Matt

Thank you for your help with testing aspects of PreShow. I'll create different topics for specific functionality that I'd like for you to test.

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.

Kodi launches an external player, which doesn't directly interact with PreShow. Many people use PreShow with the default player and external players without issue. There are some functionality that isn't available with external players (chapter action events), but they should work. The 1 thing I see in the log is: AESinkWASAPI: IsFormatSupported failed (AUDCLNT_E_UNSUPPORTED_FORMAT) - trying to find a compatible format And there's still a log about youtube at the moment of playback, which is super weird. 2025-05-25 22:34:17 info <general>: [- PreShow Experience -]: Experience: PLAYBACK STARTED 2025-05-25 22:34:17 info <general>: [plugin.video.youtube] Get property |play_with|: '' 2025-05-25 22:34:17 info <general>: Skipped 1 duplicate messages.. 2025-05-25 22:34:17 info <general>: [plugin.video.youtube] Clear property |busy| 2025-05-25 22:34:17 info <general>: [plugin.video.youtube] Pop property |player_json|: '' 2025-05-25 22:34:22 info <general>: [- PreShow Experience -]: Fullscreen video closed - stopping Can you disable your youtube plugin and try a sequence with just the feature and see if that behaves differently?

I don't know that this has anything to do with your issue. The loading/busy icons are part of the skin. Some skins have options to remove that. The functionality shouldn't affect how the videos play. The "allow skipping" functionality adds a blank video before and after every video so that when you hit next/previous chapter PreShow can see that and jump to the next item in the queue. Turning that off removes those videos, but I don't think it should affect whether a video plays or not.

The action files that I originally published didn't work for some people. I've since hidden the files. I may come back to it at some point, but it probably won't be any time soon. Did you edit the action files to include the details for your setup? Did you assign them to the "Beginning of PreShow" and "Before Feature" action events?

I'm planning on releasing updates to some of the old content when I get the new trivia functionality completed. I'll post back when that happens.

Have you rescanned your content after adding/updating the trivia? In your trivia module settings is the "Trivia select" set to Default? Please share a log and I'll see if I can figure out what's going on. 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.

Share a log and I'll see if I can figure out what's going on. To share a log, close out of Kodi and then reopen it. Open Preshow and try to save and open a sequence. 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.

Have you set your content path in the settings and is it writeable? It is the 1st thing in the settings, as seen in the image below.

I've tested this on Windows 11 (I don't have anything with Windows 10) a few times and haven't encountered any issues with playback. No one in the Discord channel is reporting these issues, so my best guess is it is computer specific. I'll post back if I get any new suggestions.

Very cool, and nice work by tiben20. Let us know how it works.

@suchmich1983 There are some errors for jellyfin and a random youtube one, but I'm not seeing an exact cause from the logs. I'll try to set up a windows box to test and will respond back with any findings.

Awesome. Glad that you figured it out.

I've been travelling for work and just got home yesterday, so I haven't had any time to look into this. The previous log didn't show any errors related to PreShow. The only thing the log gives is: warning <general>: CRendererHQ::CheckVideoParameters: chosen scaling method 1 is not supported by renderer warning <general>: CVideoPlayerVideo::OutputPicture - timeout waiting for buffer I'm not saying that is what is causing the issue, just that they are the only clues that we currently have. I read a few posts about DXVA causing a similar issue. Here's a link to 1 of the posts.

IMPORTANT UPDATE, 30th April While we were proofreading this post and getting ready to publish it, we became aware of some terrible news: the OSUOSL is in very real danger of closing down at the end of this year due to recent funding changes, and they need immediate help. Lance Albertson, the Director of OSUOSL, explains it in his own words here. This matters so much. Without getting into the rights and wrongs of US public sector funding, this could send shock waves through so many open source projects if it's allowed to happen. Please, if you value their work - and we all should - and if there's anything you or your employer can do to help them, we'd ask you to do so. ---- It takes an army of people to create, maintain and deliver Kodi, but not everyone involved is a team member. As well as the obvious developers, graphics designers, forum moderators and similar, we're also hugely dependent on our sponsors for both financial help and donations of infrastructure. It's the latter category that we'd like to highlight today, specifically the Oregon State University Open Source Laboratory. The OSUOSL is a nonprofit organisation that works to advance open source technologies, seeking to accelerate the growth of high-impact open source software projects, and promote a global open source culture of accessibility and increased productivity. The lab partners with industry leaders and policy makers to bring open source technologies to new sectors, including education, health and government. To this end, they've been providing free hosting services for FOSS projects since 2003, and currently do so for more than 160 projects, including those of worldwide leaders like the Apache Software Foundation, the Linux Foundation, Drupal - and, of course, Kodi. They offer world-class hosting services, professional software development and on-the-ground training for promising students interested in open source management and programming. The most active organisation of its kind, the OSL delivers nearly 430 terabytes of information to people around the world every month from its hosted sites. Specifically for Kodi, they currently host a significant 2U, 96-core system that runs most of our build systems, as well as separate platforms that host a big part of our public-facing infrastructure: the forum, the wiki, and our pastebin site. We're immensely grateful for their assistance and support, and want to publicly thank them for everything they do. OSUOSL is primarily funded through grants, corporate sponsorships and individual contributions from the community. Please see their website for how you can help them to continue providing services such as this. View the full article

Share a log and I'll try to help. To share a log, close out of Kodi and then reopen it. Play a feature with Preshow. 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.

Day Three dawns. We have a compressed schedule today before we break for individual workshops/breakouts - plus some people will be leaving us early in order to get home - so let's get to work. neo1973 opened the day with a discussion about merge policies, specifically around reviews and self-merging your own PRs. There's a reality that, when you've been deep in a certain area of the code, you may well be the subject matter expert - for the moment, at least - so there's nobody to necessarily critique the what of your code. As such, there's an element of "publish and be damned". There is, though, also the how: does the code itself stand up to inspection? We already use tools to sanity check the code, check for null pointers and undestroyed variables, and similar, so the quality side is already covered to a certain extent. That said, AI tools are falling into place and improving quickly, so there's more that we can do here, and more to investigate. Onwards into a conversation initiated by yol around some of our hosted infrastructure and some specific issues we have there. That in turn led into a more general conversation around hardware, usage, I/O and capacity, and similar: important to us, but probably less so to the general public. Next up, chewitt with an update on LibreELEC: user numbers, current platform trends and future plans, dependency/kernel versioning, CI/build, upstreaming fixes, drivers, chipsets, hosting, finances, collaborations, architecture. For what should be obvious reasons, samnazarko weighed in where appropriate with an OSMC perspective. Finally, lrusak gave an update on a long-desired feature: headless Kodi. It basically exists, it works, but it needs a good chunk of tidying up to make 100% certain that nothing tries to create or access a GUI on a non-existent window manager (e.g. popping up a notification toast). There are headless implementations - such as Docker images - already available from other sources, so this is really just about bringing this into the official release. And, with that, the main conference comes to an end. Time to huddle together, fire up laptops, and do some coding. So, that's it for DevCon 2025. Genuine thanks to Tirana for the hospitality, and to everyone who's helped to look after us this year - and thanks to you for reading. Until the next time ... lamtumirë, dhe faleminderit. /images/blog/team-kodi-tirana-2025.webp Team Kodi 2025, Tirana View the full article