View Full Version : Borrow some specific skipping navigation features from MediaPortal?
I miss there thing when I skip forward. There I could push forward a couple of times, 1-2-3, and then release/wait, and I would skip for i.e. 5-15-45 sec...
I also miss the function when I start a movie, that XBMC could ask if I will start from the begining or play from where I was the last time I ended..
Now I get no question about it..
/Soder
You can skip around while in a video. On a remote, its the up/down/left/right actions. up/down are big skips, 5 minutes, i think. left/right are small skips, 30 seconds i think.
And you can resume from the previous spot. There's an option to make this the default action, or you can bring up the context menu and choose resume.
You can skip around while in a video. On a remote, its the up/down/left/right actions. up/down are big skips, 5 minutes, i think. left/right are small skips, 30 seconds i think.
And you can resume from the previous spot. There's an option to make this the default action, or you can bring up the context menu and choose resume.
Yes, I CAN skip, but only 30 sec or 5 min. In Media portal, o could do do more then one small skip at once. And it wasnt 5+5+5+5, but 5+15+45+2 min, and then when I release, it skip 2 min. Not 5 sec first, then 15 s and so on..
I will test the resume function with the context menu...
/Söder
oh ok. so it increases with each keypress? hmm, that's kind of cool. (but i can also see it being annoying as its not intuitive.) does it display it onscreen so you know what the skip duration is going to be? i could see this as a new action, "incrementalskipforward" and "incrementalskipbackward".
rwparris2
2008-08-27, 04:53
Maybe hold for 1 sec it does 10 min, 2.5 secs 30 min, etc
And maybe show a frame so you can know where you're jumping too?
So if you're at 0:43:59 into the movie and hold right for one second it will show the frame from 0:53:59 and then once you've held it for 2.5 secs it will show the frame from 1:13:59. I suppose it would depend on how much is buffered though...
Just a thought :)
Gamester17
2008-08-27, 14:39
i can also see it being annoying as its not intuitiveI agree, and we pride ourselves with XBMC being more intuitive than most other media center software out there :nod:
I am therefor against those type of non-intuitive skip functions.
I also miss the function when I start a movie, that XBMC could ask if I will start from the begining or play from where I was the last time I ended..
Think this would be a very useful feature. At the moment there's only the option to either restart all movies from where they last ended or from the beginning.
oh ok. so it increases with each keypress? hmm, that's kind of cool. (but i can also see it being annoying as its not intuitive.) does it display it onscreen so you know what the skip duration is going to be? i could see this as a new action, "incrementalskipforward" and "incrementalskipbackward".
Yes, exactly, I press i.e. 5 times, and I see how much the media center will skip. If I press one time too much, I can press back, and then when I release it will skip so much I want.
skip 5 sec will in that way take maybe 1 sec longer then without this function, but skip 30 sec will be easier.
/Söder
I´ve used MP for several years and this one of the small things I really liked. It does work intuitive and would complement XBMC.
ethanmcdonald
2008-08-27, 19:43
One thing I've never figured out how to frame by frame skipping to watch something in detail ?!
@gamester
thats exactly why i would propose using a different action, and maybe adding an option where the user can choose to use incremental skip instead of fixed skip so they dont have to update the keymap. (the default being fixed skip, of course)
@DonJ
xbmc has had resume for a very long time. it does not prompt the user, and I, for one, would be adamantly against such a prompt. too annoying. in lieu of a prompt, Xbmc defaults the "select" action to start from the beginning, while the "play" action default to resume. (this is an often forgotten feature. maybe its not actually documented?)
additionally, there is a "resume from last positon" option in settings which makes the "select" action resume. and of course, there the context menu has "resume" and "restart" options which complement this setting.
@rwparris2
now, that sounds cool. show a small thumbnail of the frame where xbmc would jump.
@ethanmcdonald
as far as I can remember, Xbmc has never had frame by frame support.
...as far as I can remember, Xbmc has never had frame by frame support.
Is this something that can be added?
open a feature request trac but there's no guarantees.
Gamester17
2008-08-28, 15:09
One thing I've never figured out how to frame by frame skipping to watch something in detail ?!Off-topic and XBMC already have frame-by-frame frame stepping support when paused, see => http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=67
does the dvdplayer support this as well? from the thread, it seems like its xbox only as the discussed patch uses mplayer's frame advance.
Rand Al Thor
2008-08-28, 16:55
What about this. Leave tapping the forward/back button to skip in the increments that it already does. Then if you hold the button for say 3 seconds, the movie timeline pops up on the bottom of the screen like a slider with a counter to tell you where in the movie you are and either the main screen changes accordingly or a thumbnail of where you are at pops up as well. Then you can just slide back and forth as much or as little as you want, then when you stop and hit play again (or maybe just let got of the forward/back buttons for 3 seconds) the movie resumes from where you dropped the slider. This would work great with the mouse too on Mac/linux/windows. I am pretty sure I saw mouse grabbing and sliding as feature request (or something of that nature). Does that make sense?
Gamester17
2008-08-28, 17:44
does the dvdplayer support this as well? from the thread, it seems like its xbox only as the discussed patch uses mplayer's frame advance.Not tried it with DVDPlayer so I do not know. :eek:
rlhenson
2008-10-19, 05:42
I too have used Media Portal and find the skip function far superior and more intuitive to XBMC's. I like just about everything else in XBMC so it is very disappointing that the programmers can't even be bothered to take a serious look at this. It takes about 10 minutes to install Media Portal, upload a movie file then try it. Anyone that has used this feature for more than 30 minutes would never want to go back.
As much as I like XBMC this could be a deal breaker for me. Other than this one feature I feel that XBMC is probably the best Media Center available. Thanks for any re-consideration of this suggestion.
i used to use Mediaportal and i really didn't like how it skipped and it didn't offer a way to do it like XBMC. Now i would think most people like it the way it is so if you guys do decide to add it please add it as a option.
I have used xbmc on xbox an then Mediaportal for a long time (switched mainly for watching HD). Now about the only thing Mediaportal ever did better was exactly that skip function we are talking about here.
I too think it is by far more intuitive and flexible than just two fixed skipping steps. E.g. every time I didn't get something in a movie, skipping about 10 seconds back is enough to hear/see it again, 30 seconds would be too much. Or if I watch a few episodes of a series in row I can easily skip the intro within just 3 or 4 presses of the respective button. Takes me 3 seconds and I am back in the story instead of watching a) the annoying thing every time or b) jumping through the intro in tedious steps. Just two examples why adding this very useful function as an option would be a good thing.
btw, something being intuitive is not the same for everybody. My wife for example got the skipping thing in MP immediately, because the time you will skip is shown. But she never can remember when to press the right or the up button for small or big forward skipping steps. So as a matter of fact that is not very intuitive at all...:no:
I have used xbmc on xbox an then Mediaportal for a long time (switched mainly for watching HD). Now about the only thing Mediaportal ever did better was exactly that skip function we are talking about here.
I too think it is by far more intuitive and flexible than just two fixed skipping steps. E.g. every time I didn't get something in a movie, skipping about 10 seconds back is enough to hear/see it again, 30 seconds would be too much. Or if I watch a few episodes of a series in row I can easily skip the intro within just 3 or 4 presses of the respective button. Takes me 3 seconds and I am back in the story instead of watching a) the annoying thing every time or b) jumping through the intro in tedious steps. Just two examples why adding this very useful function as an option would be a good thing.
btw, something being intuitive is not the same for everybody. My wife for example got the skipping thing in MP immediately, because the time you will skip is shown. But she never can remember when to press the right or the up button for small or big forward skipping steps. So as a matter of fact that is not very intuitive at all...:no:
What happened to this request? We got the "ask if resume", but I still kind of miss the thing to be able to know how long I want to skip in the movie..
/Söder
I agree, and we pride ourselves with XBMC being more intuitive than most other media center software out there :nod:
I am therefor against those type of non-intuitive skip functions.
Sorry Gamester17, but I totally Disagree with you, The Mediaportal skip function is far more superior than the one of XBMC. Have you tried it ?
I have used Mediaportal for several months, finally, i find that xbmc is far better, except for the skip function.
The skip function of MP is really more intuitive because it shows on screen the amount of time you will jump, plus it enables you to do very fine jumps in just a few button press.
I have read in this post that someone's wife never knows what the difference between left/right and up/down : same thing for mine.
Further more, implementing this feature as an option would free the up/down keys. I Mean, if we can easily go precisely where you want just with left right, big jumps are no more needed, so up/down could be used for something else.
Something else : Personnaly, I would like to use up down to zoom in/out. I know I have some sort of zoom with ok button, but a smooth,progressive one with up down arrow would be awesome.
I am not skilled enough to implement this myself, but i don't feel this would be a hard work. Perhaps you could implement it and see the users feedback.
Sorry Gamester17, but I totally Disagree with you, The Mediaportal skip function is far more superior than the one of XBMC. Have you tried it ?
I have to agree with miljbee on this one, as a MediaPortal ex-pat I have to say this is the only this I miss about it.
The incremental skipping method is much more user friendly (and quicker) than what I currently see in XBMC.
TBH I have to disagree with that feature being that useful, sure it's somewhat usefull but the skip times it produces are just way to far apart, a few big steps or smallsteps is more detailed IMHO.
Usually I used it when I skipped through commercials and I 90% of the time either got way to after the commercial, or way to little in it. With big step or a few small I always find myself being perfectly aligned after the commercial break. So at the end of the day I spent more time trying to get the "time to skip" right than what the skip would take to do with the old way.
Sure I know you can set it up to ramp up not that fast but then one could just as easily do the small steps.
Note I'm not against the function I'm just questioning if it's really worth it / really usefull.
Initially I found the feature odd in Media Portal, but after getting used to it I think it's better than what's available currently in XBMC simply because it's more functional and it's more intuitive.
I've gotten used to the XBMC way and I do see some pros to it, but I think overall the media portal is better specially for novices or casual users.
Gamester17
2009-05-01, 18:59
Initially I found the feature odd in Media Portal, but after getting used to it I think it's better than what's available currently in XBMC simply because it's more functional and it's more intuitive.You are contradicting yourself, ...if you have to get used to it then it is not intuitive. Intuitive IMHO means that you understand and can use it right a way as it feels natural without thinking about it.
You are contradicting yourself, ...if you have to get used to it then it is not intuitive. Intuitive IMHO means that you understand and can use it right a way as it feels natural without thinking about it.
Yea... defining what's intuitive is very hard, but what I meant to say is, if we could rate the level of intuitiveness, I would say the media portal way is more intuitive than what's currently available. The main reason for this is that the user will intuitively use 2 keys, left right to navigate a timeline. In contrast, in XBMC one needs to use 4 keys, left right, and up down. Some users may find about up and down only by mistake or only after reading the documentation. Furthermore, it's not immediately obvious how much up and down skip forward vs how much left right.
But yes I do admit that the media portal way is still not as intuitive as it could possibly be. I think the more intuitive interface would be something similar to the Tivo, where it still uses only left and right, but it gives real-time video feedback.
XBMC has five buttons to jump inside a video :
Ud/Down
Left/Right
Back
What is achieved in XBMC with five buttons on your remote is achieved with 2 in Mediaportal :
Left/Right
So :
1 - less is more !
2 - Five buttons versus 2 : I think we can tell that it's more simple with 2 (simple = intuitive, Am I Wrong ?)
3 - learning : the first time you use XBMC, you play a vid, press right and it jumps, but since you are a noob, you don't know exactly how long it jumps, the only thing you see is that is does relatively small jumps.
Same thing with Up, but you still ask yourself how long will it jump when I will press the left/right up/dow button.
Same thing with back. furthermore you will probably press back because you want to return to the gui (I mean exit fullscreen video), and you find yourself that back does very small jump backward instead.
With MP, when you hit right for the first time, it jumps 5s and it displays it on the screen. Clear, no question. It won't take long before you hit right twice and understand that the more you press left/right, the more the time it will jump increases. It won't take long, because it is displayed on screen.
So the noob will probably find it more intuitive in MP.
4 - Since the incremental jumps require less buttons to navigate inside a video, you have more keys to offer more direct access to the users.
5 - There is already a few params in advancedsettings.xml about jumps, I can't see why this feature couldn't be added as an advancedsetting.xml option.
Anyway, I Think, all has been said about that, and I feel that it's more of a personnal taste than a clear rule. But I would be disappointed if this feature wasn't considered seriously just because it comes from another MediaCenter.
There has already been a number of posts requesting this feature, So, there is clearly a great interest on this.
Also, I agree that there are probably more important features to study before this one.
XBMC has five buttons to jump inside a video :
Ud/Down
Left/Right
Back
What is achieved in XBMC with five buttons on your remote is achieved with 2 in Mediaportal :
Left/Right
So :
1 - less is more !
2 - Five buttons versus 2 : I think we can tell that it's more simple with 2 (simple = intuitive, Am I Wrong ?)
3 - learning : the first time you use XBMC, you play a vid, press right and it jumps, but since you are a noob, you don't know exactly how long it jumps, the only thing you see is that is does relatively small jumps.
Same thing with Up, but you still ask yourself how long will it jump when I will press the left/right up/dow button.
Same thing with back. furthermore you will probably press back because you want to return to the gui (I mean exit fullscreen video), and you find yourself that back does very small jump backward instead.
With MP, when you hit right for the first time, it jumps 5s and it displays it on the screen. Clear, no question. It won't take long before you hit right twice and understand that the more you press left/right, the more the time it will jump increases. It won't take long, because it is displayed on screen.
So the noob will probably find it more intuitive in MP.
4 - Since the incremental jumps require less buttons to navigate inside a video, you have more keys to offer more direct access to the users.
5 - There is already a few params in advancedsettings.xml about jumps, I can't see why this feature couldn't be added as an advancedsetting.xml option.
Anyway, I Think, all has been said about that, and I feel that it's more of a personnal taste than a clear rule. But I would be disappointed if this feature wasn't considered seriously just because it comes from another MediaCenter.
There has already been a number of posts requesting this feature, So, there is clearly a great interest on this.
Also, I agree that there are probably more important features to study before this one.
I totaly agree with you. =)
/Söder
You are contradicting yourself, ...if you have to get used to it then it is not intuitive. Intuitive IMHO means that you understand and can use it right a way as it feels natural without thinking about it.
After reading your post yesterday evening, I had some friends over for a gaming session. Two of them brought their wifes. Since I have XBMC running in the bedroom and MediaPortal is still installed and running on that PC I took the opportunity and asked each of them to jump to a specific scene in Star Wars (picked that since everybody knows it).
I have to mention, that I had to tell most of them, which keys to use at all - so much for intuitive :;):
Most of them managed to figure out the MP skipping method within seconds, some took a little longer but found the method still very practical. Only a few figured out to use the up and down keys under XBMC and most thought it's not very intuitiv compared to the MP way.
Before you ask: I have not explained before, what I am looking for. And I have not influenced them in any way. I have started with MP and the moved on to XBMC with one half of the people and vice versa with the other half. All together ist was 11 people testing this, one already used XBMC, so I didn't count him.
The results are far from representative, but just for myself they back up my own experience 100%.
BTW, one of the most important things to do in Product Management and R&D in Consumer Electronics (where I work since the mid 90ies) is listen to the users and implement features the way they prefer to use it. Often that is hard for engineers to follow, since they planned this or that feauture in a different way, but in the end it's the users, who buy the product and when they are happy with it might turn into a loyal customer.
I know that open source software development is a completely different story, but I believe the same principles apply.
EowynCarter
2009-05-02, 19:49
Well, that is THE function i miss in xbmc.
the hability to go wherever you want in the file.
I think the freebox way is good. Basicly, if you hold the forward button for more than certain time, if goes forward WAY faster, allowing you to go though the file in seconds.
dteirney
2009-05-03, 11:22
I might be interested in looking at implementing something like has been suggested in this thread.
With the commercial skip support I am working on, I currently have the Up and Down arrows skipping forwards / backwards to the next / previous commercial marker (scene markers are used at the beginning and end of commercials).
This is so I can easily get back to the start of a commercial break using the Down arrow if the commercial was automatically skipped yet incorrectly marked by MythTV. Works similar in the other direction - if MythTV didn't mark the start of a commercial break early enough I can skip forward to the end of the next commercial break using the Up arrow.
This behaviour doesn't work if you do need to do a big skip for some reason. Still not sure if this is how it will stay, but a solution where the Left and Right arrows are used for standard seeking forwards or backwards with consistent behaviour would be good. Then Up and Down could perhaps be used for the less consistent jumping to marked parts in the video (similar to how dvdplayer works with videos that have Chapters).
I agree that for the changing seek duration approach it would need to have the current skip time period displayed each time (e.g. 5s, 10s, 20s, 40s). Although the information pane is displayed and shows the time in the video when the skip buttons are pressed, knowing the amount of time it's skipping would be really useful. I don't think people would learn very quickly how it behaves if all they are shown is the time in the video that it's skipping to (e.g. 1:20:13). I'm pretty sure that would need some more major changes than just the backend seek behaviour.
I Think the biggest difficulty with this feature is displaying the amount of time we will jump, because it is linked to the skinning engine, and thus skins ... if there is new data to display, then existing skins need to be updated ...
Oops, I Forgot to tell you a big Thank you for being the first to consider seriously this feature.
darkdays
2009-06-09, 20:38
I'll take my place in the choir when it comes to the benefits of MPs way of handling skipping/seeking. Have been using both XBMC and MP extensively, XBMC since it's birth and MP for 3 years. Why MP? I wanted something like XBMC on my Windows computer, after a roomie and his xbox moved out, earlier than there was a XBMC for Windows. Now I made the switch to XBMC in my setup a couple of days ago, being nicer looking and a generally superior alternative for my usage.
A few things bother me, most of them I will probably work out as I delve deeper, but I always found skipping/seeking in XBMC a mess and nicer in MP.
Wasting 5 buttons (or even 7 if . and , don't do the same thing as right and left, haven't figured that one out yet.) for a simple thing as moving forward/backward along a time line is to me wrong and completely unnecessary. Too many buttons on the remote is why most people never figured out the complete functionality of their VCR back in the days. I use my cellphone as a remote control via bluetooth and cellphones don't come with too many buttons so it's extra important to me. (O.T: Using your cellphone as a remote is ridiculously handy and has this Star Trek-cool that makes everyone that sees it go 'oooooh!'. Remote Control via Bluetooth is a very good reason for MC-junkies of any sort to buy SonyEricsson-phones.)
XBMC: Wanna go directly to that funny line at say 54:54? Oh, that would be 5 clicks on up , 9 on right and then wait for 24 seconds, unless you go to 55:00 and use a third button to jump a small step (or two?) backwards. Intuitive? Hardly. Usable? Nah.
MP: One button will take you there, with visual feedback homing you in to within a couple of seconds. The amount of button clicking is about the same or slightly higher but no need to use more than one button, and the visual feedback is showing you what's going on and you can even correct before each jump if you accidentally overshoot.
If the five buttons would provide a superior skip/seek-feature it might be motivated, but as it is this is probably one of the few things MP does a lot better than XBMC in my opinion. Sure it might take a minute or two getting the hang of it, but after that MPs approach is working soo smooth that you're instantly annoyed whenever you need to seek on XBMC.
I'm not saying the MP-way of handling it is in any way perfect, the same strategy could probably be done in a nicer fashion, but it's still better, simpler (as in less buttons, less need to look up what button does what) and more intuitive (as in visual feedback and "wanna move to the left on the timeline? -press the left button.")
As to the skin issue this could be introduced in a release that introduces more features that are also requiring skin updates, so that nobody needs to update anything that wouldn't already need to be updated.
Anything requiring keeping a button pressed I think could prove to render things unusable for some people as remote controls, controllers, keyboards, cellphones, etc. can handle keeping buttons pressed in different ways. I know my phone tends to stack it up so that if I keep a button pressed for 3 secs the computer would be going for 10. Also it's easier to click a button a specific number of times than holding it pressed for a specific amount of time. It also takes less time to press a button five times than holding a button down for 2.5 secs, depending on the agility of your thumbs. If you want to do 3 different jumps (one big, one medium and one small) you could be looking at a total of 8 seconds of button pressing, which at least I would find annoying and harder to control on my cellphone with it's tiny and slippery buttons.
It seems, at least in this thread, people with experience of both programs at large favor the MP way of handling it. That should be a hint that it might actually be the better alternative at this one tiny but highly used area. I think XBMC would benefit from adopting this strategy and make an even better and nicer implementation.
Could it be so that the people that don't like the MP way never figured out the possibility to configure the jump steps to be more fine / coarse to your taste in the setup? I know I changed mine kind of arbitarily at install and have been very pleased with the way it worked out.
jmarshall
2009-06-10, 01:39
Just type in 5454 using the remote's numbers :p
A patch for this sort of thing is most welcome, or at least a _DETAILED_ description of exactly how it works, step by step, that allows reproduction of the behaviour.
OK jm,
Since I am not able to code this, I will try to describe clearly what we would like.
Firstly, if anyone is interrested in this subject, I invite him/her to setup Mediaportal and see how jumps works.
in this post, i will call the described feature "Incremental Jumps"
Now, here is my own description :
I will start by describing what should happen from the end user experience, then I will try to propose some more technical way to achieve this.
From the end user :
Basics :
A video file is playing in fullscreen
When the user press right one time, it does a 10s jump ahead
When the user press right two times, it does a 30s jump ahead
When the user press right three times, it does a 60s jump ahead
When the user press right four times, it does a 3min jump ahead
When the user press right five times, it does a 10min jump ahead
When the user press right six times, it does a 30min jump ahead
When the user press right seven times, it does a 1h jump ahead
Of course, the length of the jumps (steps) can be personnalied by the user (more on this later). Same thing for the time while XBMC waits for another keypress.
More details :
when he press the right button while playing a video in fullscreen, the OSD will appear and will display the timeline with a mark (a vertical line for exemple) at the current playing time so the user knows where he is in the video. Also, the progress bar of the timeline will grow to show the position to which the player will jump when it will (the vertical line stays at the current position). The growing part of the progressbar might get another color. Also, an info box will pop somewhere on the screen (top right for exemple). This infobox displays the length of the currently selected jump, and the position where the player will jump in the time line (+10s 01:10:27 for exemple).
Now XBMC wait a certain amount of time, let's say 1000 ms. If at the end of these 1000ms nothing happened, the player jumps 10s ahead, the info box immediately deseapears, the timeline is updated and deseapear a few seconds later.
If before the end of the 1000ms, the user press right a second time, then the growing part of the timiline, and the values displayed in the infobox are updated (+30s 01:10:47)
Now, if the user press left before the 1000ms countdown, he is back to the +10s. Left Again = -10s.
Ok that's clear enougth ?
The settings :
I don't know if there should be some settings related to this in the ui or if it should be in the advancedsettings.xml, but the user should be able to choose the jumps he wants and the time he will wait before the player really jumps.
This behaviour is usefull to navigate into a timeline, but it might also be usefull to browse long lists. The shoutcast genres for exemple. press channeldown one time to jump to the fifth item in the list, two times to jump to the tenth, 3 times to jump to the next letter (!), and so ...
Now, to implement this, I can see several ways :
1 - Code a new "keymapable" action : IncrementalJump available while in fs video.
2 - Copy paste the code that makes sms like text input possible. It's nearly the same thing (at least, that's my feeling)
3 - more ambitious : extend the keymap.xml syntax to enable this :
Now, we have StepForward and BigStepForward (and backward of course).
a - So let's add StepForwardX wher x is the number of seconds. X is not a fixed value, users can replace X by whatever they want. exemple : SepForward3600
b - extend the button syntax. Exemple :
<left length="1000">StepForward10, StepForward30, StepForward60, StepForward180,StepForward600,StepForward1800,Step Forward3600</left>
This third solution would enable to use this in long lists if corresponding Actions are created.
I hope I have been clear enough. If a dev wants to code this, he will be the hero of probably all the users that have used MP one day ... and let's hope, all the others !
Just wanted to add to this discussion as then I would say it's alot more usefull.
if Chapter X is on 0h 0m 20s
Press once will do jump 10s
Press twice will do jump to Chapter X (saying this in the notification)
press thrice jump 30s
This would make commercial skips and such work nicer with TV integration.
Cheers,
Tobias
Just wanted to add to this discussion as then I would say it's alot more usefull.
if Chapter X is on 0h 0m 20s
Press once will do jump 10s
Press twice will do jump to Chapter X (saying this in the notification)
press thrice jump 30s
This would make commercial skips and such work nicer with TV integration.
Cheers,
Tobias
something like this :
<left length="1000">StepForward10, NextChapter, StepForward30, StepForward60, StepForward180,StepForward600,StepForward1800,Step Forward3600</left>
This would be really great, I think that extending the keymap.xml this way would bring awesome possibilities !
something like this :
<left length="1000">StepForward10, NextChapter, StepForward30, StepForward60, StepForward180,StepForward600,StepForward1800,Step Forward3600</left>
This would be really great, I think that extending the keymap.xml this way would bring awesome possibilities !
Nah, I meant Skip to chapter if it is between 2 skips.
Say chapter FOO is at 0h 0m 20s it will do as you said.
But If chapter BAR is at 0h 1m 20s it would be
One press: Step 10s
Two presses: Step 30s
Three presses: Step 1m
Four presses: Step to Chapter BAR
Five presses: Step 3m
Both examples we are at 0h 0m 0s when we press.
dteirney
2009-06-13, 08:53
I'm going to have a crack at implementing something like what has been suggested here.
Round 1 will just be so I can see how well this sort of model works. Won't be any feedback other than what XBMC and the various skins present right now. If the skip button is pressed again within 1s of the previous skip it will jump to the next larger time:
* 10s
* 30s
* 1min
* 3min
* 10min
* 30min
* 1h
* 2h
* 3h
I'll probably try some other heuristic models, like if skip is not done within 1 second but within say 2.5s it jumps forward by the previous step amount. For example, if up to 1h, wait 2s then press again and it jumps forward by another 30mins. Will likely have to play with timings as well. Some video containers are slower to seek than others, e.g. mpegts can be horribly slow.
Seeking backwards after going forwards, if you overshoot, will likely need to consider what the previous seek forward amount was. Oi, I can already feel this becoming tricky!
Just type in 5454 using the remote's numbers :p
A patch for this sort of thing is most welcome, or at least a _DETAILED_ description of exactly how it works, step by step, that allows reproduction of the behaviour.
I got an MS Remote, and the remote's number works as letters when I want to search....but when Im watching a movie and press the numbers nothing happens. OR, when I press number 2 I think, the volyme is changing.
Do I have do something to be able to use this skipping method?
/Söder
jmarshall
2009-06-13, 11:22
You have to map the keys, via Keymap.xml
You have to map the keys, via Keymap.xml
But shouldnt that been done by default? I got an standard MS Remote...the one the most people have..?
/Söder
jmarshall
2009-06-14, 07:02
Sure, better defaults are always welcome. The vast majority of developers do not have the a MS remote, so we can't always know the best mapping for a particular scenario.
Come up with a better keymap and we'll gladly make it the defaults :)
Cheers,
Jonathan
Sure, better defaults are always welcome. The vast majority of developers do not have the a MS remote, so we can't always know the best mapping for a particular scenario.
Come up with a better keymap and we'll gladly make it the defaults :)
Cheers,
Jonathan
Well, I have now edited my keys, so that when I press 1 on the remote, the number is displayed. When I press the 4th number, it just disappear and nothing happens.
How is this done?
/Söder
leading zero. 0143 jump to one hour 43 mins
leading zero. 0143 jump to one hour 43 mins
Ah! So it's not that I enter what time I want to skip to? Like 0143 to jump to 01:43 in to the movie?
/Söder
Ah! So it's not that I enter what time I want to skip to? Like 0143 to jump to 01:43 in to the movie?
/Söder
Yes it was. Only it was hh:mm, not mm:ss as I thought. I had only tried on a tv show, and 0134 was more than the lenght of the show.
Thanks.
/Söder
I would like to place another vote for the MP style skipping.
Also - learning that I can jump to a specific HH:MM has proved to be very useful.
I'm going to have a crack at implementing something like what has been suggested here.
Did you or anyone have any time to look at this? I am so hoping that it will be implemented... If only I could code...
What about a button that will display a slider on OSD that can be moved forward/backward with remote and when press OK skip to that position?
I know one can use numbers on keypad but this is more 'visual'
dteirney
2009-10-14, 09:04
Did you or anyone have any time to look at this? I am so hoping that it will be implemented... If only I could code...
Unfortunately no. Spent most of my spare time available to XBMC getting the MythTV content integrated better within XBMC - commercial skip took a while. I think I know how I can implement though based on that experience. Once my bug allocation for the upcoming release is sorted and the release has been done I will be looking at this.