skin.setstring slows down render process (1 Viewer)

[mbuzina]

MediaPortal Version: 1.4.0

Description
If you have a larger SkinSettings.xml file and/or change several settings at once MP renderthread will be blocked while the SkinSettings.xml file is saved to disk.

I would expect all Disk I/O needs to be done in a separate thread, so this save action should be transferred to a background thread.

Steps to Reproduce:
Make a SkinSettings.xml file with a lot of settings (I have 300+) & execute several skin.setstring on onfocus while a fadelabel moves (this makes the effect extra visible).

Now move focus to the button that sets the strings & the fadelabel will pause updating until the file is saved to disk.

The effect is most visible when using a normal HD for the skin directory (instead of an SSD).

You can also have multiple buttons that set several settings that move focus between them. Then activate ! render stats and quickly jump with the focus. I can push down to 1 frame/sec

 

[tourettes]

I would expect all Disk I/O needs to be done in a separate thread

Not probably caused by the disk I/O but some CPU intensive processing. Writing few kbs to HD in a rendering loop is not a great idea, but definitely it wont cause huge stall with modern HW.

But you are correct, all heavy processing needs to be done outside the rendering loop (==main thread).

 

[mbuzina]

Could be, I checked task manager and yes, CPU goes up quite a lot, reaches 18% for me (4 HT cores, could be 1 thread 100%). I thought we were waiting for disk I/O to complete.

Still I would say this is a bug to be fixed. Future skins will probably use these features quite a lot to be flexible and blocking rendering is not a good idea.

 

[mbuzina]

Still valid on 1.4

 

[mbuzina]

OK, is confirmed, will add to jira:

https://issues.team-mediaportal.com/browse/MP1-4086