View Full Version : FF/RW 'skip-time' adjustment from GUI or XML
jeffscott72
2004-01-16, 22:34
it would be nice to be able to change the values of the step forward/backard/up/down values from the xml file. a 30 second skip would be great for vidoes that have commercials. a 7 or 8 second instant replay comes in handy too.
gmackenz
2004-01-18, 11:30
i can't believe that this feature wasn't designed to be user configurable in the first place.
i'd set it to 30 seconds forward (so 3 clicks of the remote can get me past all the opening credits/music of almost all anime shows) and 10 seconds back.
----
more so, the lack of ff and r playback seems really painful when watching a movie. the ff and r should be like tivo or replay functionality, where you can toggle ever faster speed of ff or r. the implimentation of xbmp was really poor for reverse, as it would go much faster than the default initial ff speed.
can one skip to a specific time in xbmc? i'd sure like to be able to jump to a specific minute:second.
LEECH666
2004-02-09, 20:26
*bump* :d
i also think costomisable skip-values would be a very cool feature.
it would also make ff & rwd obsolete in my case.
i use skipping all the time in zoomplayer.
leech666
LEECH666
2004-02-10, 23:01
*bump* *http://www.xboxmediaplayer.de/forums/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif
is there a problem understanding this request ?
we ask for a feature to costomise the amount of time that is skipped by using these actions.
snip --- from keymap.xml
----------------------------
* *<action>
* * *<description>step forward</description>
* * *<id>20</id>
* * *<gamepad>dpadright</gamepad>
* * *<remote>right</remote>
* *</action>
* *<action>
* * *<description>step backward</description>
* * *<id>21</id>
* * *<gamepad>dpadleft</gamepad>
* * *<remote>left</remote>
* *</action>
* *<action>
* * *<description>big step forward</description>
* * *<id>22</id>
* * *<gamepad>dpadup</gamepad>
* * *<remote>up</remote>
* *</action>
* *<action>
* * *<description>big step backward</description>
* * *<id>23</id>
* * *<gamepad>dpaddown</gamepad>
* * *<remote>down</remote>
* *</action>
----------------------------
add something like :
<skiptime>20</skiptime>
for each of the step actions.
where the unit of the value is given in seconds.
so this example would skip 20 seconds forward if dpadup or remote up is pressed :
* *<action>
* * *<description>big step forward</description>
* * *<id>22</id>
* * *<gamepad>dpadup</gamepad>
* * *<remote>up</remote>
** *<skiptime>20</skiptime>
* *</action>
i think this could be done :)
leech666
LEECH666
2004-02-11, 22:43
no one likes me ... come on admins & developers , gimme a reply :)
leech666
mvoosten
2004-02-12, 00:40
they won't if you keep bumping the message up.. give people time to overthink the idea and give a smart and well thought answer ???
LEECH666
2004-02-12, 01:53
yeah i guess you're right.
the topic isn't too catchy for the eyes. but i didn't want to suggest a feature that allready has been suggested.
leech666
LEECH666
2004-03-09, 20:15
sorry for bumping it up again.
but noone seems to look on older topics.
it really would supersede ffw an rwd funktion , if you ask me.
leech666
with the latest official build it looks like when you press the left analog controller it ff and rw 1 minute and 5 seconds. is there any way to reduce that to 30 seconds or even 7 seconds? i'd rather press it more times to get past commercials than press it less and have to sit through 1 minute of commercials. currently, the seek forward and back on the trigger buttons doesn't work that well and i prefer to use the skip on the analog direction pad.
i think this has been discussed in the past and i think the only resolution was to rebuild xmbc youself. are there any other options b/c i know i'm not capable(or have the time) of building it myself.
ok. i was wondering why for some shows i record it seems that it skips more than on other shows. is it possible to set the skip base don a fixed time rather than a percent? the problem w/a percent is that it's different for everything i record. different sized recordings give me different skip times. if there was a 30 second fixed skip and i'm watching a tv show w/commercials and most commercials are 30 seconds or 60 seconds it's easy to skip through quickly and know by pressing right 4 times i skip past 2 minutes of commercials.
in a movie this isn't as important but when watching recorded tv shows it becomes an issue. since the seek rewind has a bug that possibly can't be fixed then you are forced to skip ahead and watch the last minute or so of commercials to make sure you don't miss the show coming out of commercials.
jmarshall
2004-04-30, 09:07
this may be possible using mplayer_seektime() and mplayer_gettime() instead of mplayer_setpercentage() or mplayer_seek().
not sure how accurate mplayer is at seeking within different files on a time basis though.
i certainly agree that a time based method is more obvious and certainly more useful as it always responds the same way.
i'll look into this one and see how accurate it is.
this is very easy to fix (if you have the possibility to compile xbmc yourself)
in guiwindowfullscreen.cpp comment out the old case action_steo_back to action_big_step_forward and insert this instead:
case action_step_back:
{
int itime=g_application.m_pplayer->gettime();
if (itime>=4)
{
g_application.m_pplayer->seektime(itime-4);
}
}
break;
case action_step_forward:
{
int itime=g_application.m_pplayer->gettime();
int itotaltime=g_application.m_pplayer->gettotaltime();
if (itime+4<=itotaltime)
{
g_application.m_pplayer->seektime(itime+4);
}
}
break;
case action_big_step_back:
{
int itime=g_application.m_pplayer->gettime();
if (itime>=30)
{
g_application.m_pplayer->seektime(itime-30);
}
}
break;
case action_big_step_forward:
{
int itime=g_application.m_pplayer->gettime();
int itotaltime=g_application.m_pplayer->gettotaltime();
if (itime+30<=itotaltime)
{
g_application.m_pplayer->seektime(itime+30);
}
}
break;
in this case the small jump jumps 4 seconds and the big one 30 seconds.
this code isn't foolproof (i'm not really a programmer), but hey, it works! :d
jmarshall
2004-05-01, 02:32
this will work as long as mplayer has accurate time seeking.
i've found that a lot of the time it does not.
check out the code for action_small_back_step (or the corresponding action - i don't have the code in front of me).
it continually attempts to seek back the required time, as mplayer seems to not have particularly time accurate seeking.
ofcourse, if the above code is shown to work ok, i think this can be implemented.
just wanted to comment real quick and say thanx for listening to my comments and considering them. i think my suggestion was valid and it sounds like you guys think so too. :d
having a fixed skip time that is constant for all video makes life that much more easy b/c you know how much time you are skipping through. now would it be possible for a user to configure in the settings what the skip time is? personally, i would prefer 30 seconds ff/rw as my "big skip" and 7 seconds ff/rw as my small skip. this is a nice way to skip through a movie or commercials and when you get to the point where you should be you can then go back in 7 second increments to get exactly where you want to be.
it was timebased at the very beginning of xbmc's life.
it was later changed to % since that's more useful for the masses.
the only way to have both would be a new setting where the user could choose this themself.
not all video clips are 1hour-2hour+ consider the fact that many watch musicvideos that are 3-5minutes long. how much use is a timebased skip then?
skip was never designed to be accurate (afaik), just a quick way to move around large clips.
i would also vote for a set time based skip however i think this is best solved with a setting where the user could choose both the method of skip (percentage vs time) and the two settings (small and large - percentage or mins/secs depending on setting).
i'm guessing that mplayer's time based seeking may come into question only on certain codecs/filetypes. at least the user could have the option of using time based if it works for their collection.
i wouldn't mind looking into implementing these ideas but personally i still don't have access to the xdk.
gougeAway
2004-05-17, 22:54
just like to say that i'd love to be able to set the exact time (in seconds) for ff/rw too. i use snapstream on my pc, and 30 second skip, 7 second rewind is perfect.
as i know mplayer has recently been updated but exactly *how* mplayer functions is a bit beyond me, i wondered if this very interesting idea might be addressed..?
i'm going to play w/the edits posted and try compiling a version with the 30second forward 7 second back (as that really does seem to be about the best) but wondered if the latest version of mplayer has addressed any of these functionality issues...
sticky
what i would really like to see is an option in the keymap to be able to customize certain button's (like chapter next and chapter prev) in fullscreen video that would skip forward 30 seconds and skip back 10 seconds. i would find that alot easier then what it does now by skipping forward or back 1/36th of the video or whatever it is. can this be done?
so i see that there's the small skip back, which is almost perfect. but is it possible to configure a small skip forward?
hi all,
how many ppl use xbmc to playack recorded tv? i sure do... skipping ads is a major part of playback and i find that the current fwd and back skip is great (better than tape anyway) but a bit of a chore as the skip duration changes with the file size/length (i think it's a set %, maybe 5%).
i would love it if i could configure the duration of fwd and back skip in seconds, even if it was in the .xml file. there is a new feature suggestion in the sourceforge log for this type of function here (http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1026950&group_id=87054&atid=581841). it's been there since sept last year and i wondered if anyone else would be interested in raising the profile of this feature suggestion?
Bruce Ballslap
2005-04-26, 17:38
it was timebased at the very beginning of xbmc's life.
it was later changed to % since that's more useful for the masses.
the only way to have both would be a new setting where the user could choose this themself.
not all video clips are 1hour-2hour+ consider the fact that many watch musicvideos that are 3-5minutes long. how much use is a timebased skip then?
skip was never designed to be accurate (afaik), just a quick way to move around large clips.
where does this thought "masses prefer percentage" come from? is there a study or poll somewhere?
one could assume that "masses" have video clips of varied durations, e.g. from 4 minute britneys to 3 hour lotrs. does the average joe love that he never knows how long a jump xbmc will make? i believe that in contrast joe would love to know that a certain button makes e.g. a 10 second jump and another button makes a 5 minute jump. but that's just me!
it'd be nice. i'd personally have it set to 7 seconds for back, and 30 seconds for ahead -- exactly as my replay does it.
Gamester17
2005-04-27, 11:52
i like to second this request. personaly i would like 'big step' and 'small step' backwards/forward to be 5-minutes and 30-seconds respectivly by default, (and preferable also editable in the gui under advanced settings), *...maybe a compromise could be made/coded so that there are keymap.xml mappable functions for both procentage and time-based skips?, then power-users could map it however they like, (...though by default i think 5-minutes skips should be mapped to skip-/+ to make it more like on a standalone dvd-player, that has been suggested before by myself in this other thread (http://www.xboxmediaplayer.de/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.pl?act=st;f=4;t=3752))
anyone willing to code a patch for this so it can be tested in 'real-life'?
there's no way we're gonna -substitute- % with static time values, so it will have to be an option for user to choose (if someone looks into it)
and skip is used to move forward in a playlist i think, so it's already taken?
hey pike,
fair enough not wanting to replace the existing functionality, be nice if is was configurable, even in the .xml file rather than through the interface. i think the logical keymap would be to retain the existing setup (ie. the green arrows on the remote, not sure what these are mapped to on the xbox controller) if you could map a different value to each arrow, either positive for fwd or negative for back, eg. up=big back(-600secs), down=big fwd(+600secs), right=small fwd(+30secs), left=small back(-10secs), that'd work well i think. anyway easy for me to ask since i'm not a coder (those years are behind me :p ), i appreciate any consideration that this request gets, i think it has real merit and would benefit a lot of ppl.
cheers,
tasty.
if time based jumping is restored, they are immediately configurable. the times are actually stored in mplayers input.conf file. if you open it up, you'll see that they're still there. the small jumps are 60 seconds, and the big jumps are 600 seconds.
so kraqh3d are u saying that time-based skip is already part of the mplayer library? does this mean that implementing an option to switch between time-based and percentage based skipping would be fairly straightforward?
absolutely. i've been playing with time based seeking for the past few days now :)
implementing an option to switch between percentage and time based seeking is very easy. or, alternatively, new actions could be defined which the user could then map via keymap.xml. this would allow the use of both time and percentage based seeking at the same time, assuming the user has enough buttons.
that is awesome news kraqh3d! is it possible that your changes can make their way into a release? i think you're going to make a lot of ppl very happy :bowdown:.
jmarshall
2005-04-30, 12:22
i'd personally favour setting reasonable defaults (eg 30 secs forward for "small skip" and 7 secs backward for small back skip and not have options in the gui - either that or we really have to start thinking about dividing the settings into advanced and normal as there are already too many that overwhelm general users.
we can always make it adjustable to advanced users in settings.xml
cheers,
jonathan
i already said my point, looks like i'll need to repeat myself ;(
what we have now works fine, has for a very long time. if we're going to change it, course of action is simple:
keep current defaults as new defaults
other than that, knock yourself out
@tasty:
i never said i would be committing any changes. there are probably files that cant be seeked using mplayer's native time based seeking ability because they lack timecode information. it's open source so you're free to enable time based seeking in your own build. just dont expect support from these forums.
@pike, jmarshall:
i agree with both of you.
the percentage based seeking should remain the default. a simple boolean option of "use time base seeking" could be added to the settings. i'm not in favour of making the values directly configurable via the gui.
the values could be kept in settings.xml. advanced users can then alter the them by manually editting settings.xml and/or mplayer's input.conf.
i didn't mean to jump the gun. you'll notice that i'm only asking the question, not assuming that it'll be in a release. so there are other issues -
1. the [settings] gui should not be changed - i completely agree, i think kraqh3d's suggestion of a boolean only and the actual time values in settings.xml would be superb.
2. not all files have timecode info, so time-based skips wouldn't work for those files - fair enough, not mush can be done about that.
i know that development work on xbmc is all done by the goodness of a lot of peoples hearts. i'm a member of a silent horde who thanks you guys for all your hard work to give us a product that ms completely failed to see a market for (playing catchup with mce, clowns). i don't have the ability to make my own release sadly, so it's back to the development team if this is going to move forward. if the change is worthy i hope you will consider it for a future build, if not well at least we chatted about it and i appreciate your time. this is the 'feature suggestions' forum after all :) ...
cheers,
tasty.
it's in cvs... see http://manual.xboxmediacenter.de/wakka.php?wakka=changing&v=4s6 for advanced configuration
hey kraqh3d, sounds fantasic. i expect that i need a new xbmc build? i tried just the config change and it didn't work, settings.xml gets overwritten and the new settings removed (even when changed without xbmc running). any particular build date i should look for? or just one with a date > today? :) thanks mate.
tasty.
you need a build thats atleast from today. anonymous cvs lags behind a bit. you wont have those options in your settings.xml until you run a build that supports it. (it'll add them automatically with the default values.)
outstanding, many thanks again for implementing this feature! i can't wait to get a new build, cheers kraqh3d!
:kickass:
tasty.
hey guy. thanks! i started this thread (before it was taken over) a couple months ago and am sooo happy it's been implemented. the only question i have is wether or not you can customize the 'small step backward' as well?
Gamester17
2005-05-10, 09:59
thank you kraqh3d! :bowdown: ...though any chance of changing cvs defaults for time based seeking to 5 minutes for big step and 30 seconds for small step?, please :rolleyes:
hey guys, if you read through the new manual page you'll see that you can change the values to what you want yourself (so does the default need to be changed?) and yes you can change both the big and small steps forwards and backwards (4 settings). i've tested the new version and it works really well.
Gamester17
2005-05-10, 11:45
you can change the values to what you want yourself (so does the default need to be changed?)yes i think the default should be changed a bit, because 5-minutes is about the same as a dvd-video/movie chapter and 30-seconds is about the same as a commersial :saint:
if you want to change the defaults, lets run a poll. *i'd been using 1 and 10 minutes in my own personal builds for a while now, so i just formalized the changes and committed them.
but as tasty said, is this necessary? *it's very easy to change the values. *i made sure the procedure was well documented.
Gamester17
2005-05-10, 17:18
oki, poll posted here (link) (http://www.xboxmediaplayer.de/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.pl?act=st&f=4&t=12767) :saint: