Another speed tweak request...

[fuzzweed]

Hi Psycik, following your wonderful work in speeding up the random playlist; is there any way to speed up the initial plugin load? - i'm guessing that my problem is again due to DB size (around 15Meg).
Obviously I need to wait for it to read the DB at some point, but it would be better for me if the plugin loaded first, and the DB filled up in the background, as unless theres some 'instant' feedback when I hit the ML2 menu button, it's hard to know whether the remote press has been received or not.
I've noticed that the TV listings plugin expolits this behavior, so I'm guessing it should be possible somehow......

EDIT: OK forget ALL of that - read the wiki and turned off the (All) thingy. One big RTFM to myself......

[psycik]

I wasn't going to say RTFM honestly But I would have just suggested what you did, glad you found it.. Oh to have that problem when i have so much music it takes forever to load....

[HtV]

Oh to have that problem when i have so much music it takes forever to load....

And find the time to listen to it.

[psycik]

That's why I take my whole collection to work on a portable harddrive - and fill up my 2 Gb SD card in my cellphone - gotta get though it all somehow!!

[fuzzweed]

I kinda gave up listening to music for a while cos I could never choose which CD to put on (honestly, although I admit it does sound odd now I wrote it down). These new fangled MP3s and the shuffle button have really done me a favour over the past couple of years....

[liteswap]

I sort of know what you mean.

And while we're talking about speed, should it take sometimes a minute or more to move from viewing one M3U playlist to another? My collection is around 60GB and it's hosted on a Linux/Samba server connected via Gigabit Ethernet. Is the server being asked to index stuff before the playlist can be displayed?

[psycik]

no, but it reads through that playlist and checks existence of the file, and I think will read it's tags as well. All I get out of the M3U is the name of the file.

So doing it over a network will take a little bit of time, it depends on the size of the playlist.

Does it do it if you look at one playlist then the next, then the previous again?? I can't remember if i clear everything out, I probably do or I'd be using a heap of memory.

[liteswap]

Yes, it seems to be the same whichever way you go. Does make it a bit painful. Can I suggest that, in the absence of an actual speed-up, some form of progress bar/report would reassure users that it's not frozen?