Last year I posted about [intlink id=“41” type=“post”]improving the performance of Media Browser[/intlink]. In the end that attempt yielded disappointing results. However, I’ve recently been experimenting with various ways of improving performance as my library size increases.
- The sqlite performance of Media Browser is now noticeably better than when it was first enabled and I was very pleased with the results I got from enabling it with the new 2.2.8 মুক্তি.
- I will be experimenting with the result of moving the sqlite database file onto the [intlink id=“40” type=“post”]র্যাম Drive I already use for my WMP তথ্যশালা[/intlink] and will update this post accordingly
The above changes have yielded some benefits, but really I was in search of a bit more. Whilst [intlink id=“41” type=“post”]benchmarking a new ইউএসবি Pen drive[/intlink] I checked the size of my media browser image cache and noticed that it had grown substantially — to over 600 meg, with an average image size of about 600k. Given the typical display size of the images in question this seemed rather a lot and I wondered what else could be done. I remembered seeing a post about reducing the image cache on TheHTPC, which is one of the blog feeds I keep a half-eye on quite regularly and decided to dig the article in question up. I was delighted to see that the author (অন্য জন) has tried various of the things I had already done, and had some excellent advice for reducing image size.
- Recompress all the JPEGs (in my case to 80%). This saved over 350meg
- Resize all the movie cover images (I followed the advice to use 600×400). This saved an additional 230meg.
I would like to echo Jon of TheHTPC in endorsing FastStone Image Viewer for the above operations. It was free and easy to use.
- I also decided to limit the number of backdrops per movie to a maximum of 2. This saved an additional (post compression) 60meg. I considered reducing the maximum to just 1, but this would only save an additional 14mb — which I decided isn’t worth it for the moment.
In total I have reduced the number of images by approx 250, and the total size by 640mb.
- I also checked to see if any backdrops were larger than 1920×1080 with the intention of resizing any that were. Sadly (or sensibly) none were. But I was able to identify 4 corrupt (1kb) backdrop files which I also removed.
- I have also switched off “use internet providers” in the Media Browser config (inside media center, not the start menu config utility) altho I don’t expect this to have any effect as I already have complete meta-data that I manage with মিডিয়া Cen-Ter মাস্টার
I still have 189mb of PNG’s and decided to try compressing them further with PNGOUTWin, which I selected based on a comparison of various png compression tools. Despite the original comparison giving PNGOUT rather unfavourable performance in terms of time to complete, I found the windows version, which has been optimised for multicore cpu’s, performed well, completing most images in under 10 seconds, with an average compression to 94%. Extrapolated to all my images this would save just 12mb. Sadly PNGOUTWin isn’t free, and I decided saving 12mb just wasn’t worth paying for.
Overall I have now reduced the average size of a file in my ImageCache folder to just under 220kb — only 37% the original average. Once the entire cache is rebuilt I expect (and hope) this will result in a new cache size of under 250mb, which should offer a very substantial speed boost.
“Hi James I realise it has been a long while, but I just checked this on windows 11 (build 23H2)…”