Kodi Community Forum

As suggested by pkscout (author of Artist Slideshow), I am posting my issue here, as it seems more to do with the skin, and not with the add-on.

Here is the issue I am experiencing, with Kodi 18.5 freshly installed today from the Play store on my Android 9.0 TV box, and the current Artist Slideshow installed (the issue is present with and without the pkscout's Estuary Leia mod):

- I enable fanart visualization when playing music (using my own images, specified in the override folder)
- When music starts, first I see the foreground stuff - mp3 built-in image, title, progress bar. All looks bright and contrasty.
- 1-2 seconds later, I can see my slideshow starting in the background. Foreground is still visible (bright and contrasty), my slideshow has low contrast.
- 1-2 seconds later, the foreground disappears, my slideshow keeps running, but it still has exactly the same low contrast as before.

If I watch the same images using the Kodi's Pictures mode, they look bright and contrasty.

It looks like some semi-transparent foreground image is present when I watch the slideshow full-screen (even when no foreground elements are showing), making it appear low contrast.

According to pkscout, this issue is not present under Windows, Mac, and OSMC, so it is likely limited to Android devices.

Here is the content of kodi.log:

https://paste.kodi.tv/epozucivah.kodi

I'd appreciate any help with this issue.

I believe what you are describing is due to the colourdiffuse added to the image at https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/master...on.xml#L22
as this applies a coloured diffuse filter to the fanart image, and it's this I'm assuming is what you mean by low contrast since this means you won't see the image in full colour fidelity (this will be the same on all platforms/OS's).

To remove it you will need to edit the MusicVisualisation.xml file and delete colordiffuse="88FFFFFF" so that line becomes:

xml:
<texture background="true">$INFO[Player.Art(fanart)]</texture>

See this for how to get the skin files off to edit them https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...pid2908539 and last few posts of https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=306327&page=2

(2020-01-06, 13:57)jjd-uk Wrote: [ -> ]I believe what you are describing is due to the colourdiffuse added to the image at https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/master...on.xml#L22
as this applies a coloured diffuse filter to the fanart image, and it's this I'm assuming is what you mean by low contrast since this means you won't see the image in full colour fidelity (this will be the same on all platforms/OS's).

To remove it you will need to edit the MusicVisualisation.xml file and delete colordiffuse="88FFFFFF" so that line becomes:

xml:
<texture background="true">$INFO[Player.Art(fanart)]</texture>

See this for how to get the skin files off to edit them https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...pid2908539 and last few posts of https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=306327&page=2

Thanks! Indeed, I just reproduced this issue (low contrast) on other platforms as well - CoreELEC and Windows 10. I'll give this a try.

Hmm, I am trying to test this under Windows 10, and in the only MusicVisualisation.xml file I could find (inside c/Users/syam/AppData/Roaming/Kodi/addons/skin.estuary.leia.pkscout.mod/xml) I do not see the setting you mentioned. The only references to colordiffuse are:

                        <texture background="true" colordiffuse="$VAR[BackgroundDiffusion]">colors/black.png</texture>
                                <bordertexture colordiffuse="border_alpha">colors/black.png</bordertexture>
                                <bordertexture colordiffuse="border_alpha">colors/black.png</bordertexture>

Is there another MusicVisualisation.xml file I overlooked?

Also, it looks like the fix you suggested is already there (provided by the pkscout's Leia skin mod):

   <texture background="true">$INFO[Player.Art(fanart)]</texture>

Perhaps this extra diffusion layer is introduced elsewhere?

I don't know about the pkscout mod, but the included default Estuary is in the addons folder within the folder that Kodi is installed to, so you're looking in the wrong place for that.

Just realised on default Estuary if the images are provided via Artist Slideshow addon then this line will also have to be modified I think https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/master...on.xml#L30 again the colordiffuse="88FFFFFF" part has to be removed.

Thanks, I'll try both. I found the file as c/Program Files/Kodi/addons/skin.estuary/xml/MusicVisualisation.xml

I tried this (changed both lines), and don't see any difference. It looks like the pkscout's version of MusicVisualisation.xml overrides/supercedes the one provided by Estuary skin, and your fix is already implemented there.

Any other places where a foreground semi-transparent skin might be interfering?

No idea then, removing the colordiffuse makes fanart look exactly like it would look when viewing in Pictures for me, however I'm using the normal local fanart as I don't use Artist Slideshow.

Thanks - that is an interesting observation, suggesting that perhaps this can be fixed by tinkering with the Artist Slideshow code.

For me before & after the suggested edits.

Before



After



Before



After

Actually I owe an apology, I saw a difference in making those changes so made an assumption, but neglected to actually check via Pictures so I thought just to be sure I'd take a look via Pictures and it indeed is still not full colour fidelity.

Ok it seems a 3rd edit is necessary, try editing this line https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/master...on.xml#L45 to give

xml:
<!--			<include>ColoredBackgroundImages</include> -->

The <!-- and --> has the effect of making the line a code comment which is ignored, you could instead just remove that line, I do it that way so it's easy to revert to go back to how it was originally.

So now I've got:

A quick look at pkscout's github suggests this is the line in the mod

https://github.com/pkscout/skin.estuary....on.xml#L62

estuary displays a diffused texture on top of the fanart.

https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/master...ml#L43-L46