[xhaggi]

I get that this is wanted (and why), but I think having a delay on ALL seeks and variable seek length (with no obvious UI feedback?) is precisely the sort of thing that's going to confuse new users and that the instant, easy to understand seeks of the past were actually one of the majorly cool things I see new users liking about kodi.

Thanks for your feedback. First of all there are different visual feedbacks in the UI (depending on the skin) if you start seeking.



1. the seek slider/progressbar (blue one) which indicates the current seek position.
2. the seek time (on the left) which indicates the resulting playtime after the seek will be performed e.g. 03:31
3. (WIP) the seek offset (after SEEKING) which tells you which seek step you are currently reached e.g. +03:00

Apart from that you can configure each step size and the delay e.g. configure only -10m,-30s,-7s,7s,30s,10m and if you don't want to wait such a long time (1000ms) before the seek is performed you will be able to reduce the delay to the minimum of 500ms which is really near to instant

But I would recommend smaller step sizes e.g. -3m,-60s,-30s,-7s,7s,30s,60s,3m because the last skip step size will be repeated on subsequent key presses. 1 = 7s, 2 = 30s, 3 = 60s, 4 = 3m, 5 = 6m, 6 = 9m .... 10 = 30m etc.

[da-anda]

do I see the morning sky of Big Buck Bunny below the seek bar?

@bossanova808 - give it a try, you might like it, but it ofc depends on your usecase. If you happen to watch liveTV with loads of commercials then smart seeking is great. Skipping 5 mins using 30 sec steps on a low power device is taking ages, while with smart seeking it can be done almost instantly and blindly (I know you could enter a timecode and press a directional button - but you have to look at the remote for that which is a bit inconvenient).

[xhaggi]

do I see the morning sky of Big Buck Bunny below the seek bar?

yep

[jjd-uk]

Like bossanova808 I constantly use instant small & big steps and wouldn't want to lose this, with small steps used to skip past the movie/tv titles/credits then big step where chapters aren't available.

For small step I could see the benefit of smart seeking for Live TV, so I welcomed this added functionality since instant small step could be retained by having a single step, however if you also remove big step as well in favour of smart seeking thus requiring 2 steps then that instant behaviour is lost.

To be honest I not sure how all the seeking ties together with stuff like chapters presently, could maybe big step and chapter handling be merged if we are consolidating code and reducing functions requiring key mapping? that's if they are not already in some way linked, personally I don't have much stuff with chapters. This would give something like jump to next chapter point if available but if none is available then jump configurable big step thus keeping the instant behaviour.

[xhaggi]

Like bossanova808 I constantly use instant small & big steps and wouldn't want to lose this, with small steps used to skip past the movie/tv titles/credits then big step where chapters aren't available.

because we don't have anything else until now

..., could maybe big step and chapter handling be merged if we are consolidating code and reducing functions requiring key mapping?

This is already done, "ChapterOrBigStepForward" and "ChapterOrBigStepBack" and mapped by default in keymap section FullscreenVideo.
I agree that the big step is really handy in some cases and we should leave it as it is. But the small step should be gone in favor of the smart seek.

[jjd-uk]

This is already done, "ChapterOrBigStepForward" and "ChapterOrBigStepBack" and mapped by default in keymap section FullscreenVideo.
I agree that the big step is really handy in some cases and we should leave it as it is.

Something in the back of my mind was saying it already was and perhaps that's the function I already use, have never felt investigate the key mapping for that, all I know for sure is I press Up and it skips 10 minutes

But the small step should be gone in favor of the smart seek.

Yep in full agreement on that, small step can die in favour of the new smart seeking.

[da-anda]

jjd-uk - don't mix up small_step_back with step_back. small_step_back was -7 sec, step_back -30s and big_step_back -10min. So getting rid of small_step_back would mean you would have to use smart seek for -7 and -30. Personally I think we could keep the old actions for some time but remove them from default keymap where apropriate (f.e. on limited button remotes in favor of some other often needed feature).

[jjd-uk]

I only use the remote d-pad so left/right (small step) and up/down (big step) so changing left/right for smart seek is fine for my usage.

[xhaggi]

jjd-uk - don't mix up small_step_back with step_back. small_step_back was -7 sec, step_back -30s and big_step_back -10min. So getting rid of small_step_back would mean you would have to use smart seek for -7 and -30. Personally I think we could keep the old actions for some time but remove them from default keymap where apropriate (f.e. on limited button remotes in favor of some other often needed feature).

why should we leave something in we don't need anymore?

IMO we should think about an alternative smart seek key ACTION_ALT_STEP_BACK/ACTION_ALT_STEP_FORWARD as replacement for the BIG_STEP keys and give the user the same possibility to configure the step sizes. With this addition everything is possible.

something like that:
NORMAL_SEEK_STEPS = 15s,30s,60s,5m
ALT_SEEK_STEPS = 5m,10m,30m

or for the old behavior:
NORMAL_SEEK_STEPS = 30s (if small step is need add 7s as well)
ALT_SEEK_STEPS = 10m

PS: or we use the BIG_STEP keys without introducing new ones.

[Tolriq]

FYI Yatse does use Event Server so simulate keypresses so does adapt to those changes as users does like when everything react the same.

But maybe Montellese should be included since JSON API also have "smallforward", "smallbackward", "bigforward", "bigbackward" in the player.seek function so may be impacted by this and need some work to properly support new mode without loose of functions.

[jjd-uk]

Just confirmed via the mappings on github that I'm most likely using "ChapterOrBigStepForward" and "ChapterOrBigStepBack" when doing Up & Down on the remote, so why do we also have "BigStepForward" and "BigStepBack" is there any difference when seeking in the video with no chapters?

[xhaggi]

Just confirmed via the mappings on github that I'm most likely using "ChapterOrBigStepForward" and "ChapterOrBigStepBack" when doing Up & Down on the remote, so why do we also have "BigStepForward" and "BigStepBack" is there any difference when seeking in the video with no chapters?

does it be a leftover because BIG_STEP exists before we had chapter skipping included?

[jjd-uk]

So do what you want with "BigStep" from my point of view, but please make sure it doesn't affect the behaviour of "ChapterOrBigStep".

[xhaggi]

So do what you want with "BigStep" from my point of view, but please make sure it doesn't affect the behaviour of "ChapterOrBigStep".

I'm thinking about replacing big step, yes also in combination with chapter + big step, with a smart seek configuration in addition to the current smart seek configuration. The chapter skipping would remain untouched. What i've said in http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=...pid1922206

[da-anda]

I'm thinking about replacing big step, yes also in combination with chapter + big step, with a smart seek configuration in addition to the current smart seek configuration. The chapter skipping would remain untouched. What i've said in http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=...pid1922206

yikes, two smart seeks? What for? Also up/down smart seek won't work for liveTV (where we do channel up/down) and also not for music (where we do star ratings with up and down keys). We should get a little consistency with our keymaps and thus I'm against adding something like a big_jump_smart_seek which IMO is totally superfluous. Main seeking/skipping should be done using left/right and be consistent accross all players (video, audio, picture) while UP/DOWN should not be associated with seeking but rather context sensitive actions.

For that reason I'd remove up/down seek mapping and only use them for chapter jumps in video context. In case a movie doesn't have chapters we can fake some based on user configurable rules (X amount of markers, fixed step sizes which sort of would be old +/-10 min, ...). Into the chapter markers we could also merge custom bookmarks and treat them as jump points. Ideally we also show a thumbnail bar while jumping chapters (or seeking) along with the chapter markers.