Matt

There will be a new action setting for the last chapter in the next version.  I'll look into other time based options at a later date.

I have temporarily disabled the repo.  I will add it back when the next version comes out.

I appreciate the feedback and agree that the menu/sequence system is difficult to use.  I just don't have the bandwidth to learn how to create something like TMM for this though.  I'm slow enough as is.

If things ever get to the point where people are donating money for development, I'll see about having someone else create an external option.

Here is Kodi's API list:
https://kodi.wiki/view/JSON-RPC_API/v13

There's an overwhelming amount of functionality in there, all of which will need detailed setup to control.

Here is a link to Home Assistant's Kodi page:
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/kodi/

Someone may be able to help if there's something specific you want do.

Here's the PreShow repo:

Thanks for suggesting this.  It is possible, but difficult, and there are some things that I should do to make it more apparent about what is possible.

The IMDB trailers are limited to 1080, because that is the maximum resolution for those files. 

The TMDB trailers can be whatever resolution you set up your youtube plugin (input stream adaptive) to display.  I currently have mine set to 4k and it looks great.  Getting that to work reliably is a major pain though.

I have done some work to try to make the YT side easier, as well as to provide options to download the vidoes, but that's a long process that I don't know if I'll be able to make work properly. 

I will post more about this in the future.

@Tom I'm not sure what you mean.  Please create a new thread here:
https://preshowexperience.com/forums/forum/11-support/

And provide as much detail as possible. 

How would this be used?  I don't think there are existing AAC or MP3 audio format bumpers.

I still have 1 big issues that I want to resolve before trying to get PreShow into the official repository.  I hope to make my own repo available early next year.

The previous command module has been renamed to loop and modified to include some of the requested functionality.  

It currently doesn't allow you to press a button to escape the loop, but does allow you to set loops for

• Duration 
• Time of Day
• Number of loops

I haven't made any progress on it.  I'm still very aware of the interest in the feature though.

I am marking this completed, as @NightWatcherTheater's program should do what you want, and I don't think there's anything that I can do in programming to make this work across the board.

On 8/5/2023 at 12:21 AM, OTA said:

If you're using pass-through audio, you're not going to control the volume since it bypasses Kodi and is directly decoded by your AVR.

This is correct.

There's a zip in each bumper set that allows you to download all of them at once.

Can't you already set the volume in the sequence editor? 

I do think that modifying the videos is probably a better way to go so it will work regardless of other factors.

Thanks for the suggestions.  I'll look into this.

I have done some research on it and have some preliminary code, but nothing really to report at this time.  

I am going to create a guide on this with details instructions, but want to explain the issue and the process for my workaround.

The issue is that using the zidoo player inside of Kodi breaks the sequence after a video bumper or feature is played.  As I stated previously, I have explored multiple solutions to resolve the problem.  Unfortunately, none of them have worked.

The challenge is that the Zidoo player doesn't have an API, so I'm more or less working in the dark to try to fix the issue.  Compound that by them Zidoo not releasing the source for the current version ZDMC publicly.   I went through the source for a previous version and compared every single change to the same version of kodi to see what I could learn.  By my logs, it doesn't even appear that what they have in it matches how it actually works (CPlayerCoreFactory::GetPlayer(ZidooPlayer): no such player: ZidooPlayer).

So, short of redoing how PreShow works, it doesn't appear that there is an optimal solution.  But there is a workaround.  It isn't a perfect solution, but it works for me.

In the past, people created a playercorefactory.xml to try to get it to work.  The file designate what player to played certain types of content.  In my opinion, the problem with that is that you don't necessarily have 100% control of the types of files that you are using unless you are creating everything yourself.

Using the playercorefactory.xml points out where the issue is, which is the compatibility with the with the Zidoo external player.  I double checked this in my system, which is a Zidoo 1000 Pro, and confirmed that if I turned off "use external player" in the ZDMC settings that the PreShows would play without issue.  

So my workaround is to create action files that turn off the Zidoo external player for everything prior to the feature film.  The added benefit of this is that if you use a skin that is set up for PreShow Experience, it won't show the loading icon before videos.  There will still be the 1 instance of "Video Loading ..." prior to the feature film, since this is in the Zidoo side and I don't have any information on how to turn that off.

One additional thing that has to be changed in order to get to work is if you want to have a rating before the feature, then it has to be an image since we can only show 1 video.  Also, this will only work for showing 1 movie and not a sequence of movies.

The action files can be downloaded here:

Here is the guide:

It's a skin issue and unfortunately not something that can be controlled from within any addon.  It's just how kodi is set up. 

I have spent some time on this and have to say this is a weird problem.  I've tried a bunch of different potential solutions inside of PreShow to get it to work, but none of them have been successful.

However, I do think I have a workaround to get the PreShows to play properly in ZDMC.  I need to do some more testing and if all goes well, I'll provide instructions on how to get it to work.  It doesn't require editing anything inside of zidoo.

I'll reevaluate this at a later date, but I don't think there is a realistic way to do this with the trailer sources that we are using today.  

It's great that they released ZDMC 20.1.  It didn't seem like they would do it for a while.  I installed it on my system over the weekend and continue working to see if I can get PreShow to work with it.  

So far 20.1 has been very unreliable for me.  My system never crashes and almost every add-on that I've installed has crashed on me.

I am still working to get it to a point where I am comfortable submitting it to the official repo.

Right now I spend a ton of time working with people individually to  help troubleshoot issues they are having.  I need to modify it to make it easier for new people to use before I will submit it.  

If it was added to the repo today I would have to spend all of my time helping people and wouldn't have time to do anything else with it outside of that.

It's going to be a while before it gets submitted to the repo.

The PreShow part of it works fine, at least on my system.  I had to go into Settings > Media > Library > Videos > "My movies directory" and then right click on it and select "Scan to library" and remove the .auro3d.mkv and then select the actual movie title in order to get it to show up.  That parts a bit of a pain, but I think it's outside of what I can control.

The issue that @Eddage had was resolved in a PM.