johnsanc

@JoeViking245 - So far so good, this tool is simple but works really well. I do have a couple of small suggestions: When importing unsupported games, set the "broken" flag When adding games to a platform that is already setup, only add the differences instead of adding everything again. This will be helpful if people periodically update with newer MAME versions and new games are added to the Software Lists. For example if a game goes from unsupported to supported, then remove the broken flag and if a new game is added, add it. Cheers!

OK - Quick update on my findings so far: Of the most popular themes I've tried, only Unified Refried does not create game video directories when switching platforms (No idea why...) Colorful is still the only theme I've used that has lag when switching platforms, and the lag time seems linerarly related to how many games are in that platform The issue remains if I replace all video references in the platformfilter xaml with a basic video display The issue remains if I turn off "Use random game videos for missing platform videos" The performance issue is completely resolved if I put in bad paths for the Game videos My suspicion now is that perhaps ALL videos for that platform are checked upon platform switching (platform video + game videos for that platform in case a platform video doesn't exist), but I would think that other themes do this too... So is this theme somehow checking the game videos first before applying the platform video? One other thing I noticed is that none of the other themes I tested use that ListBoxScrollCenter plugin... Looking on @Grila's github page I do see references in the code for delays if resources aren't ready... but it looks like that's only in text views. I'm stumped! Hopefully another expert themer might know whats going on.

@viking - Unfortunately that xaml change didn't help. I thought I found the issue, but I haven't had my morning coffee yet, so I was mistaken. I'll take a closer look this weekend tweaking things and trying other themes to see if I can get to the bottom of it. I know for sure my performance problems with platform switching are not due to animations, they are due to Game videos being checked on the platform view.

@JoeViking245 BAM! That fixed it. Thank you so much for the super fast update! Now I can add these weird obscure systems that only MAME emulates.

@viking - I am using the beta with your latest enhancements. Here is an overview of my hardware and setup, which I realize is not the norm, but I know what I am doing with VMs and the hardware is not an issue. Software: UnRAID OS with a Windows 10 VM with hardware passthrough for a graphics card All images stored on a PCIE 4.0 NVME drive dedicated to the VM Platform videos on NVME drive Game videos on a mapped network drive (local machine using virtio drivers, but still slower than a local hard drive) Hardware: Ryzen 3900X CPU (8 cores dedicated to VM) GTX 2070 Super GFX card (passed through to VM, benchmark scores same as bare metal) 32 GB of RAM (dedicated to VM) Literally the ONLY performance problem i have is the theme checking for game video paths when switching platforms. I have no idea why this is happening and apparently no one else has an explanation yet either. I suspect this could be the root cause of performance problems with other themes as well that has gone un-identified. Because my videos are on a mapped network drive, this is expectedly slower. I just have no idea why the theme would check for these before they are needed. Perhaps a plugin you are using is doing this? I did notice this in the theme Assembly log every time I changed platforms. Not sure if this is normal or not. 2020-02-20 16:21:11 [Ao.Bigbox.Plugins.SystemEventRouter] blocked duplicate OnEventRaised event (SelectionChanged) Also regarding the colors, I noticed this in the color DLL config, so I assume thats my Genesis color issue root cause: <add key="Platform.SEGA_GENESIS" value="" />

This tool looks pretty awesome, but I can't seem to get it to work with Launchbox 10.10. The menu item simply doesn't appear under Tools. Any ideas how to work around this? The DLLs are unblocked.... actually I didn't even need to unblock them. @JoeViking245, I'm not sure if this is related but I see some errors in my debug log. Looks like some paths are hardcoded that are specific to your machine. 2020-02-20 10:54:24 AM FIRST CHANCE EXCEPTION: C:\Users\Joe\source\repos\ImportMameSoftwareLists\Resources\mess.ico at System.Drawing.Image.FromFile(String filename, Boolean useEmbeddedColorManagement) 2020-02-20 10:54:24 AM EXCEPTION IGNORED: C:\Users\Joe\source\repos\ImportMameSoftwareLists\Resources\mess.ico at System.Drawing.Image.FromFile(String filename, Boolean useEmbeddedColorManagement) at ImportMameSoftwareLists.LBSoftwareListImporter.Unbroken.LaunchBox.Plugins.ISystemMenuItemPlugin.get_IconImage() at (SideBarViewModel , ItemsControl )

Yes I get that too and its not consistent even within the same BigBox session. I just did it where Arcade was green one view then purple the next. Also my Sega Genesis seems to always be green so far.

Fair enough. My SMB path is an extreme case that highlights a performance bottleneck. This same bottleneck could also apply to people that keep their original media on a local spinning disk drive which has slower seek times. Something in BigBox evaluates original image paths that it does not need since the images are cached in the Cache-BB folder. Unless I am misunderstanding exactly what the cache is used for (I would love to learn more about this if info is already posted somewhere) I suggest taking a closer look at the caching and when to access images whenever time allows. I suspect there may be some significant performance gains to be had (especially for spinning hard disks) that no one realizes because they haven't really stressed the setup the way I have.

OK after a bit more digging I confirmed something unique about this theme and you can test it for yourself. Update your platforms XML to reference game video paths that do not exist. When you switch platforms these folders are created at the time you switch to that particular platform in the platform view. You do not have to go into that platform to view the games. I tested this same thing with other themes and this does NOT happen when you switch platforms. @Jason Carr - any ideas why this theme is doing this and any pointers you can give to @viking to prevent this? This would definitely cause performance issues if game video paths are checked / created upon switching platforms.

First, I do not think its a far stretch to think someone might want to store some of their media like game videos on a SMB share or a mapped network drive. I posted this to let other people know that I found a solution to my particular performance issue that I did not see covered anywhere else. I took a methodical approach to troubleshooting and the solution led to me to question how the cache and xml parsing in BigBox actually works. Either you do not actually know how it works or you do not want to share that information. Either way, I don't expect you to spend any time on this, nor was I asking for troubleshooting help. I was merely asking for insight around how the cache works which would hopefully explain some of the results I was seeing. Second, feel free to ban me for this comment - but I need to give some constructive criticism here: The common theme I see on this forum in the performance related issues is "It works on my machine, follow these tips [link to post]" - Which is unfortunate as it almost feels like moderators stifle others from actually helping. Check out the unRAID forums if you want to see how a helpful a forum can be. Not everyone will use the application with the exact same setup as you, nor should you expect that. I am providing insight that could give you clues to areas for performance improvements. In short - sorry for bothering you. I found a solution to my performance issue and wanted to share in case others run into the same thing.

That means that BigBox must be trying to read original images it does not need at that time. And there must be some images types that are not cached even after the originals are read. I do not see any other explanation of the massive performance increase by moving my original images locally. I see the following Game image types cached based on the file names. ClearLogo / Clear Logos (whats the difference?) 3D Boxes 3D Carts Boxes Carts Screenshots Steam Banners Thumbnail versions of the types above (It appears you can't force these to be cached) After forcing the image caches several weeks ago I have not seen a single new cached image written to the Cache-BB folder, with the exception of thumbnails where are populated if I use a theme and view that displays them. Some of the cached images are very large already so I see no need to ever read the original once they are cached.

Thanks for confirming, that tells me there is something unique about this theme and the game videos. Perhaps trying to load them before they are actually viewed. I'm hoping viking can clarify.

@Jason Carr - I get that the image CACHE folders are used constantly and the cache is on the NVME drive. I'm talking about the ORIGINAL images not in the BB-Cache folder. It appears these paths are read even if the cache is completely full. Can you confirm how the original media paths are used in the event when all images are already cached?

@viking - A few design suggestions on the Game View... I noticed that the video is cropped by the bezel, but the bezel doesn't put the video in context to a monitor or machine so it doesn't really make sense to me to crop the game video at all. Notice the "N" in "COIN" is cut off. The bottom corner of the video is covered by the up/down icons and the box art covers a significant portion of the right side of the video. If you make the video smaller and align the bottom edge of the video with the bottom of the info box on the right it would still look very clean and it would free up space so more of the video is visible. It would also add a bit more symmetry around the border. Just food for thought!

@Jason Carr - But I have a full image cache for both logos and coverflow. Are there other images that are not cached that I am missing? Is BigBox still trying to read those paths even though they are cached? I am just trying to understand how the cache actually works and what actually happens when switching platforms and games so I can adjust accordingly to maximize performance. I don't see this topic mentioned anywhere else in the performance enhancement threads. You are right about the SMB overhead. I simply didnt think that the original images would be referenced since they are already cached on my NVME drive in the Launchbox install location... but that doesn't seem to be the case. It appears at least something is trying to parse all the media paths.

@Jason Carr - Yes for game videos only since I don't have enough space on my local NVME drive. Not the platform videos though, those are all local. It seems like something is checking video links upon switching platforms for the first time to cache them, and its particularly noticeable with this theme. Random access to SMB shares is expectedly kinda slow - I just wasn't expecting that when switching platforms. The really weird thing is that when I moved the IMAGES locally the videos over the SMB share loaded MUCH faster when switching games. This is another reason I asked in my other post what is going on under the hood with the cache and such. I confirmed that when I purposely break the paths to the game videos this theme switches platforms very fast, so it believe it has to be related to those video paths

@viking - I just wanted to update you and say I resolved almost all performance issues with my setup. Now the only slowness is switching platforms for the first time like I posted earlier. I confirmed this still does not occur with the 4K videos with other themes. Is there anything your theme does with the game videos when switching platforms?

I've been battling with some severe performance issues in BigBox on a system that is pretty much bleeding edge. I found the root cause of the issue: DO NOT USE SAMBA SHARES FOR ANY IMAGES Basically I stored all my game videos and images on a SMB share that technically exists on the same machine (I use a Windows 10 VM). I thought this would be fine since I noticed that forcing Logo and Coverflow caches basically force a cache for all images that would be used in any theme. However, something in BigBox must be checking these paths even with images cached or something because when I moved all images locally into the LaunchBox folder and changed my platform XMLs according everything ran smooth as butter. Even the resource intensive Colorful theme with 4k videos works flawlessly now (with the exception of switching platforms for the first time, which is laggy in relation to how many game videos I have for each platform). So @Jason Carr - I have to ask, what is going on here behind the scenes with the image cache? And why would moving my seemingly unused images to a local folder solve the issue?

@Kevin_Flynn - I have Launchbox / BigBox installed on my NVME drive so all XMLs should be super fast to read. After double checking here is a summary of my current setup: NVME Drive: Launchbox + Bigbox install + Platform videos SSD: Game images + Game videos (technically these are part of a BTRFS cache pool and referenced as a SMB share but the drives are physically in the same machine, no other applications have performance issues because of this) Array drives: Games only I can try moving the images to my NVME drive, but honestly BigBox should not be attempting to access images before I even navigate to a game. When I look in my "Activity Streams" plugin in the unraid UI I do not see images being accessed from the platform view. Again, the platform switching delay is unique to this theme only.

@Jason Carr @viking - Here is a video of the platform switching lag. I don't think it's the platform videos causing the delay because they load very quick with other themes. Any idea what is causing this? Notice how when I try to view the platform after the first time its pretty quick.

Hah that was quick to find another unraider. Theres a few things I noticed right off the bat that should improve performance - I noticed that unnecessary assets are accessed as I'm scrolling through the games list. For example Flyers when I'm using a theme that doesn't use them, and accessing images when I simply held down the down arrow on the keyboard. Things like this are low hanging fruit, especially to prevent thrashing if someone is using a mechanical drive. I didn't mean to derail the conversation - Getting back to @viking's fix - The changes show a definitely improvement in the overall smoothness of animations. I still have an issue when I change to a platform for the first time during a BigBox session it takes several seconds in relation to how many games I have within that system. After an initial platform view its smooth as butter from there on out for that session. It feels like theres some kinda caching going on. Does the theme parse the platform xmls to calculate how many games there are? I dont quite understand why this is the only theme with that initial platform switching delay.

For what its worth, literally every benchmark and app I normally use performs just as good as bare metal since I have CPUs pinned and the GFX card passed through. If there are performance issues because of a VM then theres something seriously weird going on with BigBox specifically. Maybe I will take a video and post it so you can see what I am talking about. When the lags occur BigBox is literally flagged as unresponsive in Task Manager for several seconds. Also sometimes I get input lag of several seconds - which I have seen discussed elsewhere to no avail. I don't mean to knock BigBox - its by far the best option available, but there is a lot of room for performance improvements given the hardware. I'll toy around with different settings to see if I can get it running smoother... or its entirely possible my expectations are just too high lol Is there any verbose debug logging available? I have debug logging on but it doesn't tell me much aside from a few other bugs I've found (path length issue)

I’ll check this out this evening. For now here is my hardware config that was causing performance issues: Ryzen 3900X ASRock Creator motherboard 32 GB DDR4 ECC RAM (2666 MHz) RTX 2070 gfx card 1 TB PCIE 4.0 NVME drive for OS and platform videos 860 EVO SSD for game images 5400rpm drives for game videos Note that I use Unraid as a host OS and use a windows 10 VM with hardware pass through for my graphics card and 8 cores dedicated. Gaming is butter smooth with the latest games, BigBox still struggles especially with the colorful theme. did you see my note above about videos delaying navigation? Can that be fixed?

Yay performance optimizations!! Sidenote - is there a way to NOT wait for videos during navigation? I I noticed that I cannot navigate away from a game until the video is loaded, which is really limiting if I keep my videos on a slower drive. Not sure if its unique to this theme or a global issue. Also, does this theme parse the games xml more than others by any chance (not sure if that is even a thing)? I can't figure out if its just the size of my collection (~7500 games across ~15 systems) causing issues. There has to be a correlation between the number of games in the platform and the slowless between switching platforms.

@viking - After several tests with various themes I can confirm that the 4k videos are not the problem. I tried using those videos with various theme such as Unified Redux and they all load perfectly fine when switching platforms. With my platform switching issue with the Colorful theme I can tell the previous platform video is playing in the background because I can hear it. Eventually after many seconds the next platform view will load along with the correct video. Is the theme somehow using coverflow images by any chance? I do not have a full image cache for those because I don't use and coverflow views.