theme COLORFUL bigbox theme

[Jason Carr]

1 minute ago, johnsanc said:

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.

I've previously reviewed viking's theme, and haven't found any performance issues that can really be addressed, so I'm not sure that there's much he can do. Not sure why you would be seeing a delay in that situation, but I've confirmed that I am not seeing any delays on my systems when switching platforms for the first time.

[johnsanc]

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.

Edited February 18, 2020 by johnsanc

[ItchyRobot]

Anyone else seeing green highlights for text, instead of the colors they should be?  For example, I still see green text highlights in Nintendo, when it should be red. It's seems like some kind of a cache issue. This is an issue for me theme wide. And in some windows, the highlight color is correct, until I start to scroll through the game list, then it switches to the default green until I stop scrolling.

Edited February 18, 2020 by ItchyRobot

[johnsanc]

4 hours ago, ItchyRobot said:

Anyone else seeing green highlights for text, instead of the colors they should be?  For example, I still see green text highlights in Nintendo, when it should be red. It's seems like some kind of a cache issue. This is an issue for me theme wide. And in some windows, the highlight color is correct, until I start to scroll through the game list, then it switches to the default green until I stop scrolling.

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.

[viking]

On 2/18/2020 at 4:47 AM, johnsanc said:

@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? 

 

OK, nice. Are you using the "official" version or the "performance test" version that I posted on the forum?

On 2/18/2020 at 6:13 PM, johnsanc said:

@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

I have no idea how BigBox "realy" works. I just call the video, like any other theme. The only difference is the animation of the platforms video. This point can slowdown without a good graphics card. (Like Intel graphics)

On 2/18/2020 at 6:50 PM, johnsanc said:

@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!

I understand this need, but I will not change this design. The goal is not to display the maximum amount of info one after the other. Maybe for another view! ?

On 2/18/2020 at 6:54 PM, johnsanc said:

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.

I don't think it's possible. In any case, I have no idea how to do it.

On 2/18/2020 at 6:58 PM, Jason Carr said:

I've previously reviewed viking's theme, and haven't found any performance issues that can really be addressed, so I'm not sure that there's much he can do. Not sure why you would be seeing a delay in that situation, but I've confirmed that I am not seeing any delays on my systems when switching platforms for the first time.

It would be good if all those who have performance problems on my theme tell me and give their hardware/software configuration.
Instinctively, I would say that network support should not help.

On 2/18/2020 at 10:27 PM, ItchyRobot said:

Anyone else seeing green highlights for text, instead of the colors they should be?  For example, I still see green text highlights in Nintendo, when it should be red. It's seems like some kind of a cache issue. This is an issue for me theme wide. And in some windows, the highlight color is correct, until I start to scroll through the game list, then it switches to the default green until I stop scrolling.

It's very strange that the color only works on a few platforms.
Do you use the default platform name?
Is this a platform for which I have created a specific video?
For example, I have not yet made the GENESIS video, but MEGADRIVE.
If you want to check / change the colors, go to: "LaunchBox\Themes\Colorful\Plugins\Ao.Bigbox.Themer.v3_9_7a\AssemblyConfig"

• Ao.Bigbox.Themer.v3_9_7a.dll.config  > If you have custom platform names, add them here. Or give it to me for the next update.
• Ao.Bigbox.Themer.v3_9_7a-Colors.dll.config > To add/customize all colors. For example, copy the MEGADRIVE color and paste it to GENESIS.

On 2/19/2020 at 3:05 AM, johnsanc said:

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.

Yes, I have that too. I think the scrool is faster than the refresh of @eatkinola plugin. I can't do much about it.

 

 

I would like to take this opportunity to tell you that I have not forgotten COLORFUL!
I just have a loooooooooooooooooot of work these days.
I come back quickly with updates !!!!?

[ItchyRobot]

1 hour ago, viking said:

It's very strange that the color only works on a few platforms.

Do you use the default platform name?
Is this a platform for which I have created a specific video?

I'm sorry, I did not do a good job explaining. I see all the text highlight colors as they are intended. They match the different colors of all the videos you made. Where I am seeing green highlight is when I scroll. For a split second I see green on every text highlight, then it quickly switches to the correct color. It's not a big deal, but it definitely distracts away from the beautiful theme.

[johnsanc]

@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="" />

Edited February 20, 2020 by johnsanc

[viking]

17 hours ago, ItchyRobot said:

I'm sorry, I did not do a good job explaining. I see all the text highlight colors as they are intended. They match the different colors of all the videos you made. Where I am seeing green highlight is when I scroll. For a split second I see green on every text highlight, then it quickly switches to the correct color. It's not a big deal, but it definitely distracts away from the beautiful theme.

It's not a bug I think, but the way @eatkinola built its plugin. I think scrolling is faster than refreshing color. But I could be wrong!
In any case, there is nothing I can do about it.

16 hours ago, johnsanc said:

@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="" />

I'm not sure it's a story of cache or path. The "problem" with my theme is the animation of the video. It is not recommended by Microsoft because it forces the system to calculate the animation of 100% of the pixels on the screen. From what I understood !
I'm not a coder, but a designer ?

You can trie this :
In "PlatformWheel1FiltersView.xaml", line 181 : change the Value by 0  (Value="0")
With that, there is no more video animation. Is the problem still there?

 

About Plugins, I used :

• Ao.Bigbox.Themer.v3_9_7a.dll : For text size, Responsive pixel distance and color by platform.
• GrilaBBControlsPlugin.dll : For gamepad icon and batterie level.
• ListBoxScrollCenter.dll : To center the selection in lists.

All these plugins are used in many other themes here.

 

About Colors :
Yes, I haven't made the GENESIS video yet. So no "official" color.
You can do this :
<add key="Platform.SEGA_GENESIS" value="#0e7acd" />
This is the MegaDrive color

[johnsanc]

@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.

Edited February 21, 2020 by johnsanc

[johnsanc]

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.

Edited February 22, 2020 by johnsanc

[viking]

About the code to call the Video platform :
It is pretty much standard. It was @Grila who helped me with this piece of code. The goal was to display the video without distortion and that filled the chosen space.

Original Code, for Platform Video call : 

<transitions:TransitionPresenter Grid.Column="0" Grid.ColumnSpan="12" Grid.Row="0" Grid.RowSpan="11" TransitionSelector="{Binding
ImageVideoTransitionSelector}" Content="{Binding ImageVideoView}" IsContentVideo="true" />

COLORFUL version, by Grila and adapted by me :
(line 574 in PlatformWheel1FiltersView.xaml)

<transitions:TransitionPresenter x:Name="vidsource" Grid.Column="0" Grid.ColumnSpan="12" Grid.Row="0" Grid.RowSpan="11" Content="{Binding ImageVideoView}" IsContentVideo="True" Visibility="hidden"/>
            <Border Grid.Column="0" Grid.ColumnSpan="12" Grid.Row="0" Grid.RowSpan="11">
                <Border.Background>
                    <VisualBrush x:Name="PlatformVideo" Visual="{Binding ElementName=vidsource, Path=Content}" Stretch="UniformToFill" AlignmentX="Center" AlignmentY="Center">
                        <VisualBrush.Transform>
                            <TranslateTransform x:Name="PlatformVideoAnim" X="0" />
                        </VisualBrush.Transform>
                    </VisualBrush>
                </Border.Background>
            </Border>

Note that it is the platform video that is the most tweak.
Do you have the same problem on GamesView? With the videos of the games?

 

I do not know if you tested, but if it has to do with the number of games in the platform, maybe it comes from the counter?
Try this :
 

In  "PlatformWheel1FiltersView.xaml" , line 716 :

Replace this : 
	Text="{Binding GamesCount}"
by :
	Text="Test"

It will no longer display the number of games in the selected platform, but the text: "test".
Does that change anything?

[viking]

OK, a little test during the lunch break.
@wallmachine  asked me why not use the original code for the video ... No reason!! (now)
At the origin of this theme, I dont think to use the videos in full screen. So I needed Grila's code, for a perfect video crop. But not anymore!

If you could try this test view: PlatformWheel1FiltersView.zip

Just unzip this view in:   LaunchBox \ Themes \ Colorful \ Views
And be sure to test BigBox set on this view. (ClearLogo Wheel, White background)

It works at home, but I have the impression that the animation is a little less fluid. And at your home ?
I especially need the return of people with small configuration.
@johnsanc Do you still have your problem with this view?

Edited February 24, 2020 by viking

[johnsanc]

@viking - I tried your modified xaml and the animations look pretty much the same to me. I also tried modifying the games count to "TEST" but that also did not resolve the platform switching lag. I thought about that too awhile back, but that doesn't really explain why if I remove or create bad references to my game videos the switching lag COMPLETELY goes away. Its also very weird that I don't have this issue with any other theme, which is why I'm stumpped!

There has to be something going on with checking the game video paths. I have a feeling its related to SelectionSnoop - based on what info I can find, it looks like it returns info that is not readily available, so I assume that means it must parse the platform XMLs which would definitely cause slowdown if its checking video links for some reason.

Would it be possible to get a version that doesnt use SelectionSnoop to try? I noticed Unified Refried does not use this, and that is the theme I am currently using for performance comparisions.

EDIT: YES we are getting closer. Its definitely related to something in @eatkinola's Themer plugins. Nostalgia theme also has the exact same platform switching lag behavior. However the Nostalgia game view is incredibly slow for me, it takes 2-3 seconds to switch a game. The colorful game view is VERY smooth, so no issues there.

Edited February 24, 2020 by johnsanc

[viking]

Um, damn! What a mess! ?

SelectionSnoop is part of @eatkinola plugin, for color management by platform.
I really hope that's not it, because it is important in my design and Eat has to work hard on it!

OK, new test version:  PlatformWheel1FiltersView.zip
Always with the new "standard" video call, and without the colors by platform.

 

EDIT :
You say "the animations look pretty much the same to me".
Exactly the same? Better? Worst?    (I'm talking only about the video movement fluidity)

Edited February 24, 2020 by viking

[johnsanc]

@viking - Whatever you did with that last update FIXED the platform switching issue! Although I do see that all platform colors are green now... is there another way to implement that that doesn't require whatever was causing the issue?

The platform transitions are pretty fluid for me in 4k, sometimes there is a little bit of stutter. Are there two versions with the switching lag fix you would like me to compare? I dont think its a fair comparison to compare the fixed one vs prior versions that had the lag for me.

 

Edited February 24, 2020 by johnsanc

[viking]

OK, the problem is isolated. But not solved!
In this last test, I deleted all pieces of code allowing to assign a different color by platform.
This system come from @eatkinola "Ao.Bigbox.Themer.v3_9_7a" plugin.

@eatkinola , Do you have a solution for the problem of @johnsanc ?
Because there, nobody has a custom color by platform! ?

About the platform video animation fluidity, the difference is between the "official" code and the Grila's version.
I am editing asap 2 comparison versions for test.

Edited February 25, 2020 by viking

[johnsanc]

Please don't rework the logic of theme just for me! My setup is not the norm since I am accessing videos over a mapped network drive. Not sure if this same issue exists if videos were on hard drive with slower seek times too - unfortunately I can't really test that. Unfortunately it looks like something about that plugin and certain ways of using it cause huge performance problems in some setups.

What I don't quite understand is why with Colorful all of the Games views work really fast but the platform view has the issue... It looks like SelectionSnoop is used in all of your games views. With the Nostalgia theme BOTH the platform and games views are very slow for me. 

[kobaturtle]

Hi,

maybe it already has been reported but I had choppy video transitions between platforms (I'm using fading transition exclusively). Issue is solved swiching from VLC to Windows Media player in Video playback engine.

Thanks again for this great theme and your hard work!

[wallmachine]

@viking this is what the videos do for me Colorful_beta_v.0.7

[johnsanc]

@wallmachine - Try the variant viking posted a few replies above. I'm curious if your stutter issues are better, worse, or stay the same with the "colorless" variant.