Technical USB drives

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USB drives

• When drives are read: nothing is read at launch. Drives are read when the Local tab (or Settings › Content › USB drive) opens, or when a title page asks for its sources with a drive plugged in (then only the drive's saved index, not its files: a few seconds at most). From then on plugging one in or out updates it. A title's sources always show the drive's matches as they are now, even when its addons' answers are kept from a moment ago.
• Matching: your installed search addons are asked once per title (the first two search catalogs of that type, in your order), and only a close match is taken (the same name, and year when the file has one). A camera's file (IMG_0042.MOV, VID_…, GOPR…) isn't asked about. A show's files are asked about once, not per file.
• Plain files go in Continue Watching by their place on the drive and their size (so the same path on two drives isn't taken for one file; found again on whichever drive has that file). Your own matches are kept per file the same way.
• The index lists up to 5,000 folders / 20,000 files, 12 levels deep. Stopped while listing, nothing new is kept; while matching, the listing and the matches so far stay. Clear the USB index while one runs stops it too. Matching runs 300 titles at a time, two at once, waiting while StremioK is in the background.
• Big files on the 2017 TV: its player can't read past 2 GB of a file played straight from the drive (it plays from the start, but every jump stalls), so a file over 2 GB plays through StremioK's service (a link on the TV itself) instead. Smaller files, and files on newer TVs, play from the drive.
• Folder listings: where the TV's own listing can't read something in a folder (the 2017 TV can't read a file over 2 GB that StremioK's service wrote), the folder is listed by the service. Tizen 3's listing fails a whole folder when it can't read one entry's details (a name it can't convert…): such an entry is still listed (its details worked out from its name), and a folder the TV can't list at all is listed through the service. Tizen 3's file API also refuses any path with an apostrophe (Ender's Game.mkv), another case the service covers.
• What the service reads: USB drives only (/opt/media/…): folder listings, subtitle files and a video's first and last 64 KB for its hash, never a path elsewhere (links pointing off the drive are refused).
• File links are raw (file:///opt/media/USBDriveA1/Share/El Pájaro Loco.mkv), as the TV's own are: its player refuses %-escaped ones (PLAYER_ERROR_INVALID_URI, checked on the 2017 TV with accents, apostrophes, + and brackets).
• Downloads: StremioK's service downloads into a ….part file renamed when it's complete; a dropped connection is picked up where it stopped (when the server allows it, as debrid servers do), up to 5 times. A download is matched to the title it was downloaded for (nothing guessed from its name, no indexing again). Downloads use their own up-to-date list of trusted certificates (the 2017 TV's own is too old for many servers).