2 Stage Online Menu Population

[Former user]

The issue here is the time required to populate my online source menus. For 3 youtube links, and 5 earthtouch links the time has varied from 12 minutes to over 40 minutes and if one clicks on a menu item before it is populated, Samsung kicks you out of DLNA. This makes it impossible to fire up Serviio and then watch on-line feeds within a reasonable period of time.

I'll continue to edit this request as I learn more, but it now appears that the time is due to the invocation of ffmpeg -i for each menu item. Analysis of the log for the 12 minute sequence shows that ffmpeg takes 6 sec for each earth-touch link, 2 sec for each You-Tube link and 1 sec for abc-news links. So each 20 item feed can take up to 2 minutes to populate. I don't have the 40 minute log to analyse, but I was uploading at the time so perhaps network traffic caused further delay. I only know that I tested multiple times and the 40+ minutes was consistent, which caused me to create this request.

I know the retrieval of the url links html and the contained thumbnail is instantaneous using explorer so perhaps it might be possible to instantly populate all the menus with the text/video link/thumbnail for each menu item, to make them viable for access, and then proceed to retrieve the ffmpeg info for each item as a background process, or on demand when an item is clicked before ffmpeg has been run on it. Another possibility is that if all the items in each feed are the same, as they seem to be, that the first links data be used to populate all the items.

[Petr Nejedly]

some info here: http://forum.serviio.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3540#p23747

Not sure why the DLNA app crashes though. Serviio adds the items as it retrieves ffmpeg information, so if you enter the feed folder and come back out of it you'll see items being added to it. At least it does't crash on my Sammy B series.

Enable detailed log to try capturing incoming requests that crashes the TV.

[Former user]

The crash only occurs, if I click on link #3 for example (Whose title has not yet changed) while link #2 (Whose title has changed) is still populating its menu. Clicking on link #2 works fine and the populated to date items display and can be played. I'll create a log of the crash and attach it separately.

I appreciate the info in your post, so its now clear to me that you need the info from ffmpeg before you can add the item to the cache. To me that represents a valid requirement to retain that information including expiry time between serviio start-ups and to use that info on a subsequent startup so that all the previous menus are immediately viable, and then update that info with ffmpeg running in the background if the item has expired.

This would make online function the same way as local files, which if changed while serviio was stopped, only have their old info displayed from the database until it is updated in the background.

The other suggestion to stop the crashes referenced above is to not display any unpopulated links in the menu until you update the name and begin population, which would be similar to a new local folder not being displayed in the menu on startup until the database is updated.

These changes, would allow serviio to be viable on startup for both local and on-line and to be updated in the background without impacting the users access to unchanged local or online sources.

If this is not possible, then my alternative suggestion is to list all the feeds as now but to populate a feed on demand, rather than crash, if I click on it before it is populated. This would at least give more rapid access to link #15 for example without having to wait for link #1-#14 to populate first.

[Former user]

OK see my response above and here is the referenced crash log. The sequence is: Start Serviio Open Online feeds Click on unpopulated folder empty folder opens click on "upper folder" to go back get "Failed to access the device" message. then takes me back to the Serviio icon but it is inactive with background message: "No movie in current device. Select other category. To proceed I must exit back to the samsung Video/photos/Music menu and select movies then serviio again. Actually I now see that this is the same sequence that occurs if I select an unattached HDD and then click on "upper folder" to go back, so its not an unline problem

[Former user]

More info here: The message above is for the BR. The TV message is: "Request cannot be completed, MEDIA PLAY will be return to main screen"

I've changed this from proposal to bug. Crash logattached above.

[Petr Nejedly]

feeds don't appear unless they are parsed now, should fix this.