RetroFE on slow storage media

[walknight]

So I finally got RetroFE working off a USB drive connected through a USB 2.0 port. That's the only way to add external storage to this cab.

Due to the slow media, a game play video can take half a second to load. During this time, the scrolling wheel is non-responsive.
This creates a rather unsmooth user experience. On the other hand, if the user stops scrolling and waits to see the video, the half-second load time is totally acceptable.
It only becomes annoying in this scenario:
- User scrolls one time then pauses
- Video starts to load
- User decides to scroll more --- non-responsive until video loads.

I guess this is because opening a video is a blocking operation in current event loop. If that operation can be moved to a separate thread, such that UI rendering and other operations become fully asynchronous, it will make a much better experience on these systems with slow storage media.

Not sure how difficult to implement, just want to throw out the idea there for your consideration.

[Pieter Hulshoff]

The problem with this idea is that it could seriously impact animations, not to mention additional stops. If the loading of the video is split off to a separate thread, that thread needs to be cancelled somehow if the loading takes longer than the next selection.

[walknight]

Thanks Pieter. I guess you get what I wanted to achieve. When time allows I'll give it more thought.

[The SPY]

that must be really slow drive, I have my whole RetroFE artwork and also emulator rom stored on a NAS and connecting to it via Wifi and don't see any slow down on the menu, except when it doesn't find any media for the rom, it does pause a little while it must be trying to locate everything required etc

[Lowspecs]

Same problem here with an USB 3 drive = while load a video, there's a time with no response... it make the user feel that it's slow.