Bundle Font

[aqw]

XBMC doesn't have support for this yet, but the devs seem open to it. Once this addon makes it to the main repo, then we can talk with the devs about getting this feature supported.

The problem is that we inherit the font from the active skin in XBMC, and many of those fonts don't play nicely with our interface.

For now, we will continue targeting Confluence's font (as it is the default skin).

[alexanderritola]

I'm using Ace and the font is overlapping on the new interface, which is beautiful by the way. Great work!

[aqw]

@AlexanderRitola This is a known issue (hence the bug). I use Amber daily, and it's pretty bad.

This won't be fixed for quite the while, largely because it is up to the XBMC team to allows addons to set their own font. But we were told to not ask for the feature until this addon is in the main repository (which is a reasonable request). And we won't get to the repository until I feel we're feature complete and reasonably stable (which we're not yet, on either point).

This issue is open mainly just so people know that it's a known problem.

Though if anyone is willing to add this feature to XBMC themselves (or knows an XBMC dev well enough to guilt-trip ;-), that would be awesome. :-D

---Alex

[alexanderritola]

Sorry, I wasn't asking for it to be fixed, I was just mentioning that it was an issue on Ace, though, I realize now that it was kind of pointless for the reasons just stated. Sorry!

It doesn't bother me at all though, I'm easily able to identify what each game is and that's all that really matters. Thanks again!

Also I've got a question, I seem to have a problem with slightly choppy audio (burps every 10 seconds or so) accompanied by very minor video distortion (like a horizontal bar is just slightly out of place). The video glitches are minor enough to not be bothersome but the audio can be. I've got a sense it's related to FFMPEG, but i was wondering how I might go about investigating the cause of this issue.

Thanks

[aqw]

@AlexanderRitola That burpring/tearing sounds like it's struggling to provide seemless playback across segments. Each stream is chopped up into segments (usually 2 or 10 seconds). Most streams we play now have 10 second segments.

There's not a whole lot we can do about that at our layer. I would suggest looking at your CPU usage (make sure it's not starved for cycles), make sure the network isn't congested (perhaps your ISP is throttling and the segments come /just/ a bit too late for seamless playback), perhaps you've done odd things to XBMC's video/audio playback settings, or you have a weird build of ffmpeg/xbmc and it's something associated with that. Or it could simply be that the football gods are conspiring against you. ;-)

After troubleshooting, if you feel this is a problem that /can/ be solved by the addon, open a bug report (with logs, etc) and we'll take a look at it.

---Alex

[aqw]

If anyone is interested, there's a conversation over in the Kodi forums about font issues for skinned addons.

http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=214140

[BaumSchorle]

I am currently working on a solution for this, as soon as I have something to test I will let you know!

[aqw]

@BaumSchorle /Awesome/. Did they finally provide a way for addon devs to solve this?!

[BaumSchorle]

@Alexqw No, there is still no solution for this, as far as I know.

However I found a way for a decent workaround. I stumbled over this library: https://github.com/mazkolain/xbmc-skinutils The developer is a smart gui, we provide a font file and a font.xml which is dynamically added to the active skin and then the skin is reloaded. After leaving our addon, the skin is set back to it's original state.

What I like about it:

• It is actually working. I have it already running on my system and tested it with 3 or 4 different skins and it looks nice everywhere.

What I don't like about it:

• we dynamically edit the font.xml of the skin
• if you are running on Confluence, the library copies the skin from the Kodi installation folder to the userdata folder and you need to restart Kodi to activate the Confluence Skin from the userdata folder.

[aqw]

@BaumSchorle I agree with your downsides. It's a very heavy-handed approach to a problem that should be solved in Kodi proper.

However, I agree with your statement that "It's actually working." It solves the problem, and it solves it now. I'm reassured that he's been developing and maintaining this solution for 4 years now. Though I am concerned that it seems there's not much of a community around the effort (1 contributor, no issues or PRs, no forks). It makes me wonder how broadly it has been tested.

That being said, as long as it is minimally invasive to our code and can be reverted easily (in case this chokes badly on the odd skins people use), then I'm all for it. As we should continue to bitch to the kodi devs that this really needs to be solved by them.

Thanks for looking into this. :-)

---Alex

[BaumSchorle]

This libraries are used in the popular Addon Spotimc and I think it is pretty well tested. I haven't come across any problem until now, it just works like a charm.

There is only one thing missing for a "complete skinned addon": We need to design our own select dialogs for selection of bitrate and full/condensed games.

[aqw]

Good to know it's well tested then. :-)

Are there problems with the default dialogs? I havn't noticed any problems.

[BaumSchorle]

It depends on the skin, I am using eminence and the selction dialogs are not looking any good. The OK-Dialogs are not the problem, at least not in eminence.

[BaumSchorle]

@Alexqw I created a pull request, maybe you want to test it with your skin!?

[aqw]

This is closed for now, but I am looking forward to Kodi doing this properly.

---Alex

[aqw]

Reopening, because of issue #184 The skinutils patch lives on in the font-hack branch. Extra points and love for anyone who can convince upstream to complete this feature. Even better if you have the skills to complete the work yourself. :-)

https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/4743

---Alex

[aqw]

So... crazy idea, and I'm not sure (as in I doubt) that it's possible with Kodi's current feature-set, but there's no bad ideas in brainstorming... or something... right?

What if the addon were more of a scraper, that (assuming a valid subscription) could scrape the GamePass servers and setup the resources with proper auth and enter them into Kodi's library. That way all of the display issues become the responsibility of the skin (again). We wouldn't have font problems, the resume feature would work, favorites would work, etc.

The concern is, I don't know/think that Kodi has a media type of "Sports Game" or if it can even add streams as resources in the library. The scraping would have to be done frequently-ish to update info, and we'd have to work closely with at least one skin to act as a reference implementation for important features (game start-time, etc). And I don't know where Red-Zone or NFL Network would go in the library.

Perhaps all a little pie-in-the-sky...

Thoughts?

---Alex

[Ghoschdi]

@Alexqw I have very limited knowledge (still), but what you describe sounds a bit like the taken approach of the AMAZON VOD addon developed by Sandman. You provide the addon your login details, it fetches the information from the Instant Video servers and serves the Movies/Series via the standard Kodi 17. (video section) skin. The addon comes in two flavors: One with a local database and one with online information provided via Amazon. Github here: https://github.com/Sandmann79/xbmc

[aqw]

@Ghoschdi Sorry, your post slipped by me. I took a closer look at that amazon addon, and it seems he ships the actual db file, rather than an advanced form of scraper. :-/

I'm not a fan of that approach in general, but also it wouldn't work for us in practicality, as we'd have to have a way to push high frequency updates to the db (in the most extreme case, every few minutes on Sundays).

Thanks for keeping an eye out though. :-)

---Alex

[Ghoschdi]

@Alexqw No problems.

From my very quick glance at the code he seems to pull the info from the remote server, prepares it in a way that Kodi understands it and can display it in the normal video menu. For this reason he seems to use a DB file. In the newer VOD one (version 0.27) he got rid of the local DB and pulls info directly from amazon (to compose a new temporary db). At least this is what i saw also on the version running onmy Shield TV now. The related new plugin is located in this github tree: https://github.com/Sandmann79/xbmc/tree/master/plugin.video.amazon-test

This approach makes sense to me as you need to pass a lot of information you want to put into different categories. Wouldn't this also help to solve the request about having a team view? Anyhow i still do not understand how Kodi builds the Video menu and how you can pass multiple elements like GP needs to do.

[aqw]

@Ghoschdi FYI, I changed my username today to 'aqw'. Just to reduce confusion. ;-)

If he's actually doing what you're saying, then that is very interesting indeed. It would also require skin support, but then that could be a general, in-Kodi solution to all type of sports. That's... very interesting. I need to talk with a Kodi dev and get their input.

---Alex

[aqw]

The Kodi PR (kinda) has new life: xbmc/xbmc#11136

Hope springs eternal.

---Alex

[aqw]

I wonder if this changed anything for us: xbmc/xbmc#11379

[jm-duke]

Doing some clean-up and this enhancement request is really old, so I'm closing it.