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jeroenpardon / skin.grid

Grid, a UI for Kodi. By using this code you agree with the license terms as included.
http://www.gridskin.net
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Beta 2 testing - Discussion #79

Closed jeroenpardon closed 7 years ago

jeroenpardon commented 7 years ago

Hi all,

I'm back in the country for now, let's get to beta 2 :)

I just pushed a new update. Most of the work in there has been done shortly before my trip. It hasn't gone through lot of testing, new issues and regressions are to be expected.

I haven't kept track of the changes well though. But from the top of my head:

KOKONUTCREME commented 7 years ago

Hi Jeroen, welcome back.

Installed latest commit and received an error that skin shortcuts was unable to create menus. Checked version I had installed and installed latest commit from GIT for shortcuts and tried again but there was no change.

I switched skins to Estuary, Mimic and Arctic Zephyr and there were no problems with skin shortcuts running and creating my personal home menu items.

Reverted back to GRID, received same error msg. I changed settings of skin shortcuts, deselecting option to share menu between compatible skins and this time the script ran successfully although my home screen menu was set to default items.

Later on I reverted skin shortcuts back to default and this time it ran successfully on GRID restoring my personal home menu - strange behaviour.

Has anyone else experienced this?

jeroenpardon commented 7 years ago

Thanks :) Yeah, I expected some skin shortcuts issues to pop up. I was actually thinking yesterday I should have put up a heads up about it. There's been quite a lot of changes that have to do with skin shortcuts, most of them "under the hood" stuff. This could cause setups to contain references to things that aren't there anymore, have moved or whatever. Which could indeed cause a build failure. So, do keep on the lookout for any issues but I think this is caused by the changes I mentioned and will only happen once.

KOKONUTCREME commented 7 years ago

Ok thanks for the explanation.

monkeyboyohyeah commented 7 years ago

Can confirm KOKONUTCREME's issue above. Same happened here. Can anyone please tell me how to revert skin shortcuts to default to be able to start again?

KOKONUTCREME commented 7 years ago

Enter the skin shortcuts addon and untick the option to share menu items with compatible skins.

You'll need to use the shortcut key to activate the shutdown menu so you can access Settings/System menu from within GRID. On Tue, 13 Jun 2017 at 18:35, monkeyboyohyeah notifications@github.com wrote:

Can confirm KOKONUTCREME's issue above. Same happened here. Can anyone please tell me how to revert skin shortcuts to default to be able to start again?

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jeroenpardon commented 7 years ago

sorry for not much activity from my part lately guys. I've been working on things that haven't been pushed to Git yet. I have been working on a horizontal menu layout but so far it has not come at a point where I feel good about it. I will be on holiday starting this saturday, maybe that will get the creative juices to flow faster when I get back ;)

Any thoughts or wishes with regards to a horizontal menu, let me know as I am a vertical menu type of guy ;)

jeroenpardon commented 7 years ago

Back from holiday, hopefully you guys are still around too. If any of you are looking forward to a horizontal menu, do let me know about things that are important to you in a horizontal menu. I don't really ever use it myself and I am finding it hard to come up with a fresh take on it.

FrissonReynald commented 7 years ago

Happy to find you jeroen :) I hope your holiday was enjoyable. I do not use much horizontal since vertical refocus because better visibility for me. But in the horizontal menu I like to have a very wide font and sub menu clear and vertical drop down. No menu on the center, it hurts the fanarts. Be positioned on the bottom 1/4 screen and sub menu up (much like Zephyr). Cheers

loggio commented 7 years ago

yes +1... definitely use a vertical submenu if you can help it. I absolutely hated horizontal menus until I started using the Arctic Zephyr skin because I rely on submenus too much and navigating a horizontal submenu is very unpleasant and just does not feel right or look right for that matter.

http://i.imgur.com/tNrevwM.jpg

Ostrymiecz commented 7 years ago

You can give up horizontal menu Jeroen. I think it's better to have one option that's done right. Personally I don't like "strips" beneath home screen menu items but I can live with them. An option for turning them off would be very nice but that won't happen I guess. :)

I know those "strips" reflects whole GRID idea but they're too strong for me and just don't fit there.

jeroenpardon commented 7 years ago

There's really no reason why there can't be two options done right ;) But I do think I will be postponing work on it and have it be a future plan. Just a heads up, I do plan to "sacrifice" the stream home menu.

I will be focusing in getting what's there now it's final touches and optimisations. I also plan to change some thing on the configuration side of widgets, but that requires changes in Skin Shortcuts first, for which I am in contact with the developer. Probably going to share some info publicly.

bigdaddyral commented 7 years ago

Sorry I've been out of commission, I've been dry camping for 3 weeks without power or reliable internet, so I haven't been online much.

In regards to the horizontal menu, I feel the reFocus horizontal menu is perfect (main menu with sub items underneath). Something along those lines would be dreamy.

jeroenpardon commented 7 years ago

No worries, I am just starting to pick things up again after my holiday. Have fun camping!

KOKONUTCREME commented 7 years ago

Hey everybody I'm back after 3 weeks R&R in Singapore, just installed latest commit and experienced the bug you reported Jeroen with the widget indicators appearing before home menu loads.

It doesn't matter which keystroke I press to clear the message Kodi stops responding and shuts down. I reverted back to an earlier commit.

jeroenpardon commented 7 years ago

Nice @KOKONUTCREME I was there for just a day (transferring through to New Zealand) 2,5 years ago and man, it was like a sauna! Yeah, found out about that issue this morning. Had to leave for work so didn't have time to fix it. Will look into it later Cheers and welcome back

FrissonReynald commented 7 years ago

Jeroen, I installed the new update (9h) and there is a worry. Kodi destroys himself at the opening. Can not initialize GRID. Ok i see your previous post !

jeroenpardon commented 7 years ago

So, I feel I have to draw a line for myself here. It is very tempting to keep working on adding things like the widget indicators and other things I am planning to add to the skin.

But, every thing that's added needs testing.. And sometimes seemingly small changes or features end up being more work, or effect more areas and pose more decision challenges than you initially thought.

So, I am not adding anything until after a public release and I will now focus excusively on resolving any remaining issues in what we have now.

I am still planning on overhauling the configuration side of the widgets, but that is going to have to wait. Partly because of what I wrote above, but mostly because the changes required in skin shortcuts for that to become a reality have proven to be more complex than initially assumed. So, I will need to wait until Bob has time to implement it.

In any case, please do post any bugs you come across so I can take care of them before the public preview release. Just no feature or change requests please.

Speaking of which, I am currently trying to put together a post for the public announcement thread. Not sure yet how I am going to approach it and exactly what I am going to be sharing. It is the WIP section after all...

I think I will not be mentioning your names in that post. I want to exclude any chance of people bothering you for an invite or link to a beta and stuff like that. I hope you'll understand and obviously you will all be properly credited when I actually put up the public preview release.

FrissonReynald commented 7 years ago

Ok Jeroen , thx for your amazing work :)

jeroenpardon commented 7 years ago

Before I forget. When I make a public post on the forum, I would like to control what is shared. So please don't post any additional info, screenshots and things like that. Thanks guys

jeroenpardon commented 7 years ago

Aaaand another thing ;) You will all be credited on the "About Grid" section in skin settings. I will use the names under which you are listed here on Github. Should you prefer to be credited using your real name (or another screenname) just let me know.

jeroenpardon commented 7 years ago

First preview released publicly (not a build, just screenshots): https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=318152

Ostrymiecz commented 7 years ago

BTW Jeroen – do You plan to add fantastic list view from reFocus which is "movie strip" or "gallery". I don't remember it by heart. The one that had fanart set as fullscreen background and it could be modified to rolling movie strip (slide left/right). I'd kill for that view :) It was always my one-and-only view in reFocus.

jeroenpardon commented 7 years ago

The fullscreen layout is already available, the smaller version is not. No immediate plans for it.

Ostrymiecz commented 7 years ago

Oh. I will test it today.

jeroenpardon commented 7 years ago

A request to the PVR users.

I have added the Big list and Slide view to the recordings window. Since the PVR Demo add-on has several shortcomings and oddities it would be great if you could check if everything is working correctly.

For instance, are you seeing the thumbnails in slide view? And are you seeing a fallback texture when a recording has no thumbnail? Not sure how this can be tested? Can you remove or disable thumbnails on the backend so this can be tested for example?

Anyway, if anyone can test this that would be great

Cheers :)

loggio commented 7 years ago

Hi Jeroen,

I haven't been very active on testing lately as I've been flat out with work and have a lot going on at home so apologies for the inactivity.

The new views in PVR seem to be working however the skin helper pvr artwork scraper is not showing thumbnails anymore... All I see are my default channel logos. I use TVheadend as a backend for PVR and this does not show thumbnails for recordings, hence the reason i like to use the skin helper scraper. http://imgur.com/AlaeXbc http://imgur.com/zlfuibB

Couple of things...

  1. In both views the blue info bar that normally displays runtime, rating, genre etc is missing... in PVR you should use this info bar to display the Time/date of the recording, just like you've done in the standard list view on the recordings page. There's also no watched indicators in the slide view. as can be seen in the images posted above.

  2. the "info" page of a recording needs to be fixed up and rearranged. Remove all the buttons and just leave the "play recording" button. See estuary for example. http://imgur.com/wUx6JOj

  3. Not related to PVR.... any reason why is this code in the home window being run onload and not onunload ? condition="Skin.HasSetting(homemenu.collapse)">RunScript(script.skinshortcuts,type=hidesubmenu&mainmenuID=9000)

I can seem to remember you stating a reason for this somewhere... But for me, the time it's taking to execute the script is really making for a sloppy experience when entering the home screen as there is always a delay in collapsing the submenu, sometimes this is a huge delay and can take up to 4-5 seconds to collapse... this is random, but happens often to me, especially if I've been navigating the skin windows for a while and then decide to go back to the home window. As a user, it's making the home screen navigation look and feel buggy. Changing it to onunload fixes this...

  1. I realise this is cosmetic and you're probably not interested in changing it, but can you consider an increase or change the highlighted font in the settings windows and dialogs to be a little more beefy ? a little bump in size or boldness would go a very long way. http://imgur.com/ObtrRlf http://imgur.com/2atAhPu

The screenshots above don't do it justice as looking at things on a computer monitor are always more crisp and easier to see... However, everybody's TV screens a different, some with high colour output and saturation, some with high contrast, some washy, some really black blacks, some use RGB, some use YCbCr etc.... My point being, small dark text can be very hard to see when the contrast color of the highlight is so apparent.

jeroenpardon commented 7 years ago

Hi Loggio,

No worries, glad you were able to find time for some testing.

I'm afraid there's not much I can do about the thumbnails not showing if they aren't provided by the backend. The SkinHelper properties are not available within the actual containers unfortunately. Actually I believe it's a Kodi limitation more than anything. Only Kodi's native infolabels can be used here. Because of the same reason I can't do several things I would want, like show the tv shows status in the containers, or the custom rating sources.

1 & 2: I made some changes that should take care of this, let me know it it doesn't

  1. I believe it had to do with the onunload actually being faster when I tested it, but trying it out now onload indeed seems a bit faster. I've changed it to onload on my version and I'll be testing it for a while. But 4-5 seconds to collapse the menus is totally abnormal though. It's always just a fraction of a second for me whether it is on my workstation, NUC or RasperryPi. No idea what could cause such delays to be honest.
  2. Yeah, it's not something I'm going to change. I have no trouble reading any of it. Though I realize there are specific wishes, preferences and circumstances. As changing the font size is so easy to do, I'm going to leave tweaking that to the individual user.

I'll think about adding an alternate fontset with bigger fonts.

loggio commented 7 years ago

Hi jeroen, Not sure if understand your statement about thumbnails and the skin helper script.. They were working fine before in the channel window and the recordings window but since the new views were added I don't see the thumbnails in any of the pvr windows.

I should be able to see fanart for recordings window and channels window as I did before...

loggio commented 7 years ago

Also, it's already set to 'onload' changing it to 'onunload' fixed it.

jeroenpardon commented 7 years ago

So they aren't showing when set to list view either? If so, then that is a separate issue I will look into. It remains though that the PVR scraper artwork will not be visible in the Slide and Big List view.

The properties that are provided by Skin Helper only return anything when it is not part of the actual list control. In the case of List view for example, the property is used within the recordings window, but it's not part of the list you scroll through, and only the artwork for the currently focused item is shown.

jeroenpardon commented 7 years ago

Could you try deleting line 655 from Variables.xml and check if that makes the pvr thumbs show up again?

loggio commented 7 years ago

No there are not showing in list view either..

Ok, will do. I will get back to you tomorrow as I'm away from home at the moment and I'm unable to test. Hang tight.

Loving the skin! No doubt it will be a big hit with the community once officially released.

jeroenpardon commented 7 years ago

Sure, no rush 👍

jeroenpardon commented 7 years ago

A heads up to everyone, I have just pushed a commit that will most likely cause several of your home menu items to have no text. This is because of renumbering the language file strings. I know it's a pain but you'll going to have to manually re-enter the label text or remove and re-add the item so it picks up the new strings.

jeroenpardon commented 7 years ago

Another request to PVR users: In the screenshots folder I would like to have one of the guide timeline. Instead of a silly PVR Demo add-on shot I would like one of a real PVR setup. If anyone could make post a nice screenshot with TV channel logos and all, that would be great!

Cheers

loggio commented 7 years ago

Hi Jeroen, Just tested the changes PVR and all seem to be good.

The issue with PVR skin.helper fanart is with line 653... Deleting this line brings back the fanart but breaks thumbnail images for the big list and slide views. I think you'll need to add specific conditions to line 653 to allow it to detect what view if that's even possible ...

for now I just added this quick fix as I won't be using the big list or slide views for recordings anyways... <value condition="!String.StartsWith(Container.FolderPath,pvr://channels/) + !String.StartsWith(Container.FolderPath,pvr://recordings/) + [Container.Content(images) + !ListItem.IsFolder] | !String.StartsWith(Container.FolderPath,pvr://channels/) + !String.StartsWith(Container.FolderPath,pvr://recordings/) + [String.IsEmpty(Container.Content) + !ListItem.IsFolder]">$INFO[ListItem.Icon]</value>

loggio commented 7 years ago

here's some screenshots of PVR windows by the way http://imgur.com/2K8uRnv http://imgur.com/9suHLsP http://imgur.com/FDoc9fh http://imgur.com/EQUhCk0

jeroenpardon commented 7 years ago

Great, thanks for the shots and the testing, I'll look into those conditions

KOKONUTCREME commented 7 years ago

Hi Jeroen

Have installed latest commit.

In TV Shows the banner viewtype is showing logos centred over the banner, when logos are enabled.

Poster and landscape viewtypes are more sluggish to scroll vertically for movies and tv shows compared to list, slide, gallery and banner viewtypes.

This is the first time I've used poster and landscape views so unsure if my experience is expected behaviour. When I scroll up or down one row at a time, the selector moves about half a second after I've pressed the directional key. When I scroll horizontally the movement matches the keystroke exactly. If I want to scroll quickly through the library, the selector doesn't move smoothly through each row but kind of jumps and I lose sight of where I am until it catches up.

Is my experience similar to others?

I used to be able to see progress of library updates when scanning new items into the library on the homescreen but no longer can. Not sure if this behaviour is by design or not as my KODI is configured not to hide progress updates.

jeroenpardon commented 7 years ago

Hey @KOKONUTCREME

Thanks, the issue with logo's being displayed on top of the banners is now fixed.

Library update notifications should definitely show on the homescreen too, and they do for me. I tried poking around with different skin settings but I can't seem to reproduce it. Anyone else having this problem?

Edit: was able to reproduce the notification issue after all. Cheers, fixed now.

Regarding the poster and landscape views there's a couple of things to consider:

So, that in combination with what type of system you're running on could very well make a fair bit of difference. I don't notice any slowdown on my workstation but that's a fast system, or on actual HTPC which is a Core i3 system about three years old, but with an SSD. I have not tried these on my Raspberry Pi but I can imagine it will be noticeable on there.

Try and see what changing the landscape view to use landscape artwork will do for performance, I'm curious to know what effect that will have for you.

Cheers, Jeroen

KOKONUTCREME commented 7 years ago

Thanks for fixing those two issues Jeroen.

Will test landscape view with those changes you suggest. Makes sense as it did feel like the delay was because it was waiting for the images to render completely when scrolling forward, when scrolling backwards and then forward again it was much quicker.

I'm running KODI on a Windows laptop and iMAC that is specced sufficiently with processor and RAM that shouldn't have problems with the image rendering.

I prefer list views but will imagine the posters view would be quite popular for many users as it quickly shows multiple content at once which is useful for larger libraries.

jeroenpardon commented 7 years ago

Cheers @KOKONUTCREME keep me posted about the performance please as I feel it's important the experience is as smooth as can be. Not sure what I could do about the views to make them faster but we may stumble upon something I hadn't thought about before.

Also, could you do a basic comparison between list view and the landscape and poster views with regards to CPU and RAM usage? If you go into skin settings and press left to acces the options menu there's an option to enable the debug grid. On the bottom left it will then show CPU and RAM usage. I'm curious to know how much these differ between the views.

And can you also try using the big list view? That one actually sits right in between list view and the landscape/poster views when it comes down to the amount of textures that need to be rendered.

Cheers, Jeroen

Oh, if anyone else is experiencing significant slowdowns in these viewtypes as well, I would like to know.

KOKONUTCREME commented 7 years ago

Yep will do when I get home after work later tonight.

jeroenpardon commented 7 years ago

👍

jeroenpardon commented 7 years ago

Oh, one last thing: please check if you notice any difference with the background fanart turned off too.

KOKONUTCREME commented 7 years ago

Hi Jeroen

Here are my test results running Kodi on my iMAC. Definitely feels much smoother when using landscape images for landscape artwork type than fanart with logos enabled.

Test case 1 Background fanart off List artwork type - Posters Landscape artwork type - Fanart Logos enabled

List view CPU 5% RAM 31%

Big list view CPU 23% RAM 32%

Slide view CPU 9% RAM 31%

Gallery view CPU 8% RAM 32%

Poster view CPU 16% RAM 37%

Landscape view CPU 19% RAM 37%

Test case 2 Background fanart off List artwork type - Posters Landscape artwork type - Landscape Logos enabled

List view CPU 5% RAM 33%

Big list view CPU 12% RAM 33%

Slide view CPU 9% RAM 34%

Gallery view CPU 8% RAM 33%

Poster view CPU 16% RAM 37%

Landscape view CPU 11% RAM 35%

Test case 3 Background fanart on List artwork type - Posters Landscape artwork type - Fanart Logos disabled

List view CPU 5% RAM 34%

Big list view CPU 24% RAM 36%

Slide view CPU 10% RAM 36%

Gallery view CPU 8% RAM 37%

Poster view CPU 16% RAM 39%

Landscape view CPU 14% RAM 35%

Test case 4 Background fanart on List artwork type - Posters Landscape artwork type - Landscape Logos disabled

List view CPU 5% RAM 29%

Big list view CPU 24% RAM 29%

Slide view CPU 10% RAM 29%

Gallery view CPU 8% RAM 28%

Poster view CPU 17% RAM 33%

Landscape view CPU 12% RAM 31%

Test case 5 Background fanart on List artwork type - Fanart Landscape artwork type - Fanart Logos enabled

List view CPU 14% RAM 30%

Big list view CPU 25% RAM 30%

Slide view CPU 10% RAM 30%

Gallery view CPU 8% RAM 30%

Poster view CPU 18% RAM 36%

Landscape view CPU 15% RAM 32%

Test case 6 Background fanart on List artwork type - Landscape Landscape artwork type - Landscape Logos disabled

List view CPU 14% RAM 28%

Big list view CPU 14% RAM 30%

Slide view CPU 9% RAM 29%

Gallery view CPU 7% RAM 29%

Poster view CPU 18% RAM 36%

Landscape view CPU 12% RAM 32%

jeroenpardon commented 7 years ago

@KOKONUTCREME awesome, thanks for the detailed results!

I'll look into it more when I get home, but most of the results are quite in line with what I expected and my own testing. Your CPU usage seems to spike a bit more in general though.

The resource usage in Big List view actually surprises me, I would have thought that to be right in the middle, not sure what to think of that. I'll have to double check if I am using the exact same scroll animations in all the views.

Couple of things I can think of to improve on this:

Thanks again for your efforts 👍

KOKONUTCREME commented 7 years ago

No problem, would be useful to know if the other testers share similar experiences to my own when using those viewtypes with same config just to rule out a local issue on my end.

jeroenpardon commented 7 years ago

Yes, indeed.

I am closing this as there are no known issues that can be solved at the moment. I feel comfortable with declaring the current release to be Beta 2.

Now I want to focus on preparing for the public preview release. Trying to improve performance in the views discussed above will be the first on my list.