[Buschel]

If I got it right, you describe a flow using the Kodi via a remote, either physical or app. This ends up in the playlist not being updated anymore. Could be a Kodi issue as well. Will try this tomorrow as well.

For now I only used the remote app to play whole picture folders, via the app‘s library view. And this works flawless.

[amasephy]

I use the app remote for the entire thing. Basically I think the difference is if you specific via Kodi server to start a slideshow then the playlist refreshes accordingly. If you start a slideshow by selecting a photo within a folder then the playlist will not refresh. This flushing issue is only possible from the right hand pane remote.


One note about starting slideshows from the app. I added the photos main menu item back in. Then I found that I could not start slideshows from root folders. Long pressing on them revealed no context menu in the app. It was only possible from sub folders. Pretty irritating given I rarely have subfolders.

Last thing, related to the debounce: the lack of bounce is a problem with party mode. It either needs the bounce or some new animation to mask the loading. Really what I would love to see but is probably not possible with the limitations of the api are a nice graceful party playlist loading animation where the top most entry is popped off by the playlist shifting up and a new bottom entry fading in keeping the party playlist populated with 10 songs.

Edit: Looks like the playlist type views (music movies photos) has that weird angled slide in issue you fixed elsewhere in the app. Normally the list items slide in horizontally but if you have a playlist long enough and scroll down a bit then toggle to one of the other playlist views the list items slide it at a 45 degree angle.

Edit 2: Was able to reproduce the constant bouncing issue. Basically when I load the album with thousands of photos then the bounce animation happens like crazy. Any attempt to load another album with less pictures does not stop the constant bouncing. The new small playlist displays on Kodi server but the apps now playing playlist is just completely unusable after this as nothing stops the crazy behavior other than restarting Kodi server.

[Buschel]

One note about starting slideshows from the app. I added the photos main menu item back in. Then I found that I could not start slideshows from root folders. Long pressing on them revealed no context menu in the app. It was only possible from sub folders. Pretty irritating given I rarely have subfolders.

Confirmed. Just did not work on this yet, fixed this now.

Last thing, related to the debounce: the lack of bounce is a problem with party mode. It either needs the bounce or some new animation to mask the loading. Really what I would love to see but is probably not possible with the limitations of the api are a nice graceful party playlist loading animation where the top most entry is popped off by the playlist shifting up and a new bottom entry fading in keeping the party playlist populated with 10 songs.

Hmm. Let me review the animation for the playlist.

Edit: Looks like the playlist type views (music movies photos) has that weird angled slide in issue you fixed elsewhere in the app. Normally the list items slide in horizontally but if you have a playlist long enough and scroll down a bit then toggle to one of the other playlist views the list items slide it at a 45 degree angle.

Ok. Will look into this.

Edit 2: Was able to reproduce the constant bouncing issue. Basically when I load the album with thousands of photos then the bounce animation happens like crazy. Any attempt to load another album with less pictures does not stop the constant bouncing. The new small playlist displays on Kodi server but the apps now playing playlist is just completely unusable after this as nothing stops the crazy behavior other than restarting Kodi server.

I now added 8000 pictures and can see similar issues. Sometimes it helps to stop the slideshow and then play another picture or picture folder. This is caused by Kodi and not the app.

Just to help not mixing things up. "Debounce" is a technical term and is directly related to the bounce-effect you mention. "Debounce" means: not acting on each event, but only on the last one of a series of events. Technically this is done by starting a timer on an event like "Playlist update". Each new such event restarts the timer. When the timer is passed (usually after the last event restarted it), the action is taken.

What happens with playlist updates: The app receives an event from Kodi that playlist got updated. The app then asks Kodi to provide details on the whole playlist. After all playlist items were received the app does the "bounce" animation to visualize the playlist got updated.

What happen with the use case of adding thousands of items: Kodi just sends multiple events that the playlist got updated. This seems the relate to the size of the pictures as well (loading time related?). I saw up to 40 events for 8000 pictures. Without debouncing the app each time asks to provide a complete list of the playlist items (200, 400, 600, ..., 7800, 8000 items). This takes ages to process on both Kodi and app side and causes the recurring "bouncing animation".

[amasephy]

Thanks for clarifying the debounce thing. You’re right, I was totally thrown off by the term.

This is all extreme edge case stuff so I wouldn’t burn out over trying to make fixes. As I’m sure you found, Kodi server takes a lot time to catalog 8000 photos before the slide show even starts. This far from a typical use case. Kodi itself is not well designed for slideshow viewing anyway. You already took care of the biggest thing - adding action sheet to root folder for photos. 👍🏻

Were you able to replicate the playlist not flushing and refreshing when loading a new slideshow? I can try to write more clear directions if need be.

[UlfSchmidt]

This is all extreme edge case stuff so I wouldn’t burn out over trying to make fixes. As I’m sure you found, Kodi server takes a lot time to catalog 8000 photos before the slide show even starts. This far from a typical use case. Kodi itself is not well designed for slideshow viewing anyway.
…

I have to disagree here. Kodi server itself works very well with even huge slideshows, at least my instance (SHIELD TV with Kodi 21.0 stable). I can start a slideshow over all my vacation pictures (more than 17,000) and it starts within seconds.

But the App unfortunately is not able to deal with such large playlists in a consistent manner. Sometimes it simply dies and needs to be restarted. Sometimes it works well for hours (just tested). And starting the same slideshow from the App is almost impossible. This drives me crazy, as it is one of my regular use cases and also the only use case where I have to use the remote control panel to navigate on screen to the right folder and to initiate the slideshow.

Also strange, as it contradicts with your statements @amasephy, I can switch from one slideshow to another and the old one is erased from the playlist as expected.

[Buschel]

This is all extreme edge case stuff so I wouldn’t burn out over trying to make fixes. As I’m sure you found, Kodi server takes a lot time to catalog 8000 photos before the slide show even starts. This far from a typical use case. Kodi itself is not well designed for slideshow viewing anyway.

True. But I am sure, a properly managed debouncing can really help here. Not giving up yet.

You already took care of the biggest thing - adding action sheet to root folder for photos. 👍🏻

I did it right away for all sources, e.g. when going to Movies>Files or Music>Files

Were you able to replicate the playlist not flushing and refreshing when loading a new slideshow? I can try to write more clear directions if need be.

Yes. After adding 8k pictures Kodi does cooperate that well anymore. In most cases any additional picture playlist change lets Kodi hang and then crash.


I am right now reviewing and attempting to rework the playlist animations. This is really not well done so far. But there are many corner cases and I am sure this will bring up some regressions once changed. For now I am not "bouncing" it anymore but just let it fade in/out on an update -- also for PartyMode.

[UlfSchmidt]

You already took care of the biggest thing - adding action sheet to root folder for photos. 👍🏻

I did it right away for all sources, e.g. when going to Movies>Files or Music>Files

I was just in this minute writing another post to ask you for this
…because I wanted to check whether it makes a difference to add 10,000 images versus 10,000 songs…

[UlfSchmidt]

Yes. After adding 8k pictures Kodi does cooperate that well anymore. In most cases any additional picture playlist change lets Kodi hang and then crash.

Are you on the latest Kodi server? I never had any issues on server side, only within the App. Sorry to tell!

[amasephy]

I didn’t mean to presume that it was an edge case where a user would load huge slideshows in. Sorry about that UlfSchmidt.

I honestly thought I was the outlier having a folder with thousands upon thousands of photos! I stand corrected. 🙂

In my case loading the slideshow from Kodi server directly is actually really slow for me. I get a progress bar every time that says something along the lines of “reading metadata” and it took several minutes for that 8,000 photos to even begin to load up. I also found flipping between slides to be a little slow compared to just loading a slideshow program and flipping between slides which my experience on windows has been an instant response time. With Kodi the experience did not seem great to me. Not sure why my experience is so different from yours.

So, what the heck is going on here? Are we just doing something different?

I’m using latest release. Photos are stored on a NAS with gigabit hardwire between all devices.


Buschel, I have the flushing fail even with folders with only 10 photos. This isnt related to loading massive slideshows.

[UlfSchmidt]

So, what the heck is going on here? Are we just doing something different?

I’m using latest release. Photos are stored on a NAS with gigabit hardwire between all devices.

I don’t know. Very strange indeed, because my setup is quite old already and deals well with my image collection:

1. My Kodi server runs on an old Nvidia SHIELD TV (the cheapest variant available) on Android
   
2. All my media files are stored on a cheap self built NAS (with some old single core CPU)
   
3. The connection between the NAS and the SHIELD is an old telephone line, limiting the bandwidth to 100 MBits/s
   
4. The NAS storage is mounted via SAMBA on the SHIELD
   

Only thing I remember is that everything becomes incredibly slow when one uses the Kodi provided mechanism to attach any NAS to it. The SHIELD has its own implementation of SAMBA, so that from Kodi’s point of view all media is stored locally. For me, that did the trick.

[amasephy]

I’ll test with my windows box and see if the experience is different.

[Buschel]

The App always first builds the playlist, and then starts playing a playlist id: Playlist.Clear > Playlist.Add (e.g. a whole folder) > Player.Open (playlist index).

One main problem with such large playlists is that Kodi sends multiple events (Playlist.OnAdd) while the playlist is building. This triggers the App to ask Kodi for detailed content of the playlist. This causes load on Kodi and in consequence delays finishing the playlist and playing it. You can even see this happening by letting the App show the playlist and then start a large slideshow via Kodi UI. Lots of playlist reloading happens, but Kodi does not wait for the playlist to sync fully and just starts playback. 

Tipp: You can disable TCP connection as a workaround. This will disable the events and should avoid the App creating load by the playlist updates. -> @UlfSchmidt: Can you try this and report back?

I can change the App to start playing right away via Player.Open (e.g. a whole folder). I assume this is what Kodi internally does. This also builds a playlist, but playback already starts early. Interestingly this also allows to trigger playing the huge picture slideshow (20k pictures) multiple times. Problem here is that this requires events to be sent from Kodi and might cause trouble for devices/setups which do not have TCP enabled. E.g. the playlist would only be loaded when user moves to the picture playlist.

Ideally: 

1. Player.Open instead of building playlists first. But needs review / test for impact on non-TCP setups.
   
2. Event debouncing.
   
3. With the two above changes I can start playback within about 3 seconds for my 20k test pictures (symlinks to same 15 MB picture).
   

For now I cannot really provide test builds as this would disturb the current ongoing release candidate testing.

[UlfSchmidt]

Tipp: You can disable TCP connection as a workaround. This will disable the events and should avoid the App creating load by the playlist updates. -> @UlfSchmidt: Can you try this and report back?

Either I’m too stupid to disable TCP correctly or it in fact doesn’t change anything, with the only exception that the connection indicator becomes red during the time the images are added to the playlist.

[Buschel]

Did the app show yellow connection status? Then you did this correct.

[UlfSchmidt]

No :-(
I simply removed the TCP port entry from the settings menu in the App. What else should I try?