Do we really need Packed Textures? (1 Viewer)

tourettes

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    For information purposes:
    I use the StreamedMP skin with Moving Pictures/My TV series/My trailers. But I have not done anything about the fanart, except the standard present art of the skin.

    Could you post how many packedgfx*.png files MP creates for you and does those contain any of the fan art (or any other non-skin related textures).
     

    edterbak

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    I deleted the 'hack' and restarted MP.
    Result:
    15 files, no fanart in it.
    Total size of all the files together = 35.1 MB
    See screendump of the thumbs.

    Just the 2 minutes I tried going through the menu with an unhacked MP, did see as speedy as normal. I tried the things which seemed slugisch a while agoo, but couldnt see it just now.... SO, it could be a placebo in my case.... :mad:

    I see a lot of TV logo's. Could be a little too much in there than I use...
    attachment.php
     

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    CHli

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    I think he said :

    Total size of all the files together = 35.1 MB

    About that :

    Just the 2 minutes I tried going through the menu with an unhacked MP, did see as speedy as normal. I tried the things which seemed slugisch a while agoo, but couldnt see it just now.... SO, it could be a placebo in my case....

    I would refer to that thread :

    https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/1-0-final-svn-builds-303/animation-slowing-down-time-52527/

    Where I think we have seen major improvement with MP 1.0.1.
     

    Swede

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    Every file uses 32MB memory in GPU. I know, it sounds weird, but you can see earlier in this tread why.

    @Others
    If we somehow have to keep packed gfx, then the skin developers will probably have to put only the most important textures, that needs to be packed, in the Media folder, and the rest in sub folders. The sub folders will not be packed (cached). I have no idea witch textures are important to pack, but I guess RTV or Tourettes does. I have found a few, as you can see in previous posts, but i guess thats only because MP is made to use those textures from the GPU memory.
     

    tourettes

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    Every file uses 32MB memory in GPU. I know, it sounds weird, but you can see earlier in this tread why.

    Nothing weird in it. Just a simple calculation of texture dimensions and color depth. Almost the same amount of memory is used when no packed textures aren't used at all (you are free to calculate the memory requirements for the single graphics files, althou it might take few hours by hand :p). It's all just simple math.

    ...but i guess thats only because MP is made to use those textures from the GPU memory.

    All textures that are rendered to the screen are always rendered from the GPU memory. That is how video cards work. No matter are they packed textures (which are just as normal textures in the end) or not.

    As a final entry to this issue (at least from my side):

    The issue what some of you are seeing is coming from the following fact: If all required textures (packed or not) for the visible screen area aren't fit into the GPU memory there will be texture swapping between GPU and main RAM (nothing that is related to the packed textures). The overhead is just much bigger when swapping bigger dimension textures (more memory required, more memory bandwidth needed for the swapping).

    So, there is one possibly for optimization on the packed texture generation to reduce the texture swapping need we could limit the texture dimensions that are added to the packed textures. One educated guess how select the limit for the textures that are put into the packed textures: 1/4th of the area of maximum texture size that GPU supports. So, for 2048x2048 we would allow 1024x1024 sized textures to be packed. Or maybe 1/8th would be more optimal (512x512). Who knows...

    Combining that and the fact that skinners should always match their texture dimensions to the power of two rule, the possible side effects (which are rare and happen only on low end GPUs) would most likely be history (of course there would be still GPU memory that limits the performance on "prettier" skins...).

    So we have two tasks:

    • Educate skinners to use power of two dimensions for their artwork (this is good for overall GPU rendering performance ad the packed texture´management). For example default B3 skin MePo's should be re-rendered to 512x512 textures.
    • Introduce a upper limit on the texture packer for the texture sizes that are included into the packed textures (minor code change, but finding the optimal limit needs some testing).
     

    Swede

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    Quote myself:
    "Next step might be a checkbox in the setup, and an explanation. A lot of people needs this without knowing it."

    If MP works on low end computors, why not have a checkbox that triggers RTV's debug setting?
     

    Dadeo

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    If you want fanart, you can use the ugly hack :)

    C'mon, correct way to fix such issue is to ask plugin developers to fix their broken code.

    Hey Tourettes, can you or someone please tell me how the plugin developers SHOULD be storing their fanart? I have already reprorted the problem https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...13/mp-1-0-1-creates-97-packedgfx-files-58887/ and referenced it in the TVSeries plugin forum, no repsonse though!

    If I know where fanart should be stored so that it does not create 97 packedgx, files and take 2 minutes to cache, I will harass the plugin developers until they change it!

    Of course, your suggestion of limiting the size of textures that are packed seems a good solution to me, but I think if you are going to say plugin code is broken there should be some info somewhere that says where plugin graphics (especially fanart) should be stored. I couldn't find it, but then I am not a plugin developer! Am I just looking in the wrong place?

    BTW I am using RTV's 'fix' of adding <entry name="packLogoGfx">no</entry> to the debug section of mediaportal.xml but I have been getting crashes with that. Right now I am skinning so I can't really recache all the time or I would just cache once for 2 min and leave it!
     

    Swede

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    Hmmm, my fanart is in the Thumbs folder under Fan Art and is not cached, even without any fixes (or ugly hacks). Where is yours? Do you have old fanart left someplace else?
     

    Dadeo

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    Where is yours? Do you have old fanart left someplace else?

    My fanart is all in thumbs\fanart. TVSeries creates two sub folders: fanart and _cache

    So actually, on Vista it is in C:\ProgramData\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\thumbs\Fan Art\fanart\original

    I did copy 'older' fanart, but only to that location. They were png files so I deleted them and voila, it works perfectly! Now, why would it cache the png files and not the jpgs?
     

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