This is more of an update to my Fun with RAMDisks post made nearly a year ago.  With the alpha testing for the upcoming Media Browser Firestorm release going in full swing, I thought I would post a small update that makes this useful (for those of you with little RAM also).

Firestorm will include some experimental SQLite support for some cache-able items, like metadata (no image caching yet, however).  What makes this interesting for those of you with limited memory, is that the database for even my collection (2500+ movies and around 10000 TV episodes) is only about 40MB.  This means you can create a RAMDisk of 50-100MB and still have room to grow.

DataRAM has a new RAMDisk beta release available for Vista and Windows 7 (thanks Jason) here.  It is good for both x86 and x64 systems.  I set mine up to autoload and autosave my disk image on startup/shutdown and also to autosave every 5 minutes.  I chose to create an unformatted disk and then initialized it in the Disk Management Console and formatted it NTFS (DataRAM only gives FAT16/32 options).

I then cut and pasted the cache.db file located in C:\Programdata\MediaBrowser\Cache to my new RAMDrive (R:\, in my case).  This file is created after you enable <EnableExperimentaSqliteSupport> to True in the new Firestorm MediaBrowserXml.config file and then allow Media Browser to run and populate the database with the cached info (can take a while, but it is still very fast).  You will also notice a cache.db-journal file is created.  Don’t bother trying to symlink this file as it will not work.  It is a volatile journal file that SQLite uses and it will just delete and recreate itself over-and-over, removing any symlink attempt.

Next, you want to create your symlink by running the mklink command from the command-line.  I would recommend entering the command interface as Administrator to avoid any ‘gotchas’.  Once open, just run the following commands, assuming your RAMDrive is R:\ and you have already created and moved your cache databases to that drive.

mklink c:\programdata\mediabrowser\cache\cache.db r:\cache.db

That’s it and it should look like this…

Now it’s time to fire up Media Browser and enjoy some lightning fast SQLite/RAMDisk caching!

I do have to admit, however, that I can tell very little performance increase doing this on my system.  The SQLite caching by itself is tremendously faster than the hash files in the directory method, so your mileage may vary.

In order to make things even easier for you, I’ve decided to rework the plugin index once again.  I am now using a table format that allows auto-sorting by simply clicking on each column header.  I have just updated the main plugin table with the new one and the remaining tables are being worked on now.  I hope to have most of it finished today.

I have also removed the tiny thumbnail images in place of a text link for viewing screenshots.  This helps tremendously in load times.  It also keeps the table from dynamically resizing during loading.  You’ll also notice a few other changes here and there, but primarily my reason for changing was so that you can easily find the latest plugins added by sorting with the “Added” column.  Right now, everything will start with a base date of 10/1/09, but as we move along you’ll find this to be quite useful.

Hope the new layout is beneficial to you!  Check it out!

Update:

I just noticed that yesterday happened to be the site’s busiest day since its inception.  Thanks for visiting!

It’s not finished yet, but I do have a little more there than what was on the old plugin index page. I didn’t see any reason to hold it back when I thought it could really help you out now. I will be adding the additional sections throughout the next week or two, so continue to check back to see what’s been added.  The location is the same…the content is new!

I have also added a contact form at the bottom of the index so that you can submit your own plugins and/or corrections to the list.  Let me know what you think or how I can improve it!

Considering the number of screensaver/window minimization issues that the cumulative updates for VMC have given me for the past year (including SP2), I refuse to install this on any of my systems. However, I am interested in hearing how it has impacted any of you.

This update (KB967632) came out yesterday for both 32 and 64-bit systems. The issues resolved by this update, according to Microsoft, are:

• Fixes an issue where closed captioning will turn off when the focus changes from Live TV playback
• Fixes an issue where sometimes during Live TV playback, a blank blue bar would be displayed on the screen
• Increases the number of tiles that are supported on the top level of the Media Center start menu
• Fixes a top Watson crash issue
• Fixes a Windows Media Center TV Guide issue that is related to the digital TV switchover

Whatever. I never noticed these things, so I don’t want to break my Media Center to fix something that doesn’t exist for me.

If you’ve installed this update, I’d appreciate your feedback, so comment back! Positive and negative appreciated!

Yaggs, the author of the SecondRun.tv plugin, has added another addition to the Media Center pluing library – HuluDesktopWMC.

I have not tried it out yet, but basically this is a small plugin that places the Hulu Desktop interface within Media Center.  Since Hulu Desktop works with a remote, it apparently provides a somewhat seemless interaction between the two.

Anyway, reports say it works in both VMC and 7MC, so that’s some good news.  It also requires Hulu Desktop to be installed and there is a coupe of small configurations you have to initiate in order for it to work properly.  You can more info at the TGB thread on it or the official SecondRun.tv site.  Download also available at the latter link.