New to Minimserver - a few questions

[simoncn]

(03-05-2013 22:20)winxi Wrote:  I think that if an audio server provides resizing album art to thumbnails, caching the thumbnails is unavoidable. Even though there exist fast image resampling algorithms, there is a lot of data involved. Just consider a situation when a control point requests a thousand or more items at once, each having high resolution embedded album art. Such a situation can not be handled properly with 'resizing on the fly', especially on a NAS device with little resources. This may the reason why almost every UPnP audio server which provides image resizing caches the thumbnails.

I can't think of a good reason for a control point to request a thousand covers at once. At most, it should request only the number of covers that can fit on the current displayed screen.

Also, if some caching is required to meet user performance requirements, I think it would be better done on the control point side. If the control point does need a thousand thumbnails very quickly, it's a lot more efficient for it to retrieve these from a local cache than to get them across the network from the server.

An interesting hybrid approach might be for the control point to display a low-res thumbnail image from its local cache to get something on the screen quickly, and simultaneously request the full-res image from the server (in cases where a large image is required). When the full-res image arrives, the control point can replace the low-res image by the high-res version.

Quote:As for caching the whole library (including tags), I think that this makes the whole server/client concept with UPnP streaming obsolete. Of course, such a control point offers various possibilities, being not restricted by the UPnP protocol. However, there may arise problems with synchronizing for example. It's surely a matter of taste, but I prefer the most generic way of a good server software in combination with a good control point software, having all the nice features from both worlds.

I agree with this in principle, but with some reservations. This approach provides good basic functionality, but the limitations of the UPnP protocol make it very difficult for it to compete with a fully integrated control point/server combination in terms of providing a first-class user experience.