Cache Thumbnails

**zero_koop** · June 13th, 2010, 08:16 AM

To speed up the Boxee interface it would be nice if the thumbnails for movie/tv covers were locally cached and not downloaded each time the movie/tv page is viewed. To be honest, sometimes Boxee does seem to cache them because they load very quickly, but most of the time it takes about 15-20 seconds to load thumbnails for about 20 TV shows. This makes browsing much slower because its harder to navigate to the title you want without a thumbnail of the cover. If Boxee already caches thumbnails then maybe its my computer or maybe its a bug, but it usually takes a (relatively) long time to download them. Thanks!

**darcilicious** · June 13th, 2010, 10:07 AM

That seems odd to me. It took les then 5 secs for 43 TV Show thumbnails to show up for me just now...

How often do you run Boxee? Is there a similar delay each to you leave that go back to TV Shows or is only the first time after starting Boxee?

What if you do something else for a bit or even let Boxee be idle a bit after first starting and then visit TV Shows, same delay?

**zero_koop** · June 19th, 2010, 07:11 PM

So this isn't normal? hmm, that's strange because I've had this problem with every version of Boxee I've installed since early alpha. I have a fast internet connection (>10MB/s) so that isn't the problem.

But yes, this happens every time I navigate to those screens but seems worst on the TV Shows list (which is weird since I less TV Shows than Movies). I just did a comparison test with another computer which is faster than the computer I usually use Boxee on and that does seem to help, so maybe it is just my slower computer. Still, it takes a good 10 seconds to load the TV Show thumbnails on my faster computer. As far as being idle for a while, I'll have to test that later, but I'm pretty sure I'll get the same results.

If you say that it shouldn't take that long than I'll just assume that it is the speed of my computers. Thanks.

**zero_koop** · June 19th, 2010, 07:17 PM

I just thought of something else. I'm accessing these movies/TV shows from a networked drive. Would that have anything to do with it? I wouldn't think so since Boxee identifies the movies/TV Show names ahead of time.

**Sccrluk9** · June 19th, 2010, 11:55 PM

I beleive they are stored locally. If they arnt I dont see the point in the thumbnail folder that has all my movies and tv shows thumbs in it.

I do however on occasion get the same slowness in loading the thumbs as your are describing but it only happens to me once or twice a week.

Running Win7 the folder is located here
C:/Users/*Username*/AppData/Roaming/BOXEE/userdata/profiles/*username*/Thumbnails/

**StevenR** · June 20th, 2010, 08:48 AM

I've had the same sort of problem with movies and TV shows from a network source. I've also noticed it to a lesser extent with external USB drives.
My theory on this is that it is partly due to Boxee needing to check that the video files exist before displaying the thumbnails. For the main internal disk this is usually very quick, since the disk should have already spun up. An external drive may not be accessible immediately and may need to spin up for Boxee to be able to start checking. A networked share may have a larger delay before it is available, since not only may the disk on the remote computer not have spun up there is also the delay due to the network.
Something which seems to prove this theory for me is that with my external USB hard disk (actually an internal SATA drive in a USB SATA dock), Boxee will not even start displaying thumbnails (they all show the spinner) until I hear that the disk has spun up.