Major connection issues with mezzmo

[HomerRamone]

Ive started getting major issues getting my client to connect with mezzmo.
I have several playlists defined. One for TVs, one for Movies, one for Music etc.
There are playlists within this.
So the TV one for example as a "stuff we are watching currently", "homers TV", "all TV" etc
The movie one has "All movies grouped by letter", "All movies ungrouped", and so on.
I just added a new playlist that has a criteria something like "keyword contains" and sorted by keyword.

This is in the Movies playlist.
Now whenever I try to open the movies playlist the client shows the busy thing for a while then says "mezzmo sever failed to respond".
Once this has happened I cant view any playlists.
If I go back to the addin selection page in kodi the mezzmo server no longer shows up.
If I try to stop the server I get an error that it could not be stopped
"The mezzmo media service could not be stopped"
"The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion"
Error code 1053

This does appear to stop the server - but obviously this isnt really solving the problem.

[jbinkley60]

Ive started getting major issues getting my client to connect with mezzmo.
I have several playlists defined. One for TVs, one for Movies, one for Music etc.
There are playlists within this.
So the TV one for example as a "stuff we are watching currently", "homers TV", "all TV" etc
The movie one has "All movies grouped by letter", "All movies ungrouped", and so on.
I just added a new playlist that has a criteria something like "keyword contains" and sorted by keyword.

This is in the Movies playlist.
Now whenever I try to open the movies playlist the client shows the busy thing for a while then says "mezzmo sever failed to respond".
Once this has happened I cant view any playlists.
If I go back to the addin selection page in kodi the mezzmo server no longer shows up.
If I try to stop the server I get an error that it could not be stopped
"The mezzmo media service could not be stopped"
"The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion"
Error code 1053

This does appear to stop the server - but obviously this isnt really solving the problem.

It is likely the playlist is not leveraging database indexes and doing table scans which causes it to take a long time to respond. I've had this happen and had to modify my playlist to leverage the database indexes. What is the Mezzmo server timeout value set to in the Mezzmo Kodi addon ? If it isn't set to 60 seconds try setting it to that and then see if you eventually get the playlists to appear. I have found on slow playlist that once they load the first time they are cached and often come back faster the second time. Lastly, what type of drive (i.e. hard disk or SSD) is your Mezzmo database running on ?



Thanks,

Jeff

[HomerRamone]

Thanks for the suggestions. I've not changed the timeout setting - but looks like is 60
Database is on an SSD (Learned that lesson a long time ago )

[HomerRamone]

Looks like 60 is the max it can be set to also

[jbinkley60]

Looks like 60 is the max it can be set to also

Did this just start without you adding or making changes to any smart or active playlists ? If so it sounds like a potential database issue or possibly something going on with your SSD. If you haven't made any changes you could try backing up your database and running maintenance. 60 seconds is the maximum because folks aren't going to sit around longer than that to wait for a response. Can you tell me if anything preceeded the issue beginning ?


Thanks,

Jeff

[HomerRamone]

This all started when I added a new playlist.
That said I had a similar issue around Christmas last year when I created a Christmas playlist - never got to the bottom of it - just removed the playlist
Ive certainly done maintenance and a chkdsk on the drive - but will run them again anyway but not hopeful this will help

[jbinkley60]

This all started when I added a new playlist.
That said I had a similar issue around Christmas last year when I created a Christmas playlist - never got to the bottom of it - just removed the playlist
Ive certainly done maintenance and a chkdsk on the drive - but will run them again anyway but not hopeful this will help

Ok. It is likely due to the nature of the playlist which is causing a table scan vs. using indexes. You said your playlist is a keyword contains which is going to translate to an SQL Like query which is generally going to be a table scan. If you don't have multiple keywords in your files then you can change to an IS vs. Contains and that will likely use an index and be much quicker. I looked at the Mezzmo DB indexes and that appears to be the case. I did some SQL testing and an is (SQL equals) uses an index but a like query uses a table scan

I don't know of a way to show the underlying to SQL code for a playlist to then show a query plan to see how it runs. I don't know if the diagnostic logging shows the SQL query command. Maybe Peter can weigh in here.


Thanks,

Jeff

[HomerRamone]

Unfortunately the keyword isnt a single word - its got a numerical suffix. Im using it as the sort type for the playlist. (I realise theres already a sort title field but I already use that to keep the name correct in a list of all movies -if you see what I mean)

[jbinkley60]

Unfortunately the keyword isnt a single word - its got a numerical suffix. Im using it as the sort type for the playlist. (I realise theres already a sort title field but I already use that to keep the name correct in a list of all movies -if you see what I mean)

You might try changing it to IS just to see if it resolves the issue with taking a long time to respond and align to my table scan theory. If so then maybe we can think of another way to accomplish this or if I can get to the underlying SQL call we can find a way to optimize it better. I'll see if Peter has any answers on the playlist to SQL capture. I could increase the timer on the Kodi addon but are you really going to wait longer than a minute to get a playlist populated ?


Thanks,

Jeff

[Peter]

A condition like keyword contains could be slow because the query has to check every keyword for a partial match. Try reducing the playlist smart rules to see if this speeds up the response. You can also try setting supportsunplayedcount="0" in the name tag of the device profile to see if this helps. See the ConceivaMezzmoAndroid.prf profile for an example of this attribute.