The latest beta thread (2)

Here's the place to discuss anything about Media Preview in English.
theoneofgod
Posts: 41
Joined: Sun Aug 04, 2013 6:12 pm

Re: The latest beta thread (2)

Post by theoneofgod »

BabelSoft wrote:@kocchi96x @theoneofgod good to hear that everything is working fine :)
@theoneofgod Anyway, I don't see where is the advantage of enabling RAMDisk when you already have a SSD. With SSDs, you already have speed and data persistence, while with RAMDisk you achieve speed but may lose data if any errors araise.
I find any process to reduce write speeds on the SSD. I know it's really bad practice but I like to move temp locations for my browser etc, to other drives. Terrible I know.
theoneofgod
Posts: 41
Joined: Sun Aug 04, 2013 6:12 pm

Re: The latest beta thread (2)

Post by theoneofgod »

Regarding moving the cache file. Have you tested it on a slower drive, like a standard HDD?
BabelSoft
Site Admin
Posts: 342
Joined: Sat Jun 02, 2012 9:23 pm

Re: The latest beta thread (2)

Post by BabelSoft »

Yes, my configuration was a SSD as the system drive, but I used a regular HDD as the L2 cache drive. The only configuration I never tested yet is a HDD as the system and L2 cache drive.
Paul
Posts: 7
Joined: Sat Jun 28, 2014 8:06 pm

Re: The latest beta thread (2)

Post by Paul »

Hello

Last week I upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 8.1 and I found out about the now famous to me Windows 8.1 thumbnail "feature".

So today I discovered Media Preview and have been playing with it a bit.

I have Windows 8.1 Update 1 64 bits on an 4,4Ghz CPU with 8GB of RAM and a 120GB SSD.

I installed the lastest Media Preview beta, 1.4.4.468 and I don't see ALMOST any improvement over not having it installed regarding the level 2 cache.

The level 2 thumbnail cache is created correctly in C:\MediaPreview and it increases as I browse pictures and videos on Windows 8.1 explorer, 203 MB right now, but once I restart the computer if I browse those folders I browsed before restarting the thumbnails do not appear inmediately and take a lot more time to load than it should. Even more than without Media Preview installed.

I unninstalled and reinstalled Media Preview. I installed it on a Windows 8.1 clean installation virtualized and it keeps doing the same. Whenever I restart Windows 8.1 the level 2 thumnbail cache does not make ALMOST any difference and does not help speeding folders browsing as it should. I also tried deleting all caches from Media Preview Configurator >> Testing and cache >> Clear Thumbnail Cache, and deleting C:\MediaPreview and restarting. The thumnbails are always generated quickly and well the first time and the level 2 cache grows as expected but a Windows restart will force Media Preview to slowly load the previously generated thumbnails from the level 2 cache. The level 2 cache is on the 120GB SSD with read speeds of over 400 MB/s. No antivirus or any resident program. I've checked read and write permissions on the C:\MediaPreview folder and everything is ok. I even let Media Preview grow a big cache of 2GB with the "Fill Up Thumbnail Cache" and it worked ok. There is no crash, no hang, no freeze, just a permanent lag loading the already generated thumbnails from the level 2 cache. Obviously the level 2 cache fixes the dissapearing thumbnails of Windows 8.1 but the fact that the already generated thumbnails load slower than without Media Preview makes the program a bit of a LOVE/HATE it. :)

Except for the level 2 cache thing Media Preview works really great for me. Only thing I have found is when a video file has the .264 extension it takes a lot more seconds to generate the thumbnail than any other video file extension. But if I rename that .264 video file to .M2V or .TS extension and restart Windows and browse the folder again then it generates the thumbnails very fast as it usually does with other video file extensions. The file is the same, I just changed the extension. I had to manually add the 264 extension in Media Preview Configurator. It may be a limitation of Libav with the 264 extension. Nothing big to worry.

Overall I give Media Preview a 9.9/10. It works great and it's easy to use and configure. The level 2 cache is a new thing and I'm sure it will get fixed in new betas. Or maybe it's just me and my Windows 8.1 Ouch!!!

Tomorrow I will virtualize Windows 7 and try Media Preview beta on it to see if level 2 cache lags too.

Thanx!

Paul
theoneofgod
Posts: 41
Joined: Sun Aug 04, 2013 6:12 pm

Re: The latest beta thread (2)

Post by theoneofgod »

I see the lag too, when browsing a folder with many .flv files. But the positive side to MP is that there's no "writing" to the drive when it has been done already.
Paul
Posts: 7
Joined: Sat Jun 28, 2014 8:06 pm

Re: The latest beta thread (2)

Post by Paul »

Hello again

I just tried Media Preview beta 1.4.4.468 on Windows 7 SP1 Ultimate 64 bits virtualized and it does NOT lag! :shock:

The level 2 cache loads so fast and beautiful on Windows 7! :lol:

It is all a Windows 8.1 problem. Windows 8.1 seems to break the Input/output priorities to the level 2 cache or something. I'm looking and the Windows 8.1 task manager and I don't see any Media Preview service or application who's priority can be raised up.

theoneofgod >>> Once you restart Windows do you still see the lag loading the .flv thumbnails? Are you on Windows 8.1? Do you see lag on photos and other video files or only with .flv files?

Thanx!

Paul
theoneofgod
Posts: 41
Joined: Sun Aug 04, 2013 6:12 pm

Re: The latest beta thread (2)

Post by theoneofgod »

Yes, that's when I see this "lag". The top progress bar goes green and takes awhile for it to work. The drive isn't being used for anything else but it takes a very long time to load. Only seems to happen with .flv files though.
BabelSoft
Site Admin
Posts: 342
Joined: Sat Jun 02, 2012 9:23 pm

Re: The latest beta thread (2)

Post by BabelSoft »

Paul, thanks for your feedbacks.

For the .264 files, by default Media Preview doesn't handle them as this extension is not listed in the video tab of the config tool, which means it was handled by Windows and its vanilla thumbnailer... But when you added the extension manually via the config tool, you forced Media Preview to handle files with this extension, and you've just confirmed that, at least for H264/AVC encoded files, Media Preview is faster than the vanilla thumbnailer :)

Now, as for your L2 cache issue on Win8.1, I'm quite astonished as I did some quick testing within a virtual machine and it seemed to work well without any lags. But I must confess that my primary testing configuration is under Win7.
You cannot change the priority of Media Preview as it is launched as a subprocess of Windows Explorer when the shell needs it. Well, maybe changing the priority of explorer.exe would impact something or maybe not...

What theoneofgod reported is really interesting. So, the L2 cache issue on Win8.1 seems to be limited to some file formats only ? .flv format is a derivative of the more common .mp4 format. I don't see what pattern would trigger a lag with .flv files only, but I'll try to do some tests with a folder filled with .flv files only and see if I can reproduce this lag issue. I'll also isolate other file formats to different folders and see for which file formats I can perceive some lags.
theoneofgod
Posts: 41
Joined: Sun Aug 04, 2013 6:12 pm

Re: The latest beta thread (2)

Post by theoneofgod »

An example of the .flv files that have issues:

Code: Select all

Format                                   : Flash Video
File size                                : 911 MiB
Duration                                 : 1h 44mn
Overall bit rate                         : 1 223 Kbps

Video
Format                                   : Sorenson Spark
Codec ID                                 : 2
Duration                                 : 1h 44mn
Width                                    : 480 pixels
Height                                   : 400 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 1.200
Frame rate mode                          : Variable
Bit depth                                : 8 bits

Audio
Format                                   : Speex
Codec ID                                 : 11
Duration                                 : 8s 760ms
Channel(s)                               : 1 channel
Sampling rate                            : 5 500 Hz
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Paul
Posts: 7
Joined: Sat Jun 28, 2014 8:06 pm

Re: The latest beta thread (2)

Post by Paul »

Hello Babelsoft

I've installed Process lasso to permanently raise explorer.exe prioritiy to HIGH and I have not seen any improvement on thumbnails loading.

I have tried in the past days with Windows 8.1 Update 1 updated to the lastest patches and also with Windows 8.1 Update 1 clean virtualized without any patch, just out of the box, recently installed, the first thing to install was Media Preview, configured it, browsed movies and photos, restarted Windows and there it was the lag.

Did you try Windows 8.1 Update 1 or just Windows 8.1? And Windows 8?

I'm gonna try to virtualize Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 instead of Windows 8.1 Update 1. Maybe it's a problem of Update 1?

I don't know what more to look for. On Windows 7 Media Preview works perfect so it's not my machine. It has to be Windows 8.x whatever version.

I see the lag problem on all kind of media files, photos or videos, jpeg or mkv, png or flv, whatever media file I browse it lags.

Thanx!

Paul

PD: Are you all using 32 or 64 bits Windows? I do 64 bits.
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