I am using a shared G Drive for OpenLP ver 2.4.6
o: on all our PC's (so we can edit at home but have replicated presentation at church automatically) contains all OpenLP subfolders including the currently edited set.
It appears that all media in a set is literally added in full to the set file eg. APAC-2020-09-20-09-30.osz. in my current set is 116Mb
This is somewhat of a disasterous approach because if a set includes a 900Mb video, each time a minor alteration is made to just a text element in a set the sync software maintaining the integrity of the synched drive exports a nearly 1Gb file to the shared cloud drive.
Worse still is that in order to go live with a large media file OpenLP extracts the Media from APAC-2020-09-20-09-30.osz to O:\OpenLP\servicemanager forcing the rsync service to sync O:\OpenLP\servicemanager to the cloud chewing up PC resources and bandwith on our Internet service. If I then start to edit and test a new set at home the O:\OpenLP\servicemanager would be emptied out and a new media file imported into the set file and then extracted to O:\OpenLP\servicemanager so a small 2 character edit in a set would translate into a resync of files multiple megabytes in size. I noticed a comment by someone else that slow internet speeds are a thing of the past but let me reassure you that Internet speeds < 5Mbs in rural Australia are still very common even on fibre to the node connections.
It would be better if the set file merely contained a pointer to large media files (all media including images) rather that housing the entire media file within the set.
We used to use OpenSong and that is what it does. The set file was merely a few Kb in size with pointers to everything in its library.
We would sync the library of images and videos only when new images or videos themselves were added, deleted or altered but not everytime a set was updated. Sets would draw images from the library only when needed at runtime.
Media files themselves are rarely edited on an adhoc basis.
We would put video media into V: which was synched once and OpenSong would simply open V:newvideo.mpg at the appointed time. As a matter of fact as VLC can play a URL it was often simply matter of including the URL for online media elsewhere into the OpenSong set.
Using this approach it is even possible to have in OpenSong a dummy media file in V: at home unsynched and the actual media file in V: at church so edit and test of a set could be done at home without vast quantities of data continually being rsynched over the internet.
I hope this scenario will convince you that using pointers is far more efficient over the long term and especiall while preparing and testing a set than embedding the media.
I really want to use OpenLP because of its HTML configurability for stage monitors telepromptors etc. but if you can't give me a way out of this embedded media approach I am afraid we may have to look at something else.
Sorry about the longwinded post but I am new to OpenLP and I am having some difficulty explaining the point.
September 21
