[Q] XBMC help - XBMC is getting quite large! - Fire TV Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I've been running XBMC on my FireTV for a while now and I have noticed that it keeps growing in size. With only an 8GB hard drive - most of which is taken up by apps - there isn't an easy way to get rid of the old thrumnails and such that are starting to make XBMC balloon up over 2GB.
Does anyone know of a good way to prune XBMC back down to a reasonable size? An app recommendation would be best - but detailed instructions would work. I'm kinda new to FTV and really haven't edited anything - just sideloaded a few things. Thanks in advance.

Search feature and ye shall find, young grasshopper

Moving the thumbnails to SD doesn't actually address the OP's problem...jut shifts it to SD
I would assume deleting the thumbnails folder together with Textures*.db should take care of the folder size. Your XBMC will run slower after the reboot as the images will have to be cached again as needed.
I have seen Python scripts to regenerate the thumbnails faster based in installed add-ons, but I don't know how to install Python on AFTV.

You need to save the Thumbnails on some external device. You can store them on a mounted flash drive or network location if you want. Unless you do that, eventually your internal memory is going to fill up.

I use a program add-on called Thumbnails Cleaner Version 1.1.3 by Max (m4x1m) Headroom, just search for repository.m4x1m.zip on google and you will find the repo in the first links. its very easy to use and can greatly reduce you thumbnails folder

I use fusion maintenance add on to do the cleaning.

Related

Need Help. How do I get to the Internal Storage area

OK, I got my Sprint TP2 yesterday and was playing around with it. I installed my SD card that had some files on it and when I tapped on one document file by mistake it "unzipped" it to the internal storage completely filling it.
I've looked all over but cannot seem to locate the internal storage memeory on the phone.
HELP!
Thanks in Advance.
OK, never mind. But.....
OK, after I opened it back up today I started looking at it like my old PDA and found the file and deleted it.
But..
I'd like to free up more internal memory as it shows I only have 158MB free. And only 59MB free for program memory. I'll be getting a 16GB card soon to replace my 2GB I have but I'd like to have more internal memory.
What programs/files can I delete safely from my Sprint TP2 to free up more space?
JohnMcD348 said:
I'd like to free up more internal memory as it shows I only have 158MB free. And only 59MB free for program memory. I'll be getting a 16GB card soon to replace my 2GB I have but I'd like to have more internal memory.
What programs/files can I delete safely from my Sprint TP2 to free up more space?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
158MB of "Storage" memory is actually quite a bit -- it's 60% open/empty. Considering that a lot of applications are less than a 1 MB, and a huge one is 5MB -- you still have room to install dozens directly to the device. To minimize use of Storage, install as many apps as possible to your card. And, wherever possible, configure settings on apps to store their data to the card...and set the camera to save to the card, etc. Even a 2GB card is a lot of space -- unless you're carrying full-length, high-quality movies.
Program memory gets filled up by stuff that's currently running, so deleting installed programs won't free up more of that -- unless these programs run automatically/all-the-time.
MCbrian said:
158MB of "Storage" memory is actually quite a bit -- it's 60% open/empty. Considering that a lot of applications are less than a 1 MB, and a huge one is 5MB -- you still have room to install dozens directly to the device. To minimize use of Storage, install as many apps as possible to your card. And, wherever possible, configure settings on apps to store their data to the card...and set the camera to save to the card, etc. Even a 2GB card is a lot of space -- unless you're carrying full-length, high-quality movies.
Program memory gets filled up by stuff that's currently running, so deleting installed programs won't free up more of that -- unless these programs run automatically/all-the-time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, if you have 158MB storage free on the phone right now, be sure to take a screenshot if it so you can look back later and remember "back when" you had still had that much free space
MCBrian is right, moving stuff to your memory card is the best way to free up space on the phone's memory and keep it from filling up unneccesarily. Like he said, first change the camera settings to always save to the card, otherwise that will always eat into your available on-board storage, and quickly. I would also suggest going into the current album of pics on the phone, deleting anything you don't want to save, and move whatever you do want to save into a "pics" folder on your card (HTC's photo album can include pics saved there as well). Same for music...store any and all of it on the card, not the phone's memory. The one caveat with that is that the HTC music player (the music tab in touchflo) doesn't always find music on the card, not for me anyway, but I never liked that player anyway.
Managing my memory that way has given me enough space that even with dozens of programs on the phone, all of them installed to the phone's memory, I still have 95MB free space for programs on there. In fact, I still have a fair amount of junk (stuff I tried but don't use, etc) in there that I need to go clear out. Installing some of your programs to the memory card can help too, but if you're careful you can keep enough storage memory on there available to be able to avoid ever needing to do that (and the hassle that comes with trying to figure out which programs are ok with being installed on the card, as well as managing/maintaining separate install locations).
If you're going to start using file explorer to dig around in your directories, I highly recommend you first install File Explorer Extension. It simply adds a lot of the stock destop file explorer functionality that's missing in the mobile version ("open with>" in the context menu, for example!)...makes a HUGE difference in ease of use when digging through your file structure. I attachted it below, "fexploreext v2.05.CAB"
For keeping your RAM ("running" memory) from growing too fast, I also suggest running the other 2 cabs I have attached below (SSK TP2 Dynamic Resource Proxy.cab and nopushinternet.cab), they make a big difference in the active memory management on the TP2, you'll probably see a noticable difference right after soft-reset.
Thanks for those CABs. I'm pretty good at managing the storage on things like this, I just couldn' find the files/folder on the newer phone using the options available in WinMo6+. I've been using an Axim for years runnign WinMo5 and earlier versions. Storage cards are pretty easy for me as I'm use to running stuff between the Main/CF/SD cards that I had on the Axim. I just have alot to learn about the newer 6.1 OS. Probably, by the time I get used to 6.1, Sprint will come out with 6.5(6,7,whatever) and I'll get to relearn everything all over again.
If there are any other programs you'd recommend to help me out I'd greatly appreciate it.
JohnMcD348 said:
Thanks for those CABs. I'm pretty good at managing the storage on things like this, I just couldn' find the files/folder on the newer phone using the options available in WinMo6+. I've been using an Axim for years runnign WinMo5 and earlier versions. Storage cards are pretty easy for me as I'm use to running stuff between the Main/CF/SD cards that I had on the Axim. I just have alot to learn about the newer 6.1 OS. Probably, by the time I get used to 6.1, Sprint will come out with 6.5(6,7,whatever) and I'll get to relearn everything all over again.
If there are any other programs you'd recommend to help me out I'd greatly appreciate it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well the file structure is obviously still pretty much the same windows-standard, just some locations moved around. The bad news is that none of the programs installed by default in the stock rom are removable through the normal remove programs dialog, or any 3rd-party app I've seen. However you can just go perform the same steps manually by deleting any folders matching the program/publisher's name in these locations:
<root>/program files
<root>/application data
<root>/windows/start menu
...and then searching in the registry to delete any keys in there for the program as well. You'll need a registry editor to do that, I've attached my favorite free one, PHM Regedit...just search your registry by the name of the program you're removing. If you're not familiar with messing around in the registry, there's guides available here, let me know if you need me to point you in that direction. And, as always, be SURE to make a backup copy of your registry (PHM can handle that for you) before making any changes.
Here's a couple of other utilites I've found useful:
Advanced_Configuration_Tool_v3.3.cab -Gives you acccess to all sorts of advanced UI and system configuration options, a favorite and often-referenced tool here at xda.
Extra Camera Modes.cab -unlocks some capture modes that the TP2 camera is capable of, but aren't enabled from the factory on US models. New modes include MMS video, Burst, Sport, and geotagged images
SDK certs.cab -windows authentification certifcates necessary for installing many hacks/apps/cabs/etc that are available here
DivXPlayer_PPC.cab -a lean, mean .avi player from the people who came up with DivX (the codec standard, not the movie rental crap lol). I rip my DVD's at home to ~700MB DivX files, save them on my memory card, and use this app to play them...it gives far better performance and quality than any of the other players I've tried.
Very Much appreciated.
Now, I seem to have another probelm and I don't know if it's my unfamiliarirty with the newer Sync Center or am I just doing something wrong, or if it's an issue with the programs I've got.
I'm new to both Win7 and WinMo6+(and touch flo, etc). Up to now I had XP(w/ ActiveSync) and my WinMo5 Axim.
I can't seem to get my programs installed onto my TP2. I use a prgram for work called Tarascon. It's a medical reference program. I tried to install it yesterday and I never got the repsonse on the TP2 to request permission to install it. Today, I tried to install SOTI's Pocket Controller and this time I did get the request and I installed it to the device but I can't find it anywhere on it. It didn't install an Icon on the device and I've looked through every place I could think and can't even find an installation file for it. I didn't get an install error or failure notice and my memory size dcreased 2MB so something happened.
Glad to help
Since I don't really know anything about the medical reference software you're using, my first suggestion would be to check with the publisher and make sure that the version you have is compatible with Win7 and WM6.x...often software that worked on WM5 won't work just right on 6.
As for SOTI Pocket Controller, the latest version available on the site should be compatible with your setup. When you install it, are you doing that by running a .exe file on your PC and then letting Mobile Device Center (the new generation of ActiveSync) handle the install from there? It might be advisable to just moving the .cab file for the program straight to your phone (device memory or storage card is fine), and run it from there to install...bypasses the MDC, and ends up doing the same thing in the long run. In fact, it might be worth trying the same thing (running the .cab straight from your phone) with the medial software you've got.
It might just be that I'm using Ver4 and it doesn't want to run right with the newer install setup(MDC).
It worked fine when I installed it on my Axim(WinMo5) and using WinXP(ActiveSync).
Another odd thing, every time I plug in my TP2 and MDC starts to Sync, I get the request from Win7 for the Tarascon program to initialize. So that tells me something, somewhere set a pointer to my TP2 to update the program. I think.

[NST][Home replacement] EpubBrowser [11/04/2012]

Hi,
I did up a home replacement for my Nook simple touch, thought I would share it. This is an initial release, no doubt there are bugs, incompatibilities, etc, you were warned. There are no checks for other devices at this point, NST only.
Thanks to the nook community for the noogie.img file, touch nooter, and relaunch for source code ideas and various threads regarding quick refresh and e-ink support.
Disclaimer: Now, what I am using currently is the bare minimum, I have tried quite a bit of the work in this forum and it works well, but I wasn't satisfied or 100% confident and I wanted less installed. So, I restored my nook to stock, used noogie and copied over a rooted ramdisk. That was it, no touchcolortools, nooktouchtools installed, adw minimal this or that, or button saviors. I am sure they are great programs but I don't know enough about them or have the interest/time to do research on them to want to keep them installed.
For me, the point is to keep things simple and maintain battery life. It's an e-reader not a tablet after all. I just want to read books, check email, check a website or two, get some more use out of wi-fi since I don't live in a B&N supported nation.
​To install:adb install EPubBrowser.apk
Optional:
I also installed Email.apk and set up my gmail from there, no certificates required or a million google app files and plucking a chicken on a Tuesday after jumping on your left foot crap. No offense to those who like chicken plucking.
adb install Email.apk
Done and done.
I can do up a CWM zip upon request, but last going off I have a continuous reboot after installing the latest version and if you know enough to get the Nook's CWM installed you should be able to use adb.​See attached files.
What is not working:
Since Android doesn't really know about multiple external storage locations (at least for the Nook's 2.1 and/or my knowledge of android) EPubBrowser is unable to detect when the internal storage has been remounted, there is no notification of that, just notification of external storage. So if you plug in your usb cord to the computer the list of books will be empty even when you remove it. So if you don't have an sdcard you will have to hit the back button and launch home again to refresh.
Also, B&N books are not listed, whatever is in My Files will be scanned only. That applies to internal and sdcard storage. You can still use B&N's Library to access those.
I don't have any option of uninstalling apps either. adb uninstall works fine or you can just delete files from /data/app via adb shell.
What is working:
Launch of EPubBrowser via nook's home button, without use of nooktouchtools, it duplicates how the B&N home app works.
The notification icon for resuming reading goes through the app. As long as the book was launched from EPubBrowser it can remember the last book, otherwise the main display will show up. Reason being that for whatever reason the last page read doesn't work with the B&N home screen if it's not a book bought from B&N. But if you are just using the B&N Reader app it's not a problem.
When you are prompted which home you want you can select EPubBrowser and hit default. This may not stay set and will go away the next time you reboot.
How to use:Left / right swipes to go to the next 6, previous 6 books, no indication of the current page is displayed, (e-ink and aesthetics).
Touch a book cover to launch a description of the book, swipe up and down to scroll through the description, touch the cover displayed there to start reading. Hit back button on top of screen to exit without launching a book.
To bring up the list of apps installed, swipe a clockwise circle starting at 10 O'clock. Touch an app to launch it, left or right swipe to go back to main screen.​That's it for now.
If you have any ideas for improvements, bug reports, please provide as much detail as possible, and when you have done that add some more detail.
Cheers!
Updates:
2/19/2012:
Added screensaver for last read book. (Jpeg 75%) Settings->Display->Screensavers->EPubBrowser
11/4/2012:
Added src project
Looks nice! I'll give it a shot later when my Nook's charged.
Thank you for making and sharing, i am going to try tomorrow and tell you,
Improvements
First of all, thank you for creating this cool launch screen. I love the simplicity of it. Here are is brief list of improvement that you can perhaps easily implement.
-When on the homescreen with the covers of all the books, I am not sure if I am suppose to scroll down or to the right to view the rest of my books.
-When on the page with the details from the book, there is no back button to take you back to the homescreen. I end up using the button savior back button.
-The circle gesture that takes you to the apps does not feel very responsive to me.
Anyhow, great job. Can't wait to see how you plan on improving it
OW MY EYES
I installed this, and everything just kept flashing. GO Locker and GO Launcher are both broken, and the only way I could fix it was by getting into ADW and closing the task. Did I install it incorrectly? I put it onto an SD card and used ES File Manager to install it.
ChunC said:
First of all, thank you for creating this cool launch screen. I love the simplicity of it. Here are is brief list of improvement that you can perhaps easily implement.
-When on the homescreen with the covers of all the books, I am not sure if I am suppose to scroll down or to the right to view the rest of my books.
-When on the page with the details from the book, there is no back button to take you back to the homescreen. I end up using the button savior back button.
-The circle gesture that takes you to the apps does not feel very responsive to me.
Anyhow, great job. Can't wait to see how you plan on improving it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
Thanks for the feedback.
You swipe left to go to the previous page of books. You swipe right to go to the next page of books, assuming you have more than 6 books. Personally, I know what books I have on the device so it's not a problem knowing how many are left to see for me.
The back button should be on top of the screen in the middle, not sure why it wouldn't be there on yours. I will give it a think, maybe remove the scroll control in the book description and just use gesture detection and scroll the text via code.
Responsiveness and speed will likely improve over time, I am using the gesture library, maybe there are some optimizations there I can do.
Cheers!
Googie2149 said:
OW MY EYES
I installed this, and everything just kept flashing. GO Locker and GO Launcher are both broken, and the only way I could fix it was by getting into ADW and closing the task. Did I install it incorrectly? I put it onto an SD card and used ES File Manager to install it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
Noted, so it doesn't work with GO Lancher/Locker. Never tried GO stuff, so that wasn't tested. It was tested with ADW and relaunch, and I had all the rest of your typical touch nooter install there without problems, android market, etc.
I have run it with Home.apk renamed to Home.apk.bak and that works fine as well.
As for your other question, if it is installed it is installed, there are no configurations to modify, however you get it there it should be fine.
Cheers!
WANT
Noted that it does not work with go, will have to get rid of that first.
From the screenshots, I can already tell you put time into polishing! Good job!
NFHimself said:
Hi,
Noted, so it doesn't work with GO Lancher/Locker. Never tried GO stuff, so that wasn't tested. It was tested with ADW and relaunch, and I had all the rest of your typical touch nooter install there without problems, android market, etc.
I have run it with Home.apk renamed to Home.apk.bak and that works fine as well.
As for your other question, if it is installed it is installed, there are no configurations to modify, however you get it there it should be fine.
Cheers!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll try it again without the GO software, but it was making everything just keep flashing, like the lock screen.
@NFHimself, any plans for taking this to github? It is very close to what I always wanted but I was also looking for:
- some kind of usage of Calibre data
- library filtering for series, highly rated, etc.
- tracking of books that are clicked to maintain sort of recent read filter
- sorting options by rating, series, and other Calibre properties
- option to display 6 or 12 (smaller) book covers.
I hope it already does use intents for selecting a different epub reader for those who have no defaults and multiple ones installed.
I know its a long list, and I have some Android experience. I am sure there would be other developers here so a combined effort might help.
Screenshots looks good, but on the Nook - only flashing screen like Googie2149 said
tazzix said:
@NFHimself, any plans for taking this to github? It is very close to what I always wanted but I was also looking for:
- some kind of usage of Calibre data
- library filtering for series, highly rated, etc.
- tracking of books that are clicked to maintain sort of recent read filter
- sorting options by rating, series, and other Calibre properties
- option to display 6 or 12 (smaller) book covers.
I hope it already does use intents for selecting a different epub reader for those who have no defaults and multiple ones installed.
I know its a long list, and I have some Android experience. I am sure there would be other developers here so a combined effort might help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
I use Calibre as well, I just connect via adb and calibre picks up the nook and I copy books over and it converts on the fly, cool program. Using Calibre data is an idea worth looking into, if I can fit it into the theme of no preferences, no extra buttons or config. There are plenty of those kind of home apps already. Relaunch for one is great, just missing a graphical front end, I was going to mod that, but decided that I didn't really need so much stuff and I wanted to learn more android API.
I did up the app using pretty straight forward epub standards (note the plural), it works with most epubs I have run across, not sure if looking for extra xml is a good functionality vs performance tradeoff. I haven't been using EPubBrowser for very long myself, so when I add more books and find something annoying I will probably make changes to fix it. I want to keep things simple, if I need a preferences menu, it is already going the wrong way.
I am not specifying any class, just a regular launch this epub file intent, so it should work with any reader. I like the stock reader myself, cool reader seems to dislike some epubs I have above a certain size, and I didn't want to deal with it.
I may github it, I am kinda time limited these days.
Cheers!
AgentSlash said:
Screenshots looks good, but on the Nook - only flashing screen like Googie2149 said
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
More details are needed to figure that out. What device do you have? What do you have installed on it?
Cheers!
I just wiped then manually rooted my Nook, and this works now. Although I'm having some trouble with getting to the apps page after the first time I did it. Could you possible change how you get to the apps page? Maybe change it so you have to click the menu key to get to apps.
Edit: Now that I've added my books, it shows me two books, one empty, and another book. Now it just flashes and removes/re-adds the last book. :/
Edit 2: I found that there are a few books that just don't like this launcher and cause the entire Nook to start flashing. I've been adding my books one by one to see which work and which don't and I'll try and find similarities between those that don't.
Great launcher replacement.
Running right now, but after the second page, I get sent back to the first, regardless of left-to-right or right-to-left swiping. Ideas?
Also, any chance for a page up/down use for scrolling through books?
I took a quick vid. It looks like when I swipe again from R to L, it tries to redraw the next books, but gets confused?
http://youtu.be/K1ukWFK0syg
ace7196 said:
Great launcher replacement.
Running right now, but after the second page, I get sent back to the first, regardless of left-to-right or right-to-left swiping. Ideas?
Also, any chance for a page up/down use for scrolling through books?
I took a quick vid. It looks like when I swipe again from R to L, it tries to redraw the next books, but gets confused?
http://youtu.be/K1ukWFK0syg
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
I'm busy painting the baby's room, but it looks like it is resetting, perhaps one of your books is crashing the app and it is being relaunched as the home screen. Or could be some other bug, how many books are involved, if you remove one or add one, does it go away?
If someone could open the e-pub (it's a zip file) that causes the error and paste the contents of the .odf file (it's an xml file) , that would help.
Cheers!
NFHimself said:
Hi,
I'm busy painting the baby's room, but it looks like it is resetting, perhaps one of your books is crashing the app and it is being relaunched as the home screen. Or could be some other bug, how many books are involved, if you remove one or add one, does it go away?
If someone could open the e-pub (it's a zip file) that causes the error and paste the contents of the .odf file (it's an xml file) , that would help.
Cheers!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've gone through and removed / added ebooks, and still the same problem.
Sorry, been kinda busy.
I need to be able to see the bug on my end to work on it. Maybe I've been lucky with the book selections I have made or converting using Calibre has set them all to have the same kind of format, vs the variety you might see in the wild from multiple sources.
Does the error happen with no books?
What happens when you have just one book?
How many books do you have on your nook? (If it's something like 1000 then yeah, maybe you'd have issues, no checks in the code for being out of memory.)
What firmware are you using?
Are there any hardware differences? (Can't imagine that being a problem, but I am using a NST, not the original Nook.)
What can I do to reproduce this error on my end? What are the steps?
Cheers!
NFHimself said:
Sorry, been kinda busy.
I need to be able to see the bug on my end to work on it. Maybe I've been lucky with the book selections I have made or converting using Calibre has set them all to have the same kind of format, vs the variety you might see in the wild from multiple sources.
Does the error happen with no books?
What happens when you have just one book?
How many books do you have on your nook? (If it's something like 1000 then yeah, maybe you'd have issues, no checks in the code for being out of memory.)
What firmware are you using?
Are there any hardware differences? (Can't imagine that being a problem, but I am using a NST, not the original Nook.)
What can I do to reproduce this error on my end? What are the steps?
Cheers!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For me, it doesn't matter how many books I have, it's just a few specific books that crash, independent of the other books in my library, and some books are more severe than others (one makes the entire Nook start flashing (all software), others make only this app flash).
I have the same problem as the people above but I can't get past the first page. I can't seem to narrow it down to a certain book making it crash. It's a shame I love this home screen, but hopefully we can get this fixed and running great.

[Q] Best working Emulator Frontend?

Hey guys,
I've been trying to find the best way to put my games collection on my fire TV and so far all of them dont work well.
I even tried to use XBMC with the config information here: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=183527
No need to make any changes to the Rom Collection Browser since its been updated recently.
Rom Collection Browser(XBMC): Works but doesn't resolve misnamed files well at all. Gameboy Advance and PSX games collection buttons do nothing. Cant use because all images and videos are stored onto local drive maxing out the box space. I even made a Advancedsettings.xml file to move the cached items from xbmc to the usb drive and it doesnt allow my xbmc to run.
Advanced Launcher(XBMC): Requires much more configuration than Rom Browser. I keep getting a launcher.xml error when it tries to write to the plugin folder so it doesnt save any roms or changes.
Gamesome: Works, fantastic file identification but you have to input 100 games at a time or it will crash on new file scans. Also no way to remove previously scanned items that have moved or been deleted.
Any Input or ideas anyone?
If you have the choice to delete games through the Gamesome app,do so to properly remove them from the list.
If you have lingering game names,you will have to clear the data of the app in order to remove them,but will have to customize all of your settings again if you do clear the data.
retroben said:
If you have the choice to delete games through the Gamesome app,do so to properly remove them from the list.
If you have lingering game names,you will have to clear the data of the app in order to remove them,but will have to customize all of your settings again if you do clear the data.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I figured that and thats a deal breaker because im not trying to redo my 23,000 nes roms 100 at a time again. and i have a collection of everything.
Are those from something "good" at a "paradise" for the animal known as "emu"?
retroben said:
Are those from something "good" at a "paradise" for the animal known as "emu"?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Lol yes
Here is an awesome place I once forgot the name of,but eventually found once again.
It has unlicensed and pirated nes game dumps for nes.
I wish that the large compilation pack was still available so you would only have to download one file.
cah4e3.shedevr.org.ru/
There's things like Zelda SNES port for NES,Toy Story partially ported from Genesis,and Pokemon Diamond 2 on NES.
It says FAMI Dumping Project,but they are in .nes format for easy playback.
Just use retroarch's FCEUmm core to play them all,as some are using difficult mappers.
Surprisingly,it is still ongoing with new dumps since the last one was June 21st this year.
HAVE FUN!

Amazon Fire Tv Low memory issue guide for newbies?

Okay, so I've owned my fire tv for about a month now, and I'm getting a low memory pop-up (currently have 607 mb left). I've cleared the cache, uninstalled apps, deleted some tv shows, and movies. I've tried to find a step-by-step tutorial pertaining to the unrooted installation of XBMC on how to move the thumbnails, and have came up empty. This is surprising considering the abundance of information out there in regards to the fire tv. I think that their should be a guide to help other newbies understand how to avoid the "Low memory issue." Right now there is nothing, the only thing I could find was something about changing the path sub of the thumbnails to nas or bignas1 (which does not require root) but there is no clear info on how to put your thumbnails in there or take them out. Anyways, if someone could make a simple guide for other novices' explaining the procedure that would be cool, Thanks!!!
Changing your thumbnail path to an external USB drive requires root. Anything involving an external USB drive requires root.
You can change your thumbnail path to a network share or NAS without needing root though.
Some other things to consider:
Are you using an advancedsettings.xml file to change your cachememberbuffersize setting? If you have cachememberbuffersize set to 0 in your advancedsettings.xml file, that defaults all cache to the local hard drive and you don't use RAM at all for cache. Most people don't realize that when you set that to 0, you're using hard drive space and ignoring RAM. That 0 setting was meant to help on devices with limited RAM but excess HD space. On the FireTV that 0 setting can have a big impact on storage since the HD space is limited. I don't recommend that setting on FireTV. If anything you should use a set value instead of zero, so you keep your cache in RAM, but still have a set limit so the device doesn't use up all the RAM for cache and crash itself. That won't use any HD space for cache. I've never had any cache or buffer issues with that config.
More info on cachememberbuffersize: http://kodi.wiki/view/HOW-TO:Modify_the_video_cache
Also.... are you using any plugins that are set to download movies/TV/music while streaming? Some plugins, like Icefilms, are set by default to download the video in the background while you're streaming. That can use up a large chunk of storage, if not all of it. Go to the plugin configuration page for each plugin and check to see if anything is downloading in the background. I've seen Icefilms do this frequently.
You can also reduce the size of your thumbnails in most plugins. Again, go to the plugin config for each of your plugins and see if you can change the thumbnail/metadata size to a lower quality.
I don't believe there's a noob guide for this. But there are some apps available that will help with clearing space. I use the XBMCHub Maintenance Tool. That has options for clearing all your current thumbnails, as well as deleting old plugin packages which can also clear space.
Hope that helps.
KCFish said:
Some other things to consider:
Are you using an advancedsettings.xml file to change your cachememberbuffersize setting? If you have cachememberbuffersize set to 0 in your advancedsettings.xml file, that defaults all cache to the local hard drive and you don't use RAM at all for cache. Most people don't realize that when you set that to 0, you're using hard drive space and ignoring RAM. That 0 setting was meant to help on devices with limited RAM but excess HD space. On the FireTV that 0 setting can have a big impact on storage since the HD space is limited. I don't recommend that setting on FireTV. If anything you should use a set value instead of zero, so you keep your cache in RAM, but still have a set limit so the device doesn't use up all the RAM for cache and crash itself. That won't use any HD space for cache. I've never had any cache or buffer issues with that config.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was totally unaware of this and am looking into doing this utilizing advanced settings. Can you let me know what you set the cache settings to. Are you using all three options in HOW-TO:Modify the video cache?
advancedsettings.xml - Cache settings
1 - Choose what to buffer→ Thinking of using "2 Only buffer true internet filesystems (streams) (http, etc.)" as I only stream from addons.
2- Increasing the cache→ Not sure what number to set for cache to avoid caching to my hard drive.
3- Increase the fill-rate of the cache→ Not sure what to set the fill-rate to.
Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.
Thumbnails are the pictures/posters/screenshots that come up as icons for every movie, TV show, show episode, and posted video that you browse/check out/click on INFO, whether you play it or not, and they are saved in Storage Data, taking up Available Internal Space, and do not disappear/get erased on their own. Their continued existence is the reason KODI slows down over time, and can lock up completely if remedial measures aren’t taken. The Caches and Packages and Thumbnails (NOTICE THE ORDER) need to be cleaned out when the FTVS begins to noticeably slow, or at some point to prevent the slowing, hence my recommendation regarding weekly or monthly maintenance. 5 minutes maintenance once or twice a month should not be too much to do to keep FTVS/ KODI operating properly.
RAW MAINTENANCE PROGRAM: To clear Avail Space and Data /Thumbnails
Install Raw Maintenance program in order to clear out the cache/packages/thumbnails, IN THAT ORDER, to keep the FTVS/KODI running smoothly. Open the NOISSUE repo, scroll to and select the Maintenancerepo.rawmaintenance.zip > back out and select “Install from zip file” > scroll up to Install from Repo and select > scroll to RawMediaKodi and select > back out and select Program Addon > select RawMaintenance and install > then back out to Services > scroll to and select RawMaintenance Services and install > back out to the KODI menu bar.
Then go to Programs on the KODI main page menu bar, click on Program Addons, scroll to the RAW MAINTENANCE addon, click, scroll to the MAINTENANCE (orange triangle) icon, click, and you will see icons for Clear Cache, Delete Thumbnails, and Purge Packages. PAY ATTENTION HERE!!! Click on the each of the icons Cache/Packages/Thumbnails, IN THAT ORDER, (left/right/center order, NOT the left-center-right order displayed on the screen), and click on the OK that comes up each time, then use the BACKUP BUTTON (upper left one in the two rows of three buttons, the bent sideways arrow) four times out to the KODI main page and click down to the POWER BUTTON on the main KODI screen below the menu bar in the lower left corner (circle with a vertical hash mark half into it) and select, then click on the EXIT box that comes up above the menu bar. KODI will close and take you back to the FTVS main screen or the Manage Installed Apps section, depending on how you entered KODI. You can click on the KODI icon to re-enter, but if you return through the Manage Installed Apps way, you will see the Avail Space and Data amounts have reset to about 4GB and less than 1GB, respectively.
Thorn in my side
I keep clearing cache packages and thumbnails I also try new build on fire tv and my RAM is getting worse. I believe that what I'm cleaning isn't deleting it getting stuck someplace and I've tried to find it in my file directory and esee file manager I've downloaded apps to try and clean it with those but I'm stuck in can't seem to think of any other places to look. ANY SUGGESTIONS WOULD BE GREAT.
RAM? Dont touch ram. Android 5.x.x and above is more than capable of managing it on its own.
Some people are playing around with disabling AFTV launcher, when they don't use it (understand, that you are disabling settings, and the launcher grid with it - so have another method of launching apps ready - or you will have to resort to adb commands as a last fallback - to get it back). - I don't.
As for diskspace -
1. don't touch Kodis advancedsettings.xml undless you know what you are doing. I know what I am doing, and I still havent changed the default caching behavior in there.
2. Moving Kodis image cache to an external drive should only be necessary if you have a large collection of movies/shows on a local server/drive (and with large I am talking 300+ items), that you always want to have indexed in Kodi.
3. If thats not the case, use Raw maintenance once in a while - and you will be fine.
To see whats filling up the Firetv besides Kodi, use https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rjhartsoftware.storageanalyzer (you need a mouse (mouse emulator) to effectively use it).
edit you can use
adb shell dumpsys meminfo
to see whats taking up memory at any specific time - but ram "cleaners" arent the solution, imho.

[GUIDE] Adding custom GameStream games to your homescreen.

We all know that we can add custom games to Geforce Experience in order to stream games to our Shields that are not officially supported by Nvidia. Last year, Nvidia added the ability to display Gamestream game shortcuts directly on our home screens. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, they did not carry this ability forward for custom games that have been added to Geforce Experience, but only to the officially supported ones. After a lot of digging around, here’s a way to circumvent this limitation. It’s important to note that this method bypasses the ‘Add Custom Games’ function in Geforce Experience, in order to have our games appear as officially supported ones. And now, a warning: this guide is long. It’s long because the process is long, but it’s also long because I’ve never been good at concisely explaining things. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Now, navigate to:
Code:
\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Local\Nvidia\NvBackend\ApplicationOntology\data\
Here you will find a file called fingerprint.db. This is an XML file that contains information on all of Nvidia’s officially supported games. Inside you will find entries such as the following:
Code:
<Fingerprint name='the_witcher_3'>
<DisplayName>The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt</DisplayName>
<Version name='steam'>
<CMSID>10534111</CMSID>
<CMSVersion>1</CMSVersion>
<Distributor>Steam</Distributor>
<Files>
<File name='bin\x64\witcher3.exe' />
<File name='bin\ddi\Steam.dll' />
</Files>
<Hypersampling>0</Hypersampling>
<HypersamplingFactors>2;4</HypersamplingFactors>
<Icon>bin\x64\witcher3.exe</Icon>
<Image>bin\x64\witcher3.exe</Image>
<IsAutomatable>1</IsAutomatable>
<IsStreamingSupported>1</IsStreamingSupported>
<Launch>start steam://rungameid/292030</Launch>
<SteamAppIds>
<id>292030</id>
<id>124923</id>
</SteamAppIds>
<StreamingAutomatedLaunch>0</StreamingAutomatedLaunch>
<StreamingCaption>The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt</StreamingCaption>
<StreamingClassName>W2ViewportClass</StreamingClassName>
<StreamingCmdLine>start steam://rungameid/292030</StreamingCmdLine>
<WhisperModePopsFactor>0.588</WhisperModePopsFactor>
</Version>
</Fingerprint>
It’s fairly obvious what most of the tags inside this entry are for. The most important one, however, is the CMSID tag. This is the id number that Nvidia identifies your game with and uses to launch in GameStream. Also take note of the Files tag. In here you will find the files that Nvidia is looking for when scanning for new games.
I’ll also point out here that when you launch an officially supported GameStream game on your Shield, the shortcuts that are created on the homescreen are actual self contained apps.
The method of this guide is fairly straightforward:
1) We make an new entry in fingerprint.db with a custom CMSID, and fill out the rest of the information inside our entry to ensure that our game is detected and launched properly.
2) We extract one of the apks for the GameStream shortcut apps that are on our Shield’s homescreen, and copy this apk to our pcs.
3) We replace every instance of the old CMSID in the apk with our newly created CMSID, then recompile the apk and install it on our Shields.
Once this is done your newly installed shortcut app will launch your game as defined in the new entry you made in fingerprint.db. One thing to point out is that Geforce Experience overwrites fingerprint.db frequently (how frenquently, I don’t know.) I’ve changed this file to be read-only (via the security tab) on my system, which I hope will stop it from being overwritten. As a backup, I keep all of my custom entries in fingerprint.db backed up in a separate file, which I will simply append to the original database if the above method doesn’t work. (not sure how Window’s permission policies work.)
I’m not going to write a step-by-step guide here, but rather describe the game I’m launching and go from there. I like playing games on the WiiU emulator, Cemu, through GameStream. What I did here is create a shortcut in Steam to launch Mario Kart 8 directly in Cemu (if you have questions on how to do this, you can Google it.) I then used the option in Steam to make a desktop shortcut for this Steam shortcut, which creates a .url file that launches the game. Looking at this file’s properties shows that it runs the command: steam://rungameid/9898741384892907520. This is the command that I have GameStream launch. Note that your command will differ depending on what you are launching.
Now, here’s my entry for Mario Kart 8 in fingerprint.db:
Code:
<Fingerprint name='mario_kart_8'>
<DisplayName>Mario Kart 8</DisplayName>
<Version name='generic'>
<CMSID>500000001</CMSID>
<CMSVersion>1</CMSVersion>
<Distributor>Nintendo</Distributor>
<Icon>Mario Kart 8.url</Icon>
<Image>Mario Kart 8.url</Image>
<Launch>start steam://rungameid/9898741384892907520</Launch>
<IsAutomatable>1</IsAutomatable>
<IsStreamingSupported>1</IsStreamingSupported>
<StreamingAutomatedLaunch>1</StreamingAutomatedLaunch>
<StreamingCmdLine>start steam://rungameid/9898741384892907520</StreamingCmdLine>
<StreamingCaption>Mario Kart 8</StreamingCaption>
<StreamingClassName>W2ViewportClass</StreamingClassName>
<Files>
<File name='Mario Kart 8.url' />
</Files>
</Version>
</Fingerprint>
Adding this entry will cause GeforceExperience to add the game to GameStream as an officially supported title. However, It won’t do so right away. To get GeforceExperience to use our newly updated fingerprint.db, you can either end the correct nvcontainer.exe process in the Task Manager (there are a few) or just restart your computer. After this, scan for new titles in Geforce Experience and your new entry should be detected, and should appear on your Shield. Sometimes it takes a further restart of your PC for the game to finally appear on the Shield. It won’t, however, create a shortcut on your Shield’s homescreen. That’s the next step: making your custom apk.
I won’t explain all the different ways to extract apks from your Shield and so on. Here’s what I did:
1) Extracted the apk using Total Commander on my Shield.
2) Copied the apk to my desktop
3) Decompiled the apk using EasyApk (available on Xda-Developers)
4) Opened the AndroidManifest file and all the files in the res and smali folders in my code editor. I use Atom. Replaced all instances of the old CMSID with the new CMSID in all these files. (ctrl-f, find all, replace all.)
5) Replaced the banner and icon in the \res\mipmap-xhdpi-v4\ folder with new ones. You can also change the title of the app in strings.xml, as well as the color of the animation that is displayed when the app is launched in colors.xml. These are in \res\values\.
6) Recompiled the apk with EasyApk, and installed it on my Shield.
That’s basically it. The new apk will launch the game as defined in fingerprint.db, directly from the Shield’s homescreen.
Now, there are some drawbacks to using this method. One is that no poster and blurred background will be displayed on the screen as the GameStream stream loads. This can be solved, but only with root. Briefly, here’s how to solve it:
When GeforceExperience detects and adds a new game it creates an entry in the following file:
Code:
\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Local\Nvidia\NvBackend\journalBS.main.xml
Here’s the beginning of one of these entries:
Code:
<Id_57f8f0c0 Type="1">
<Id Type="2">1475932352</Id>
<CmsId Type="2">500000001</CmsId>
<CmsVersion Type="2">1</CmsVersion>
<DisplayName Type="4">Mario Kart 8</DisplayName>
<ShortName Type="4">mario_kart_8</ShortName>
The important info here is the second Id Tag: 1475932352. Keep it in mind. Now, copying your poster image to tegrazone3’s cache folder, located here:
Code:
/data/data/com.nvidia.tegrazone3/cache
on to your Shield will allow the poster to be displayed when the game is loading (and also while inside the Nvidia Games app.) However, a couple of things first:
One is that you must copy this image after the Nvidia Games app decides to move all its images from whatever internal mechanism or database it uses to store them, to the cache folder. This shouldn’t take too long. 5 mins? 10 mins? No idea. However, one way to force it is to clear Nvidia Games cache and data in Android Settings so that it is rebuilt. About 10 minutes afterward you should be good to copy your posters into the cache folder. You’ll know that it is time when you are being asked to overwrite the old files in the cache folder (to which you will reply ‘yes’).
Here’s the other thing, your poster must be named like this: img_s2_g1475932352_t2_i0null. Notice the part in bold. This is the ID taken from journalBS.main.xml. Also notice: there is NO file extension.
And that’s about it! Be aware that the Nvidia Games app may overwrite these cached images at some point, such as when the cache is cleared in Android Settings. I keep all my files in another folder on the Shield to be quickly copied back if and when that happens. Also, this doesn’t break the game’s launching ability anyway, so it’s not such a big deal. I’ve thought about experimenting with the read/write permissions of these files like I did with fingerprint.db. Haven’t tried it yet but it’s a potential solution, and also a potential Nvidia Games crashing error.
I’ll also mention tegrazone3’s database files. I’m not sure what the cause-effect relationship is between these files and Geforce Experience. However, there is the potential to edit this database directly as an alternative to the above guide. I tried editing it with a sqlite editor on my pc and it caused all posters to appear blank in Nvidia Games. And since the above guide worked for my purposes I decided not to spend any more time on the matter.
And now, finally: IS THIS WORTH THE TROUBLE??? Probably not. Not for most people, anyway haha. I don’t play that many different games so doing the above for those handful of games wasn’t a huge deal. I also really hate having to go through the Nvidia Games app and seeing all that tegrazone grid streaming what-have-yous. I don’t use that stuff, and much much rather have everything I do use displayed on my homescreen. But if you have hundreds of games that you would like added to your Shield’s home screen, I’m sure you stopped reading long ago.
That’s it! Hope I didn’t forget anything.
Awesome Guide!
I've never done any of this stuff before, and I was able to follow this guide and it seemingly worked perfectly! I do have one question about an issue I ran into, though. The game I made "gamestream ready" now defaults to mouse/keyboard controls versus shield controller controls. So now when I open the game, I have to hold the start button to make the "on screen controls" go away. Here is my custom fingerprint entry. (ignore my formatting here, I couldn't get it to paste right)
<Fingerprint name='monster_energy_supercross'>
<DisplayName>Monster Energy Supercross</DisplayName>
<Version name='generic'>
<CMSID>500000002</CMSID>
<CMSVersion>1</CMSVersion>
<Distributor>Steam</Distributor>
<Icon>supercross.exe</Icon>
<Image>supercross.exe</Image>
<Launch>start steam://rungameid/711750</Launch>
<IsAutomatable>1</IsAutomatable>
<IsStreamingSupported>1</IsStreamingSupported>
<StreamingAutomatedLaunch>1</StreamingAutomatedLaunch>
<StreamingCmdLine>start steam://rungameid/711750</StreamingCmdLine>
<StreamingCaption>Monster Energy Supercross</StreamingCaption>
<StreamingClassName>W2ViewportClass</StreamingClassName>
<Files>
<File name='supercross.exe' />
</Files>
</Version>
</Fingerprint>
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
wooow so, maybe, will be possible to share gamestream games unsupported from nvidia?
will be awesome!!
Sorry for necroposting)
Great tutor!! Thanks for your investigation!
I've also seen there some lua wrappers over each supported game. Maybe main magic is there?
I think all this actions can be described in the lua scripts for each title and running automatically after game detected.

Categories

Resources