Need a way to go to Prev/Next Chapter

[jfgilliam 26]

I know there's not that many buttons on a Roku Remote, but I would really like to have some way of easily going to either the previous or the next chapter. Could it be a user selectable option to use the FF and RW buttons for this? If the video does not have chapters, then act as normal.

[speechles 1917]

This is a good idea. The other apps have this feature. I added this to the issue tracker.

 

Reference: Issue #162: VideoPlayer OSD (Chapter menu / Mini LiveTV guide)

 

Using fast-forward or rewind buttons to do this steals the behavior those buttons presently do which is scan the timeline at 1x 2x 3x speed. This behavior is the same in all Roku apps and might break certification approval on the Roku store if we change it.

Edited December 28, 2018 by speechles

[jfgilliam 26]

Understood. I could live with you using the left/right arrow keys. Although, that will eliminate the ability to skip. But, will just have to use FF/RW instead.

 

My reason for requesting this, is I've found an easy way to use comskip and ffmpeg to add chapter marks at the beginning and end of the commercials. This way, I don't have to transcode the original and cut them out. I can just skip over the commercials. If comskip gets it wrong, I'll just use FF/RW to find it.

 

BTW. There's no button for next/prev chapter in the web app either. Could use the >| when playing a video.

[speechles 1917]

Understood. I could live with you using the left/right arrow keys. Although, that will eliminate the ability to skip. But, will just have to use FF/RW instead.

 

My reason for requesting this, is I've found an easy way to use comskip and ffmpeg to add chapter marks at the beginning and end of the commercials. This way, I don't have to transcode the original and cut them out. I can just skip over the commercials. If comskip gets it wrong, I'll just use FF/RW to find it.

 

BTW. There's no button for next/prev chapter in the web app either. Could use the >| when playing a video.

 

I meant we will use pressing UP to bring up the chapter / mini livetv guide.

 

When you press left/right it toggles into the seek bar and lets you move bit by bit to the exact spot and play. Using fast-foward and rewind goes to the seek bar and starts to immediately seek at 1x 2x 3x depending on how many presses of the button you make. We cannot change those behaviors. The seek behavior changes will/can cause Roku store certification approval rejection.

 

Presently you press UP or DOWN you get the same OSD as when you press the OK button.

 

So what if instead. Press DOWN or OK is still the OSD. But if you press UP it brings up the Chapter menu, unless this is liveTV channel in which case it brings up the mini live tv guide. This will be more intuitive as it is the same behavior presently found on Android TV and the other TV apps.

Edited December 28, 2018 by speechles

[jfgilliam 26]

That sounds good.

[GreenAndPrickly 3]

 

@Speechles:

 

As of today, I no longer use the Emby app for TV as I have cut the cable and switched to Youtube TV. This results in access to 99.9% of what we will ever want to watch on cable channels at about a third of the cost. An important consideration, given that we only watch cable channels for news and sports.  (We will still need the Emby app to access about four terabytes of stuff we recorded with Media Center over several years, so that part hasn't changed.) 

 

However, because we used Emby for several months to watch both live and time-shifted TV, I do have some thoughts about it.

 

One BIG thing that you should consider with the Emby Roku app with regard to short skipping is to provide thumbnail images like both Youtube TV and Netflix provide. (I wish the Youtube TV thumbnails were a little larger---they seem to have not heard of the 10-foot interface idea.)  In both apps, the thumbnails seem to be in the past so we always need to go back one keypress before resuming, but that may be the nature of the beast.  

 

The minimalist controls on the Roku are definitely a challenge for the app developer. I applaud your choice of how to implement "chapter" jumps. Judicious use of the up/down directional controls, and the use of context to redefine the meaning of all of the directional controls is definitely the correct approach. Youtube TV has some very interesting approaches to navigation that (for example) resulted in my wife adapting to it much faster than she did the Emby app, after years of Media Center use. 

 

Lacking the recorded markers the topic starter has in his recordings, my "solution" (perhaps too strong a word) for commercial skipping with the Emby Roku app was to use the macro capability on my Harmony remote. I programmed the direction buttons on the Harmony to send the standard Roku directional commands and therefore left and right were preserved as approximately 10 second skips. However, I programmed the Harmony left and right skip buttons to execute macros that do triple ROKU skips, resulting in a full 30 second commercial skip in each direction. Skipping a commercial break was then reduce to a process of quickly pressing the Harmony right skip button as many times as your best guess as to the length of that particular break. The left and right arrow buttons allowed finer tuning.  (All much easier than it sounds.)

 

I chose triple skip with the Emby app because commercials are all 30-second duration on the channels we watch and skipping with the Emby app is "flying blind".  (Thus my suggestion above about providing visual feedback.) 

 

However, with Youtube TV, I may change the skip macros to issue a full five (the Harmony limit of macro size) "short Roku skips" because the thumbnails let me see quickly whether each scene looks like the actual program or a commercial. I can then use the left direction key to fine tune where to hit play. With the emby app, it sometimes took many more play and pause actions than it now takes. 

[speechles 1917]

@@GreenAndPrickly

 

I noticed this too. The BIF picture given does not match where you get dumped off into the video. It is like 10 seconds or so before which is annoying I agree.

 

@@Luke is there something causing the BIF to be 10 seconds off with what ffmpeg does to create them? Or is this the Roku firmware? In any situation I will add it to the issue tracker too since this is an issue. (Issue #164: BIF not aligned to seek position).

Edited December 28, 2018 by speechles

[GreenAndPrickly 3]

@@GreenAndPrickly

 

I noticed this too. The BIF picture given does not match where you get dumped off into the video. It is like 10 seconds or so before which is annoying I agree.

 

@@Luke is there something causing the BIF to be 10 seconds off with what ffmpeg does to create them? Or is this the Roku firmware? In any situation I will add it to the issue tracker too since this is an issue. (Issue #164: BIF not aligned to seek position).

 

I have never written a Roku app. 

However it took me only about two minutes to find this web page that addresses the issue:

https://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/sdkdoc/Trick+Mode+Support

Scroll down to the windows topic.  You will see it says the stamps will always all be off 10 seconds (indexing issue).     However, it suggests a little "for" loop to fix the issue (for a recorded set I presume).  

[speechles 1917]

I have never written a Roku app. 

However it took me only about two minutes to find this web page that addresses the issue:

https://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/sdkdoc/Trick+Mode+Support

Scroll down to the windows topic.  You will see it says the stamps will always all be off 10 seconds (indexing issue).     However, it suggests a little "for" loop to fix the issue (for a recorded set I presume).  

 

It is easier than their "for" loop to fix it. Which is basically assign 0.jpg as the first filename. Then iterate through all filenames moving them all down 1 number. Thats a waste of CPU time and disk activity. Instead...there is an easier way if you build them at 0 to start with.

 

@@Luke in the function ExtractVideoImagesOnInterval found in the Roku-Bif code. When this is called it should use -start_number 0 when building the jpg's with ffmpeg to avoid the 10 seconds being off.

Edited December 29, 2018 by speechles

[Luke 36997]

It is easier than their "for" loop to fix it. Which is basically assign 0.jpg as the first filename. Then iterate through all filenames moving them all down 1 number. Thats a waste of CPU time and disk activity. Instead...there is an easier way if you build them at 0 to start with.

 

@@Luke in the function ExtractVideoImagesOnInterval found in the Roku-Bif code. When this is called it should use -start_number 0 when building the jpg's with ffmpeg to avoid the 10 seconds being off.

 

@@speechles how did you determine this?

[speechles 1917]

@@Luke I did my own tests. In the single video I did this fixes the BIF problem and now it matches the image in the BIF to where it drops me off in the video.

 

Here is there code Roku uses shown below. All this does is rename everything starting at 00000000.jpg. Since mv is a shorthand way to rename the first name in the dir list in a foreach and then stashes the vars to do it again. It is just changing all the numbers down 1 becomes 0. 2 becomes 1. 3 becomes 2. etc.. Its wasting time/cpu/energy...

j=00000000.jpg; for i in *; do mv ${i} ${j}; j=${i}; done;

Instead of all that use -start_number 0 to begin with as you make the images before you BIF them up. Then it should clear up that 10 second offset. Be right to begin with. This does come with the caveat all old BIF done the old way have to be remade all over again to fix the issue. Or a tool needs to be made to extract, fix, repackage to allow migration to the correct offset. Basically any BIF without a leading 00000000.jpg inside the BIF has to be fixed and repacked.

Edited December 30, 2018 by speechles

[Luke 36997]

Thanks !

[jfgilliam 26]

If you didn't already think about it, when you press the up arrow on the Roku to display the list of chapters, make sure the current chapter that is playing is highlighted. This will make it a 3 press action to skip the commercial "up", "Right", "Ok".

[speechles 1917]

@@jfgilliam exactly. Intuitive and less button presses. We intend to do exactly as you mention. Keep it simple with as few button presses required as possible. We agree with you.

[awdspyder 11]

This is good news - you don't know how many times I've sought this functionality in the Roku only to remember it didn't exist.  Great work, guys!

[ThePaladinTech 22]

This will be great! Will it use .edl files for chapters?

[Luke 36997]

That's tdb.

[jfgilliam 26]

This will be great! Will it use .edl files for chapters?

 

I'm working on a post processing script that will run comskip to create the .edl file. Once that is done, it uses the .edl to create a FFMETADATA1 file in the ffmpeg required format to mark the commercials as chapters. Then, I run ffmpeg to convert to mp4 and add the chapter marks where the commercials are. The script is highly customized to my environment right now. I will be willing to share it at some point after the jump to chapter feature is added to the Roku and other apps and I have time to make is configurable.

[jfgilliam 26]

I'm anxiously waiting for this feature because I use PlayOn to record a lot of our shows. I just found out that it already adds chapter marks to the file where the commercials are.

[ajw12 0]

Hi all,

 

Is there any eta on this feature? I tried looking for the issue tracker on the site an on Github, but couldn't find where @speechless made the ticket. 

Also, in addition to the method already mentioned above (or alternative if needed) would it be possible to add a chapter lookup/list to the timeline menu (I don't know the right term)?

On Roku when you tap the down button the basic video timeline and and info shows up. At the bottom there are two icons (information & settings). 

Could an additional icon for chapters be added there and when you hit it you get a chapter list to scroll through and select?

 

Really can't wait for this feature. Overall the software is a joy to use, but being able to select chapters from .edl while already viewing the movie is something I need.

Thanks!

[ebr 14902]

Hi.  This is still planned and getting closer.  Thanks.