Matt

Awesome. Glad you got it working.

So, here we go once again - development (and developers) never actually sleep, so we're pleased to present the first public preview of our next significant release: Kodi v22, "Piers". This is a major release, so, as you'd expect, it comes with many new features. However, it is also an Alpha release, so there's a very good chance that something won't work the way it's intended to. As such, please be aware that installing this will most likely break things, which is kind of the point of releasing it: please raise Github issues with full debug logs to help us resolve any regressions you wonderful testers come across. So, all that aside... what's actually changed? Video/audio Upgraded to FFmpeg 7 Audio book chapter support Movie Versions/Extras full redesign Movie Sets support setting info and artwork Better stream selection Automatic cleaning of cached images/artwork Blu-ray multi-episode support New Blu-ray episode selection menu Blu-ray episodes now have their own progress, media info and artwork Library import/export now handles Blu-ray episodes Episode ranges are now supported and shown in the library Movie Versions/Extras are now supported for Blu-ray discs PVR New Recently Added Channels (plus new widget) New Providers window (requires skin support) New Custom Timers Improved channel groups Improved saved searches Improved recording functionality Improved EPG search 1-minute EPG resolution (requires skin support) Games Shader support (from Google Summer of Code 2017/2019) Improved mouse and keyboard support GUI Reduced memory usage for single- and dual-channel textures Improved performance and memory usage on OpenGL and OpenGLES Improved large texture image quality with better performance on slow devices Implemented front-to-back rendering for better performance (OpenGL(ES) only) Network Improved SMB GUI settings Support for SMBv2.0 devices lacking SMBv2.1 features such as "large MTU" Fixed connecting to Windows SMB servers with no password Drastically improved performance at listing large SMB directories Platforms Windows/Xbox Initial Windows ARM64 desktop support Python 3.13 on Windows/Xbox Enabled XAudio2 sink for Windows desktop (was previously only on Xbox) Enhanced Video Super Resolution feature with 10-bit SDR support (Intel and Nvidia) and HDR10 (Nvidia) Android Enabled file sharing to other apps and players Improved channels on the home page Upgraded to Android 15 Minimum Android version is now 7.0 Android support for 16KB page size LG webOS New unified media pipeline Linux HDR passthrough on OpenGL (was previously only on OpenGLES) Support for the Wayland Color Management protocol, therefor supporting HDR on Wayland with compatible compositors Make Kodi work on systems using a Turkish locale Peripherals Improved OSMC Remote support Improved Pulse-Eight CEC Adapter support Improved Flirc support Known issues Scanning for new content will fail if local NFO files are present (fixed for Alpha 2) Filesystems that use milliseconds can trigger a rescan If you love life on the bleeding edge of new, you can get Alpha 1 from here. Select your platform of choice, and look in the "Prerelease" section. Again, though, please: expect some breakage, don't use this as your daily installation unless you know how to get things working again, and please share your experiences back with us so we can really get going on those bugs. And take a backup first! As usual, in the full spirit of open source, you can see what's changed since v21.2 here. View the full article

@MidnightWatcher is correct. External players don't pass the chapter changes through kodi’s code like the internal player.

There are 3 ways to handle what you are asking for. I don't think I would recommend an action file for what you are asking for, unless you are playing the audio file on another device. If that is the case, I would recommend option 3 with just the image. Here are the options in order of difficulty. Option 1 - I think you can select an audio file as a file in the video module. The visuals associated with it may vary from system to system, so you may get flickering or a generic background. Option 2 - Change the audio file to a video and add it as a video module. Option 3 - Add a slideshow module and add an image, which can just be black, to a folder within your slideshow content, set your audio file as the music and set the time for the module to be just longer than your audio file.

Awesome. Glad you got it working.

The updated file is also in the alpha of the latest version in the repo.

I think the https option has been there for a long time and that they are now just removing the http option. I think there's a good chance you are correct and the update is tied to a new app version, which sends the instructions to the bridge.

The way that they implemented the https is a bit strange. They require that the security certificate be passed to the hue prior to submitting the api web request. Getting the Hue lights to work in PreShow is already difficult for most people. Even if I provide instructions for how to do it, I think it would end creating more confusion and get me into more tech support than I can handle for it. My current solution should be considered temporary, but that may not change how to proceed. The issue is that the https link gives a security error, which is what PreShow will see instead of connecting to the bridge. The current fix is to ignore that error, so that the https works like a standard http link and passes calls to the bridge. Ultimately, people will probably have to change the http to https in their action files. At some point I'll go in and see if I can add code into PreShow to handle passing the security certificate to make it easier for people. I'm not sure if that will require additional changes to your action files or not at this point.

I'm going to release a new version of PreShow, hopefully this weekend, with a solution that should take care of this issue. I have attached the updated python file that control actions with the potential fix. The file goes in your kodi addon directory in the following folder: script.preshowexperience > lib > preshowexperience Below is a guide to where the kodi folder is. The addon folders is located inside of this, so add addons/script.preshowexperience/lib/preshowexperience to find the location where the action file goes. Android Android/data/org.xbmc.kodi/files/.kodi Flatpak ~/.var/app/tv.kodi.Kodi/data iOS /private/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/Kodi LibreELEC /storage/.kodi Linux ~/.kodi Linux (Flatpak) ~/.var/app/tv.kodi.Kodi macOS /Users/<your_user_name>/Library/Application Support/Kodi Nvidia Shield (SMB) smb://<nvidiashieldurl>/internal/Android/data/org.xbmc.kodi/files/.kodi OSMC /home/osmc/.kodi tvOS /private/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/Kodi WebOS /media/developer/apps/usr/palm/applications/org.xbmc.kodi/.kodi Windows C:\Users\<YourUsername>\AppData\Roaming\Kodi Windows Portable <Install location chosen by you>\portable_data Windows Xbox %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\XBMCFoundation.Kodi_4n2hpmxwrvr6p\LocalCache\Roaming\Kodi\ If you don't know hot to copy the file to this location, please wait for the updated version of PreShow that will include the change. actions.py

There are a lot of things going on in your logs, with 72k lines of info. There's 1 issue that I think I've fixed in a future version, but has separate issues. Ultimately, I think I am going to create a separate version of PreShow with the bug fixes and without the metadata and then another version moving forward with the metadata. Your trivia has a lot of issues with it in the logs. There are some folders that aren't scanning correctly. I'm not sure what the issue is with it at this point though. I'll look into this further when my work lets up and I get more time, and will respond back when I have a new version.

I need to correct my statement about the YT trailers. There used to be a setting for "Ignore YouTube trailers" that was commented out at some point. I need to test it, but will add it back in an upcoming version of PreShow. I am also going to revise the setting text for Kodi trailers to be "Kodi Database (YouTube or Local)."

I get how the wording is confusion in your case. I added in the (YouTube) because for the majority of people that use kodi, their only option will be to stream YT videos since they won't have local trailers with their movies. It was something that came up a lot. You are the 1st person that I've talked to in a long time that has used local trailers with their movie files. This is a waste of storage space, but an option for you would be to copy your trailers into the PreShow's trailer folder and set that as your content. It would quickly fix the issue so that you are only getting your movies and no YT, but obviously doubles the space. I'll look into it more after I get through the current beta development process.

PreShow should read whatever is in Kodi's database. It doesn't allow you to pick within the kodi trailers to eliminate YT trailers though, but neither did CV. My guess is that you either don't have local trailers for all of your movies or you also ahve the tmdb trailers enabled. I may add an option to only show local videos for kodi trailers.

3.4.3 has bumper metadata and scoring, which is still in beta. I should have named the version in the repo with the beta tag, but didn't. If you edit the json file in the content folder you'll get different clips with different movies. I have added code that will be in a new version of PreShow to add the random functionality back in, so that it will randomly pick from the options if there are multiple clips tied for the best option or you haven't modified the json file. I also need to modify the settings for the bumpers when I get time.

Great job troubleshooting it. Looking at the log again, I noticed that it is trying to show: /Trivia/The Dark Knight UHD/Who Said It/@eaDir/The Dark Knight - Who Said It 08_a.jpg @eaDir is Synology's metadata folder. PreShow sees the file and assumes that it is an image since it has .jpg in the filename. I have added code in the next version to ignore anything in the @eaDir.

There's something funky going on with your install. It can't find settings and shows some things that don't make sense (Triva. Either the file in the repo is messed up or there was an issue during installation /configuration. Try going back to 0.3.4.1 and the make sure your settings are correct with the content folder. Scan you content again and then try the trivia again after that.

Trivia should work. What version of PreShow are you using? I'll be happy to look at your log file and provide any suggestions I can figure out. To share a log, close out of Kodi and then reopen it. Open Preshow and preview your Trivia module in the sequence editor. Then go into the PreShow settings and scroll down in the general tab until you see "paste my kodi.log to pastebin." Click that and then click "current." Next, click Show QR code and use your phone to get the link to the pastebin page. You can either share that in this thread or send me a direct message through the site with it.

You can use the Kodi Remote app as an actual remote with PreShow. It just doesn't provide you with any more functionality than an actual remote. For most situations, you should already have PreShow configured the way you want it prior to using it with a movie. If you are using a skin that has the PreShow, or cinema, button you can use the iPad remote to click that button.

I don't think that the Kodi Remote app offers any functionality that is compatible with PreShow, other than the basic remote. It doesn't display program add-ons, which is what PreShow is. It also doesn't load the launcher or skin links, so it unfortunately isn't really compatible with Preshow, or vice versa.

1920x1080 JPG is the preferred resolution/file format. 4K PNGs may technically be better, but for 99% of images the quality difference will be minimal (<10%) compared to a significantly larger file size (>15 times larger). Just for clarification, there are 2 separate things that could be considered fact slides. There are stand alone facts images that are just single images with some detail that can be named anything, except ending in q, a, or _c#. And then there is what you are describing ,which is a fact at the end of a Q&A trivia image series. The current version of PreShow on the site doesn't have an option for fact slides with Q&A, but 0.3.4.3 introduced _f for doing exactly what you are referring to. I'm not putting this version on the site because I am working on database updates and every new version requires people to delete their database and redo all their content. As soon as I finish this line of development in regards to the database, I'll add 0.4 to the site with all the changes, including the _f files for facts at the end of Q&A. I'd prefer that you use the _f for your facts, but for people that haven't updated to a version with it it would currently play the fact separately from the Q&A. We can always go back and rename them after the update if you want to use a clue format as the answer and the answer format as the fact. I'm going to be going back to some of the legacy trivia and updating them, which will include some additional slides and metadata. My standard format for Q&A trivia will be: PackNameQA1_q.jpg for the question PackNameQA1_c1.jpg with 1 of the answers dimmed PackNameQA1_c2.jpg with 2 of the answers dimmers PackNameQA1_a.jpg for the answer PackNameQA1_f.jpg for the fact

Awesome. Glad you got it working.

Sorry it didn't work. I'll reach out to you if I am able to modify it at some point in the future.

I tried to create an action file/python combo to change the allow skipping. It didn't work in the middle bof the sequence, but I'll test it further when I get time.

There are instructions inside the action file, which is just a text file. Go into your Kodi system settings and select "System information." Take note of your IP address. Then go back to the system settings and select "Services." Then select the "Control" and turn on "Allow remote control via HTTP." You'll need to enter a password. Take note of your username and password. Edit the action file with you system info. This may or may not allow PreShow to work on your Zidoo box.

If the allow skipping fixes it for you, then I guess that's your solution. The issue isn't anything that I can see in the logs.