[fixed] General considerations about playlists and media browsing (1 Viewer)

[Smeulf]

Hi all, Hi Albert,

First, bugs or not completed fonctions :

- When adding videos from a search using "Add all to playlist button", the titles are played randomly, not in the alphabetical order. I didn't found an option to change that.

- Coul'd not save the current playlist

Now, for general considerations/questions about playlists :

- Do you plan to save playlists into M3U files like in MP"1" ?

- Do you plan to add a function to resume a playlist ? It could be nice to have a complete saison of a TV show, or an audio album in a resumeable playlist for me.

And finally media browsing :

Is there a way to browse the media like in MP1 ? I mean, by folders ?
Cause now, finding the good movie or the good song seems more difficuls for me. And I'm not the only one who like this function. It's one of the reason we choose MP with some friends. Can you consider to add this (if possible of course) ?

for reading and for you answers.

 

[Albert]

AW: General considerations about playlists and media browsing

Hi Smeulf,
I'll answer your other questions and fix the bugs soon. One answer in advance: We don't store MediaPortal 2 playlists in M3U format for the usage in MP2. The reason is, we have a variable requirement for metadata to store. So we use an own format which only contains identifiers for the playlist contents. All metadata is located in the media library and is dynamically reloaded when a playlist is loaded.

But there might be a plugin which exports an existing playlist in the m3u format.

 

[Smeulf]

Albert,

Did found how to save a video playlist : by pressing Escape Key while reading. If I stop the video as I did before, current playlist seems to be set to blank. I think is't wanted, and then no bug

Found others things :

- by cliking too fast and too much time on the next button in a playlist (video, not tested in audio), the client becomes frozen.
- 2 playlist can have the same name (maybe a wanted function, but maybe a warning coul'd help ?)
- in text boxes (like search), there no " | " to see where I'm typing. If I use arrows, I'm not always sure where I will type. Am I clear enough ?
- when using keyboard in search field, if I don't type fast enough, sometime chars are dropped cause search is already in progress

Last for today : do you maintain a "todo list" and a "bug list" aviable for everyone ? If yes, I coul'd take a look before posting, then I would not report already known bugs Already had a look at "Mantis", but there are a few issues assigned to MP2.

Sorry to be so poor C# developper, I woul'd try to correct bugs, but you're definitely to good for me, and I can't help other way than sending bugs...

Please let me know if you want me to stop and wait for an Alpha. I would not take it badely

 

[Albert]

AW: Re: General considerations about playlists and media browsing

Hi all, Hi Albert,
- When adding videos from a search using "Add all to playlist button", the titles are played randomly, not in the alphabetical order. I didn't found an option to change that.

That's ok as the titles are added in the sequence they are found on disk. I think we'll add some sorting functions later.

- Do you plan to add a function to resume a playlist ? It could be nice to have a complete saison of a TV show, or an audio album in a resumeable playlist for me.

Yes that's true. Such a function will also be added later.

Is there a way to browse the media like in MP1 ? I mean, by folders ?

Yes, there is a way to browse local folders. That function is currently only available when the server is not connected; it's a fallback to the media library browsing. But I think I'll make it configurable that the function can be shown even if the server is connected.

Did found how to save a video playlist : by pressing Escape Key while reading. If I stop the video as I did before, current playlist seems to be set to blank. I think is't wanted, and then no bug

Well, you don't need to press escape while the media is being added to playlist. If you press escape, you stop the process of adding media so not all media is added.
The correct way is not to stop the video but to simply leave the fullscreen video screen by pressing escape when you're in the video fullscreen screen.
Later, it will also be able to click on the navbar and to press the back key (<-) on the remote control.

- by cliking too fast and too much time on the next button in a playlist (video, not tested in audio), the client becomes frozen.

We'll have to check that.

- 2 playlist can have the same name (maybe a wanted function, but maybe a warning coul'd help ?)

Yes, that should be prevented.

- in text boxes (like search), there no " | " to see where I'm typing. If I use arrows, I'm not always sure where I will type. Am I clear enough ?

Yes, there is no visible text cursor in text boxes. That function has not been implemented yet but will be added. (Baboonanza? )

- when using keyboard in search field, if I don't type fast enough, sometime chars are dropped cause search is already in progress

What do you mean by "chars are dropped"? Are typed chars really lost while the search is being processed? I cannot confirm that, here there are no chars lost while typing in the search text box.

Last for today : do you maintain a "todo list" and a "bug list" aviable for everyone ? If yes, I coul'd take a look before posting, then I would not report already known bugs Already had a look at "Mantis", but there are a few issues assigned to MP2.

Not really. We'll have a complete public bug list when we have an alpha version released. At the moment, the state is not stable enough to maintain such a list. I have such a todo/bug list on my desktop but that is not visible for the public

So when you see real bugs, you can write them down here. A list of missing functions is also welcome, if you don't expect me to comment each function. But it helps me to see that those functions are requested.

Cheers,
Albert

 

[Smeulf]

@revision 3293 / chars dropped :

I tried multiple times :

SG1-S04 -> displayed SG1-04 ; "S" was missing

SG1-S04 -> displayed SG1-4 ; 0 missing, in fact, the 0 appears, disapears, and is replaced by the 4... Pretty strange.

I've about 200 files names SG1-xxx, and I typed pretty fast. It really seams the search begins and is not completed before I type a letter, so the letter is dropped.

No problem if I type solwly. Didn't used the virtual keyboard, but my physical one.

And, yes, I'm sure I typed all the letters

Thanks for all you answers/comments. Of course I don't expect you to write a novel on every post. I'll focus for the moment to majors bugs, and keep the small things for later if they still exists.

 

[burr]

@revision 3293 / chars dropped :

I tried multiple times :

SG1-S04 -> displayed SG1-04 ; "S" was missing

SG1-S04 -> displayed SG1-4 ; 0 missing, in fact, the 0 appears, disapears, and is replaced by the 4... Pretty strange.

I've about 200 files names SG1-xxx, and I typed pretty fast. It really seams the search begins and is not completed before I type a letter, so the letter is dropped.

No problem if I type solwly. Didn't used the virtual keyboard, but my physical one.

And, yes, I'm sure I typed all the letters

Thanks for all you answers/comments. Of course I don't expect you to write a novel on every post. I'll focus for the moment to majors bugs, and keep the small things for later if they still exists.

If the input takes longer than 1 second i think or what the timeout is the busycursor will show and the input queue will be deleted so this is probably what happens.
So when you type a char and the search takes to long time the next char will be dropped and no new chars will be accepted before the searh is finished.

Correct me if i'm wrong Albert.

 

[Albert]

AW: Re: General considerations about playlists and media browsing

If the input takes longer than 1 second i think or what the timeout is the busycursor will show and the input queue will be deleted so this is probably what happens.
So when you type a char and the search takes to long time the next char will be dropped and no new chars will be accepted before the searh is finished.

Correct me if i'm wrong Albert.

You're right about the input management; IF there is a blocking action running, the busycursor will show up after some timeout and from that time, all input (mouse + keyboard events) is discarded.
But in the case of the search screen, at least the search is no blocking action; it is executed asynchronously. When the search result returns, the update of the result list could block, I'm not sure at the moment. So if a computer is slow enough that the building of the result list lasts longer than the input queue timeout, that could cause a similar behaviour. But Smeulf said that the missing char appeared and then disappeared. So the char WAS handled and thus not discarded by the input manager.

I'll check that strange behaviour at the weekend. It sounds like a multithreading issue.

 

[Albert]

AW: General considerations about playlists and media browsing

Smeulf, I cannot reproduce that behaviour. Can you help me debugging it? Do that:

In AbstractSearchScreenData line 100, add those lines

      ServiceRegistration.Get<ILogger>().Debug("------- SearchText: {0}", SimpleSearchText);
      ServiceRegistration.Get<ILogger>().Debug(Environment.StackTrace);
      ServiceRegistration.Get<ILogger>().Debug("----------");

You'll have to add those usings:

using System;
using MediaPortal.Core;
using MediaPortal.Core.Logging;

Then, try to reproduce the strange behaviour and give me the log output where I can see that first, a char was present and after that, the char is left.

Thanks!

 

[Smeulf]

Hi Albert,

Please find attachment "log.zip". With the entire log, I extracted 2 parts (log1 and log2).
Log1 correspond to a search of "sg1-s04" where the second "s" is simply dropped.
Log 2 correspond to search of "sg1-s04", where the second "s" was dropped, and the "0" appears, deseaperas, end is replaced by the 4.

I had an idea of the problem : does the search field could be set to the "last search" value at the end of a search ? Could that explain the problem ?

I't my pleasure to help.

Greetings.

 

[Albert]

AW: Re: General considerations about playlists and media browsing

...

Hi Smeulf,
thanks for the logs.
I thought the problem is something different, but the logs showed me that it's not what I tought.
It seems that the problem causing that behaviour is deep in the SkinEngine. It has to do with value propagation via bindings in multiple threads.
There would be some quick 'n dirty solutions to solve the problem in your case, but I want to fix it properly. It will take some time to fix that. I'll open a mantis issue for it because I'm currently working at another area.

Thanks for the bug report and for your effort!