[no Bug] Skip in PiP doesnt work for 2nd Video (1 Viewer)

[Smeulf]

The only point where I think we might loose too much flexibility with Smeulf's concept is this: The focused player not only receives player control commands. It is also the player which provides the data for the "Currently Playing" screen. And it is the player of the playlist which is currently being edited. So in Smeulf's concept, imagine you're watching a football game noiseless and you want to listen to music in the secondary player, which could be a quite common scenario. To add music to the music playlist, you would need to have the music player in fullscreen all the time while you're browsing through your ML. I think that is neither acceptable nor is it what we want to achieve with our player-picture-in-the-background. We WANT the user to be able to always see the player in the background which is most interesting. And in my example scenario, you have two different interests: The visual interest is on the football player while the control focus must be on the audio player...

In my concept, you keep a way to focus any player handly... It's "just" a kind priority for the next focus player. If a player is fullscreen then it gains the focus, this don't means the other player needs to be fullscreen to be focused by hand... But if a new player is started fullscreen or if the player become fullscreen from PIP, then it's auto-focused, and you have to switch or manually focus the PIP player to gain control on it. I hope I'm more clear this way.

To add the music, just focus the music player could be suffisient right ?

User option is also a good way, I agree FreakyJ.

Cheers.

 

[Albert]

Ok Smeulf, then I have understood your concept wrong.
But if I then understand it correctly, the only difference between your two concepts is the strategy, how MP2 decides which player gains the focus after some player action like the "Toggle PiP" action or opening a new player/closing a player, right?

 

[Smeulf]

100% exact

 

[morpheus_xx]

I've just talked with my colleague, who had a LOEWE TV with two tuners and PiP feature.

The behaviour of the TV was like this:

• Watch the TV Channel "A"
• Press the PiP Key
• Channel "A" moves into the PiP frame (!), is muted
• Fullscreen channel is set to the last watched channel
• All controls (ch+ / ch-) only work in fullscreen
• Press the PiP Key again
• Channel "A" moves back from PiP to fullscreen

This means there the PiP is used for "parking" the current watched channel in the PiP frame.

So if we make changes to our current handling, I would think about the order of the players when a new video is started as PiP. Currently we use the new in PiP window, while the currently watched remains fullscreen. The TV does it the other way...

 

[tourettes]

I've just talked with my colleague, who had a LOEWE TV with two tuners and PiP feature.

The behaviour of the TV was like this:

• Watch the TV Channel "A"
• Press the PiP Key
• Channel "A" moves into the PiP frame (!), is muted
• Fullscreen channel is set to the last watched channel
• All controls (ch+ / ch-) only work in fullscreen
• Press the PiP Key again
• Channel "A" moves back from PiP to fullscreen

This means there the PiP is used for "parking" the current watched channel in the PiP frame.

So if we make changes to our current handling, I would think about the order of the players when a new video is started as PiP. Currently we use the new in PiP window, while the currently watched remains fullscreen. The TV does it the other way...

From end user (read: no technical background) point of view the LOEWE's approach sounds more logical as the interaction will happen always in the same place. I would assume the similar / same approach is used in other TVs as well (probably in BD players as well). It would be nice if people could check how their HW that has PiP support is designed to work.

Of course there is simply no point in copying some behavior just as if can be copied, but in many cases big HW manufacturers are spending quite much money on the usability side (althou in many cases they fail miserably in the usability side ). Also the PiP funtionality in MP2 is a bit more complex than in a TV - for example it is possible to have music player there as well so it is not 1:1 comparable with the TVs PiP functionality.

One open issue in morphs' description is what happens after Channel '"A" moves back from PiP to fullscreen'? does the PiP close? Or is there some other button mapped for closing the PiP / secondary player.

 

[morpheus_xx]

Yes, the TV cannot switch between the PiP channels. There is only "turn on" and "turn off". After that the previous fullscreen channel before PiP is it also again after PiP.

And I don't say we should copy this at all (we are much more flexible). Only point I would consider is the "PiP startup behaviour", means to push the newly started video to fullscreen and move the playing one to PiP.

This fit's also to the approach to mainly control the fullscreen player (== make it the CurrentPlayer)

 

[The_Stig]

And I don't say we should copy this at all (we are much more flexible). Only point I would consider is the "PiP startup behaviour", means to push the newly started video to fullscreen and move the playing one to PiP.

I like that. Sounds logical.

But we need to be able to switch between fullscreen and PIP. If we would only have "turn on" and "turn off" PIP, we would loose timeshift buffer for PIP I guess. But as I understood (hopefully correctly) the switch between fullscreen and PIP is possible in any here discussed case, right?

 

[morpheus_xx]

Yes, of course we will keep the possibility to switch between the running players!

 

[morpheus_xx]

... Only point I would consider is the "PiP startup behaviour", means to push the newly started video to fullscreen and move the playing one to PiP.

This fit's also to the approach to mainly control the fullscreen player (== make it the CurrentPlayer)

I now finally took care about this part and created a new branch for testing! https://github.com/MediaPortal/MediaPortal-2/commits/FEAT_ImprovePiPHandling

It changes the "startup behavior" of PiP: a playing video will me moved to PiP, the newly started video will get fullscreen and gains the controlling focus (get's CURRENT player).

I already tested many combinations and it worked fine, but I think more testing of the changed logic is required! So please test this feature also...

 

[commander197]

Hi morpheus,

will the audio changed automaticly too? In my last tests I need to change the audio manually after switching from PiP to fullscreen.
The second thing I had in the old version you can find here: Multiple audio track problem.
I will test the new version next week.

Thx
commander