The Return of the Green Button

[softworkz 3349]

20 hours ago, DavidinCT said:

I was a Microsoft MVP on Windows Media Center for 3 years, I was on their beta program, a mulit time bug bash winner.  I'm even certified in, So, I know Media center very well

Welcome! I've been 7 years MVP (but for Win API and C++). Do you like to join the testing?

[DavidinCT 3]

I don't even have Emby installed right now but, sure add me, I have a dual boot system, I will prep a partition for testing. 

Hope I have some time to work on it...

[softworkz 3349]

21 minutes ago, DavidinCT said:

I will prep a partition for testing. 

No need for that. There's a portable version (no installation, just unzip).

22 minutes ago, DavidinCT said:

Hope I have some time to work on it...

Will be interested what you think about it. I might also have some questions when you were so closely involved..  

[DavidinCT 3]

25 minutes ago, softworkz said:

No need for that. There's a portable version (no installation, just unzip).

Will be interested what you think about it. I might also have some questions when you were so closely involved..  

 

Sure, DM me, or ping me over at thegreenbutton.tv under the same name...

[pünktchen 1261]

On 1/31/2023 at 2:42 AM, softworkz said:

The functional changes are made for general integration into Emby clients. It depends on whatever @Luke will decide to pick up. What remains will be specific to the theme.

Very disappointing that the new server beta doesn't include your guide representation fixes. 

[softworkz 3349]

1 hour ago, pünktchen said:

On 1/31/2023 at 2:42 AM, softworkz said:

The functional changes are made for general integration into Emby clients. It depends on whatever @Luke will decide to pick up. What remains will be specific to the theme.

Very disappointing that the new server beta doesn't include your guide representation fixes. 

My knowledge on this subject is precisely identical to yours...

For the side of the WMC theme though, I can say that it has proven to work well in the (non-public) testing so far.
There's a new mouse wheel behavior where the wheel input doesn't scroll the area directly but moves the focused cell instead, so scrolling is driven indirectly by the focus-movement (like WMC). Also, the guide is auto-progressing by time, there's no current-time indicator line, and the left edge is the current time instead (like WMC). Further,  there's "hoverfocus" behavior which means that cells get focused when hovering with the mouse (like WMC). 

[hayrund 14]

On 3/6/2023 at 5:10 PM, softworkz said:

 CALL FOR TESTERS 

I have an first version ready for testing now.

Initial testing will be done in a closed group. If you want to take part, drop a short message here!

 

If it's not too late, I'd love to join the test!

[softworkz 3349]

Things are moving and we made some great progress - here's one of the bits:

WMC Video OSD

[Kandidat1999 22]

18 minutes ago, softworkz said:

Things are moving and we made some great progress - here's one of the bits:

WMC Video OSD

 

Still no Time, when the movie will end on the main movie page.

[softworkz 3349]

26 minutes ago, Kandidat1999 said:

Still no Time, when the movie will end on the main movie page.

Why "still"?

[rbjtech 4333]

7 hours ago, softworkz said:

Things are moving and we made some great progress - here's one of the bits:

WMC Video OSD

 

Love it ! - I so missed the screen candy of WMC.     When emby eventually force me from AndroidTV  - it looks like this and possibly ET are going to be the only options for my mainstream Theatre player.   Hopefully this can do Direct File play as well .. 

Amazing work @softworkz

[markyp 21]

is it too late to join the testing?

[softworkz 3349]

44 minutes ago, rbjtech said:

it looks like this and possibly ET are going to be the only options for my mainstream Theatre player.   Hopefully this can do Direct File play as well .. 

This is ET and this is the Android (non-tv) app and this is the web app etc..  

Even though the look and feel is so completely different, it is all driven by the Emby client app code. Adaptions are made at the presentation layer only - but here with strong focus on details, especially scrolling, keyboard, mouse and remote-control behavior. Also, rich UI presentation is prioritized over compatibility with mid- to low-range devices. When a device is too weak to handle it, then it won't be able to use it. This needs to be kept in mind when comparing with the regular Emby themes, which are made to run on every little box. 

I'm glad to see that it will sell as something brand-new.    

The only thing that's really built from scratch is the

 

New on-screen keyboard

 

[softworkz 3349]

Triple-Tap (T9) Input 

 

[softworkz 3349]

On-Screen Keyboard - Diacritics Input

The alpha keyboard supports > 200 different keyboard layouts/languages (not all are enabled currently).

For each language, it provides precise and accurate behavior:

Modifier Keys

• It replicates the behavior of modifier keys (CapsLock, Shift, Alt Gr, CTRL)
• Only shows/allows those combinations of modifier keys which are valid, e.g.:
  • When a modifier key does not produce different characters, it is not shown
  • When you press a certain modifier key, only those remain visible which are a valid combination (which has key mappings)
  • When one or more modifiers are active, only those keys remain visible which have a specific mapping for this modifier combination
    (allows faster navigation and finding key quickly)
  • Modifier keys are synchronized with a physical keyboard
  • Typing via physical keyboard is still possible when the OSK is active

Transforms

Transforms - sometimes also called 'composition' - is when you create certain characters by a sequence of keys.

Examples:

• ^ + a => â
• ´ + e => é
• other languages have their own transforms, many of them I've never seen before...

To make this kind of input easy, when you have pressed one of those keys starting a transform (also called 'dead keys') the OSK hides all keys which would not be a valid completion of the transform, and on those keys which can complete the transform, it shows the resulting char of the completion.

It also works in cases, where the completion chars are differing depending on the active modifier key (or key combination).

 

Demo

 

[softworkz 3349]

On-Screen Keyboard - Numeric Input

There's a special mode for editing number input fields

 

[softworkz 3349]

On-Screen Keyboard - Password Input

In password editing mode, there's no voice input and no MRU handling. The focused button is a "reveal" button which allows to show passwords in clear text or masked (like in the field above).

 

[softworkz 3349]

On-Screen Keyboard - MRU Panel

We have recently disabled the HTML engines' feature to display a popup with recent text inputs when entering text fields, because it interrupts navigation: the popup gains focus and you can't continue navigating within the Emby page.

As a replacement, the new OSK provides an MRU (most recently used) panel where you can choose one of the most recent 8 input terms:

 

 

The terms are stored specific to the input situation, so when you are in a field to enter the server's host name, you won't see your inputs from search and vice-versa.

 

Privacy Concerns

There are always privacy issues with such kinds of features, so we have taken measures and added options to give you full control over the behavior:

• Of course, the MRU feature is disabled for password fields
• The MRU terms are stored per Emby user who is logged in. You won't see the inputs from other users on the same machine
• The MRU terms are stored at the client side only and not propagated to the server
• It is possible to clear MRU terms for the current input
• It is possible to clear all MRU terms for the current user
• The MRU feature can be totally disabled 

 

Clearing MRU for the Current Input

This can be done with the focused button below

 

Clearing all MRU Terms

This can be done from the settings panel with the focused button below.
It will clear all OSK data (MRU terms, language selections, settings)

 

Disable Saving of MRU Terms

There's an option in the settings panel to disable the feature altogether:

[rbjtech 4333]

So nice to see privacy being taken seriously  - per client and per user is perfect imo 

[softworkz 3349]

On-Screen Keyboard - Voice Input

Media titles are quite often in English language. For non-native English people it's often pointless to use voice input, especially when you have titles of different languages: 
When the selected speech recognition language doesn't match the title's language, you're often having a hard time to have the SR recognize what you're trying to dictate.
The new OSK provides an easy way to switch between languages and it remembers your recent 4 selections, so you don't need to go through the full list each time you need to switch.

Searching in Emby is not as forgiving like a Google search which tries to eliminate spelling differences and merge/include results for terms with identical or similar meanings, and so your voice input needs to result in the exact writing of under which an item is stored in Emby.

But how should the speech recognition engine know whether you mean:

• 6 Million ways
  or
• Six Million ways

Well, the answer is: It can't. It can only guess and return the most likely result. But it's possible to have it return multiple possible results and that's what the new OSK is doing: In case of ambiguity, it shows up to 4 alternate recognition results from which you can choose.

This video demonstrates the feature and also shows what a difference it can make whether you have the right language set for voice input or not:

 

[softworkz 3349]

Voice Input Testing

This is what happens when you fail to realize that taking a break is long overdue...

 

[softworkz 3349]

About Seeking Precision

Have you ever - like me, frequently - wanted to seek to a very specific position in video or audio and found out that you can't? Maybe even repeatedly, to replay a specific sequence again and again? Then this might be for you.

The current situation

1. Direct Click on the seek bar

When you move the mouse (without clicking) until a certain time position is shown, you will on the seek bar, expecting to get to that point in time of the video/audio. But that's not what  is happening:

 

In the moment when the mouse goes down, you don't get to the point in time, but really far away from it:

1. 31:46 => 31:26 - 20s off
2. 10:01 => 0:21 - 40s off
3. 18:10 => 17:43 - 27s off

 

2. Dragging the "Knob" Pt. 1

You don't always know the time where you want to go to, but you just want to move a tiny bit back or forward. In this case, you would rather drag the "know" and move it very slightly into the desired direction:

 

What happens is that after mouse-down, when you make the first movement with the mouse, the knob jumps as it gets centered to the mouse pointer.

1. 22s off
2. 31s off

Those values might even be longer time spans than you actually wanted to move the knob yourself.
After that jump has happened, you often don't even know anymore at which position it was before doing so. 
You cannot even adapt to the situation by trying to position the pointer in the center of the knob, because that differs depending on the position: In the left area the knob will be centered at its right edge and at the right seekbar side to the left edge (and center in the middle).

 

3. Dragging the "Knob" Pt. 2

The only thing that works somewhat - and only when you know the exact time you want to go to - is to drag the knob and lift the mouse button when the desired time position is shown. Then, the video will get to the position that was shown, but you'll hardly even realize that it has worked right, because once another thing weird thing is happening here:

The time in the slider bubble is jumping again after mouse-up - which makes you think that it didn't work correctly as well.

 

Not just Emby 

While the way it manifests is quite extreme with Emby, similar issues exist in other players (but just one, not all three):

• VLC has a very small knob - it's jumping as well, but a lot less
• Windows Media Player (the older one) has similar problems.
• The new Media Player does it right and precise, though
• WMC does it rather ok, but it has a similar centering problem when trying to drag the playhead:

 

 

When you click on the playhead, it centers it horizontally to the mouse pointer - which isn't much helpful either.

 

This can't be true! 

...is what I thought after looking at this...and before I started to create a better seek bar.

This is the initial result (the generic, non-WMC theme related part):

 

I'll cover the WMC-Theme side in another article.

[softworkz 3349]

A note about the last video in the previous post: Of course the video doesn't depict the eventual appearance. The big transparent circle and the red and blue lines were just meant to illustrate the new precision.

WMC Theme Seeking

The WMC theme uses improvements to seeking precision as explained above, but there are a number of 

Differences

• There's the "Play Head" which is always shown as part of the seek slider
• The current time position is always shown inside the play head, not at the left edge:

 

 

• In case of TV playback, the left edge of the slider is showing the start time of the current program, the right edge is showing the end time of the program and the play head is showing the wall-clock time of the current playback position:

 

 

• There's nothing shown when just hovering over the seek slider with the mouse
• It is still possible to click on arbitrary locations of the seek slider to seek to a certain position:
  (with precise timing and slider positioning)

 

• It's also possible to grab and drag the slider position marker 
• It's still precise and doesn't jump when you grab the position marker off-center:

 

 

Play Head Dragging

 

It is also possible to drag the whole play head instead of the small dot. The difference in range is compensated automatically (which you can see from the movement of the small notch at the bottom of the play head)

 

 

Keyboard and Remote Control Operation 

The last video shows keyboard operation: The play head expands automatically to show thumbnails when it's focused, and the position can be moved via keyboard input (LEFT/RIGHT).
When leaving, the play head is collapsed back to its regular state:

 

Edited May 9, 2023 by softworkz

[rbjtech 4333]

Very nice.  

So rather than blindly 'scrobbing' to find the chapter you want (albeit easier to do than before..) - the AndroidTV client you can just press 'up' and get to the chapter markers, importantly listed on the play line as well so you visually know where they are vs the overall timeline.  Having this in combination with this accurate seeking would be amazing...

 

Edited May 9, 2023 by rbjtech

[softworkz 3349]

4 hours ago, rbjtech said:

So rather than blindly 'scrobbing' to find the chapter you want (albeit easier to do than before..) - the AndroidTV client you can just press 'up' and get to the chapter markers,

In the WMC theme, you press "down" and then 2 or 3 times "right" to get to the chapter list. Though, this is covering the timeline rather than showing alongside.
I don't see this to be replicable in the exact same way...

...but: there exists an idea that I'd call "Seekbar Annotations". This would be about displaying various types of markers on the seek bar: chapters, intro end, end credits start, etc.

This could be used in combination with another brand new feature (from today)...

Edited May 9, 2023 by softworkz