Theme: blue neon night

[Gilgamesh_48 948]

One thing seems to have popped up about the new way "play" is handled.

If you press play on a partially played show it always restarts from the beginning. That is a play where a choice could be naturally presented as an extra click is kind of expected or you could do as it seems most the regular Emby apps and automatically restart from a few seconds before where the playback stopped.

 

I actually prefer the latter option as I almost never want to restart something from the beginning BUT others may not fee the same.

 

I have not had the time to look through all the threads to see if there has been any discussion about how to restart but I do have to say the I really like the automatic restart for the previous stopping point or, if a second press is needed, you could do what the Plex Roku developer did and that is make, in that dialog, play behave the same as OK so a "Start from where I left off" option becomes play play (or OK) while a "start from the beginning" would be something like play down play (or OK)

 

I hope my suggestions are not intruding too much in your development process but I used to program (started with paper tape and punch cards) and now I want my TV watching to as close to a pure "Garfield" mode as possible.

 

Thanks.

Edited September 11, 2017 by Gilgamesh_48

[speechles 1929]

@@Gilgamesh_48 I like your suggestions.

 

I have this working. Using "NO with Resume" will turn off continuous play and allow resuming. Using "NO" will turn off continuous play and resuming. I didnt want to make people press extra buttons, hence the single preference.

 

 

I have personally never used plex. Honestly, not anything of theirs. So I really have no idea how theirs works. They require extra button presses for sure based on your work flow of their app. My thought was eliminate all that and make it straight forward what is going to happen. We arent shady/secretive/uncooperative as plex on the emby side of the fence. On this side, you can have it your way. Hence emby, your media, your way.

 

I will include this in the next release. If no one mentions any bugs it should be in the next day or so.

Edited September 11, 2017 by speechles

[Flamebird 7]

New Version: v4.21

* add preference to disable continuous play

* add logic to support disabled continuous play

* fix type mismatch crash bug

 

Finally had some time to spend digging through code with a fine tooth comb. As requested by @@Gilgamesh_48 there is now a way to disable continuous play entirely. In options, find the preference labeled "Continous Play" and set it to NO. Now it will not spawn a dialog box and will only play the selected item when pressing play on your remote.

 

I've also corrected the bug which was crashing the app. This was due to me allowing the homescreen to be both poster and thumb and allowing users to change this on the fly. I was mixing string and integer types in one function. OOOPPPSY! DOH! Now these types are always forced into integer and things run smoothly.

 

Any other bugs? Unexpected Behaviors? Random crashing? Please post here about them.

 

Updated all links in first post. Have fun, enjoy, relax.

 

@@techworld @@chattojimnow @@mikeraburn @@Happy2Play @@Flamebird @@Gilgamesh_48 Any issues found?

 

Updated Roku; it downloaded Blue Neon update, rebooted the Roku (cause I don't trust it ) and  went into the app. Any arrow key press is still kicking me out to the home screen.    Oddly, if I hit the "ok" button it goes into the search screen as expected. Picked a random episode of Doctor Who and it's currently direct playing perfectly.

@Happy2Play;this is obviously not a media problem in Blue Neon Nights, a it's crashing from the home screen; not from media play.

 

Okay; I let the episode of Doctor Who play and then brought up an options dialogue and just randomly picked "from BBC" in the options and it went into the sort by BBC shows no problem and I'm now playing Keeping Up Appearances; but it's transcoding.

I hit the "info" button on the dashboard and it says that it's trancoding because "Media bitrate exceeds limit".

 

Here's the info from the Emby screen:

 

VideoCodecMPEG4

Codec tagmp4v

ProfileSimple Profile

Level1

Resolution1280x720

Aspect ratio4:3

AnamorphicNo

InterlacedNo

Framerate25

Bitrate3993 kbps

Pixel formatyuv420p

Ref frames1

AudioLanguageund

CodecAAC

Codec tagmp4a

ProfileLC

Layoutstereo

Channels2 ch

Bitrate256 kbps

Sample rate48000 Hz

DefaultYes

TitleUnd AAC stereo Default

Embedded ImageCodecMJPEG

Level-99

Resolution416x320

Framerate90000

Bit depth8 bit

Pixel formatyuvj420p

Ref frames1

DefaultNo

Containermp4

Edited September 11, 2017 by Flamebird

[Gilgamesh_48 948]

@@Gilgamesh_48 I like your suggestions.

 

I have this working. Using "NO with Resume" will turn off continuous play and allow resuming. Using "NO" will turn off continuous play and resuming. I didnt want to make people press extra buttons, hence the single preference.

 

...

I have personally never used plex. Honestly, not anything of theirs. So I really have no idea how theirs works. They require extra button presses for sure based on your work flow of their app. My thought was eliminate all that and make it straight forward what is going to happen. We arent shady/secretive/uncooperative as plex on the emby side of the fence. On this side, you can have it your way. Hence emby, your media, your way.

 

I will include this in the next release. If no one mentions any bugs it should be in the next day or so.

 

When I first saw your post I though that my old brain had missed and option when I went to disable "Continuous Play" but after checking and rereading your post I "think" I understand that it will be in the nest release. Correct me if I am wrong.

 

I actually prefer it to just resume where I left off. For the rare times I wish to restart from the beginning I can either mark the video unwatched or I can use the rewind button. it is not really that bad to wait the short time even a long video takes to rewind.

 

The only reason I mention Plex is that I have used it for a long time and sometimes I think they did some things right or it is just to give ideas. Under no circumstances do I think it would be a good idea to copy Plex. There are REAL good reasons why I am moving to Emby and one of them is that the apps are becoming less and less user friendly and as the apps move in that direction the company is as well. You should see the travesty they have fostered upon their users in their latest Fire TV app. You can't even press play on a poster and have the video play. They "claim" it is imposed by Google but the Emby Fire (and Shield) app plays correctly so it must not be too imposed.

 

Sorry for the off-topic ramble but my old brain sometimes just gets on a roll and I can't stop it.

[speechles 1929]

When I first saw your post I though that my old brain had missed and option when I went to disable "Continuous Play" but after checking and rereading your post I "think" I understand that it will be in the nest release. Correct me if I am wrong.

 

You can already disable continuous play in the 4.21 version. BUT.. it won't let you resume, that will be in the next version, which because of it crashing on homescreen still for users might be a few more days. I need to find out why its crashing for some users and not others and where that problem lies.

 

 

I actually prefer it to just resume where I left off. For the rare times I wish to restart from the beginning I can either mark the video unwatched or I can use the rewind button. it is not really that bad to wait the short time even a long video takes to rewind.

 

Indeed. That part comes in the next version for video bookmarks. Right now those aren't even looked at since continuous play would work rather wonky if it allowed resume. Think childrens cartoons where the child has several hundred partly watched. As they play through a season or series, it would be rather jarring for them to see things resume. Its for this that I was keeping in mind.

 

For adults, yeah, there needs to be a way to resume single episode with the play button and that exact behavior will happen. If you have continuous play to "yes" and play just the selected episode or have continuous play to "no with resume" it will resume when the play button is pressed if there is an existing bookmark.

 

 

 

The only reason I mention Plex is that I have used it for a long time and sometimes I think they did some things right or it is just to give ideas. Under no circumstances do I think it would be a good idea to copy Plex. There are REAL good reasons why I am moving to Emby and one of them is that the apps are becoming less and less user friendly and as the apps move in that direction the company is as well. You should see the travesty they have fostered upon their users in their latest Fire TV app. You can't even press play on a poster and have the video play. They "claim" it is imposed by Google but the Emby Fire (and Shield) app plays correctly so it must not be too imposed.

 

Sorry for the off-topic ramble but my old brain sometimes just gets on a roll and I can't stop it.

 

 

Plex is trying to "train" people to use their app, rather than have the user "train" the app. So with plex, there isn't very many options, lots of things are assumed as being the way it is, and there isnt much to configure if you dont like how it works. Since the blue neon app is a community supported third party app, there isn't a need to conform to any specific look. Back when emby was young, it existed as a port of the plex app for roku. This is why blue neon looks like the old plex classic sorta. Because blue neon is based on the old open source emby for roku app which is based off the open source plex classic for roku.

 

Blue neon was made to add all the cool ideas/thoughts/suggestions users had to the app, regardless if officially emby did to their own emby app. So it isn't meant as competition, more as a bells/whistles/kitchen-sink approach and try to include everything. The options are ridiculously plentiful along with things no other emby app can do. The "force" options of the play method being one of the main reasons to use this app. Video doesn't play? Try "force transcoding". Still has issues? Try "force direct". Still doesn't work and just falls back to transcoding which also doesn't work. Then try "force transcoding without stream copy". This one is always 100% guaranteed to work.

 

Plex is trying to become a distributor of content. It is clear where their motives lie, in encouraging studios to allow them to host content to share so they can justify raising  the prices yet again of their plexpass memberships. It is by design, encourage users to give, give them free streams, and justify to the studios those users aren't pirate off usenet/torrents/ed2k/email/gdrive/etc. Plex doesn't have interest or any profit to gain from adding your meager feature requests no matter how simple to do. Since emby is smaller, you get immediate attention and your requests are granted. Also, I had free time and all this is just to keep my skills sharpened so you get something for nothing. Rare, right? Getting rarer every day. Kodi is who I look up to. So much awesome things for free.

Edited September 11, 2017 by speechles

[Gilgamesh_48 948]

Right now there does not seem to be a way to go to the "next" or "previous" episodes when you select an episode by pressing OK. That is when in the screen with "Play," "Play from scene" etc on it. I suggest that the "FF" and "RW" keys be implemented to provide that function.

 

Also, in that same screen, there does not seem to be a way to mark and episode "watched" and that, I think, would be a valuable addition.

 

Of course I might have miss that functionality and if I did just point me to it.

 

I also suggested this for the "regular" app but that app already allows "mark as watched."

 

Thank you.

[speechles 1929]

New Version: v4.22
* fix movie suggested crash bug

Finally figured out what was crashing the app when navigating to the movie row. I created a new user and entered the app as that user. As soon as the movie row begins to load it crashes. This is because the movie toggle starts out at 0. 0 is show the suggested row.

Problem was the way I was handling suggestions when none were available. It was due to the poster screen having extra room to show descriptions. Extra room so I added more information to show. I always assumed movieResponse.BaselineItemName would be empty "" if there were no suggestions. Not true, it won't even exist, or in roku parlance, it is invalid.

That routine is now corrected and everyone should be able to enjoy the app and all is has to offer once again. Sorry for any interruptions. Updated all links in first post. Have fun.

 

 

@@Flamebird give this version a whirl. 8^)

 

@@Gilgamesh_48 use the "more..." button and choose "mark as watched" and that same button becomes "mark as unwatched". This isn't used as often as the other buttons which is why its inside the "more..." buttons pop-up dialog. You can use the "-> Go To..." button (also within "more..." dialog) on an episode. Then from the "Go To Options" choose "-> Go To <SeriesName>" and you will land on your next up episode of that series. Once you enter the detail screen of an episode from within the series seasons\episode view you can use the left/right on the dpad to move through episodes of that season. You can also use left/right on the dpad from any detail screen entered from within any row, and it will shift left/right in that row without leaving the detail screen. Its a shortcut to save you having to press back so often. You will need to experiment with every button to see what they do.

Edited September 12, 2017 by speechles

[Flamebird 7]

New Version: v4.22

* fix movie suggested crash bug

 

Finally figured out what was crashing the app when navigating to the movie row. I created a new user and entered the app as that user. As soon as the movie row begins to load it crashes. This is because the movie toggle starts out at 0. 0 is show the suggested row.

 

Problem was the way I was handling suggestions when none were available. It was due to the poster screen having extra room to show descriptions. Extra room so I added more information to show. I always assumed movieResponse.BaselineItemName would be empty "" if there were no suggestions. Not true, it won't even exist, or in roku parlance, it is invalid.

 

That routine is now corrected and everyone should be able to enjoy the app and all is has to offer once again. Sorry for any interruptions. Updated all links in first post. Have fun.

 

 

@@Flamebird give this version a whirl. 8^)

 

@@Gilgamesh_48 use the "more..." button and choose "mark as watched" and that same button becomes "mark as unwatched". This isn't used as often as the other buttons which is why its inside the "more..." buttons pop-up dialog. You can use the "-> Go To..." button (also within "more..." dialog) on an episode. Then from the "Go To Options" choose "-> Go To <SeriesName>" and you will land on your next up episode of that series. Once you enter the detail screen of an episode from within the series seasons\episode view you can use the left/right on the dpad to move through episodes of that season. You can also use left/right on the dpad from any detail screen entered from within any row, and it will shift left/right in that row without leaving the detail screen. Its a shortcut to save you having to press back so often. You will need to experiment with every button to see what they do.

Success!!! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sort of.     Definitely squashed the crashing bug. YAY! I can navigate anywhere now, without issue,

In switching from this to the Emby app to compare playback; Bnn isn't stopping playback; from the app or even when I use the "stop" button on the server display.

I'll play with it a bit and see if it was just a blip or an actual issue. Right now, it looks like you were right about the Emby app needs to transcode my stream and doesn't. Bnn  is playing the file no problem with any of the transcode options; but still getting the green screen on direct play. I assume that's something odd with my files; cause a lot of them were done a free program from before I had even a vague idea what I was doing. I used it cause it had a simple "point and click" menu with limited options for me to screw up.  Now I'm wondering if that was actually the case.

[Happy2Play 8356]

Any way you can provide a sample that causes/reproduces this green screen?  I haven't ever seen this issue in any play method.

Edited September 12, 2017 by Happy2Play

[Flamebird 7]

Any way you can provide a sample that causes/reproduces this green screen?  I haven't ever seen this issue in any play method.

My brain has taken the evening off.  Did you mean you want a screen shot of the green screen to see what it looks like or a sample of a file that's causing it?

The pic is easy enough; but if you want a sample file, I have to figure out how to make one. Most of my knowing how to do stuff is from a decade ago and I'm basically re-learning how to do stuff. 

[Happy2Play 8356]

My brain has taken the evening off.  Did you mean you want a screen shot of the green screen to see what it looks like or a sample of a file that's causing it?

The pic is easy enough; but if you want a sample file, I have to figure out how to make one. Most of my knowing how to do stuff is from a decade ago and I'm basically re-learning how to do stuff. 

 

An sample file if possible.

[Flamebird 7]

An sample file if possible.

@@Happy2Play

 

Okay, I made a sample file from an episode that "green screens" with direct play in both apps; but I don't know if I actually did it right 

I just chopped a twenty-two minute file down to about two minutes; cause I wasn't sure how big it needs to be  the thing I'm mainly not sure of; is that it changed the bit rate and data rate in the sample file.  I have no idea if that makes a difference for what you'll get.

 

 

Next question of course; is how do I get the sample file to you?

Edited September 13, 2017 by Flamebird

[Happy2Play 8356]

As long as the sample reproduces your issues.

 

Do you have a dropbox?  And if you do and you don't want to post here, you can pm me.

[Flamebird 7]

Duh.  I d

 

As long as the sample reproduces your issues.

 

Do you have a dropbox?  And if you do and you don't want to post here, you can pm me.

i didn't load the sample to see if it still causes the issue.  That would have made sense though. . . 

I'm trying to do too many things at once and losing track.  I'll check the sample in Emby tomorrow and if it still causes the problem, I'll upload it for you to look at.

Thanks for trying to help.  I'm starting to get the idea that I have some really poorly encoded files and Emby doesn't know what to do with them.

[ebr 14959]

Please send the file to me too.  Thanks.

[Flamebird 7]

@@Happy2Play, @ebr:

 

Way too early for me I guess; I can't get the sample file to even show up in Emby. 

Here's  link to the sample file in Microsoft Box.  Never used it before; so I'm not sure how you download from the link.

 

 https://app.box.com/s/80wltbfuhgvhbf7dhpnthr22ly3bcjr4

 

Edit:  If this doesn't work, I can, apparently; upload the original file, but I have really slow internet and will take a while to upload.

Edited September 13, 2017 by Flamebird

[ebr 14959]

I can't get the sample file to even show up in Emby. 

 

Me either... not sure what's up with that...

[Happy2Play 8356]

@@Happy2Play, @ebr:

 

Way too early for me I guess; I can't get the sample file to even show up in Emby. 

Here's  link to the sample file in Microsoft Box.  Never used it before; so I'm not sure how you download from the link.

 

 https://app.box.com/s/80wltbfuhgvhbf7dhpnthr22ly3bcjr4

 

Edit:  If this doesn't work, I can, apparently; upload the original file, but I have really slow internet and will take a while to upload.

 

 

Me either... not sure what's up with that...

 

Haven't tested file yet but "Samples" are blocked, so remove from naming scheme.

[ebr 14959]

Haven't tested file yet but "Samples" are blocked, so remove from naming scheme.

 

Ha!  Of course .  Thx.

[ebr 14959]

Plays fine on my Roku Premiere...

[Happy2Play 8356]

I got green screen on my Ultra in beta app.  Force transcode in BNN it plays fine.

Edited September 13, 2017 by Happy2Play

[Flamebird 7]

Haven't tested file yet but "Samples" are blocked, so remove from naming scheme.

Never would have even thought of that. Let me see if I can get it to load and play/not play.

[Flamebird 7]

Plays fine on my Roku Premiere...

 

Is it direct playing or transcoding?

[Happy2Play 8356]

@@speechles @@ebr

 

Was mpeg4 removed as supported Roku format?

 

https://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/sdkdoc/Audio+and+Video+Support

 

I just confirmed all my mpeg4 media gets Green Screen.

Edited September 13, 2017 by Happy2Play

[Happy2Play 8356]

Is it direct playing or transcoding?

 

It only plays force transcoding for me in BNN.

 

To me it looks like mpeg4 support was dropped and Emby will have to update the profile.