FrontView+ [for Windows]iMon replacement, NowPlaying 2nd Screen

[GlennNZ 83]

Thanks Glenn, that works!

 

Very much appreciated - thankyou

Good to hear - thanks

Glenn

[Windsurfer79 0]

Hey Guys, FrontView is so amazing! But

I have a problem with the representation of the menus. A part disappears into nothing. Is there a possibility to center the menus? I've tried everything resolution etc. but i cant find a Solution. Thx for your help. Best Regards from Germany

[GlennNZ 83]

Hey Guys, FrontView is so amazing! But

I have a problem with the representation of the menus. A part disappears into nothing. Is there a possibility to center the menus? I've tried everything resolution etc. but i cant find a Solution. Thx for your help. Best Regards from Germany

Hi

Not sure I follow.  (at very low resolution 640x480 some menu in settings will be cut-off)

A picture is probably needed to help explain what you mean.

Glenn

[Windsurfer79 0]

Hi

Not sure I follow.  (at very low resolution 640x480 some menu in settings will be cut-off)

A picture is probably needed to help explain what you mean.

Glenn

I Hope this will help you. All the Menues are cut off. Screen Resolution is 1200x800. Same is configured in frontview

[GlennNZ 83]

I Hope this will help you. All the Menues are cut off. Screen Resolution is 1200x800. Same is configured in frontview

Its very likely your monitors and Windows DPI Setting - needs to be 1.0 or 100% for maximum compatibility

 

(Had made a few changes to make more multi-DPI aware; but was a bit of hornets nest so hadn't moved forward with it)

 

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/443-dpi-display-size-settings-change.html

 

See the above link for your version of windows.

 

Let me know how you go.

 

Glenn

[Windsurfer79 0]

Trank you so much. It works Great.

 

Is it possible to Show the Logos like DTS-HD, Resolution, Format, Rating and so on in the now playing screen?

[GlennNZ 83]

Trank you so much. It works Great.

 

Is it possible to Show the Logos like DTS-HD, Resolution, Format, Rating and so on in the now playing screen?

Thanks for letting me know all good

 

The now playing media icons have been there since 1.200 (for Tv and movies) some settings to enable and change size in settings

 

Glen

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Windsurfer79 0]

Thanks for letting me know all good

The now playing media icons have been there since 1.200 (for Tv and movies) some settings to enable and change size in settings

Glen

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

OK thank you. The last problem: only a small part of my collection is displayed reasonably. 70% are blurry as you can see on the photo. A refresh does not improve. What can be the reason?

[GlennNZ 83]

OK thank you. The last problem: only a small part of my collection is displayed reasonably. 70% are blurry as you can see on the photo. A refresh does not improve. What can be the reason?

Well - that is quite strange. Is a particularly case always blurry? or only when displayed on the left?

 

FrontView - grabs the covers from Kodi (or Emby/the remote) and the fact that some of them are fine - suggests that it is grabbing them okay.

 

Probably best starting point is to look in: (FrontView Image Cache folder)

%appdata%/FrontView+/cache - images folder and see if the grabbed covers are blurry there - either before or after the case are applied to them?

 

It is possible the applying the case art is causing this somehow for some, or possibly this is what Kodi is sending?

 

Glenn

Edited November 23, 2016 by GlennNZ

[Guest]

Hi Glenn, I hope all is well!

 

I am very sorry to say that Plex has broken Frontview+ functionality in their latest version of Plex Media Player (Preview), they have just released version 1.17.

 

It is not urgent as I mostly use the old Plex Home Theatre, which works lovely with Frontview.

 

But.. I thought I would just make you aware in case you get round to looking at it sometime.

 

Thank you!

 

lisa

[GlennNZ 83]

Hi Glenn, I hope all is well!

 

I am very sorry to say that Plex has broken Frontview+ functionality in their latest version of Plex Media Player (Preview), they have just released version 1.17.

 

It is not urgent as I mostly use the old Plex Home Theatre, which works lovely with Frontview.

 

But.. I thought I would just make you aware in case you get round to looking at it sometime.

 

Thank you!

 

lisa

Hi

Hopefully fairly easy fix (fingers crossed)  I would guess that they have changed a media description (for one to work and the other not - because they both use the server)

Could you post/or PM me a log - hopefully will be able to figure it out remotely to speed up process.

Thanks

Glenn

[Guest]

Thankyou! Log is attached, it doesn't look very helpful, but I might be wrong, let me know if you need any more info.

 

 

FrontView+.log

[GlennNZ 83]

Thankyou! Log is attached, it doesn't look very helpful, but I might be wrong, let me know if you need any more info.

You're right - doesn't look that useful at all.

 

I presume you were playing something?

 

Will have a look at options.

 

Glenn

[Guest]

Yes, I did play back a film. Would the log from Plex Media Player help?

[GlennNZ 83]

Yes, I did play back a film. Would the log from Plex Media Player help?

 

Hi

What would be useful is checking the plex server status message while playing - as we did before..

 

here:

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/31037-frontview-for-windowsimon-replacement-nowplaying-2nd-screen/?p=384076

 

although token may be expired and other link shows how to get one.

 

Glenn

[Guest]

Thanks for this! I have a test set up installed on my laptop, I tried it all on there and the output file seemed to work and accept the token. The file was transcoding, it wouldn't usually be doing this on the main machine, hopefully that doesn't make any difference for these purposes. I copied the output into a text file and attach here.

 

I have been trying to get the PMP devs to let me know what's changed, but they are not very forthcoming. In the changelog it does say that they have made changes to the iOS remote app, maybe that's what has broken frontview.

 

 

output.txt

[Guest]

Hi, the PMP devs have asked what mechanism Frontview+ is using to interact with PMP. I am not sure what the answer is - what should I tell them?

Edited November 29, 2016 by Guest

[GlennNZ 83]

Hi Lisa

 

Frontview queries the status/sessions (same as output above) from the Plex server to find out what and where something is playing.

 

[i presume the most recent laptop output was from a computer connected via a local network to the plex server?]

 

Looking at the two outputs (this and the older one) the obvious difference is the player IP address that the new PMP reports is the WAN address (not a local IP address).

 

The local IP address was previously reported by the older versions eg. 192.168.x.x and Frontview used this info to figure out what was playing on its machine (the local machine Frontview is on). It did this by checking ip of the machine Frontview is running on and looking for this info in plex server/status/sessions info.

 

If the plex server, new player doesn't report the local player IP it might be somewhat hard for Frontview to find the local playing client. (The most recent output says 'wan' connection, with a internet IP given --> if you were on a local network I would presume this is a bug which should be fixed)

(Or it may be your setup is using wan rather than a LAN connection for some reason with this player)

 

Glenn

Edited November 29, 2016 by GlennNZ

[Guest]

Ah, okay, sounds like I might have confused things by running the output on my laptop instead of my main HTPC. Sorry about that, I have run it again on the correct machine this time (attached).

 

I use frontview on my main HTPC in the lounge, I had installed everything temporarily on my laptop to test before reporting the bug, just to check I could reproduce the issue on two different machines. 

 

The Server has a static IP address (192.168.1.1).

 

None of the other machines have static IP's, so will just be allocated one by my router I presume. All of the machines are in the house and on the LAN. I am confused by the WAN address, is this something I should report to Plex?

output.txt

Edited November 29, 2016 by Guest

[GlennNZ 83]

Ah, okay, sounds like I might have confused things by running the output on my laptop instead of my main HTPC. Sorry about that, I have run it again on the correct machine this time (attached).

 

I use frontview on my main HTPC in the lounge, I had installed everything temporarily on my laptop to test before reporting the bug, just to check I could reproduce the issue on two different machines. 

 

The Server has a static IP address (192.168.1.1).

 

None of the other machines have static IP's, so will just be allocated one by my router I presume. All of the machines are in the house and on the LAN. I am confused by the WAN address, is this something I should report to Plex?

 

No - same result with this one as well.  If your laptop was on same network - it has been a change at the Plex Media Player end.

 

The IP address of the player reported by the server  is now your internet IP address - the bit in the address field of the output.  

 

Previously, and I presume with the other players it reports the 'Local IP address' of the computer the client is running on.  This is (currently -and can't think of easy way around) needed to know what is playing by Frontview - as you might be playing 3-4 videos across different clients at the same time.  The local IP address identifies that machine as the one FrontView uses.

 

The PMP client is now reporting the WAN IP Address/your whole networks internet IP address - for some reason.

 

It may be by design (can't imagine why) or a change/bug.  

(welcome to point me to plex forum discussion)

 

Glenn

Edited November 29, 2016 by GlennNZ

[Guest]

Glenn - thank you so much, I had a poke around in the PMP player settings and there is somewhere to manually enter the server IP address - I did that (192.168.1.1) - re-booted everything and boom! Frontview sprung back to life. Hurrah 

 

I'll let the devs know though, as potentially that could have been downgrading performance (maybe?). But all sorted now, and something I will keep a look out for in any future changes.

 

Thanks again!!

 

lisa

[GlennNZ 83]

Glenn - thank you so much, I had a poke around in the PMP player settings and there is somewhere to manually enter the server IP address - I did that (192.168.1.1) - re-booted everything and boom! Frontview sprung back to life. Hurrah 

 

I'll let the devs know though, as potentially that could have been downgrading performance (maybe?). But all sorted now, and something I will keep a look out for in any future changes.

 

Thanks again!!

 

lisa

 

Yah!  No new builds needed for me.

 

Yep to the performance aspect - as it does look like it would be connected to local server via internet -> back to local server and then serving files out through internet. 

Obviously local discovery of the server has failed/or not occurred for some reason until you manually enter.

 

Cheers

 

Glenn

[Guest]

Glenn, so sorry to be such a nuisance, but it looks like Plex has done something to break Frontview.. again 

 

It is puzzling as everything was working fine yesterday, but today not. And there has been no server or player updates.

 

I did a clean install of everything on my laptop, just to double check, but get the same error message there as I do on the HTPC.

 

It is this error, which I think we had before:

 

[16:46:43.4029] FrontView+Api-XXX : Exception in NowPlaying Plex SystemSystem.InvalidOperationException: There is an error in XML document (3, 403). ---> System.OverflowException: Value was either too large or too small for an unsigned byte.

   at System.Byte.Parse(String s, NumberStyles style, NumberFormatInfo info)

   at System.Xml.XmlConvert.ToByte(String s)

   at Microsoft.Xml.Serialization.GeneratedAssembly.XmlSerializationReaderMediaContainer.Read9_MediaContainerVideo(Boolean isNullable, Boolean checkType)

   at Microsoft.Xml.Serialization.GeneratedAssembly.XmlSerializationReaderMediaContainer.Read10_MediaContainer(Boolean isNullable, Boolean checkType)

   at Microsoft.Xml.Serialization.GeneratedAssembly.XmlSerializationReaderMediaContainer.Read11_MediaContainer()

   --- End of inner exception stack trace ---

   at System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer.Deserialize(XmlReader xmlReader, String encodingStyle, XmlDeserializationEvents events)

   at System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer.Deserialize(TextReader textReader)

   at Remote.Plex.Api.XbmcPlayer.RefreshNowPlaying()

 

Also, I attach the full log and the output file, in case that helps too.

 

No urgency Glenn, but I really love using Frontview, so if you do get round to finding a fix that would be really cool 

 

lisa

FrontView+.log

output.txt

[GlennNZ 83]

 

Glenn, so sorry to be such a nuisance, but it looks like Plex has done something to break Frontview.. again 

 

It is puzzling as everything was working fine yesterday, but today not. And there has been no server or player updates.

 

I did a clean install of everything on my laptop, just to double check, but get the same error message there as I do on the HTPC.

 

It is this error, which I think we had before:

 

[16:46:43.4029] FrontView+Api-XXX : Exception in NowPlaying Plex SystemSystem.InvalidOperationException: There is an error in XML document (3, 403). ---> System.OverflowException: Value was either too large or too small for an unsigned byte.

   at System.Byte.Parse(String s, NumberStyles style, NumberFormatInfo info)

   at System.Xml.XmlConvert.ToByte(String s)

   at Microsoft.Xml.Serialization.GeneratedAssembly.XmlSerializationReaderMediaContainer.Read9_MediaContainerVideo(Boolean isNullable, Boolean checkType)

   at Microsoft.Xml.Serialization.GeneratedAssembly.XmlSerializationReaderMediaContainer.Read10_MediaContainer(Boolean isNullable, Boolean checkType)

   at Microsoft.Xml.Serialization.GeneratedAssembly.XmlSerializationReaderMediaContainer.Read11_MediaContainer()

   --- End of inner exception stack trace ---

   at System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer.Deserialize(XmlReader xmlReader, String encodingStyle, XmlDeserializationEvents events)

   at System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer.Deserialize(TextReader textReader)

   at Remote.Plex.Api.XbmcPlayer.RefreshNowPlaying()

 

Also, I attach the full log and the output file, in case that helps too.

 

No urgency Glenn, but I really love using Frontview, so if you do get round to finding a fix that would be really cool 

 

lisa

 

 

Thanks for the info.

 

Try this replacement dll.  (can't test where I am at moment - but think it will fix)

 

Glenn

Remote.Plex.1.150.zip

[Guest]

Works! Thank you so much!!