:sparkles: Auto play trailer on movie / series highlight after custom amount of seconds.

[QuickSwitchLK]

Skin section

Home Widgets

Feature description

Would be thankful if you would add an option to auto play a highlighted Movie or TV Series associated trailer in background if it exists in the folder, after a number of seconds delay set by the user.

Why is this feature needed? Please justify and explain.

Would look good! Will save 4 clicks to play trailer if contimplating wathing the move / series.

Screenshots and Additional Info

No response

Checklist

• [X] I have made a separate issue for each feature I am requesting.
• [X] I have searched the issues and this feature has not been requested.
• [X] I am using the most recent skin version.

[rmdcf1967]

It would be a sweet adition to this beautifull skin

[phillias]

This is a simple lift to get massive engagement. Currently it's hidden behind mini clicks. Having a video and audio playing while browsing is a great time to test bandwidth and functionality. And the user is immediately drawn in. Without any audio it's easy to feel like you're getting stuck in Netflix hell.

[jurialmunkey]

Kodi forces all containers to refresh whenever video playback starts or stops.

So autoplaying trailers would mean that your widgets constantly refresh whenever the trailer finishes. That'd be a bad experience.

[QuickSwitchLK]

Thanks for the reply jurialmunkey, I only have Kodi running on high end equipment myself, I just tried playing a trailer with the skin and then backing out to the spotlight page, I waited for the trailer to finish and I noticed the refresh, but it was instant. Am I missing something?

I have also tried Titain Binge Mod Skin which has the feature without issue on my end, clearly your skin is far more polished than that skin.

Thanks for all the effort you are putting into this skin either way. My old favorite skin is no longer being developed for nexus by its creator, so google and the Kodi forum resulted in me finding Arctic Fuse. With each update I love it more, so thank you.

[jurialmunkey]

@QuickSwitchLK - With library content it would generally be okay as library paths refresh quickly and Kodi tries to keep focus on the last item.

The main problem for library content is with randomisation or lists which otherwise might change their contents -- the refresh will reload them and it often results in a list without that item in it.

[QuickSwitchLK]

Its like waking up to an unexpected surprises! Updated and works perfect on my end. Thank you :)

I take it that limiting it to spotlight only is so that we don't cause the issues you are worried about, and now that I am trying it this way it does make sense. Spotlight is so you watch something you were not planing on watching and the synopsis and trailer make you want to watch it.

If you were just watching your favorite tv series at the time, you would not want it to play when you are inside the series, that would be just repetitive overload as you navigate through each episode.

If it doesn't cause others too many issues with your new experimental support, would you consider adding it to when in movies selecting one under title or newly added? and for TV Series when you are on the top level of that series before you select it?

Edit.. Have just noticed that there is a failed play back popup if the trailer does not exist locally ( for me TV series only), can it be smart enough to play the first from your generated list when in info under trailers, if local is not present?

[jurialmunkey]

@QuickSwitchLK

I take it that limiting it to spotlight only is so that we don't cause the issues you are worried about, and now that I am trying it this way it does make sense. Spotlight is so you watch something you were not planing on watching and the synopsis and trailer make you want to watch it.

Yep pretty much spot-on.

Didn't want to roll it out too extensively without testing it first, so spotlight is best candidate -- both in terms of easiest to implement and making sense for the feature.

If you were just watching your favorite tv series at the time, you would not want it to play when you are inside the series, that would be just repetitive overload as you navigate through each episode.

Exactly. Can see that quickly becoming quite annoying.

If it doesn't cause others too many issues with your new experimental support, would you consider adding it to when in movies selecting one under title or newly added? and for TV Series when you are on the top level of that series before you select it?

Definitely not opposed to rolling it out in more places, just want to do a bit more testing first. Plus, will need a slightly different method to make it work outside of the spotlight (spotlight is easier because it has buttons which are easier to assign triggers to do actions).

Have just noticed that there is a failed play back popup if the trailer does not exist locally ( for me TV series only), can it be smart enough to play the first from your generated list when in info under trailers, if local is not present?

Yeah should be able to fix that. Fairly sure its because I wasn't checking if there was actually a url stored for the trailer or not. I was just sending $INFO[ListItem.Trailer] straight to the PlayMedia command, so if there wasn't a url stored there then it'd be doing PlayMedia("") which obviously will fail!

[DROIDshield]

He's only gone and done it..... I'm loving the auto play but not sure which of the buttons is the trigger Open or More information. Or is there a background timer to trigger a trailer to start? Considering the Shield only has three gig of ram I haven't seen any lagging in the trailer while auto scroll is running on the widget below the running trailer.

[QuickSwitchLK]

He's only gone and done it..... I'm loving the auto play but not sure which of the buttons is the trigger Open or More information. Or is there a background timer to trigger a trailer to start? Considering the Shield only has three gig of ram I haven't seen any lagging in the trailer while auto scroll is running on the widget below the running trailer.

From what I can tell while it is experimental, the wait time is 5 Seconds and the trigger is the highlight of Spotlight "Open" or "More Information". If you press right key when on "More Information" the next Spotlight is loaded. The Trailer will only play once if no key pressed while left on either of those 2 options.

[DROIDshield]

Okay so just done the latest update and glad the spotlight label and details have been removed as not necessary, unless I missed something, what I found is once I highlighted the open button the trailer engaged after 5 seconds but the trailer while playing iron man, the name showing then changed to Game of Thrones.... once the trailer finished the fanart for GOT then appeared. This has now rendered the spotlight to stop scrolling and has not continued even after a time.

I would have thought the film or TV show name once the trailer starts would stay onscreen until the trailer has finished before changing then the resume of spotlight scrolling would begin again until a button is highlighted?

[jurialmunkey]

@DROIDshield - Yeah it shouldn't do that. Not sure why, but the condition to stop it scrolling is bugging out for some reason -- but if I rewrite the same condition with a slightly different approach it starts working properly. I think above should fix it but I have no idea why it is now working for me...!

[DROIDshield]

Will check it in your next update... thanks your for work.. this really doe's make the skin come alive... and time for a Kofi me thinks.👍😄

[ambulancePilot]

Wow, the implementation of this is just flawless. I honestly can't believe what I'm seeing. I would just love for this to be rolled out for all widgets with some options surrounding length of delay and which widgets if possible. Great work as always.

[DROIDshield]

Hmmm🤔 something isn't right... or i have an issue.

So great news spotlight is scrolling but is it supposed to work the way it is, that when I highlight open or More Information it plays the trailer... but when that has finished spotlight is then static until i unhighlight one of the two icons.

I thought spotlight would then just scroll again until a given time ie 30 secs 60 secs and then it would just start the trailer running for the spotlight movie or TV programme showing on screen at that point?

Yes it's working and that is great... just wanted to know if it is working how it should or have I got a bug in my setup.... cheers JM.

[jurialmunkey]

So great news spotlight is scrolling but is it supposed to work the way it is, that when I highlight open or More Information it plays the trailer... but when that has finished spotlight is then static until i unhighlight one of the two icons.

The spotlight is never meant to scroll automatically if either of the buttons are focused - that's true for both before and after the trailer plays.

The reason is that if we focus the buttons it means we probably want to play the movie or show the information, so we don't want it to randomly scroll away before we've had a chance to click the button

[DROIDshield]

Thanks for the full explanation, i can stop waiting for an update 😊

[phillias]

Friggin amazing! THE best!

[Bindou01]

Hi, it would be really nice if the trailer launched automatically from the information area, from the "Play" and/or "trailer" button. And it stops automatically, as soon as you change tabs, or you leave the information area.

This would solve the usability problem that makes it difficult to stop the trailer. In addition, this would remain in the logic of "tabs" which display the information on the page without needing to press it.

And if the trailer launches automatically on the wallpaper, could pressing the "trailer" button launch the trailer in full screen mode?

:D

[Beats24-7]

@Bindou01 I second that request. Right now the trailer starts playing in a popup window from the trailer button, but if trailers are set to autoplay it plays in the background (fanart area). Or is there a setting for this I am missing? It should also stop/exit automatically if you change tabs or leave the information area. Furthermore, there is no delay in seconds I can set for auto trailers in the information area. Unfortunately, this is an issue when the YouTube plugin cannot play a trailer (out of date, API needs to be updated or missing trailer, etc.) because in this case navigation is frozen for a couple of seconds until an error shows on screen. For example, there's an issue with the current beta version of the youtube plugin and it takes several seconds to load trailers from YouTube. If automatic trailers are enabled, the skin doesn't recognize any input until the trailer starts to play (which takes 4-5 seconds atm). Because I cannot set a delay for auto trailers to start, the only option is to disable them entirely.

[Bindou01]

@Beats24-7 Jurial implemented my suggestions and I find it very successful. However, to make the experience even better, in my opinion, it would be necessary to :

Start the automatic loading of the trailer only when the information page has been loaded. Because as it stands, for a few seconds, the information displayed in Production is not good. Thus, it would actually be necessary to activate a slight delay, +-2 seconds.

Then, I don't know if it's possible, but it would be necessary to prevent the navigation from freezing while the trailer is loading.

Finally, what I would find very relevant is that the sound volume is reduced to 50% for the trailers in the background, and that it returns to 100% volume only in full screen or in windowed mode. And the Holy Grail would be an “Ambilight” mode like on YouTube videos. But I'm asking too much, I don't even know if it's possible. Although if we can do it with Fanart, we should be able to do it with video?

It's more of a Christmas list.

[Beats24-7]

@Bindou01 Haha, sounds like a Christmas list indeed :)

I think a custom delay setting for automatic trailers, and trailers from the trailer button playing in the background instead of a popup player (or adding an option to decide where to play - afair there was an option for this in previous versions?) would solve many issues already.