Fan Art doesn't always load (but does sometimes) (1 Viewer)

[pzycho]

I am having an odd problem that I couldn't find anyone else having in the search results. I have version 2.0 of TV Series as well as Monochrome 1.7 skin set to use fanart. Now I got some fan arts for my shows and they only load some of the times. Some times the fan art will load the first time I open a particular series... but sometimes I have to back out of the series and select it again 3 or 4 times before the art will load. I know it recognizes that I have fan art because it displays and all black background instead of the monochrome gray.

Some other info:

I had this problem with my previous version of the plugin as well as the previous version of the skin, so it isn't something that just started with the update.

My fan art images are .png

The image sizes range from 400k to 1.8MB, though size dosen't seem to matter because the smaller files sometimes don't load while larger ones will sometimes load on the first try.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

What happens if you just use BlueTwo skin, does this still occur, trying to narrow down to plugin or skin.

 

[pzycho]

Thanks. Just checked bluetwo wide. It has the same issue.

 

[pzycho]

Okay, I have a quick theory, but I am not sure. I know that media portal randomly chooses fan art from the pool of fan art if there is more than one. Is there any way that my media portal could think that I have multiple fan art for certain shows even though I only have one (thus causing it to randomly pick some blanks before actually picking one that exists)? Its just a theory and I am not sure how to test it.

 

[Inker]

Okay, I have a quick theory, but I am not sure. I know that media portal randomly chooses fan art from the pool of fan art if there is more than one. Is there any way that my media portal could think that I have multiple fan art for certain shows even though I only have one (thus causing it to randomly pick some blanks before actually picking one that exists)? Its just a theory and I am not sure how to test it.

No.
What can happen though is that an image is damaged in some way so that it cant be loaded or that perhaps you run out of memory. Of course without a log its hard to tell...

 

[pzycho]

Ah, okay. So I took a look at the log and the error being thrown is "out of memory". Does this just mean I need more RAM? I have a gig. Still, it seems odd that if it was out of memory that it would load eventually after exiting and re-entering multiple times (just a note: I don't exit the plugin completely... just back to the list of shows).

EDIT: Also: I am running XP, not Vista (vista eats way more ram)

Again, thanks for the help.

 

[Inker]

Ah, okay. So I took a look at the log and the error being thrown is "out of memory". Does this just mean I need more RAM? I have a gig. Still, it seems odd that if it was out of memory that it would load eventually after exiting and re-entering multiple times (just a note: I don't exit the plugin completely... just back to the list of shows).

EDIT: Also: I am running XP, not Vista (vista eats way more ram)

Again, thanks for the help.

Not neccesarily, I have found the Image loading routine also throws this error when trying to load a damaged file. Try to load the image its trying in a different program (paint or something).

 

[pzycho]

Yeah, I opened a bunch of the images in both firefox and paint and none of them threw any errors. The other thing is that I doubt that I would have so many corrupted images. It seems to happen to any of the images at one time or another. Its not isolated to a particular one. Also, it happens to both images I've downloaded from the fan art website and ones that i've made myself. Maybe its just time for some more ram.

Just in case this might set off any flags, I am running xp, the fan art is stored in "Team Media Portal/Media Portal/thumbs/fan art", they are named like this: "76321_light_freak_and_geeks.png", and the folder is shared on the network.

If this doesn't set off any flags, and I'm the only one with this problem, then its probably just something with my setup, but if any of that looks fishy, let me know.

Again, thanks for all the help. You guys are a good bunch around here.

 

[pzycho]

I have returned, having fixed my own problem. I am posting the solution here in case anyone is searching for this problem and comes across this thread. Basically my issue was that I was transfering the files from my mac, over my network to my pc. When doing this, the mac was creating junk files. i.e. if the files was "filename.png" the mac would create a hidden file called "._filename.png". It is an empty file and doesn't do much damage usually because in most cases the pointer to the fan art would be to a specific image.... HOWEVER, because the fanart system randomly chooses different images when more than one is available, it would randomly pick these junk files.

The simple fix for this was to show hidden files in windows, then delete all the junk. I hope this helps someone, someday... (or if anyone making the plugin ever wants to exclude those junk files, that would work, too).

Thanks everyone for all of the help.

 

[Johan]

I have the exact same issue as above. I can however not find any hidden or broken pictures.
I have now turned off "random" fanart and then it shows correctly every time.
It does not look good with a black empty background so this is a good solution for me at the moment.
It would however be cool to use the random feature.

I am using MP 1.0 RC2 and the latest TVSeries fom SVN.
Any ideas what could be wrong? I can of course post my log if that would help.