How To Use ToDDS (developed by galvanash)

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byron
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How To Use ToDDS (developed by galvanash)

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DOWNLOAD ToDDS

Hello all, and to anyone that is interested in making xbmc4xbox run smoother, faster, and more efficiently while in library views (or just in general IMHO)...you should download this and follow this example:

PART 1

1) Download ToDDS

2) Scan your content into your xbmc4xbox library (skip this if you've already got a library set up with content)

3) Open ToDDs and select run (after content is finished scanning)

4) Type in the IP address for your xbox (the rest of the boxes should remain the same unless you have changed username or pass)

5) Select Go! This may take some time depending on how many .tbns you have in your UserData folder, but worth the wait.
ToDDS1.JPG
ToDDS1.JPG (39.45 KiB) Viewed 34776 times

PART 2

Adding the advancedsettings.xml:

This might cause a little confusion for some people, don't worry it's not hard to do, but it is necessary for this to work properly (if you already have this file, all you need to do is place code into the already existing file). For the sake of this tutorial, I"m going to assume that you have no advanced settings file yet, and explain where to place the file that I've already created (included in the zip) so that the files that ToDDS is compressing actually show up on the device you use to view xbmc4xbox.

1) Open up your ftp client

2) Transfer the included advancedsettings.xml into E/apps/xbmc/userdata

That's it your done!

**NOTE**

For those of you that already have the advancedsettings.xml, you will need to place this code somewhere in there:

Code: Select all

       <useddsfanart>true</useddsfanart>
          
       <thumbsize>256</thumbsize>

       <fanartheight>512</fanartheight>


A couple of other things worth mentioning...The size of thumbnails and fanart can be changed to what ever you want, but if you decide to change them make sure the numbers match on the .xml too (I suggest using the Defaults at first just to get a gauge on the quality before you start messing with the resolutions). Default is 256 for thumbs, and 512 for fanart. The one drawback to using ToDDS is that you might notice some loss of quality in the images (Defaults are actually pretty decent)...but it's kind of hard to argue with this:


BEFORE
BeforeToDDS.jpg

AFTER
AfterToDDS.jpg

A gain of almost 7MB of RAM in this media view...that kinda speaks for itself right there (I tried to choose one of the most taxing views from my skin to illustrate this point). Use it or don't use it...it's up to you, but it should make whatever skin you're using a little snappier in the media views especially (you can always delete the advancedsettings.xml and go back to normal with no damage done). Just make sure that you run ToDDS after you already have your content scanned into your library, as this tool compresses already existing images in your user data folder. If you add more content, you can just rescan at any point ----

ENJOY ;)
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