Coverflow not smooth on powerful computer

[Immortal Chortle]

Hi, 

I just installed Lauchbox with BB on my dedicated HTPC switching over from xbmc to get a more polished appearance. The image transition from one image to the next is not smooth like in any of the videos and hesitates almost every time. I have tried disabling transitions altogether, reducing image quality, reinstalling .net 4.6.1 framework, changing my GPUs performance settings and installing Big box on my other PCs to see if was different all of which had no effect. Here are my specs

Win7 64

120gig Crucial SSD
8 gigs ddr3
AMD 3.2ghz x4
Geforce 550 Ti
 

Thanks in advance

[SentaiBrad]

Are you still caching all of your images? Caching is very CPU intensive and can take some time. The larger your library, the longer caching can take and performance will inherently take a hit. How long have you given it? Try scrolling through your library in the main view you want to use and see if that helps. Every time you reset something like image quality, etc, it will also reset the cache.

[Immortal Chortle]

How do I cache the images? I scrolled through all of them several times and let it sit for 15 minutes or so

Edited November 26, 2016 by Immortal Chortle

[SentaiBrad]

If all of your images are already cached, there's no pop-in going on, then it could be other software, or hard ware. The CPU is the most important piece of hardware to LaunchBox. The larger a library is, the more performance can start to go down, and we figured out that it's somewhere in the ballpark of 8k library items (unless it's changed recently). Do you happen to have other software running? Anti-Virus software? Anything that does active scanning? RAM Cleaners? An active firewall can do it too, but if it's the built in Windows Firewall, then it will probably be ok.

[Immortal Chortle]

The PC I intend to use this on is completely bare bones with only the essentials installed. It only has drivers, .NET framework, Direct X, but no anti virus just windows firewall. I thought it might be something wles too so I uninstalled 7zip, Auto-It, and my codec packs to be sure but it didnt help. It acts the same no matter how many games are discovered. I have tried 10-400

I just noticed something, when the next game changes images if the image is a different size the system struggles for a second even after all of them are loaded.

Edited November 26, 2016 by Immortal Chortle

[Lordmonkus]

Even though you are using a fresh install of Windows that doesn't mean there isn't more that can be done to speed it up. Out of the box there are still a lot of CPU hogging services going on in the back ground and you can disable a good many of them to help boost performance.

I have a HTPC I just converted out of my parents old computer which is:
Windows 7 32 bit
AMD Athlon 3800 @ 2.4 GHz
2 Gigs Ram
160 gig hard drive (non ssd, might not even be SATA, can't remember)
Radeon 7800 series video card with 1 gig GDDR5 vram

It is not much of a pc at all but after turning off all the unnecessary services such as print spooler, the crap that makes windows look fancy and many others when I open my task manager I have less than 30 processes running and total ram usage is under 500 megs with nothing running. Obviously Launchbox / BigBox will change the memory usage but that is how much head room is left to work with.

I also do everything you mentioned about like turning off transitions and the image mirror opacity is set to 0 and with just about 2400 games things run pretty smooth. I wouldn't call it super creamy butter smooth but it's pretty darn good and not something I am wishing would be faster.

To learn about all the services you can disable to help gain back a lot of extra ram and cpu cycles I recommend blackviper.com. I have used this site for many years now to help tweak my systems to make them run faster. Just check every service follow the guide, if you are unsure about a specific service instead of just flat out disabling it set it to manual and Windows will turn on the service if needed.

http://www.blackviper.com/service-configurations/black-vipers-windows-7-service-pack-1-service-configurations/

[Immortal Chortle]

10 hours ago, lordmonkus said:

Even though you are using a fresh install of Windows that doesn't mean there isn't more that can be done to speed it up. Out of the box there are still a lot of CPU hogging services going on in the back ground and you can disable a good many of them to help boost performance.

I have a HTPC I just converted out of my parents old computer which is:
Windows 7 32 bit
AMD Athlon 3800 @ 2.4 GHz
2 Gigs Ram
160 gig hard drive (non ssd, might not even be SATA, can't remember)
Radeon 7800 series video card with 1 gig GDDR5 vram

It is not much of a pc at all but after turning off all the unnecessary services such as print spooler, the crap that makes windows look fancy and many others when I open my task manager I have less than 30 processes running and total ram usage is under 500 megs with nothing running. Obviously Launchbox / BigBox will change the memory usage but that is how much head room is left to work with.

I also do everything you mentioned about like turning off transitions and the image mirror opacity is set to 0 and with just about 2400 games things run pretty smooth. I wouldn't call it super creamy butter smooth but it's pretty darn good and not something I am wishing would be faster.

To learn about all the services you can disable to help gain back a lot of extra ram and cpu cycles I recommend blackviper.com. I have used this site for many years now to help tweak my systems to make them run faster. Just check every service follow the guide, if you are unsure about a specific service instead of just flat out disabling it set it to manual and Windows will turn on the service if needed.

http://www.blackviper.com/service-configurations/black-vipers-windows-7-service-pack-1-service-configurations/

Thank you for your advice. I have tried some of the options on that list which actually improved my boot time (lol) it did not have any effect on the stuttering transitions. 

[Lordmonkus]

Well I am glad it did have some benefit for you, too bad it's not where you were hoping for.

[CriticalCid]

If you are using the latest beta version of 7.0 than you can try to reduce the “Wheel Minimum Speed” in your Views options. I experienced small lags in the CoverFlow views as well but after I've set the speed to 200 Milliseconds it’s almost completely gone for me.

[SentaiBrad]

This might sound dumb, but being on Windows 7 may also be causing it. Big Box specifically takes in to consideration some enhancements Microsoft has made in the OS. Each OS they make changes, and in Windows 10 a certain part of code was optimized more so (I am probably butchering the explanation, it's been a while since Jason explained it to me, so please forgive me a bit). Basically, they offer something in a way that each operating system going backwards can't, because it's written in at such a low level. This does effect inherent Big Box performance, and it's the worst on Windows Vista, and best on Windows 10. Even Windows 8 performs slightly less. Even with top notch hardware, my understanding is that there is little that can be done to get around this. I may be off, or remembering this a bit wrongly, so I do apologize, and it may seem like an unlikely culprit but it's possible.

[Lordmonkus]

Windows 7 performance for me is fine though even on my relatively crappy spec HTPC, once the images cache in it's fine. The best view to use is the one with the text list of games down the side, the views with more images like the clear logo wheel or the ones with all the box arts is a tad slower but not really a problem once cached.

[Immortal Chortle]

1 hour ago, lordmonkus said:

Windows 7 performance for me is fine though even on my relatively crappy spec HTPC, once the images cache in it's fine. The best view to use is the one with the text list of games down the side, the views with more images like the clear logo wheel or the ones with all the box arts is a tad slower but not really a problem once cached.

There is definitely a bottleneck when I scroll through games. it will transition fine once or twice then freeze for a second and sometimes it acts like the button is being held down and jumps 20 titles ahead. Its very erratic. I thought it might be a controller issue but it also does it with the keyboard. I just found how to increase RAM usage!!! It didnt help. 

[Lordmonkus]

Does it act that way even when using the default view (the one with the text list down the side)?

[Immortal Chortle]

9 minutes ago, lordmonkus said:

Does it act that way even when using the default view (the one with the text list down the side)?

Yes. It does it in every menu at least a little bit. I disabled transitions altogether and reduced image size and it still does it. Removing the art altogether makes it much faster but it still freezes occasionally and wont respond immediately. Its like it cant catch up.

 

Edited November 27, 2016 by Immortal Chortle

[Lordmonkus]

Hmm, then something is going on.

For me on the low end pc I listed above using the default view with only boxart and screenshots I can speed scroll though my games and stop exactly on the game I want every time without issues.

All transitions turned off and image quality set to medium (not sure if that has any effect in the default view or not).

[Immortal Chortle]

I made some progress!! I manually uninstalled my GPU drivers and half of my problem is gone. The library scrolling is much smoother and responsive. However transitions are still broken and sometimes dont trigger at all. I will scroll down one entry and the image will just "pop" into existence instead of a gradual horizontal rotation.

[Immortal Chortle]

I updated to the latest beta and performance has gotten much much worse. I transitions take 2-3 seconds to load an image and scrolling will shoot the cursor all over the place. its like pressing it once sends 30 presses. I scanned my images and got this message

[jinxist]

Same problem here. Ever since I bought BigBox (5 months ago) I've never been able to get good performance out of it in terms of scrolling through the games. I have an i5 6400 2.4Ghz and an gtx970. I figured I would have no problem zipping through the covers and menus...But it is extremely slow. I've tried suggestions on other threads about turning down the quality of the art, and also changing the millisecond scroll...I've had no luck...It's a shame, I love BigBox but no matter how many times I tweak it, it never works quiet right.

[Porl Hendy]

I am in the same boat, i have a i7-6700HQ cpu and i get alot of lag when scrolling through games. I dont know why but i get alot less lag when i use SimplyHD theme. I have tried all the other themes and the lag is considerably more

[jinxist]

Right now I'm on the CriticalZone theme. I even reinstalled LB and redid my library and cut it down by about 1500! turned off all transitions, and reduced the Coverflow quality to low. STILL lagging really bad. In Jason's videos its SO smooth...like....what the hell kind of computer is he running? Because we should be able to get the same speeds. I was really excited when I first bought Big Box...Not so much anymore. I feel as though I wasted the money since it rarely does what I want it to.