Moving along a row of ICONs slow

[blctech]

Hi

I have 3 rows of movie icons on the CMC screen. When I am selected on a row , say the middle, when I use the right arrow to move right, it will move right with each click of the key, but then it will stop and I can't move it any further for 3 to 5 seconds. Same goes for going right. Does it on all my computers (Win 10 with fast processors).

It acts as though it is buffering something because once it stops for that 3 to 5 seconds the cursor then jumps the amount of clicks I did while it was paused.

Is there some Icon setting that might be causing this?

Thanks
Brian

[Pauven]

Hi Brian,

The scrolling speed is directly affected by hard drive performance. Each movie cover is loaded in real-time. A fast SSD is highly recommended, and allows scrolling to be very fast.

Perhaps you are using slower mechanical/spinning hard drives? Or slower SSDs? Not all SSD's are created equal. A PCIe NVMe type SSD is a good choice, while a SATA SSD is not nearly as good.

Another possibility is where the covers are stored. If you are using CCC, then the cover artwork get's copied to your local PC for best performance.

If you are using the legacy folder scanning feature (with CME or even worse raw MyMovies.xml files), then you need to make sure that "Artwork Caching" is enabled in CMC's settings. If you use folder scanning without artwork caching enabled, then all movie covers are read in real-time from their original location (i.e. your NAS movie server), over the network, and this can be very slow.

One last thought, if you're missing lots of covers (common issue with Folder Scanning), then CMC first searches for the missing cover, and ultimately uses a placeholder (the "?" cover). This searching for missing files can be very slow too.

I mention all of this since you were my very first customer!!!, back when I first released CMC as MM Browser. That means you got everything up and running use the really bad MyMovies.xml folder scanning approach. I'm not sure if you've migrated to CCC, but if you you really, really, really should!

Paul

[blctech]

Hi Paul

Thanks for that info. I indeed am using CCC. Works great!

I did find the problem. Unbeknownst to me, for some reason CCC was not running!!! Some questions through. Where is Artwork Caching enabled in CMC's settings?

Also, when I add a DVD via Mymovies, is an export needed from Mymovies each time. What if I only fix some URL or data via Collection Management. Does the every 5 minute scan take care of it

Thanks. I have always loved your program. Best ever!

Brian

[Pauven]

Yay, glad you got it figured out. Sorry I didn't think to mention that as a possibility. CMC is supposed to run in an offline mode when CCC is unreachable. While I know that it does impact performance a bit, I don't think I've seen it as bad as what you described.

When CMC is in CCC mode, artwork caching is automatically enabled and cannot be turned off. So you would only see this setting if you disabled CCC in CMC, which then un-hides the Folder Scanning menu where the artwork caching for folders setting lives.

99% of the time, the regular 5-minute scan should pick up and process nearly any change you make in My Movies. But this logic does rely on My Movies indicating there was a change via their API. Unfortunately, there are a few fields in My Movies that don't get reported as changed, so these would get missed by the 5-minute process, but most of these fields are relatively minor and unimportant to CMC.

If you left the weekly Full Export enabled in CCC, then these minor gaps get fixed weekly by that process. I actually changed my schedule to only run a Full Export once a month, and that's been working great for me.

I have always loved your program. Best ever!