GUI slowness with Aeon MQ7 and refreshing library speeds

I just purchased the Vero 4K to replace an aging Intel NUC i5 and an HP mini that were both running LibreElec 8+ and have made a few observations and fixed a couple of other issues.

My setup:

FreeNAS setup running over 10GbE which will transfer at almost line speed (850mb/sec usually).
An LG 65" OLED with HDR capabilities
MySQL server setup to feed my Kodi boxes in the house.
Vero 4K running the latest Aeon MQ7 skin

My first issue:

I’ve noticed the speed at which a library refresh or library cleanup takes. My Intel NUC and HP mini would complete either of these tasks in about 3-4 seconds tops but the Vero 4K takes up to a minute or more which is just unbearable. My first attempt to solve this was to move away from Kodi making the SMB connections to my server and let the OS manage them so I can configure SMB3 instead of Kodi doing SMB1. I believe the changes are correct and are working properly as I no longer have a sources.xml file and have specified in my advancedsettings.xml file the proper locations.

> <advancedsettings>
> 	<videodatabase>
> 		<type>mysql</type>
> 		<host>192.168.0.102</host>
> 		<name>xbmc_videos</name>
> 		<user>bleh</user>
> 		<pass>bleh</pass>
> 	</videodatabase>
> 
> 	<musicdatabase>
>         <type>mysql</type>
>         <host>192.168.0.102</host>
>         <port>3306</port>
>         <user>bleh</user>
>         <pass>bleh</pass>
> 		<name>xbmc_music</name>
>     </musicdatabase> 
> 	<videolibrary>
>           <importwatchedstate>true</importwatchedstate>
> 		  <importresumepoint>true</importresumepoint>
>      </videolibrary>
> 	<video>
> 		<excludefromscan>
> 			<regexp>@eaDir</regexp>
> 			<regexp>@EADIR</regexp>
> 			<regexp>extras</regexp>
> 		</excludefromscan>
> 		<excludefromlisting>
> 			<regexp>@eaDir</regexp>
> 			<regexp>@EADIR</regexp>
> 			<regexp>extras</regexp>
> 		</excludefromlisting>
> 	</video>
> 	<fanartres>1080</fanartres>
> 	<imageres>1080</imageres>
> 	<cache>
> 		<buffermode>1</buffermode>
> 		<memorysize>52488000</memorysize>
> 		<readfactor>5.0</readfactor>
> 	</cache>
> 	<pathsubstitution>
> 		<substitute>
> 			<from>smb://192.168.0.4/Media/Movies/</from>
> 			<to>/mnt/Movies/</to>
> 		</substitute>
> 		<substitute>
> 			<from>smb://192.168.0.4/Media/TV/</from>
> 			<to>/mnt/TV/</to>
> 		</substitute>
> 		<substitute>
>     	    <from>smb://192.168.0.4/Media/Comedy/</from>
>         	<to>/mnt/Comedy/</to>
> 	    </substitute>
> 		<substitute>
>     	    <from>smb://192.168.0.4/Media/Documentaries/Movies/</from>
>         	<to>/mnt/Documentaries/Movies/</to>
>     	</substitute>
> 		<substitute>
>         	<from>smb://192.168.0.4/Media/Documentaries/Sports/</from>
>         	<to>/mnt/Documentaries/Sports/</to>
>     	</substitute>
> 		<substitute>
>         	<from>smb://192.168.0.4/Media/Documentaries/TV/</from>
> 	        <to>/mnt/Documentaries/TV/</to>
>     	</substitute>
> 		<substitute>
>         	<from>smb://192.168.0.4/Media/Anime/Movies/</from>
>         	<to>/mnt/Anime/Movies/</to>
>     	</substitute>
> 		<substitute>
>         	<from>smb://192.168.0.4/Media/Anime/TV/</from>
>         	<to>/mnt/Anime/TV/</to>
>     	</substitute>
> 	</pathsubstitution>
> </advancedsettings>

I have no other sources mounted in Kodi or setup via the GUI just this file dropped in my userdata folder.

The second issue:

My covers on the TV Shows or Movies takes anywhere from 3-5 seconds to pop up on the screen. I can switch to the TV Shows screen and everything loads quickly except for the covers. They’ll eventually show up by talk about slow. If I move from TV to the Movies screen the covers will take another 3-5 seconds to show up OR sometimes the TV covers will remain onscreen even thou i’m in Movies until the Movie covers pop. Initially I thought this was because of the way my mappings were setup in problem #1 but after moving over to fstab it’s still an issue.

The default OSMC and Kodi skin also exhibit this behavior but not to the degree MQ7 does. My other two Kodi boxes pop the cover immediately and there’s no lag whatsoever.

Is this a performance difference between the Vero 4K and my other two boxes or is there something wrong with my setup?

First of all: make sure your device is up to date.

There will be a performance difference between Intel and ARM systems which will be notable if you’re using a heavy skin. I haven’t used Aeon MQ7 skin before, so I’m not aware of how heavy it is.

Maybe some others use this skin and can weigh in.

Does this happen on another skin?
Can you confirm the Thumbnails are hosted on the device itself?

Kodi does not recommend using shared thumbnails directories. See http://kodi.wiki/view/MySQL/Sharing_artwork.

Currently, we run the GPU at 500Mhz. You could try running it at 744Mhz.

 echo 744 | sudo tee /sys/class/mpgpu/cur_freq

This is something I’m considering changing in the future.

Sam

Im running aeon mq 7 on rpi3. No issues so far

Sam,

I’m running the October update which should be the latest one I believe. The slowness is also apparently in OSMC and the default Kodi skin but not as bad. MQ7 loads 12 covers at a time so it definitely is more taxing on the GPU for sure but didnt’ think it would take this long.

The covers should be cached once they initially download from the remote URL and anything after that should be lightning quick as it would pull thumbnails and cache locally from the textures database.

I’ll also give the GPU a bump per your instructions and report back.

Thanks for confirming your system is up to date.

If you can do so, removing the remote database temporarily and testing with a local library would also be helpful. This certainly seems a bit strange. A PC will be a bit faster, but I’d only imagine it being faster by a hair. I have an i5-760 with a discrete GPU. I find my Vero 4K to provide the same perceivable experience in the menus and better playback performance (and support for formats).

Keep us posted.

Sam

Do you have a good sized library? The Kodi MySQL database could use some work for larger libraries.

Have a look at this thread, and see if that helps you: https://discourse.osmc.tv/t/watched-episode-status-not-updated-sql-setup

I’ll try and remove the MySQL connection and see what happens to the performance as that would be a really good test. The Vero 4K definitely has what I’ve been looking for which is seamless auto switching from 1080p to 4K and the right color space which my $289 Shield TV can’t touch right now =/

I’ll give that thread a look over and see if it applies to my issues and report back. Thank you.

The OSMC skin does indeed load the movie covers quickly as they come from the side in a block and it’s not as slow as I had initially thought. I tweaked the view a bit and it’s working pretty good.

I’ve done some testing this afternoon and it looks like whether the content is local or not doesn’t matter much from a performance standpoint. The covers still take 4-5 seconds to load whether kodi is setup to communicate with MySQL or locally. I’ve also verified that caching all of the textures to the Textures13.db doesn’t improve the situation much either. My media folders do not have metadata in them either but that shouldn’t play a part in anything since it’s all cached locally anyway. The recently added TV/Movie screen is a widget that uses skin helper, I believe, and I’m wondering if that’s an issue?

The 2 Kodi boxes I have setup that are loading extremely fast do have SSDs in them so I’m not sure if that’s the difference in which the covers are loaded from local cache or not. I just know that the screen insta pops on those devices.

I tried the GPU command you had asked me and the GUI seemed a little faster but I’m not entirely sure it was… placebo effect =)

Anything else to try?

Hi

I’m sorry to hear that this still isn’t improved. Could you perhaps shoot a quick video for us showing the slowness? It would be good to pinpoint specific parts of slowdown.

That sounds really slow. It is not what I would expect of Vero 4K.

I’m not sure. @BobCratchett, our skinner would know this sort of thing but he’s away for a brief amount of time. Is this the only place where you exhibit slowdowns?

I wasn’t expecting miracles because performance should already be pretty good.

The Vero 4K has pretty fast eMMC storage.

Can you paste some logs so I can check your device?
Can you tell us how to reproduce your setup (add-ons; skin / customisations etc) so that we can test on our end?

Sam

1 Like

Thank you for the response and I’ll try and post up some logs this afternoon and maybe a video if I can find a place to host it.

Dropbox should let you do it

Sam

I’m using Aeon MQ7 for Kryton and installing it from the instructions posted up here via his repository: https://www.xbmcbrasil.net/thread-3392.html

The “Movies” and “TV Shows” pages are setup to use the widgets “Recently Added Movies” and “Recently Added TV Shows”. You can get to the widget selection just by pressing “UP” on the newly installed skin while you’re on either of those pages and selecting the right widget. If you can’t see either of those it usually means you have no sources setup or any pathsubstitutions in advancedsettings.xml. I just wanted to mention that in case you were testing on a box with no video paths added and ran into not finding the widgets.

Once the movies and tv shows widgets are active you can simply flip back and forth between the pages to see the cover loading issue.

I’m still working on posting up a video of the issue as well and provide a log hopefully later on tonight.

How did you want me to post the logs and should I be moving around in the GUI while the problem is happening first then dump and send?

Yes once you experience the problem please upload the logs via My OSMC.

Can anyone else try this skin? I’m currently travelling

Sam

I’m using this skin, actually the multi mod version and the Vero 4K can’t seem to handle it. The cpu after it boots up is between 50-60% and as soon I go into movies is between 200-300%. I was using fstab originally and decided to do a fresh install and use nfs inside Kodi and no difference. This skin is very heavy. Skin helper service does a lot of different things and there are a ton of options. I’m not sure what else to try. Any ideas? Here is the Kodi link to the skin.

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=301497

I feel you on the slowness and have gotten used to most of it but the switching from TV Shows <-> Movies is just unreal sometimes. The avg. time to pop the covers is around 5-7 seconds =/ The covers are even cached locally but the delay comes from the skin trying to figure out what’s the latest 12 covers in the category I believe and is probably CPU intensive.

I might try reducing it from 12 covers to the lowest possible and see if that makes a difference as a test.

Any update on this. I’m planning to buy the Vero 4k+ to replace my rpi3 and I mainly use the aeon mq7 multi mod.

My rpi3 can handle the skin ok. I’m hoping for much snappier skin performance with the Vero.