Will converting backdrops to BMP improve performance? (1 Viewer)

[tourettes]

emphatic is right. bmp would load faster than jpg because it's uncompressed. rendering time is less.

Someone should do analysis which one loads faster. As there are two things that affect the load time

1) file size (JPEG is much smaller)
2) decoding speed (BMP is somewhat faster)

Without testing you cannot be sure which one is actually the faster one.

 

[vl002001]

Wait, so am I alone in the fact that the pictures lag after they transition? or does this happen to other people too?

 

[Vergo]

Wait, so am I alone in the fact that the pictures lag after they transition? or does this happen to other people too?

I had it too on a Dualcore Athlon X2 4200+...
Fixed it by selecting my favorite picture of each segment and deleting the others. Also, I changed them to bmp, now all goes smooth

 

[fforde]

Responsiveness of the GUI should not be affected regardless of how long the artwork takes to load. I am speculating but I am guessing the multimage control loads artwork in the rendering thread. This was a problem with Moving Pictures backdrop loading until we starting loading backdrops asynchronously.

It is possible using BMPs will improve load time, but this is addressing the symptom not the problem. The correct solution is to update the multiimage logic to load artwork asynchronously. We have some generic logic in Moving Pictures (that is also used by MPTVSeries) that might be able to be pulled into MediaPortal itself. If one of the MediaPortal devs are interested, contact me and I can point you in the right direction...

 

[tourettes]

It is possible using BMPs will improve load time, but this is addressing the symptom not the problem. The correct solution is to update the multiimage logic to load artwork asynchronously. We have some generic logic in Moving Pictures (that is also used by MPTVSeries) that might be able to be pulled into MediaPortal itself. If one of the MediaPortal devs are interested, contact me and I can point you in the right direction...

1.0.1 is currently in feature freeze, but please provide a patch so we can evaluate it for the 1.0.2.

 

[damaster]

Wait, so am I alone in the fact that the pictures lag after they transition? or does this happen to other people too?

You are not alone. I have the same issue here, and I added many backdrops to my basic home screen, and even use different movie backdrops for different basic home menu items, e.g. "Watch Movies" uses backdrops from folder "movies" while "Watch a Blu-Ray" uses backdrops from folder "movies2".

Here are my system specs:
OS: Vista (EVR)
CPU: AMD Athlon X2 6400+ 3.2 GHz
RAM: 2GB DDR2 800
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 3470 with Catalyst 9.1 drivers
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H

I will monitor CPU and GPU usage while I'm in the basic home screen tonight and report back which one of the two gets taxed the most. I'll also try converting all my backdrops to BMP if I have time and then monitor CPU and GPU usage.

 

[mattroby]

Curious about this issue as well . . .

Wait, so am I alone in the fact that the pictures lag after they transition? or does this happen to other people too?

You are not alone. I have the same issue here, and I added many backdrops to my basic home screen, and even use different movie backdrops for different basic home menu items, e.g. "Watch Movies" uses backdrops from folder "movies" while "Watch a Blu-Ray" uses backdrops from folder "movies2".

Here are my system specs:
OS: Vista (EVR)
CPU: AMD Athlon X2 6400+ 3.2 GHz
RAM: 2GB DDR2 800
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 3470 with Catalyst 9.1 drivers
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H

I will monitor CPU and GPU usage while I'm in the basic home screen tonight and report back which one of the two gets taxed the most. I'll also try converting all my backdrops to BMP if I have time and then monitor CPU and GPU usage.

Did you get a chance to check this out?

When I'm on Basic Home Screen my CPU really kicks into gear. It actually works harder than when showing videos, including HD stuff. I don't want to convert all of those images to BMP if it's not worth it (taking the time to convert, extra HD space wasted, etc, etc).

FYI - I just converted all of the images from JPEG to PNG (using a program I found on Sourceforge called BulkImageConverter) and it improved the transitions. It didn't take that long either.

I can only recommend based on my experience, but I am glad I did it. It seems to have a strain off of my system.

 

[fforde]

It is possible using BMPs will improve load time, but this is addressing the symptom not the problem. The correct solution is to update the multiimage logic to load artwork asynchronously. We have some generic logic in Moving Pictures (that is also used by MPTVSeries) that might be able to be pulled into MediaPortal itself. If one of the MediaPortal devs are interested, contact me and I can point you in the right direction...

1.0.1 is currently in feature freeze, but please provide a patch so we can evaluate it for the 1.0.2.

Tourettes I am very sorry but I have my plate full as it is with Moving Pictures (and even if I did not work on Moving Pictures I'd still be very busy!) I would be happy to assist with integration of our asynchronous loading logic, but I think I would not have time to create a patch for this without sacrificing time from Moving Pictures or my personal life. I am very sorry.

I think this logic would help performance, and I think it would not be difficult to integrate, but if you guys want to use it, you need to meet me half way. The bulk of the work is done, all that is remaining is integration.

 

[tourettes]

It is possible using BMPs will improve load time, but this is addressing the symptom not the problem. The correct solution is to update the multiimage logic to load artwork asynchronously. We have some generic logic in Moving Pictures (that is also used by MPTVSeries) that might be able to be pulled into MediaPortal itself. If one of the MediaPortal devs are interested, contact me and I can point you in the right direction...

1.0.1 is currently in feature freeze, but please provide a patch so we can evaluate it for the 1.0.2.

Tourettes I am very sorry but I have my plate full as it is with Moving Pictures (and even if I did not work on Moving Pictures I'd still be very busy!) I would be happy to assist with integration of our asynchronous loading logic, but I think I would not have time to create a patch for this without sacrificing time from Moving Pictures or my personal life. I am very sorry.

I think this logic would help performance, and I think it would not be difficult to integrate, but if you guys want to use it, you need to meet me half way. The bulk of the work is done, all that is remaining is integration.

I personally don't need that feature, so at least I won't be spending any time regarding that.

Also as you all know MP is pretty fragile so changing some sycnronous things to asyncronous could be easily breaking lot of stuff. So, if someone decides to work on this then really good care must be taken when testing (public binaries...).