Hi,
I’ve been using the vero 4K+ for a few months and it’s been great. I’ve a few minor questions stuck in the back of my head and I’m hoping you’ll indulge me and give advice.
Official USB hub:
Can the official remote and a wireless keyboard/mouse (logitech k400+) co-exist together if plugged into the vero 4K+'s hub. Will osmc auto-detect both? Or is one or the other?
USB hub:
I have an external hard drive plugged directly into the 4K+. If I moved the external HD to the hub, will kodi ‘remember’ the locations of all my files etc?
SD Card:
The 4k+ isn’t slow but would installing a SD card speed things up? I have a big music collection with associated thumbnails etc. Will osmc auto-detect it?
Samba server:
I’m not a techie as you can probably guess But I did get the samba server working and it ‘talks’ to my desktop computer. Do transfers go through my router or do they ‘talk’ directly to each other?
Multi-tasking:
My video/music files start life on my desktop computer and I transfer them via samba to the vero 4K+. Can osmc ‘multi-task’, e.g., could I watch a TV show on the vero4K+ while the file(s) transfer is taking place from my computer to the vero 4K+?
Is it possible to install a separate music player on osmc? I’ve been using the same Win10 music player for over 10 years and finding it hard to adjust to Kodi’s way of thinking/organising when it comes to music. (I don’t want a big deal of this question - just wondering out loud)
Sorry for all the questions. I didn’t think they warranted individual threads so I thought I’d lump them in all together.
I depends on how its mounted. If you have an issue you can post logs and we can inform you how to fix it.
Speed it up over what? The actual music files should not make much of a difference and the artwork would be cached in the internal eMMC regardless of where you put your music.
Samba is just another name for the type of networking protocol Windows uses. If you transferred files to/from the Vero and your PC it would happen the same way as if you were transfering from one PC to another.
Yes. The Vero will have some additional overhead when the transfer is going on but in most instances the only difference you should notice is maybe a slightly slower UI. If you are using certain add-on such as Netflix (that require a lot of CPU) then there may be some impact, but usually you should not even notice.
As far as a music player inside of Kodi, I am not aware of any. If there is some particular thing about you have issues with doing then you should ask about that specifically. Kodi can act as an airplay and DLNA endpoint if you have a player on your PC that allows casting to those protocols.
Hi darwindesign,
Thank you for the quick reply. Much appreciated.
I can’t find the ‘quote’ button so my reply will be a bit disjointed.
Re: mounting HD directly into vero4K+ versus hub:
(I’m not a techie so apols in advance). I don’t know how it’s mounted. I just plugged it into the vero4K+ at the beginning. If I restart the vero4k+, the extHD ‘auto-mounts’.
Re: SD card…
My music library is approx 40k mp3’s/3k albums divided into approx 20 genres. I was wondering if the extra space on the SD card would make things speedier for Kodi to serve artist/album pictures & bio info. I was wondering/guessing if that was a roadblock?
Music plays fine once it starts but, depending on the size of the folder you’re accessing, it can take upto 5 secs to open that folder (maybe node is the better word). (There’s no problems with movies/tv).
I generally go Music → Genre → Artist → Album → play album
Anything over, say, 50 Artists opens relatively slowly (if 5 secs is slow!)
Re the SD card… This is the thread that was also in the back of my mind… I don’t fully understand the answer so I guess my question would be does the SD card become ‘internal storage’ and make my music database (?) move that bit quicker?
The OP had 3,000 movies and posters taking up 4Gb of space…
The answer by nabsltd was:
The space that is being taken up on the Vero is by the cache of the artwork. The cache is not a direct copy of the image files, but are scaled-down version. You can’t get rid of it, since it will just re-populate with the images. It can technically be moved off of internal storage, but that will likely make it slower.
Unless you are completely out of space on the Vero local storage, the cache is not going to cause slowdowns of any kind, especially when playing videos. The size of your database could be an issue, depending on what kind it is (Kodi built-in or MySQL), where it is stored (on the Vero 4K or on a different machine), and what skin you use.
If your just using the one external hard drive then it should not be any issue.
The way Kodi works is that everything is put into a database and artwork is cached. Your actual files only come into play when you are scraping new content or actually playing something. The database that Kodi uses is not the fastest thing in the world once you start getting to very large libraries (which 40k songs qualifies). The only way to speed up the database would be to move it to an external MySQL on a full blown PC (which would always have to be running). There can be slowdowns if your using a demanding skin or have your artwork cache size overriding the defaults. Switching your skin to Estuary as a test should tell you if this is a factor.
The artwork cache will be SLOWER from an SD card than the internal eMMC. If you are not storing any media on the internal storage then it should be large enough to comfortably store the cache for even extremely large collections without issue. Even if it became an issue at some point it is possible to copy the cache elsewhere and do a path substitution to a new location.
Hi darwindesign,
Once again, thanks for all the replies. So no SD for me then.
For reference, I looked at Kodi’s ‘system info’ this morning and, with the vero 4K+ idling, the system memory is approx 30% (500Mb/1700Mb) as is the used RAM at 30%. So I assume the 4K+ is not the bottleneck (for music database access).
But I did get the samba server working and it ‘talks’ to my desktop computer. Do transfers go through my router or do they ‘talk’ directly to each other?