Playlist animation effects - how can they be disabled?

[mr_a500]

The new playlist animation effects (fade in, select hightlight) are slow and annoying. Even a short playlist is tedious to scroll through when first loaded because of the slow animation effects. Is there a way to disable these effects? I just want a fast smooth playlist.

[dfuhrmann]

Hi,
Could you elaborate which exact animation effects are the problem and how do you trigger them?

[kdean]

I don't recall ever seeing animation effects in the playlist.

[mr_a500]

I've made a screen caputre video that shows what I'm talking about:
http://imageshack.us/clip/my-videos/99/3h4.mp4/

Notice the "fade in" of the playlist, the jerkiness of the scrolling and the slow highlighting of list items. All of this started in version 2 of VLC. It is not in 1.1.12 or earlier.

A playlist is just text, so it should be able to scroll text super fast.

[kdean]

That's not animation, that looks like really slow screen updates / rendering. I can't duplicate it here with even over 5,000 mp3s added to the playlist. I think you'll need to provide the OS X version and what specific Mac you're running on in case it's an issue with a graphic card. Be sure to also be using the latest VLC release when testing.

[mr_a500]

It's a PowerMac G5, dual 2.0 GHz, 4GB RAM, ATI X800 XT (256 MB) - running OS X 10.5.8. I am running the latest 2.0.3 version of VLC.

[dfuhrmann]

Thanks for the video. Thats the first time I see this problem. These "animations" seem to be drawn by the default cocoa controls, this is no special animation inside the vlc code. But I have no idea whats the cause and why they are there.

[ajmas]

What is the processor load when you have this issue? I noticed you had music playing. Does it make a difference if you aren't playing the audio file?

[mr_a500]

Processor load on initial scroll of playlist is 40%-60% (both CPUs). Once every bit of the playlist has been scrolled through, scrolling is fast and load goes down to 20%. Audio playing / not playing makes no difference. It also doesn't matter how long I wait before scrolling. It always does this slow "fade in" of parts of the list that haven't been scrolled through before. Once it has been displayed, that part of the list is then fast. (selection highlight remains slow)

[mr_a500]

I've noticed that if the files are on a flash drive, the problem is much worse - so bad that VLC playlist is totally unusable. (I tried to make a short playlist for my Sansa Clip and it was very painful.)

Obviously, this is related to file access time - and when the files are first displayed in the list, they're probably being loaded and checked for something. (parsed for info? looking for "album art" or other such nonsense?) Can a developer confirm?

If so, then this is the thing I'm looking to disable. I just want it to load the list and play the currently selected, not do unnecessary extra stuff I don't want. As I said, VLC 1.x doesn't have this problem. It all started with VLC 2.

(I'd use VLC 1.x for music and VLC 2 for video, but sadly, the two versions cannot be run on the same computer because VLC 2 preferences are incompatible with VLC 1.x and makes it crash.)

[kdean]

Have you tried changing the "Album art download policy" to "Manual download only" on the first page of the preferences? Then save and relaunch VLC. See if that makes any difference.

[mr_a500]

I have always set it to "Manual download only". Just for the hell of it, I set it to download album art, saved and restarted. There was no change in scroll speed ("fade in" jerkiness was the same). I set it back to "Manual download only", saved and restarted. It was the same.

I just noticed something else. As I said before, bits of the playlist that have been scrolled through before become fast - but, if I then close the playlist (by pressing the playlist button, leaving VLC playing the list), then reopen the playlist by clicking the button again, everything is slow again. (?)

(sounds a bit confusing, but I can post another video if necessary)

[mr_a500]

I've noticed that the slow scroll jerkiness comes back when the next item in the playlist is played. If I then go though the painful process of scrolling until everything is fast again, it'll get "reset" to the same initial slow jerkiness when the next item is played. (very annoying)

There's obviously a problem with the playlist code - but probably not noticed on faster computers.

[fkuehne]

Just FYI: these effects will be disabled on OS X 10.5 starting with the 2.0.4 release, since we figured that Macs capable of running 10.6 will be fast enough to display the effects in sane manner, too.

[mr_a500]

Just FYI: these effects will be disabled on OS X 10.5 starting with the 2.0.4 release, since we figured that Macs capable of running 10.6 will be fast enough to display the effects in sane manner, too.

So it is an actual "effect" and it'll be disabled for 10.5 in the next release? Excellent. That'll make me happy. Thanks!

[mr_a500]

Just FYI: these effects will be disabled on OS X 10.5 starting with the 2.0.4 release, since we figured that Macs capable of running 10.6 will be fast enough to display the effects in sane manner, too.

I just tried 2.0.4 and the playlist scrolling is nice and fast. Thanks very much Felix.

I did notice that when a playlist is opened with VLC, the music starts right away but the VLC GUI is unresponsive for about 10 seconds ("spinning beachball" for 5). This is with a playlist of 200 items. Is there any way to get rid of or speed up this delay?