Skin engine enhancements (themes, guide colors, skin functions, weather settings...) (1 Viewer)

[ajp8164]

Re: Skin engine enhancements (themes, guide colors, skin functions, weather settings.

Edit: I can't test with the defaultwide skin based on this install, because the settings options are not there, and the TV guide does not open correctly. Screenshot attached. Same applies for default (non-wide).

This was due to a bug loading skin settings for the TV guide. I posted a new build that should correct this problem (2012-01-07).

 

[larsbln]

Re: Skin engine enhancements (themes, guide colors, skin functions, weather settings.

I'm confused .. ATM I test the VC1 rework of Sebastiii but I would also like to see a genre colored epg

 

[ajp8164]

Re: Skin engine enhancements (themes, guide colors, skin functions, weather settings.

Can we use wildcards in genres matching? It will sure simplify configuration.

Not at the moment, good suggestion for an enhancement though. Generally, we need a genre map and genre color editor for the Configuration tool.

Thank for testing!

 

[ajp8164]

Re: Skin engine enhancements (themes, guide colors, skin functions, weather settings.

I'm confused .. ATM I test the VC1 rework of Sebastiii but I would also like to see a genre colored epg

Really?! I'm confused too. Unless he is merging in my branch for some reason(?) Post a screenshot if you can..

 

[ajp8164]

Re: Skin engine enhancements (themes, guide colors, skin functions, weather settings.

I don't see any coloring in the EPG (see screenshot). This could be down to the way EPG genres are handled in the UK (freeview). For example, genres are shown as 'sports (general)', 'movie/drama (general)', etc.

Is 'general' over-riding everthing else?

You'll need to edit your genre map (see below) to match the genres your guide service identifies (mine are from schedules direct). The "entry name" is of your choosing (arbitrary) but must match the genre-color map (see below). The csv in the genre map is made up of actual names coming from your guide service. I believe the match is a "contains" match -- there is no wildcard or other type of match at the moment.

  <section name="genremap">
    <entry name="genrenames">Documentary,Kids,Movie,Music,News,Other,Special,Sports</entry>
    <entry name="specifympaaratedasmovie">yes</entry>
    <entry name="Documentary">Docudrama,Documentary</entry>
    <entry name="Kids">Children,Children-music,Children-special</entry>
    <entry name="Movie">
    </entry>
    <entry name="Music">Music,Music special</entry>
    <entry name="News">Bus./financial,News,Newsmagazine</entry>
    <entry name="Other">Action,Drama,Horror,Musical,Musical comedy,Mystery,Romance-comedy,Western,Adults only,Adventure,Agriculture,Animals,Animated,Anime,Anthology,Art,Arts/crafts,Auction,Auto,Aviation,Biography,Card games,Collectibles,Comedy,Comedy-drama,Community,Computers,Consumer,Cooking,Crime,Crime drama,Dance,Debate,Educational,Entertainment,Environment,Fantasy,Fashion,Fundraiser,Game show,Gaming,Gay/lesbian,Health,Historical drama,History,Holiday,Home improvement,House/garden,How-to,Hunting,Interview,Law,Medical,Military,Mixed martial arts,Motorcycle,Nature,Outdoors,Paranormal,Parenting,Politics,Public affairs,Reality,Religious,Rodeo,Romance,Science,Science fiction,Self improvement,Shopping,Sitcom,Soap,Soap talk,Spanish,Special,Sports talk,Standup,Suspense,Technology,Travel,Variety,War,Weather</entry>
    <entry name="Special">Miniseries,Music talk,Talk</entry>
    <entry name="Sports">Action sports,Aerobics,Archery,Auto racing,Baseball,Basketball,Boxing,Equestrian,Exercise,Fishing,Football,Golf,Gymnastics,Hockey,Martial arts,Motorcycle racing,Motorsports,Pro wrestling,Shooting,Skateboarding,Skiing,Snowboarding,Soccer,Sports event,Sports non-event,Surfing,Tennis,Wrestling</entry>
  </section>

These are the colors (normally in SkinSettings.xml but may be in MediaPortal.xml, SkinSettings.xml is looked at first). The "entry name" must match the names in the genre map (above).

  <section name="tvguidecolors">
    <entry name="guidecolorchannelbutton">ff0e517b</entry>
    <entry name="guidecolorchannelbuttonselected">Green</entry>
    <entry name="guidecolorgroupbutton">ff0e517b</entry>
    <entry name="guidecolorgroupbuttonselected">Green</entry>
    <entry name="guidecolorprogramselected">Green</entry>
    <entry name="guidecolorprogramended">Gray</entry>
    <entry name="guidecolorborderhighlight">99ffffff</entry>
    <entry name="defaultgenre">ff1d355b,ff1d355b</entry>
    <entry name="Documentary">Chocolate,Chocolate</entry>
    <entry name="Kids">Aqua,Aqua</entry>
    <entry name="Movie">Purple,Purple</entry>
    <entry name="Music">Maroon,Maroon</entry>
    <entry name="News">LightGreen,LightGreen</entry>
    <entry name="Other">ff1d355b,ff1d355b</entry>
    <entry name="Special">Gold,Gold</entry>
    <entry name="Sports">DarkGreen,DarkGreen</entry>
  </section>

Also, the button to switch channel groups does not seem to be activated in Avalon (I am using your modified skin files of course). Actually it works, but there is no visible indication until the menu appears.

There is a problem in the Avalon 1.0.0.0 (base) skin. I'll fix and upload a new one.

Thanks for testing!!

 

[elliottmc]

Re: Skin engine enhancements (themes, guide colors, skin functions, weather settings.

Hi,

With this in MediaPortal.xml

  <section name="genremap">
    <entry name="genrenames">Documentary,Kids,Movie,Music,News,Other,Special,Sports</entry>
    <entry name="specifympaaratedasmovie">yes</entry>
    <entry name="Documentary">Docudrama,Documentary</entry>
    <entry name="Kids">Children,Children-music,Children-special</entry>
    <entry name="Movie">movie/drama (general)</entry>
    <entry name="Music">Music,Music special</entry>
    <entry name="News">news/current affairs (general)</entry>
    <entry name="Other">show/game show (general)</entry>
    <entry name="Special">Miniseries,Music talk,Talk</entry>
    <entry name="Sports">sports (general)</entry>
  </section>
  <section name="tvguidecolors">
    <entry name="guidecolorchannelbutton">ff0e517b</entry>
    <entry name="guidecolorchannelbuttonselected">Green</entry>
    <entry name="guidecolorprogramselected">Green</entry>
    <entry name="guidecolorprogramended">Gray</entry>
    <entry name="guidecolorborderhighlight">99ffffff</entry>
    <entry name="defaultgenre">ff1d355b,ff0e517b</entry>
    <entry name="Kids">Aqua,Aqua</entry>
    <entry name="Movie">Purple,Purple</entry>
    <entry name="Music">Maroon,Maroon</entry>
    <entry name="News">LightGreen,LightGreen</entry>
    <entry name="Other">ff1d355b,ff0e517b</entry>
    <entry name="Documentary">Gold,Gold</entry>
    <entry name="Sports">DarkGreen,DarkGreen</entry>
  </section>

it is starting to work, but it seems very hard to set up. We will need genre wording from all regions/epg to get this working, or am I missing something?

Don't get me wrong, I think it is a great addition, but we should not (as users) have to edit the genres in the xml file to get this to work well. Is there a better way?

Oh, and I'm not sure where the tvguidecolors section came from. I didn't add it.

Mark

 

[ajp8164]

Re: Skin engine enhancements (themes, guide colors, skin functions, weather settings.

Hi,

With this in MediaPortal.xml

  <section name="genremap">
    <entry name="genrenames">Documentary,Kids,Movie,Music,News,Other,Special,Sports</entry>
    <entry name="specifympaaratedasmovie">yes</entry>
    <entry name="Documentary">Docudrama,Documentary</entry>
    <entry name="Kids">Children,Children-music,Children-special</entry>
    <entry name="Movie">movie/drama (general)</entry>
    <entry name="Music">Music,Music special</entry>
    <entry name="News">news/current affairs (general)</entry>
    <entry name="Other">show/game show (general)</entry>
    <entry name="Special">Miniseries,Music talk,Talk</entry>
    <entry name="Sports">sports (general)</entry>
  </section>
  <section name="tvguidecolors">
    <entry name="guidecolorchannelbutton">ff0e517b</entry>
    <entry name="guidecolorchannelbuttonselected">Green</entry>
    <entry name="guidecolorprogramselected">Green</entry>
    <entry name="guidecolorprogramended">Gray</entry>
    <entry name="guidecolorborderhighlight">99ffffff</entry>
    <entry name="defaultgenre">ff1d355b,ff0e517b</entry>
    <entry name="Kids">Aqua,Aqua</entry>
    <entry name="Movie">Purple,Purple</entry>
    <entry name="Music">Maroon,Maroon</entry>
    <entry name="News">LightGreen,LightGreen</entry>
    <entry name="Other">ff1d355b,ff0e517b</entry>
    <entry name="Documentary">Gold,Gold</entry>
    <entry name="Sports">DarkGreen,DarkGreen</entry>
  </section>

it is starting to work, but it seems very hard to set up. We will need genre wording from all regions/epg to get this working, or am I missing something?

Don't get me wrong, I think it is a great addition, but we should not (as users) have to edit the genres in the xml file to get this to work well. Is there a better way?

Sounds like your trying to setup the Default skin with genre colors? I haven't done that. Have you tried the Avalon test skin I posted?

I agree that setup is essentially non-existent. I'll create a addition to the Configuration tool to configure the genre map and colors but I don't know if that will be received as a new feature or simply addressing the "bug" that it doesn't exist yet - what do you think? If I can code the changes to the Configuration tool and deliver them to the FEAT-3779 branch that would be easiest for everyone, including me.

Btw: the config tool would be transparent to the EPG grab source since I'd be looking up genres from the tv database (don't care how they got there)..

Oh, and I'm not sure where the tvguidecolors section came from. I didn't add it.

It must have gotten there somehow - it's in MediaPortal.xml right? Anyway, after thinking about it for a bit, I think you've identified a general bug with skin settings (nice going ;-) When the user loads a skin (with skin settings) and then uses the GUI to change skins (perhaps the new skin has it's own skin settings) I never unload the old skins settings. I need to go through this "cleanup" exercise otherwise things can get mixed up. MP never writes the genrecolors though so, I'm not sure what happened there.

 

[elliottmc]

Re: Skin engine enhancements (themes, guide colors, skin functions, weather settings.

I don't see any coloring in the EPG (see screenshot). This could be down to the way EPG genres are handled in the UK (freeview). For example, genres are shown as 'sports (general)', 'movie/drama (general)', etc.

Is 'general' over-riding everthing else?

You'll need to edit your genre map (see below) to match the genres your guide service identifies (mine are from schedules direct). The "entry name" is of your choosing (arbitrary) but must match the genre-color map (see below). The csv in the genre map is made up of actual names coming from your guide service. I believe the match is a "contains" match -- there is no wildcard or other type of match at the moment.

Hi,

Right, I can get rid of the colour definitions from MediaPortal.xml, since as you say they are in skinsettings.xml, so this works fine.

With

<entry name="Movie">movie</entry>

then movies are not showing up with the correct colour.

with

<entry name="Movie">movie/drama (general)</entry>

then they are fine.

In fact with

<entry name="Movie">movie/drama</entry>

then the colouring is not applied, so it seems to require the whole string.

I guess this presents us with a problem, because we will need a database of all possible genre wording used in EPGs to apply colours.

I guess the first thing I would suggest is ensure that it really is a sub-string search so that anything containing 'movie' or 'news' will be flagged up. This should simplify the situation.

If these keywords could be loaded from strings, they could be localised, so that we might get away with one word per genre per language.

Of course I don't know how this is implemented so I don't know how feasible this is. I just feel that if every user has to edit the genre wording based on that used by their EPG provider, then this feature won't see much use, which would be a shame.

I hope this all comes across as constructive, and not negative.

Best wishes,

Mark

 

[elliottmc]

Re: Skin engine enhancements (themes, guide colors, skin functions, weather settings.

Hi,

I also see that for DVB-T freeview in the UK, the genre for kid's programs is

<entry name="Kids">childrens's youth program (general)</entry>

If I add this, then error.log has

2012-01-07 22:55:37.347000 [ERROR][MPMain(1)]: Exception while attempting to read upgrade xml file

Input string was not in a correct format.

and the section is loaded from MediaPortal.xml.bak

Maybe it doesn't like the apostrophe?

Do you need full logs? I don't see much else in MediaPortal.log, apart from

2012-01-07 22:55:37.340000 [Info.][MPMain(1)]: AvalonConfig: Settings.Load(UpdateConfig)
2012-01-07 22:55:37.341000 [Info.][MPMain(1)]: AvalonConfig: Settings.Load(TVSeriesConfig)
2012-01-07 22:55:37.341000 [Info.][MPMain(1)]: AvalonConfig: Settings.Load(MovingPicturesConfig)
2012-01-07 22:55:37.341000 [Info.][MPMain(1)]: AvalonConfig: Settings.Load(TVConfig)
2012-01-07 22:55:37.341000 [Info.][MPMain(1)]: AvalonConfig: Settings.Load(MyFilmsConfig)
2012-01-07 22:55:37.342000 [Info.][MPMain(1)]: AvalonConfig: Settings.Load(MiscConfig)
2012-01-07 22:55:37.342000 [Info.][MPMain(1)]: AvalonConfig: Settings.Load(VideoConfig)
2012-01-07 22:55:37.347000 [Info.][MPMain(1)]: Exception while attempting to read upgrade xml file

Input string was not in a correct format.

Best wishes,

Mark


Mark

 

[ajp8164]

Re: Skin engine enhancements (themes, guide colors, skin functions, weather settings.

Hi Mark,

I think that error message is actually coming from the Avalon plugin. I've seen it too and they have a skin upgrade/download feature. I'll double check though.

As for the genre mapping from your (and any other arbitrary) epg grab source... I obtained the list of genres that are in the test distribution from my tv database (which was populated by schedules direct). The tv database contains all of the genres that are mapped to the programs in your guide. The MP configuration tool I'll create will simply query your tv database for your list of genres; that's part A. Part B could be a "fuzzy" match algorithm that can create a starting point genre map. The genre map is used to map your specific providers epg genre names to a (more or less) standard set of MP genre names (of course best case is end users can create their own MP genre names, which is what I would put into the configuration tool). Then, part C, the MP genre names are used to associate colors. The implementation then uses the genre name associated with the program (coming directly from the tv database) and does a lookup to find the MP genre it is mapped to, then the MP genre is used to index the color and viola, a colored program entry!

With this implementation the program (epg) genre to MP genre lookup queries for an exact match of the program genre in the genre map. It's an exact match of whatever appears between commas in the setting file entry. This is why you have to enter all of the text of the genre (including the "(general)" part). I'll take a look at the apostrophe thing.

The basic idea behind all of this is that the tv database lists lots and lots of genres, too many. If you tried to put a color with every genre you'd run out of colors and the guide coloring would be useless. My research suggests that no more than 5-7 genre colors should be in the guide.

In a configuration tool that I create all of this can be made to disappear (at least that's what I expect).