[Statler1978]

Hi,

On audio start, the dialogue automatically changes to audio display. Is there a way to disable this behavior, ie start audio without changing to audio screen (and remain on the home screen)? I am using default Estuary skin if it's a skin modification that needs to be done. Have looked for a while now for this, but can't seem to find the solution.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

[PatK]

I created a playlist for music that I want to hear, marked it as a favourite and linked it to a custom home page button menu. Ensured my setting had no artwork, visualizations etc... and if plays out on the home screen. Ensure your skin supports custom home page items (I don't think the default does) and you should be able to browse the library with sweet tunes.

[Statler1978]

I created a playlist for music that I want to hear, marked it as a favourite and linked it to a custom home page button menu. Ensured my setting had no artwork, visualizations etc... and if plays out on the home screen. Ensure your skin supports custom home page items (I don't think the default does) and you should be able to browse the library with sweet tunes.

Thanks for the information, unfortunately it wasn't the solution for me. Although following your advice led me to notice that it only occurs with aac streams. mp3 streams give the desired effect. I use the radio add-on and made 8 streams favourites.those favourites I have then added to the home screen, simple as that. 6 out of 8 are mp3 streams and when played do not activate the now playing screen. But when using the other 2 which are aac, it shows the now playing screen. So still no idea or luck as to why this behavior, although I now at least am a step further in narrowing down.

[PatK]

Modding Kodi or even a skin might be a bit over the top solution, when the issue may lie with a 3rd party add-on. A post in the Music forum or the specific add-on thread could prove positive. Looking back at some of the add-ons, Add-on:Super Favourites (wiki)  (might not be currently supported) handled streaming add-ons in a fashion that might be more to your liking.

[black_eagle]

@PatK I think what the OP means is he wants the opposite of whats discussed in this thread https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=351047

Ronie has a PR up to enable core to decide whether to switch or not to the music viz screen on playback.  That may or may not fix the OP's issue given that it only appears to happen with aac streams.  I use that addon myself so I'll try and confirm this later.

[black_eagle]

Done some more testing with this and I have discovered the following.  The 'now playing' (music viz screen) is automatically displayed for streams that you cannot pause.  I think the aac stream identifier here is a bit of a red herring because I can play Scala radio with a direct link to the stream and it doesn't trigger.  I can play a local radio station, again with a direct link to the stream, and it does trigger.  Both streams are .aac  The difference is that if I get up the controls on the music viz screen by pressing 'm', the Scala stream has both the pause button and the stop button.  The local radio station has only the stop button.  That leads me to believe that there is a difference in the streams and that it's that difference that causes Kodi to switch screens.

It's going to take some digging through the code though to find out if that is indeed the case.  Still, it's progress of a sort!

Edited to add - It appears that the two stations that trigger the visualisation window are both played by the video player, whereas the one that doesn't is played by the audio player (PAPlayer).

[Statler1978]

Done some more testing with this and I have discovered the following.  The 'now playing' (music viz screen) is automatically displayed for streams that you cannot pause.  I think the aac stream identifier here is a bit of a red herring because I can play Scala radio with a direct link to the stream and it doesn't trigger.  I can play a local radio station, again with a direct link to the stream, and it does trigger.  Both streams are .aac  The difference is that if I get up the controls on the music viz screen by pressing 'm', the Scala stream has both the pause button and the stop button.  The local radio station has only the stop button.  That leads me to believe that there is a difference in the streams and that it's that difference that causes Kodi to switch screens.

It's going to take some digging through the code though to find out if that is indeed the case.  Still, it's progress of a sort!

Edited to add - It appears that the two stations that trigger the visualisation window are both played by the video player, whereas the one that doesn't is played by the audio player (PAPlayer).

this is exactly what happens with the streams i play. i am no coder at all and i dont pretend to be one, but i do think it has correlation that aac audio is also used in videostreams. hence the videoplayer being started instead of audioplayer. a check of some sorts by kodi if the stream has video or not, should be doable and would actually be better.

[black_eagle]

this is exactly what happens with the streams i play. i am no coder at all and i dont pretend to be one, but i do think it has correlation that aac audio is also used in videostreams. hence the videoplayer being started instead of audioplayer. a check of some sorts by kodi if the stream has video or not, should be doable and would actually be better.

Yeah, I don't think it's as clear cut as just aac audio.  aac can be mpeg-2 or mpeg-4 and on top of that, it comes in various profiles/object types.  The other thing of course is that why does the video-player trigger the full screen musicviz and not a blank video screen ?   I don't know enough about the audio and video side of things to be able to answer that yet.  I'll keep digging though, because I like a challenge !!

[Statler1978]

this is exactly what happens with the streams i play. i am no coder at all and i dont pretend to be one, but i do think it has correlation that aac audio is also used in videostreams. hence the videoplayer being started instead of audioplayer. a check of some sorts by kodi if the stream has video or not, should be doable and would actually be better.

Yeah, I don't think it's as clear cut as just aac audio.  aac can be mpeg-2 or mpeg-4 and on top of that, it comes in various profiles/object types.  The other thing of course is that why does the video-player trigger the full screen musicviz and not a blank video screen ?   I don't know enough about the audio and video side of things to be able to answer that yet.  I'll keep digging though, because I like a challenge !! 

I would too, if I had any idea what I am doing in coding 😁

[ronie]

The other thing of course is that why does the video-player trigger the full screen musicviz and not a blank video screen ?

@black_eagle 
when playback starts, videoplayer will send a fullscreen message:
https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/43b613....cpp#L1990

core then checks if the player is playing video or audio and switches to the correct window accordingly:
https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/43b613...4543-L4581


in the PR i'm working on, i'd like to make this behavior user configurable,
the setting should ofc apply to both PAPlayer and VideoPlayer.

...not sure if i manage to make it work as this playback stuff is likely way above my paygrade

[black_eagle]

The other thing of course is that why does the video-player trigger the full screen musicviz and not a blank video screen ?

@black_eagle 
when playback starts, videoplayer will send a fullscreen message:
https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/43b613....cpp#L1990

core then checks if the player is playing video or audio and switches to the correct window accordingly:
https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/43b613...4543-L4581


in the PR i'm working on, i'd like to make this behavior user configurable,
the setting should ofc apply to both PAPlayer and VideoPlayer.

...not sure if i manage to make it work as this playback stuff is likely way above my paygrade  

I think you're probably well within your paygrade

Thanks for the pointers, they save me digging around and trying to follow what triggers what and where.  Still, I'm sure your PR will be better than anything that I might come up with so I will await it with anticipation.  Thanks for the work you have already done on this so far with https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/17225

[Statler1978]

Wow, thanks for at least trying. Didn't expect this to be handled so fast.

[black_eagle]

Wow, thanks for at least trying. Didn't expect this to be handled so fast.

Better than that, I have a fix for you!  And even better, you can do it yourself! 

The problem is that these particular audio streams are played by the video player, rather than the audio player.  Kodi has a set of rules to decide which player to use which are stored in a file called playercorefactory.xml.  The default file that comes with Kodi will be in kodi's system directory.  If you edit that file in notepad and find this bit

xml:
    <!-- Internet streams -->

    <rule name="streams" internetstream="true">

      <rule name="aacp/sdp" mimetypes="audio/aacp|application/sdp" player="VideoPlayer" />

      <rule name="mp2" mimetypes="application/octet-stream" filetypes="mp2" player="PAPlayer" />

    </rule>

Change VideoPlayer to PAPlayer.  Save the file and restart Kodi.  Now play your radio station and Kodi should stay on the home screen, rather than switching to full screen viz.  I'm not sure why Kodi is defaulting to playing some type of audio stream with the video player.  Perhaps in the past it was the only way to play them, but the audio player plays them perfectly well for me.

[jjd-uk]

If you look at the comment for radio here https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/master...ry.xml#L37 then that suggests that perhaps PAPlayer does not support buffering, perhaps that was the reason.

[Statler1978]

Wow, thanks for at least trying. Didn't expect this to be handled so fast.

Better than that, I have a fix for you!  And even better, you can do it yourself! 

The problem is that these particular audio streams are played by the video player, rather than the audio player.  Kodi has a set of rules to decide which player to use which are stored in a file called playercorefactory.xml.  The default file that comes with Kodi will be in kodi's system directory.  If you edit that file in notepad and find this bit

xml:
    <!-- Internet streams -->

    <rule name="streams" internetstream="true">

      <rule name="aacp/sdp" mimetypes="audio/aacp|application/sdp" player="VideoPlayer" />

      <rule name="mp2" mimetypes="application/octet-stream" filetypes="mp2" player="PAPlayer" />

    </rule>

Change VideoPlayer to PAPlayer.  Save the file and restart Kodi.  Now play your radio station and Kodi should stay on the home screen, rather than switching to full screen viz.  I'm not sure why Kodi is defaulting to playing some type of audio stream with the video player.  Perhaps in the past it was the only way to play them, but the audio player plays them perfectly well for me. 

One note: it seems with every start of Kodi the file seems to be overwritten to it's defaults. Making the file read only after changing did the trick for me (took me 1 hour to figure out why your solution wasn't working for me). But it works great!!!! Thanks a lot for the help everyone!