Database Vs Shares UI (1 Viewer)

BrillMistake

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December 28, 2007
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I believe one of the fundamental concepts that confuses most first time users (and causes them to say "it didn't work, it was so slow, it's not ready yet etc).... is the concept of Shares vs Database.

For this reason, I would like to suggest that the UI for first time users gear itself towards database views, and explains to the user that they should populate the database/s with the data found in the shares. Of course, they should be offered the chance to just view the shares directly, but be warned of the slowness of this.

This might sound quite partisan towards database, and a little 'niche'.... but having seen so many postings by people trying media portal for the first time.... a large percentage of them are caused by not grasping the views / database concept... and the fact that MediaPortal is initially configured to view shares! (I can understand the logic here, since it gives the most certain and rapid confirmation to the user that media is being found, but it's steering them down the wrong path!).


Ok, that's my piece said.

/The Analog Kid
 

Swede

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Noobs reply:

Shares view advantages:

When you add a new movie - it's there.
If you have a load of kidz movies, home made movies, recordings, etc - you can have them in a separat folders. You don't want them in a big mix.
If you delete a movie - it's gone.
If you want to sort the movies by date when you got them, ie newest unseen first - you can.

Help me out now, you other noobs! Let's list the advantages!
 

rekenaar

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    Well, Swede, you joined in 2006 so I don't think you are a noob. So much more prove that shares view IS used a lot. I must agree with all your advantages. One can alway use a specialized plugin (like Moving Pictures) for movies. Other videos is a lot easier with Shares view.
     

    fforde

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    Hrmm.. well to begin with the Shares view should not inherently be slower because it is the shares view. If it is slow that means there are problems with the implementation. Ultimately though both "Shares" view and "Database" view are just two ways to organize your video files based on meta-data about a file and it's contents. One should not necessarily be faster than another. If anything I'd expect the database view to be slower, since it is dealing with more information and more artwork.

    Setting all that aside though, I think the reason the shares view is the default is because MyVideos is not devoted 100% to movie content. The database view is (at least currently) based on movie data pulled from sites like IMDb. But the MyVideos module is meant for more than just movie content. The shares view allows the user to browse all of their content regardless of whether it is a movie file and regardless of whether it has been (correctly) scanned with meta-data pulled from online.

    So... given the current situation, even though the shares view may be slower, I think it does not make sense to start in the "Database" view unless MyVideos drops all support for non-movie related media.

    But, all that being said, I still think this is the wrong dicussion to be having. We shouldn't be asking which view should we use, Shares or Database. We should be asking how can we combine both views in a way that makes sense and makes it easier for people to navigate their media.
     

    Swede

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    Or how can we make it fast enough to be usable. You don't want to wait 1 minute to get your list of movies, every time the list shows (even when a movie stops). This extreme slow behavior is in clients, if MP is on in the server.
    I wish someone with great skills could have a look at that, but everyone only says "use database view"
     

    fforde

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    I wish someone with great skills could have a look at that, but everyone only says "use database view"
    :mad: Who said that? As far as I am concerned responsiveness as slow as you guys are describing should be treated as a bug.
     

    tourettes

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    Few reasons why database view are much faster than the shares view

    - Database view doesnt need to do any disk access (MP has bad caching for the folder structures). This is issue especially with network shares

    - My Movies code is just plain ugly, no one likes to touch that area if not nescessary -> no volunteers to make speed optimisations / good caching for folder structures

    - I personally havent had any speed issues on my small amount of video files -> I wont spend time on the optimizatio (especially after looking few times to the source code :))
     

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