Dev build 221

[ebr 16169]

Build 208 includes some improvements to remote control.  Including:

• Playing multiple items
• Queuing music 
• Volume control
• Directional navigation (up,right,left,down,page up, page down, select)

This will also make it possible for 3rd-parties to build better integration for things like voice control.  Encourage jitterjames to do that for VoxCommando here.

[AgileHumor 123]

Gotcha. I know that but understand the separation and a feature with the addon MBPlus.     Is there a way in code that MBPlus Random TV can be called via any API (Server or MBC)? 

 

For example, if I wanted to setup VocCommando to greet me when coming home and ask me if I'd like to watch some "Random TV"...what would be the best way to get that scenario?

 

I was thinking the options could be:

 

Option 1:

API Call to MBC client

 

Option 2:

Remote command (like subtitles which is not enabled in MBC) be intercepted/passed to MBPlus to start a Playlist/Random TV

 

Option 3:

API Call to server

 

Option 4 (partial working):

Macro:  Enter, down, right , right, right, down.  Trying this via VoxCommando's existing WMC support,  but not operating as reliably as I'd like (60%).

[jitterjames 18]

Thanks Luke, that would be great. 

 

I'm not sure I know enough at this point (especially about MBPlus) to give you a really intelligent feature request.  If you have time tomorrow maybe we could have a quick chat about it?  Could be voice or typing, but some way we can bounce ideas and you can correct me if my thinking is way off base about how things are currently set up.

 

I think that if playlists in MBPlus exist as items in the same way that normal playlists exist on the server, being able to call them the same way as other items in the api would be an excellent start though.  Same goes for being able to browse to an item if that is possible.  The good thing about these two methods is that it should be relatively easy to standardize them across all plugins that want to support that functionality.  I don't know if MBPlus also includes items that would require extra parameters other than an ID.

[Luke 42077]

 

Thanks Luke, that would be great. 

 

I'm not sure I know enough at this point (especially about MBPlus) to give you a really intelligent feature request.  If you have time tomorrow maybe we could have a quick chat about it?  Could be voice or typing, but some way we can bounce ideas and you can correct me if my thinking is way off base about how things are currently set up.

 

I think that if playlists in MBPlus exist as items in the same way that normal playlists exist on the server, being able to call them the same way as other items in the api would be an excellent start though.  Same goes for being able to browse to an item if that is possible.  The good thing about these two methods is that it should be relatively easy to standardize them across all plugins that want to support that functionality.  I don't know if MBPlus also includes items that would require extra parameters other than an ID.

 

 

Sure, although right now we're just talking about the core server api. The remote control api does actually allow pass-through for non-standard commands, which means you and Ebr could arrange your own private contracts for use with MB Plus.

 

But keep in mind, MB Plus is only for MBC, and the core server api can easily handle things like "play a random movie", or "play my latest family guy episode", etc.

[ebr 16169]

Jitterjames and I have discussed the possibility of building some custom navigation commands into the remote API and, possibly, MB Plus as well.

 

I really haven't thought too much about it but it would probably need to take the form of something like a request to either navigate to or start playback of an item identified by its name (e.g. a text string match that would be obtained via a voice command).  So that you could say something like "Play Random TV" and, if there is an item on the screen called "Random TV" it would be able to find it and play it.

 

There are a whole lot of "ifs" in all of that but it is a future possibility.

[jitterjames 18]

AFAIK clients like VoxCommando can't talk to plugins like MB Plus directly.  Maybe one day there will be a way.  I think it will be a lot of work for the MB devs.

 

It is probably possibly for VC to implement its own "random TV" type calls, by talking directly with the server, even if MB Plus is not installed, but it would only have access to information the server was already providing.  Still it should be possible to for example "shuffle all episodes from a given TV series / or season".  In my tests I can already do this with artist / albums / playlists (regular playlists, not MB Plus).

 

It is probably also possible for VC to call up the next unwatched episode of a show given the existing api tools.  Or to pick a random unwatched movie.

[Luke 42077]

AFAIK clients like VoxCommando can't talk to plugins like MB Plus directly.  Maybe one day there will be a way.  I think it will be a lot of work for the MB devs.

 

It is probably possibly for VC to implement its own "random TV" type calls, by talking directly with the server, even if MB Plus is not installed, but it would only have access to information the server was already providing.  Still it should be possible to for example "shuffle all episodes from a given TV series / or season".  In my tests I can already do this with artist / albums / playlists (regular playlists, not MB Plus).

 

It is probably also possible for VC to call up the next unwatched episode of a show given the existing api tools.  Or to pick a random unwatched movie.

 

 

Yes, tell me what you special commands need and I'll get some added to the next server release.

[AgileHumor 123]

While I think the MBPlus Random TV feature would be awesome (as it only shows watched + favorite TV giving me that 5p-8pm rerun experience experience I grew up with)...I feel this might not be VoxCommando's best intial focus (and don't want to be selfish).

 

Just getting a movie or music title/genre playing is a great start and think the official API's.

 

I appreciate you considering the use case in the future. 

[AgileHumor 123]

EBR, is the Random TV on MBPlus playlist via the MBC API?

[ebr 16169]

EBR, is the Random TV on MBPlus playlist via the MBC API?

 

That is a feature specific to MB Plus.

[ebr 16169]

Yeah, for the initial implementation, take MB Plus out of the equation and target the basic tasks via the core API.  Then, once that is going, if there are still specific things you want to do with MBC or MB Plus we can look at those.

[ebr 16169]

209:

• Fix photo support broken by server changes
• Implement remote direct volume manipulation
• Fix remote seeking
• Implement periodic image cache clean-up

[Logos302 86]

Installing 209 seems to have reset some settings to there "default".  Is this to be expected?

 

Group All to together (under show channels) and Use Custom Views for series were both unchecked before upgrading from 208, and became check on 209.  There maybe more but those are the two that I know I had unchecked.

Edited September 8, 2014 by Logos302

[ebr 16169]

Nothing should be getting reset.

 

Those settings are both per-user...

[Logos302 86]

Same user, I'll upgrade my other computer and see what happens.  

[jitterjames 18]

 

209:

• Fix photo support broken by server changes
• Implement remote direct volume manipulation
• Fix remote seeking
• Implement periodic image cache clean-up

 

Great work ebr.

 

SetVolume now works perfectly.  I find that the transition time for the volume change is a bit too slow.  I don't know if this was necessary to make it work or if you chose to do it at this speed.  It's only my opinion that it should be faster, but I thought I would mention it.  If you can't change it or don't want to, no problem!

 

MoveUp, MoveDown, PageUp etc. now work great too.  Do you have any intention of allowing some kind of "sendKey" type keyboard emulation?  I don't know if we will really need this or not but it usually comes in handy for special cases.  If you don't want to implement sendKey then you might want to consider some other actions like "open context menu", or "parent item" (which is sometimes different from "back").

 

If you do decide to implement sendkeys then please consider whether you might also want to allow optional key modifiers like Ctrl, Alt, or Shift.

 

Sometimes sendString can come in handy as well for doing things like searches or generally filling in text fields, rather than having to send multiple individual sendKey calls.  Again this is just icing.  If you feel like it, I'm suggesting ideas of what might come in handy at some point now, so you don't have to come back to it later.

 

Thanks again for all the updates.

Edited September 8, 2014 by jitterjames

[Logos302 86]

Everything worked on my other machine so I'm not sure why it reset on my test machine. Ah well all is good.

[Luke 42077]

Great work ebr.

 

SetVolume now works perfectly.  I find that the transition time for the volume change is a bit too slow.  I don't know if this was necessary to make it work or if you chose to do it at this speed.  It's only my opinion that it should be faster, but I thought I would mention it.  If you can't change it or don't want to, no problem!

 

MoveUp, MoveDown, PageUp etc. now work great too.  Do you have any intention of allowing some kind of "sendKey" type keyboard emulation?  I don't know if we will really need this or not but it usually comes in handy for special cases.  If you don't want to implement sendKey then you might want to consider some other actions like "open context menu", or "parent item" (which is sometimes different from "back").

 

If you do decide to implement sendkeys then please consider whether you might also want to allow optional key modifiers like Ctrl, Alt, or Shift.

 

Sometimes sendString can come in handy as well for doing things like searches or generally filling in text fields, rather than having to send multiple individual sendKey calls.  Again this is just icing.  If you feel like it, I'm suggesting ideas of what might come in handy at some point now, so you don't have to come back to it later.

 

Thanks again for all the updates.

 

In addition to what i said in the dev area, we have a context menu toggle command. we don't have a parent item command, but you're pretty much always going to have the parent id to manually do it anyway.

[ebr 16169]

Yeah I'm pretty sure the context menu command is already implemented in mbc but I'll have to check.

[Logos302 86]

209 seems to have a display problem. May have been there in 208 as well but my main pc didn't have 208.  But when you hit the Volume up and Volume Down on the remote the volume display doesn't show up until much later.  The volume still goes up and down as normal.  I'm going to down grade to 207 later today to make sure it's not the updating of the server (All though I don't know how it could be).  I posted the log but I'm not sure if it will help.  

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/umjkqq1cqej1hoy/MBClassic-9920145090e13c3d3544fdb887451ae859fac9.log?dl=0

[ebr 16169]

Well, here we go again...  Lag on volume OSD

 

I guess this is still a problem.  @@jitterjames - this is the issue I told you I had before when I accessed the volume information in WMC.  I believe it is a bug in their API and, if this continues to be a problem I may have to remove at least the volume reporting from my progress reports.

 

This would mean the system would still respond to volume change requests but the remote controlling system would not get updated with the proper volume level after the change.

[Logos302 86]

Volume lag is now gone.  with 211.

[ebr 16169]

Please try version 211 and see if it improves the issue with the Volume OSD lag.

[coolspot 22]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this as I'm not sure if it was an update to the server or classic when this occured.

 

But when I try and run MBC through an extender or right on the server itself, I have the following results.  

 

I get a bluescreen for some time, and it eventually errors out. (stopped responding)

 

Here's a copy of my MBC log file.  It seems quite long. Let me know if you need anything else.  I'm using dev settings on both server and classic

 

3.0.5367.29698 server

211 build of classic

 

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5dkaue8iujta04p/MBClassic-15920144a1995d972f04ecba9a3028ad4905818.log?dl=0

 

 

Update 1:  Rolled back classic, no change.   Rolled back server, no change.  (set both back to beta release)

Remembered I had recently installed two plugins (bookshelf) and TuneIn and uninstalled both.   Everything is working.  Currently tracking which breaks things

 

Update 2:  Yep, tracked it to the Tunein Plugin, is this a plugin that anyone has working in MBC?

Edited September 16, 2014 by coolspot

[ebr 16169]

There is some set of options in combination with this channel that causes this behavior but I have not been able to figure out what they are.  Can you please post your MediabrowserCommonXml.config and the config file for the user that was logged in at the time this occured?  Both will be found in %appdata%\mediaBrowser-Classic\Configurations.  Thx.