New to Minimserver - a few questions

[winxi]

(04-05-2013 08:08)simoncn Wrote:  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.

Yes, I think most of the control points do so. However, if the user scrolls quickly through a large list of items, the control point may request a large number of thumbnails within a short timeframe. I remember the first time when image resizing was introduced with BubbleUPnP Server for proxied servers and connections over the internet. The first approach of resizing the images on the fly was quickly changed into an approach involving caching due to various problems with the first method.

Quote: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.

I completely agree, but if a control point supports image resizing and thumbnail caching itself, there is little point in doing this at the server side, too. Server side image resizing is interesting for control points which do not support thumbnail caching, to retrieve the thumbnails from the server fast.

Quote: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.

I think that the significant purpose of thumbnails for the control point is for lists of items when browsing the library. The full sized album art is most often required just for the 'now playing' item.