extremely slow artwork/image processing on SBS 7.4.x (Asus RT-N16)

[Steevee28]

Hi all!
I managed to get SBS 7.3.3, 7.4.1 and 7.4.2 running on my Asus RT-N16. They all run pretty fast , but there is one big exception: ALL things related to images (thus also artwork) :

- Artwork scan is extremely slow (2 hours) (music library scan only needed some minutes)

- The web frontend is extremely slow in reloading *.PNGs from the server, but runs fast when the web browser already had the images in cache.

- My SqueezBox Radio immediately starts playing any music, but needs up to 2 minutes to display the artwork (wich then often causes connection timeouts)

So what is wrong?? All remaining server components run quite fast, as far as I can see...
Is this a known bug and resolved in 7.5.0-embedded?

Best Regards

[mherger]

I don't know your device and its limitations, but you might want to set it to use the faster "Resize" algorithm instead of "Resample" (Settings/Advanced/Performance). Embedded will definitely improve this on _some_ platforms (the library isn't available eg. for Windows)

[bpa]

I think artwork resizing stresses the system in both CPU and RAM - as the processor in the RT-N16 is a bit slow (533MHz )has limited RAM 128Mb and no floating point - so floating point is probably emulated.

If you enable artwork precaching - it will make the scan very long but most of the resizing will be done.

[Steevee28]

I think artwork resizing stresses the system in both CPU and RAM - as the processor in the RT-N16 is a bit slow (533MHz )has limited RAM 128Mb and no floating point - so floating point is probably emulated.

If you enable artwork precaching - it will make the scan very long but most of the resizing will be done.

Ok. How to enable artwork precaching?

[Steevee28]

I don't know your device and its limitations, but you might want to set it to use the faster "Resize" algorithm instead of "Resample" (Settings/Advanced/Performance). Embedded will definitely improve this on _some_ platforms (the library isn't available eg. for Windows)

This sound like a good explanation for Artwork. But why is loading of .PNGs of the web interface so slow? I believed that they just have to be downloaded (unprocessed) from the server.

[mherger]

> Ok. How to enable artwork precaching?

It's enabled by default. And you'd find it in the same place as the Resize/Resample setting.

BTW: lack of floating point unit in some NAS was the one and only reason why we added that the faster (but uglier result) resize method. On one box we tested the better resampling took no less than about 45 seconds per menu item...

Most of the stock icons are stored on the server in one rather large size, as they're being used in many places with different resolutions (web UI, Controller, Touch etc.). They're then resized and cached on the first request.

[Steevee28]

Ok, thank you.
The web frontend now runs at acceptable speed.
When I'm back home I'll test the Radio... but I'm confident