[mythtv-users] MythGallery: selecting a favorite picture as directory thumb

[Angela]

>What's missing from the old MythGallery plugin is the image viewer
>screen is not using MythUI. In fact IIRC there are two versions of that
>screen one uses Qt and one uses OpenGL. The only other thing missing is

That's's true.

>support for Storage Groups. Apart from that the old plugin works well
>IMHO. That's not to say it can't be improved.
>
>What's missing from the new Gallery is it simply doesn't work at all on
>remote FE's. I can't test it but I hear it doesn't work well on combined
>FE/BE machines either bringing the BE to it's knees when scanning for
>images. It does have storage group support but all the file options like
>renaming, moving, deleting files/directories are missing. You can't just
>plugin your camera and move the images on it into your gallery like you
>can with the old plugin. The zoom doesn't work properly for example the
>default zoom will crop your images rather than fill the screen, Don't
>think any of the slide show options have been implemented but I could be
>wrong since I can't get it to work at all on my remote FE. I'm sure
>there are other things I've missed.
>
>Paul H.


I tested today with 0.28-pre, combined FE/BE.

Synchronizing takes 1 minute / 6'000 pictures. It runs in the background, so
you can view pictures for the part discovered earlier.

Opening a directory takes 3 sec / 100 pictures, this is too slow! Every
time, each thumbnail is generated by the backend:
galleryfilehelper.cpp:431 (SendRequest) - GalleryFileHelper SendRequest ok
[http://127.0.0.1:6544/Image/CreateThumbnail?Id=33774]

This delay exists also when you go back to the parent directory.
Once my backend crashed. After reconnect, no thumbnails were created/shown
anymore. Had to go back to the menu and start the gallery again.

No thumbnail is generated when no pictures are found in the directory, it
doesn't recurs into subdirectories as the "old" gallery does.
In the "old" gallery thumbnails are not generated when the first
subdirectory does not have any pictures.

Some movie files types (mkv) are not recognized. Movies did not play.

I tested with the Mythbuntu theme, the thumbnail view is small (from
upper-left, uses 60%) and are also the pictures. Theme Mythmedia Redux was
OK.

>renaming, moving, deleting files/directories are missing
You are right, although I saw the code copied.

Slide Show: only fade is implemented.

CPU usage is normal.

My biggest concerns are that it is slow, as it has to contact the backend on
each directory change to generate/retrieve the thumbnails and that it
crashed the backend.

I am not a big fan from StorageGroups, the idea is good, but the files
should contain the sg_id. In MythVideo I have 4 disks, which in the worst
scenario are all spinned-up.
I have one directory defined in a StorageGroup and have symlinks to the
other disks (directories).

For the moment I am happy with the "old" gallery. Freshing it up with MythUI
as you said would be the easiest way.

Is it the preferred design to create/retrieve the thumbnails from the BE
instead of letting the FE create and retrieve thumbnails from a thumbcache?

Angela