Matt

There are still 2 options for streamed trailers in PreShow.

This turned out to be much harder than I had anticipated when I suggested adding an aspect ratio to the conditions. I don't know why I thought that Kodi listed the movie's actual aspect ratio. I have the condition selection partially done, which you can see in the images below. I had it pull in the aspect ratio, which is when I realized that it only lists the file aspect ratio, which is 1.78:1 for every bluray rip. I could have sworn I saw different aspect ratios at some point, but I double checked and apparently not. I continued working on this and came up with a possible solution to scan IMDB to retrieve the aspect ratio that they have listed. The problem there is that it isn't a free and takes time to scrape the aspect ratio. You can see my original version of that below. I've since modified it to round to the 4 aspect ratios listed above. I can change those to include more options fairly easily though. Overall, I'd say that this is pretty close to done, but it has 2 major issues that I don't really know how to overcome. The first that I mentioned above is that it takes time to scrape the info. This happens when you are initially selecting to play your movie with PreShow. For me, it takes 2-5 seconds. The best I can think of is to add a PreShow setting on whether to allow the aspect ratio condition or not and default it to off. That way people that don't need it won't be bothered by it. But people that want to use it will still have their PreShows slowed a bit. I did put a notification on there so that you'll know what it causing the delay. It isn't a perfect solution, but it's the best that I can think of. The second problem is that I'm pulling the information from somewhere else that I can't guarantee it's accurate or will always work. This may not be a huge deal, but my scrape for They Live lists it as 2.39:1. When I took a screencap of my 4k, I measured it at 2.35:1. In other more divergent example, Vertigo lists the original aspect ratio of 2.55:1 instead of the US theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1. So that's the current status.

Here's something you can try: Go into Kodi's settings and click "File Manager." Then "Add source." SMB works easily for me, but for NFS I have to do "Add network location" and configure the link manually. It adds that at the root level across directories. I may be able to give an export/import option to the settings so that people can change settings if needed.

Hi! This is just a quick note to let everyone know that Team Kodi will be present at the Free and Open Source Developers European Meeting (FOSDEM) in Brussels on 3 & 4 February 2024. We will have a booth in Building H level 1 where you can try out Kodi and chat with us at your leisure :) We have team members attending that are knowledgeable about, among other things, Python add-on programming, Kodi on Linux, the Kodi flatpak package, and Kodi on embedded GPUs. If you're in the area, we'd love to see you and get your first-hand feedback about ... well, anything, really. We're also planning to have some sample branded merchandise for you to look at - so, please, join us for a chat and a coffee! View the full article

No guarantee on this or timeframe, but I'll look into adding aspect ratio to the conditions. You could then trigger a different action for different aspect ratios.

Action files sends data to Kodi or some other system, but isn't configured to retrieve or store data. That could potentially be handled through an external script though. What exactly are you wanting to do?

A new year dawns, and brings with it one last hurrah for the Kodi "Nexus" release line. An assortment of bug fixes, some backports, no real new features. Full changelog since 20.2 on Github, as usual. Release notes Estuary An assortment of fixes for Estuary, including home categories' focus position, alignment of counter labels and Shift view for collections. Fixes to the weather layout when busy. Game/Retroplayer Fixed controllers not assigned to game ports correctly on Android. Fixed blue/pink washed out colours on Windows with 10-bit displays. Fixed possible crash in Port dialogue box. Fixed typo for the mouse middle button in Controller dialogue box. General A DVD playback fix that resolves unmounted drives not being playable. A fix for infinite loops in CPluginFile that occurred when using scrapers. A fix for a crash that occurred due to Addon settings being destructed in an incorrect order. Redact some information from Toast notifications (user/passwords incorrectly being shown). A memory leak in context menus was resolved. Image cache handling was fixed to correctly regenerate when cached files for JSON API consumers. Music Music Library: now able to automatically recover if library cleaning was interrupted previously for some reason. Platform Specific Android Fixed (workaround implemented) possible audio out-of-sync in recent AMLogic BSP devices: FireTV Cube 3rd Gen, Homatics Box R 4K Plus, … Linux VP9 Profile 2 playback failure was fixed. A fix for a leak of EGLFences in the DRM Prime renderer. macOS/iOS Fix a crash on Apple Silicon based Macs when pressing the Caps Lock key. tvOS Fixed: Not persistent binary addons (PVR) settings. Windows Fixed: 24 Hz refresh rate related to HDR in specific use cases only (when Windows HDR auto-switch is not used). Fixed: audio device "WASAPI:default" was listed multiple times in audio device list. Fixed: fractional refresh rates 119.88 Hz and higher they were not displayed correctly. Pictures An exif parsing regression from v19 was resolved. PVR Fix TV channel subtitles not displayed on playback start, even when activated in subtitle settings. Fix recordings with a path containing a colon (':') not being displayed in recordings window. UPNP A fix for a crash that occurred when a user added a UPNP source without having UPNP enabled. Playback from remote sources (ftp, http, etc.) has been fixed. Video A fix to the default Select action on certain movie-related windows. Thanks, as always, to everyone who has helped us track down and fix any issues. We endeavour to minimise the issues everyone experiences, but with such a large project, and the fact everyone contributing to Kodi is a volunteer, issues and bugs are a part of life. if you happen to experience any bugs/issues, don't hesitate to reach out on the forums, or raise an issue on Github. As this is a point release, there are no major changes since the previous version, and you should be fine to install this straight over the top of any existing Kodi 20.x installation - indeed, this will happen automatically on many platforms. However, as for all software installations, back up your userdata beforehand if you've any doubts or have anything you can't afford to lose (and definitely do this if you're going for a major version upgrade). A list of all changes for this version can be found at GitHub. If you want to read back on the full history of v20 itself, or of previous versions, you can find the corresponding articles in the relevant blog posts. Application deployment on different platforms (notably the Microsoft Store) can vary considerably due to circumstances outside of our control, so just be patient, and the update will inevitably find its way through. Android Deployment We always do what's known as a "staged" deployment roll out for Android. So if you don't receive the update immediately, be patient, as it will come through over the next week. View the full article

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:

I should have originally asked this question. Is there a reason why you aren't using the PreShow Trailer Folder scraper and are using a directory instead?

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.

Another possible option in 0.2.5 if you want to test the trivia is to use the Playback setting -> Alternate Skip Button (Shield) and set it to set it to "Select."

What trailer scraper are you using, IMDB or TMDB? TMDB uses YouTube and IMDB loads from an MP4 file. Select 1 of the scapers and the other and see if you have issues with both or if 1 will work for you. They are both playing fine for me on a few different systems, so I'm not really sure what is the cause of the problem. Please let me know the results from testing both scrapers.

I'm not sure what the issue is, but I use a Mac for my primary computer and Function + Up Arrow works for me. What exactly is your setup?

I think it is Function + Up Arrow.

I simplified what I was doing and added code into the folder view to default to the content folder. Hopefully this will fix your problem.

To confirm, the issue is that you can't find the NAS directory from within PreShow? I have some work done on revising the folder/file browsing, but haven't completed it. In the mean time, you can always edit your sequence manually to add the folder. Select any folder for your trailers. Go into your settings and click on content path to see the location at the bottom of the window. Then navigate to your NAS in Explorer/Finder and open your sequence in notepad or another basic text editor. Find: "type": "trailer", And then a few lines below that you'll see: "dir": "the-folder-you-selected", Replace the-folder-you-selected with the location of your Trailer Folder. Let me know if that works for you. I'll let you know when I get the browse updated.

@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.

The first log doesn't have anything related to PreShow in it. Here's your sequence per the 2nd log: [- PreShow Experience -] (API): [VideoBumper] ('Commercials') DISABLED [- PreShow Experience -] (API): [VideoBumper] ('Theater Outro') DISABLED [- PreShow Experience -] (API): [Feature] ('Feature') DISABLED [- PreShow Experience -] (API): [VideoBumper] 'Courtesy' [- PreShow Experience -] (API): - Random [- PreShow Experience -] (API): [Trivia] 10m [- PreShow Experience -] (API): [VideoBumper] 'Trivia Outro' [- PreShow Experience -] (API): - Random [- PreShow Experience -] (API): [VideoBumper] 'Theater Intro' [- PreShow Experience -] (API): - Random [- PreShow Experience -] (API): - No matches! [- PreShow Experience -] (API): - NOT SHOWING [- PreShow Experience -] (API): [VideoBumper] 'Trailers Intro' [- PreShow Experience -] (API): - Random [- PreShow Experience -] (API): - No matches! [- PreShow Experience -] (API): - NOT SHOWING [- PreShow Experience -] (API): [Trailer] Directory x 2 [- PreShow Experience -] (API): - Using: 'Trivia Intro' [- PreShow Experience -] (API): [AudioFormatBumper] Method: af.detect Fallback: af.format Format: Other [- PreShow Experience -] (API): - Detect [- PreShow Experience -] (API): - Detect: Looked at the file path 'Le Fantome du Bengale (1996).mkv' and decided to keep audio format 'Dolby Digital' [- PreShow Experience -] (API): - Detect: No codec matches! [- PreShow Experience -] (API): - Format: No matches! [- PreShow Experience -] (API): - NOT SHOWING [- PreShow Experience -] (API): [VideoBumper] 'Feature Outro' [- PreShow Experience -] (API): - Random [- PreShow Experience -] (API): - No matches! [- PreShow Experience -] (API): - NOT SHOWING [- PreShow Experience -] (API): [VideoBumper] 'Trailers Outro' [- PreShow Experience -] (API): - Random [- PreShow Experience -] (API): - No matches! [- PreShow Experience -] (API): - NOT SHOWING The items in red won't play. Here's what is being played: Experience: Playing next item: VIDEO: '/sdcard/PreShow/Video Bumpers/Courtesy/IMAX_IW_ADJ2_1080p_AC3_51-thedigitaltheater.mp4' Experience: Playing next item: VIDEO: '/sdcard/PreShow/Video Bumpers/Trivia Outro/Intro_2.mp4 error opening [/sdcard/PreShow/Video Bumpers/Trivia Intro] This log shows that your feature module is disabled and it is unable to play from the directory that you have set up for your trailers. It is 100% possible that PreShow will never work on your Zidoo box. I have a different version and can't guarantee that the setup is the same across the board.

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.

Christmas 2023 PreShow Experience Bumper Set View File This is the 4k Christmas 2023 PreShow Experience Bumper Set with 5.1 audio. Videos include: Countdown Courtesy Feature Intro Feature Outro Intermission PreShow/Merry Christmas Sponsors Theater Intro Theater Outro Trailers Intro Trailers Outro Trivia Intro Submitter Matt Submitted 12/23/2023 Category PreShow Bumper Sets  

We are keeping things ticking over with Kodi 21 "Omega" with the second Beta release! This is a major release, so, as you'd expect, it comes with many new features. However, with a core change to FFmpeg 6.0, there is a very good chance that some regressions may occur. As such, please be aware that installing this will most likely break things, and we'd really like your help at that point to identify the problems and get them fixed. Please raise Github issues with full debug logs to help us resolve any issues you wonderful testers come across. First, we'd like to make a few targeted announcements. Android users Many users may still be on the Kodi testing track for their Android devices. It's far easier to leave the testing track from a 'phone-based device, but be aware that if your device is on the testing track, we will be continuing to deploy Beta 2 releases over the next week or so. If you wish to opt out of the testing group, one way you can is by visiting the following link Google Play - Kodi testing track. From here, you can opt out for your Google Play account. This is the best (and possibly only) way to opt out on many Android TV devices (e.g. Nvidia Shields). With that said, for those adventurous types who would like to help us with testing, you can use the same link to opt in for a Google Play account. Skin Developers An API bump will be made with the next release of Kodi 21's testing cycle. See the following PRs for details: https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/23926 https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/23862 This will require changes and submissions to the Omega branch for skins for those who submit to the Kodi Repository. Reach out on the forums if you have any questions/concerns. Please note, https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/23927 has been merged shortly after Beta 2, and all skins will need to update the GUI version number to be available in Omega repos for any builds (including nightlies) after Beta 2. The following forum thread has the skinning change info for Omega: https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=372280&pid=3174566#pid3174566 And now, for the list of changes for Beta 2. Build/Dependencies A few dependencies have been bumped (openssl, python) as part of the normal update process. Estuary, Estouchy @jjd-uk has made a fix for Shift view overlays (https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/24168). Media flags for music have been added to Estuary by @jjd-uk as well (https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/24162). General A change was made by @CastagnaIT that narrows the scope of the optional track title providing language specific audio track data. Information regarding this advanced setting can be found on the wiki at https://kodi.wiki/view/Advancedsettings.xml#languagecodes. @rschupp has contributed to the removal of Kodi's use of the library pcrecpp. The use of this was changed to use C++ standard library capabilities. A fix has been made for when some XML files written by Kodi would add a trailing null character, therefore making the XML invalid. Several users contributed to compiler warning fixes affecting multiple platforms. Thanks to @CrystalP, @fuzzard, @thexai. @Rechi has made further fixes to satisfy more static analysis based fixes/warnings. The FFmpeg library has been updated to 6.0.1 for all platforms that don't use a system-provided FFmpeg version. @rmrector continues to improve artwork cache handling. PVR images are now handled like most other image types for the caching system. @ksooo has been fixing further context menu fallout as he endeavours to improve the maintainability and consistency across Kodi's context menus. Network A couple of fixes to IPv6 usage by @joseluismarti. Platform Specifics Android: More Dolby Vison updates have been submitted by @quietvoid. The latest fixes playback when some data is not provided by the FFmpeg library, and we would incorrectly categorise it as a different Dolby Vision profile (https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/24172). Linux: @smp79 has submitted a fix to VDPAU HQ scalers. macOS: @kambala-decapitator has updated our macOS signing tools to use Apple's newer notarytool. The previous usage of altool was deprecated/shutdown by Apple in November. Windows: The much-awaited HDR10 support was added for Xbox (@thexai https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/24083). The crash with VC-1 and some MPEG-2 videos when using DXVA decoding was corrected (@thexai https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/24085). A crash when closing Kodi on Xbox has been fixed by @thexai. PVR @ksooo continues to fix/improve Kodi's PVR system. Multiple fixes for different race conditions were merged for Beta2. Fix recordings with a path containing a ':' not displayed in recordings window. Python @the-black-eagle has added songVideoURL to the InfoTagMusic interface. Skinning xbmc.gui version has been bumped to 5.17 (https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/23926). @DeltaMikeCharlie has added infolabels for locale based information (https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/24028). UPnP @enen92 has continued making improvements in the long neglected UPnP feature of Kodi. The ability to serve smartlists via UPnP was added in https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/24008, as well as a fix to the case where sometimes some UPnP usage to stop before it was started (https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/24201). Videos @thexai has upgraded what was traditionally an advanced setting regarding Caching to a category in Settings > Services, containing the buffering fine-tuning settings. If you previously used these advanced settings, you will need to make the changes in the normal settings windows to make use of them now. The settings made in advancedsettings.xml are no longer handled (https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/24049, https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/24117). More settings were added to control the NFS and SMB chunk size (@thexai https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/24019). The setting Player > Videos > Use Display HDR capabilities was renamed to Adjust display HDR mode and moved next to Adjust refresh rate (@crystalp https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/24100). After playing more than 5 seconds in a chapter, the Previous chapter action rewinds to the beginning of the chapter for a more intuitive behaviour (@crystalp https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/24066). Known Issues You can see open issues on our tracker at https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/issues. However, to call out a couple of specifics, please be aware of the following if you're planning on upgrading: There are seek issues with multi-part MP4 files on Android (https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/issues/23673). We've had reports that the new splash screen looks like an OpenGL corruption; we know, it's not a problem, so don't panic. We'd be happy to have your artwork contributions if you'd like to work on an alternative. If remote sources are unavailable at startup, users are seeing large delays of startup (https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/issues/23958). We continue to march forward to what we hope will be a successful v21 Omega release in the new year. If you love to live on the bleeding edge, you can get Beta 2 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. There is always a great deal more changes/fixes/updates than what we can highlight in these reports, so as usual you can see a fuller list of what has been merged between v21 and v20 here. For a more targeted look at the changes made since v21 Beta 1, you can see those changes here. View the full article