[mythtv] NEW MythPlugin functionality (PATCH)

[Joseph A. Caputo]

Well, I think that initially there is just some general application startup
overhead that causes a delay of a couple of seconds with no feedback (though
Isaac said they're working on providing feedback in ThemedMenu or
something).  Then there is another delay (this time with a progress bar)
while the metadata loads from the database.  Depending on the size of your
music database, this can take a few seconds as well.  Not something I'd
complain about for a desktop app, but for a set-top application I think it's
a bit sluggish.

I suppose it's worth noting that alot of the M$ platform apps solve this
problem by keep a systray app running all the time, which is kind of
analogous to the 'load plugin once & keep in memory' model.  However, my
suggestion was that if this introduced an unacceptable level of constant
memory/resource usage, we might explore other models of accessing metadata
besides the 'load everything at init & keep in memory' model.

It seems to me (speaking off the top of my head here, I might not really
know what I'm talking about) that there are two popular models for managing
music/media files:  the strictly filesystem-based approach, where a
directory tree is accessed on-demand, loading metadata from ID3 tags and
playlists from .m3u files (XMMS?); and the database-oriented approach,
similar to mythmusic or Freeamp(??).  It might be worth looking at these
apps to see how they do things, but I'm afraid in the final analysis that
there won't be that much we can do to reduce startup time short of keeping
the module resident.  If that's the case, we'll probably need to look into
reducing the constant memory requirements.

Unless everybody but me is happy with the status quo...

-Joe C.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mythtv-dev-bounces at snowman.net
> [mailto:mythtv-dev-bounces at snowman.net]On Behalf Of Edward Wildgoose
> Sent: Friday, April 11, 2003 11:12 AM
> To: Development of mythtv
> Subject: RE: [mythtv] NEW MythPlugin functionality (PATCH)
>
>
> What is myth doing during the initialise which takes the time
> though?  Is the DB the bottle neck or is it module
> initialisation, or something else entirely..?