Glo Glo help please!

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by jackastor

So if the covers are generated on the fly, are they saved for permanent use later if not why not.

Yes and no. For books in the main memory, the images are generated as needed and saved for later. For books on the SD card, the images are generated each time. The reason for this is so the images aren't taking space in the main memory. I'm hoping that a future change will store them on the SD card.

And why should the shelves take longer to show then the book list, seems to me it should be just as fast once the actual shelf is created and books compiled to it.

Opening a shelf is about the same speed as opening the main library list. Opening the shelf list, counts how many books are on each shelf. I can see a reason for a little extra time, but I think there is some inefficient code it there.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by jackastor

I think there is a very different way the Kobo Devices handle a reset and a power off and then on. The power off I think just leaves things in the Static memory of the device and the Reset would flush the same cache memory. Which would be why the result is cleaner then a power cycle.

No, the power-off is different. It is the equivalent of doing a shutdown from computer OS. It writes everything out that it needs to, closes open files and displays an off banner. On power-on, it rereads the database and other files.

The pin-hole reset is the same as turning the computer off at the wall and then on again. Files are reopened like the power-on, but there is a risk that something might not have been saved.

[Rizla]

When you copied your books over to the PC, did you remove them from the SD-card? Sorry if that sounds stupid. It's just what you are seeing is often caused by a device simply having too many books. If you haven't already, I suggest you remove all books, except maybe one, and see how that runs.

The other things is, with all those books, you would probably have something on there that 'bothered' the ereader. Ereaders are strange things. If you have a book they don't like, they can make the device behave strangely and lag. This can happen even if you haven't opened the book. Epubs are particularly good at this. Normally deleting the book gets rid of the problem. However, sometimes you have to reformat the device to remove the headache. I don't know how it works on a glo, but I assume you can do a soft reformat (from the menu) or hard reformat (by holding various buttons at restart) of the device.

Basically clear everything off and reformat the device. If that doesn't do it, then it would probably be a hardware fault.

[timewyrm]

I don't understand, (although I think you're right about there being too many books), why is it only affecting the "shelves" view ?

[filmo]

How many shelves do you have?

With large number of books, shelves and books on shelves loaded onto your reader the reader will be slower to display books in your library and on shelves. Kobo wifi had a hard number above which it would stop showing cover pictures. Current firmware on Kobo Touch and Glow is much better but still there are limits that will slow listing of books. All e-readers have this problem. They are designed to use little power to conserve battery life. My Sony PRS T-1 will choke on 2000 books in library trying to list books and show covers, but I can turn off showing covers of books in library then it will easily handle large libraries. I think it is amazing my Kobo Touch can handle more than 2000 books in library with just little slowing of listing books. I still wish I could turn off KT showing covers. My T1 also has hard limit for number of shelves but can't remember the number.

[timewyrm]

25 shelves possibly.

What's ridiculous is that Kobo themselves on the Glo homepage mention 30,000 books on a 32GB card. I'm only trying to hold around 1600 books (if that), which 98% epubs (and 1% txt files, and the last 1% pdf (which I'm in the process of converting to epubs anyway)), and the Glo struggles. I'm not trying to push the Glo anywhere near the 30,00 books that they have stated. Also, there's no small print (or otherwise) that I can see, that mentions anything about the device struggling with x amount of books.

I've tried:

• 25 shelves with around 50 books on each shelf - doesn't make a difference
  
  5 shelves with around 300 books on each shelf - still no difference

I had at one point around 2000 books on the Glo, and "books" still loaded in 6 seconds, but "shelves" always struggles.

There are only two things left for me to try:

1. To convert all my pdfs to epubs, and see if that makes any difference. If not then:

2. Put 100 books on at a time, and monitor when the Glo "shelves" starts to struggle.


I don't think that it's unreasonable of me to expect my Glo to run smoothly with only 1600 books on it, especially when Kobo keep mentioning 30,000...

[TechniSol]

I think you're coming back to issues like how storing books on external SDHC cause the reader to have to regenerate covers each time. You may also be having problems with bad epubs, or being limited by SDHC performance that may not be what it seems according to the published specs. A number of sources point to how class 2 SDHC cards may outperform class 10 devices by a factor of 50-100 times for short random writes. Think cover generation.

There may also just be firmware issues that will get resolved later. Have you transferred all the books from your SDHC onto the pc hard drive? If so, why not try reformatting the SDHC to clean it up, setting calibre's plug-in for Kobo to copy covers to the SDHC in black and white to prevent the need to generate them, and then copying a small number of titles/shelves over at a time and see if you can find a point at which it slows down, or better yet, first try only moving content to the internal memory and see if performance is better without the external card installed.

My guess is you'll have a lot less trouble if you stick to the internal storage until Kobo gets their hats on straight and does permanent cover generation and the like for the external SDHC -though setting up the cover generation in Calibre should help. OTOH, depending on how they hung the external SDHC off the hardware, the external may be intrinsically slower... time will tell. Though there are posters that have said they have 3000 files on their readers, whether on internal or external SDHC I can't say.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by TechniSol

I think you're coming back to issues like how storing books on external SDHC cause the reader to have to regenerate covers each time. You may also be having problems with bad epubs, or being limited by SDHC performance that may not be what it seems according to the published specs. A number of sources point to how class 2 SDHC cards may outperform class 10 devices by a factor of 50-100 times for short random writes. Think cover generation.

The performance timewyrm seems to be talking about is getting to the shelf list. That shouldn't be looking at the books at all and only reading the database. How long that takes to display seems to depend on the number of shelves and the number of books on them.
[quote]
There may also just be firmware issues that will get resolved later. Have you transferred all the books from your SDHC onto the pc hard drive? If so, why not try reformatting the SDHC to clean it up, setting calibre's plug-in for Kobo to copy covers to the SDHC in black and white to prevent the need to generate them, and then copying a small number of titles/shelves over at a time and see if you can find a point at which it slows down, or better yet, first try only moving content to the internal memory and see if performance is better without the external card installed.
/QUOTE]

The calibre driver doesn't copy covers to the device if the books are on the SD card. The recent firmware doesn't store the cover images or read them.

[TechniSol]

The performance timewyrm seems to be talking about is getting to the shelf list. That shouldn't be looking at the books at all and only reading the database. How long that takes to display seems to depend on the number of shelves and the number of books on them.

Unless some bright young programmer maybe decided to generate the thumbnails for each shelf before displaying the list of shelves? I bet that'd slow things up a bit... Perhaps it's just an issue with that many files in several shelves being checked or verified?

The calibre driver doesn't copy covers to the device if the books are on the SD card. The recent firmware doesn't store the cover images or read them.

Are you sure? I haven't tested, but could have sworn I saw that suggested if you checked the appropriate options in the Kobo driver in Calibre. (Doesn't make it so, of course.) I know the recent firmware doesn't store them, I didn't know it wouldn't use them if they were there... I suppose it wouldn't make much sense to copy them there if the firmware ignores their presence.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by TechniSol

Unless some bright young programmer maybe decided to generate the thumbnails for each shelf before displaying the list of shelves? I bet that'd slow things up a bit... Perhaps it's just an issue with that many files in several shelves being checked or verified?

I hope not. I don't normally use an SD card, but I am sure that when I have and had a book from the SD card on a shelf, the cover was generated after the shelf was displayed.

I don't think it is checking for files as the count of books on the shelf can be off. With my playing with the database, I have managed to get the ShelfContents and the contents tables out of sync. In this case the shelf list shows a count that include books that aren't actually on the device.

Are you sure? I haven't tested, but could have sworn I saw that suggested if you checked the appropriate options in the Kobo driver in Calibre. (Doesn't make it so, of course.) I know the recent firmware doesn't store them, I didn't know it wouldn't use them if they were there... I suppose it wouldn't make much sense to copy them there if the firmware ignores their presence.

I fixed this in calibre 0.9.21 along with the other cover related changes. Before that, the covers were copied for books on the SD card.

[timewyrm]

I've deleted all my pdf files, copied all the books to the Kobo itself, and removed the SD card. The only difference is that Calibre is showing that there are 1111 books on the Glo, whereas the Glo itself is telling me that there are 929 books on it.

I'm going to try reformatting it and then copy the books from Calibre again.

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by timewyrm

25 shelves possibly.

What's ridiculous is that Kobo themselves on the Glo homepage mention 30,000 books on a 32GB card. I'm only trying to hold around 1600 books (if that), which 98% epubs (and 1% txt files, and the last 1% pdf (which I'm in the process of converting to epubs anyway)), and the Glo struggles. I'm not trying to push the Glo anywhere near the 30,00 books that they have stated. Also, there's no small print (or otherwise) that I can see, that mentions anything about the device struggling with x amount of books.

I've tried:

• 25 shelves with around 50 books on each shelf - doesn't make a difference
  
  5 shelves with around 300 books on each shelf - still no difference

I had at one point around 2000 books on the Glo, and "books" still loaded in 6 seconds, but "shelves" always struggles.

There are only two things left for me to try:

1. To convert all my pdfs to epubs, and see if that makes any difference. If not then:

2. Put 100 books on at a time, and monitor when the Glo "shelves" starts to struggle.


I don't think that it's unreasonable of me to expect my Glo to run smoothly with only 1600 books on it, especially when Kobo keep mentioning 30,000...

There is no such thing as too many books. The device can and does handle them well. The routines for shelves are what is at fault. And the initial set up on your device digesting that many books at once can take quite some time. I have never had an issue with speed or access of any books at any time. I have however noticed some lag in shelf access but nothing near what you suggested you had initially and I have over 36 pages of shelves (I page has one shelf) which works out to 246 shelves, some of the shelves having over 435 doctor who books(yeah I know doctor who...... What can I say). and have no more then maybe 1min 15secs of wait time for the shelves to be accessed. So poppy cock to the bs theory of too many books. Bottom line the problem is most logically caused by bad programming on the Kobo developers part. I have no issue with accessing any of the books via the regular way, search, browse from the library etc. The slow wait for my shelves is 1 min 15 secs + or minus a few secs,is the only delay I have. I remember at one point the kobo took a huge length of time for adding the books on initial start up as in when you just bought it and placed your collection on your external card. That makes sense as it is the first time the device has encountered the books and must set them up in the data base for you to access. I don't delete any of the books I buy or add, I like being able to have a good selection of reading. Adding additional books for the most part doesn't take too much time, as your only adding a few at a time or sometimes in my case a couple of dozen.. The only issue at that point is that Kobo developers override your current reading list and put the new books at the top of the list effectively kicking your current read to the bottom of the new books. Not an issue if you only add one or two... but a pain in the butt at times when you add a few dozen. I put my books only on my sd card as if there is an issue and a factory rest has to be performed the main sd card of the device is erased. meaning you have to have access to a computer to transfer your books over not practical if you travel or on a plane where access to your home computer is stifled. The fact that you can pretty much wiz through the library listings and search for a particular book faster then accessing the Shelves does support the theory of bad programming on the Kobo developers part. Again I have 246 shelves to choose from, 1 min 15 secs to bring the shelf list up.

[timewyrm]

Lol, at least 49.5% of my books are Doctor Who too (with 49.5% Star Wars, .075% Star Trek and 0.25% James Bond!)

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by jackastor

The fact that you can pretty much wiz through the library listings and search for a particular book faster then accessing the Shelves does support the theory of bad programming on the Kobo developers part. Again I have 246 shelves to choose from, 1 min 15 secs to bring the shelf list up.

All of what you said pretty much agrees with what I see. Performance is good considering the lack of power in the devices. Opening the shelf list and the initial creation of a shelf, are the only performance issues I see. And they are directly related to how many shelves you have plus how many books are shelved.

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by davidfor

All of what you said pretty much agrees with what I see. Performance is good considering the lack of power in the devices. Opening the shelf list and the initial creation of a shelf, are the only performance issues I see. And they are directly related to how many shelves you have plus how many books are shelved.

That's not true at all I have over 246 shelves and my open time is 1 min 15 secs no where near the 2.5 mins timewyrm has for his small number of shelves. I have on some of those shelves over 200 books. Books are sorted to shelves by author, all books of the same author are grouped together, series are shelved as series but concurrent with the author, books I want to read are shelved which means 2 or more times are the some of the same books shelved depending on different things. My directory structure is sorted by main directory and followed by a sub directory of all authors and followed by book directory of title in the author sub directory. So I strongly disagree with you, as I have over 3000 books now on device and it is running just grand except for the shelves which by your definition should be running slower then timewyrm's 2.5 mins and im at less then half that for 3X the books and 7X the shelves. And I am sure I have one or two questionably structured epubs that could potentially toss a wrench into the works. So therefore the logic would be there is more inconsistency with the coding and handleing of things on kobos part and tie that up with the penchant for kobo to run multiple firmware versions of the supposed same firmware makes one wonder if they really have any clue as to what needs to be done. I just am baffled as to why things are done so lack lustered in first place. Its almost like the Ceo of Kobo is a Monkey, and the programmers are just chimps going through the motions.