View Full Version : HDD spindown on streaming no longer possible?
Hi,
I just upgraded to 2.01 from a release that was nearly a year old.
The upgrade went fine and I put in all the settings back in but im now finding that hdd spindown doesn’t work like it used to.
I use xmbc every single day for streaming avi files from my PC hdd and ive got an 80gb hdd in my xbox that’s very loud and ive always had hdd spindown setup and it would turn off the hdd after a user determined time and then my xbox would be whisper quiet and I could pause the streaming video with the xbox hdd still being off. It was great.
After upgrading I find that you cant tell it after how many seconds to turn the hdd off just how long a video file has to be for the hdd to switch off and when I pause a video (which inevitably happens quite often) there is a pause and the hdd switches itself back on! Then doesn’t always turn back off when unpaused.
Is there any way to stop this as it’s really annoying?
I love xbmc 2.0, but the spindown is a major factor for me. If there is no way to stop it I might just have to go back to an earlier version.
when you hit pause, xbmc needs to fetch the icons from the disc. they are not kept in memory due to memory constraints.
ultrabrutal
2006-11-14, 09:36
I find this very annoying too, that it needs to turn on the harddrive to fetch an icon so small it shouldn't matter. There are pleanty of memory available when viewing videos even with a large cache.
Can you explain why this is really needed to keep out of memory and possibly make it a setting for all those using hd spin down?
Thanks
I was also just wondering about this, did the memory usage really go up that much since those older versions where XBMC did not have this behavior?
If it absolutely is required to not keep those icons in memory, then I'd like to make a suggestion. Why not add support to store them on a USB thumb drive instead? Sort of like Windows Vista ReadyBoost. Best of both worlds.
It's the one thing that annoys me about XBMC at the moment. Otherwise it's so close to perfection.
I can appreciate the sentiment, but your suggestion is a bit silly. Support for USB devices in XBMC is very unfinished at this point in time: READ-ONLY access for devices under 4 GB in size. :D ReadyBoost is retarded BTW...
diagdave@msn.com
2006-11-14, 13:43
it would only need to be read only, since your only reading your icons/skin off the drive
So is there no way to implement this? Surely it makes sense to make room in the memory for surely small sized icons to save the hdd having to turn on every time you paused a stream?
Please please please, find some ways of putting this back into a future release as I really like the changes to 2.0 and it would be a shame to have to go back to an earlier version.
do you really think there's special code just for that icon?
no there isnt. and no it won't be added. imo we should rip out the hdd spindown stuff completely
it raises an interesting problem: how do you put the stuff onto the USB disk, and how do you make sure you put all the neccessary stuff onto it? not saying its impossible, just trying to think-out the implementation. On the face of it it sounds like way too much work for the devs given the already sketchy nature of the USB drive support.
I would think there's gotta be some better way to do this purely in software. Would it be possible to make a "lite" skin which is sufficiently small that it can be cached entirely into RAM? If you had the skin in RAM and turned off the thumbnail caching, then you'd still have thumbnail icons without touching the harddisk once they are cached. Of course, they'd display really freaking slow because they'd have to be re-cached into RAM from wherever like whenever you are browsing. Turning the thumbs off completely and using a small skin would be the fastest/easiest way to get it done.
nobody feels like maintaining it it's to easy to break with a very minor change. to much work for too little gain.
diagdave@msn.com
2006-11-14, 17:12
i agree that its not the best idea, but it could be possilbe to use a usb skin, that means that hdd spin down wouldnt need to be on as the usb doesnt 'spin' thus make noise. to be honest i dnt hear my xbox and i dnt have a special hdd or fan, my sky box(sat) makes more noise.
do you really think there's special code just for that icon?
no there isnt. and no it won't be added. imo we should rip out the hdd spindown stuff completely
PLSE! Don't remove the HDD spindown option. I can live (allthough very annoying) with the spinup on pause, but cannot live with the spindown option being removed.
Note: it is possible to replace the existing 3.5" harddrive with a 2.5" notebook hdd, you won't hear that one.. Maybe i'll do that in the future when bigger 2.5" disks become available.
what harddisk do you use that is "so annoyingly loud"??? I need to know so I can avoid buying one in the future :) I use a 500GB Maxtor and it's way quieter than my fan :D
ultrabrutal
2006-11-18, 00:02
I use a 400 gb Hitachi with some accustic changes done to it. Even then it's loud! I love the spin down feature and would hate to have it removed!
I exchanged my fan to a 14 db low noise fan which I cannot hear. Only thing I hear now is my harddrive.
devs: I understand that the gui functions are the same, but that does not mean that you cannot extend the system and tag some resources so they are left in memory and freed manually when exiting video playback. These few resources needed during playback from video cannot take such amounts of memory that video playback is impossible. Keeping them in memory, will make XBMC more responsive as reading it from harddrive takes time. especially then the drive is powered off and needs to be powered on again.
The worst part of the power on problem is that some drives are very slow (and extra loud) to power up (7200 rpms?). The stock drive is much faster and alittle less loud than the 7200 when powering on, sadly it's not really possible to buy large 5400 rpm drives anymore. I guess a notebook harddrive could be a better option, but they are much more expensive and not so big.
2 cents spent
hehe put your Xbox inside a box of some sort :)
CompKing
2006-11-30, 07:59
Re: Spindown HD and Memory usage changing. I also see a similar "pause" in 2.01 when adjusting volume to the video stream that wasn't there in prior versions. Probably a related issue?
Since upgrading to the latest (2.0) versions of XMBC the only thing that's spoiling it is the hard drive spin up on benign operations such as pressing pause.
Like so many other people, my HD makes a fair amount of noise, and also contributes to heating up the whole box. I appreciate the fact that memory is at a premium, and some developers now regret making that feature available.
Personally, I'd gladly sacrifice other features to keep the HD switched off whilst in video playback mode. If it's down to the icons causing the spin up, how about only displaying text when the HD is spun down? This compromise would make a lot of people very happy :nod:
okay, it's time to make this perfectly clear then.
WE WILL NOT CHANGE ANYTHING IN REGARDS TO HDD SPINDOWN.
that is, i'd gladly remove it.
make your dirty compromises yourself, source is in svn.
DCintheUK
2006-12-20, 18:49
Can I just ask... at what point did genuine user feedback become an excuse to be so rude? I'm sorry - but that attitude stinks.
I too use the spin down feature (for all the reasons above). I also find the limitations in the new version a real pain.
I believe this 'problem' of non cached images effecting the spin down occurred in an earlier release - and was at the time kindly addressed. Considering the number of people who are voicing their (genuine) opinion - maybe the development team should reconsider re-including it...
ultrabrutal
2006-12-20, 20:50
Well said DC. Ofcourse the devs are free to choose what they do. However a good tone should be kept anyways I agree unless he truly consider us morons or something.
The spindown problem was added not long ago. Before that it worked fine, pausing and pressing white button.
If noone capable truly won't do this. Maybe they could do something like (as an option ofcourse):
If HD _is_ spun down:
Paused: Write PAUSED with text on screen instead of the graphics.
White Button: Write 00:05:37 / 01:47:05 in text also.
Trust me I rather have the limited amount of graphics available while playing back video. And I do not understand there are memory issues here. My LCD shows Free mem and there are always pleanty - enough for these small bitmaps I think.
Why is it needed to unload all graphics and not just keep the minimum? Please enlighten us
jmarshall
2006-12-20, 22:30
The following things are spooled off disk:
1. All textures and skin xml files.
2. All database related features (eg bookmark times, resume times, video settings, etc. etc. etc.)
3. All settings features (when they change they must be written to disk)
4. All fonts (TTF) are loaded per-letter, on demand.
As spiff has said - many of the developers (I can't speak for all) have no intention of changing this, because of a simple reason: It has never worked well, and introduces many "special-casing" things that are difficult to maintain.
May I suggest a simple fix for you users with harddisks that are obviously far noisier than the average: Remove all textures from the skin files for this (VideoFullscreen.xml), and make sure the seek dialog does not popup on pause (DialogSeekBar.xml). I can't guarantee that that will fix things, but it's a start.
Cheers,
Jonathan
ultrabrutal
2006-12-21, 00:18
Thanks man for the info man
1. I do not know how this is loaded in to memory, all at a time or just the ones needed. If some sort of list is used, maybe items could be marked with a simple flag "KeepInMemory" and this flag could be cleared when B is pressed. Only the really nice to have textures for usual video nagivation.
2. I understand this is needed for some of the features like bookmarks, but resume time could just be written when harddrive is powered on which it is when B is pressed to stop the movie. Video settings, see 3.
3. I understand this is needed and ofcourse here it's ok to power on hdd.
4. See 1. Keep the TTF's needed for basic video navigation in memory.
I do not know how anything has been implemented. I am a dev myself, but sadly lack the time to get into the code, but I am under the impression that the code base is very tight and nicely written. It's just hard to accept that this is totally impossible. Wish I hadn't bought that damn 400 gb 7200 rpm hitachi disk. Slow to power on and very noisy when on...
jmarshall
2006-12-21, 00:48
Textures are spooled on demand. We'd have to special-case it so that they were loaded once only. Same with fonts - the TTF library would have to be special-cased to allow the font file to be in memory rather than on disk, or all letters required would have to be cached. Obviously this would apply also to the subtitle font, which is not an insignificant amount of memory, particularly for asian languages.
I never said it was impossible. Merely that it is not easy. Some operations should force the harddisk out of spindown, some should not - knowing which is which is non-obvious.
Cheers,
Jonathan
Registered to post in this thread. Been using XMBC for 2 years or so. It seems odd that a feature would be introduced (spindown) and then a new feature is introduced later (pretty gui during video) which introduces a bug to the other feature and the responce is 'oh well.'
IMHO the spindown is a much more important feature than the pretty gui. It's quieter and prolongs the life of the drive. But that shouldn't be an issue, loading up a portion of the gui+icons, and the fonts and strings shouldn't be an issue. I'm sure almost everyone would be ok with xmbc using an extra meg or 2 of ram. This seems like it would be a good idea anyway so it wouldn't have to seek the harddrive for every little thing.
One of the things that people often complain about open source software is when people ask for a feature often the response is 'do it yourself'. If someone did do it themselves would you guys add it to the trunk (assuming it was neat and didn't break anything, etc)?
adrian_sm
2007-01-09, 10:48
Would someone be able to tell me where I can find what the last version of XBMC was that didn't have this problem. I would be willing to revert to it.
I predominantly us XBMC to stream recorded TV from a PC, and the pause is very annoying.
As for the noise issue, most other things in my lounge are quiet enough that you can hear the HDD. Especially at night.
Turn ya telly up! :laugh:
Ok I'll get me coat.... :blush:
adrian_sm
2007-02-03, 13:43
The following things are spooled off disk:
May I suggest a simple fix for you users with harddisks that are obviously far noisier than the average: Remove all textures from the skin files for this (VideoFullscreen.xml), and make sure the seek dialog does not popup on pause (DialogSeekBar.xml). I can't guarantee that that will fix things, but it's a start.
Johnothan, I finally got around to making a quick edit to the DialogSeekBar.xml and it has solved HDD spin up problem. So I no longer have any delays associated with the HDD spin up, or any noise.
Thanks for the tip. I appreciate it.
Adrian
ultrabrutal
2007-02-04, 11:32
adrian, care to share what you did exactly?
jm, it would be nice if this was an option for those with slow disks
I vote get rid of the feature full stop... :)