[wyrm]

bubbanc and doveman2,

I'm running 1.3.4.1011 on the family AppleTV just fine, but I'm running 12.2 Frodo and not Gotham 13 Alpha 10 as it seems you guys are. Two things for you to be aware of.

1. Skin is NOT been tested with Gotham, my dev system is still running 12.2 (and will until the beta builds appear)

2. Skin is NOT been tested with Gotham, my dev system is still running 12.2 (and will until the beta builds appear).

And yes, I know point 1 and 2 are the same because this is very important, so bears repeating.

Now I have taken a quick look at your posted debug log file and I'm pretty sure that the problem is the skin did not install correctly. I say this because the log says it could not find my font files and that it is missing a number of skin includes.

Try reinstalling the skin. You may have to go into the addons directory and delete the skin that is currently there (this will not lose any of your settings as this is stored elsewhere) and then from another skin try installing the skin again. The only times I have had issues with installing my skin was when it was still running when I tried to load the next version, so I always change to another skin and manually load the skin from there. Also the system tells you how far along the load part of the instal is, but gives NO indication of the progress of the unpack and install, so just be patient and let XBMC do it's thing.

At this stage I'm waiting for Transfix to notice that some of my strings have changed and then for the translations to be updated and then I can release 1.3.4. This release will probably be the last release for Frodo, so I will then go thru the skin and add any Gotham changes that I have not already made to the skin (most of the posted changes have already been added to the skin, but there are one or two that will break Frodo, so have not been added).

Hopefully the above suggestions will help, otherwise you will just have to wait until I (and most of the other skinners) make the jump to Gotham.
Wyrm (xTV-SAF)

[doveman2]

@wyrm,

That's fair enough, I didn't really consider that as all your previous builds have worked OK (albeit some menus were missing the odd option but that's to be expected with a skin that's not designed for Gotham specifically).

You may well be right that the skin failed to install correctly. I'm still confused as to how it even updated itself, as I'm sure I disabled auto-updates and notifications because I thought the former would lead to some addons getting updated to broken versions (e.g. iPlayer which I got working as 2.4.17 but then stopped working with v2.4.18, at least without some manual tweaks) and I thought the notifications would just confuse or annoy my brother (and lead him to manually update some addons which he shouldn't, like iPlayer). I'll have to check those settings, maybe they got changed accidentally.

Anyway, maybe it was installing silently when I rebooted to update his build or something. I'll install it on my own system manually as you suggest to check it and if it's OK here, try putting it back on his system.

[doveman2]

OK, tested on my system and it's definitely not compatible with Gotham.

At first, the Home menus appear correctly although they're quite sluggish to populate which isn't the case with v1.3.3.928. However, after moving between each category for one cycle, after that every category shows the sub-menu for Videos underneath it instead of the correct one. Although the menus are wrong, clicking on what should be there (i.e. the bottom item under System=Quit) does do what it should, although this didn't seem to be the case for Settings, which should be the first item under System (unless you changed this in 1.3.4.1011) and I had to randomly click on items until it came up and I could change back to Confluence.

I didn't experience the invisible cursor bug my brother had though, so that may well have been due to a failed install.

Regarding install progress, I get absolutely nothing when installing from a zip file. After about 10s, the highlight re-appears on the menu but then it takes about another 2 minutes with no indication before the "Would you like to switch to this skin" message appears, The only thing I found is that if I go to Available Updates and then back out, the menu then shows Currently Downloading but that's empty when I go into it. If I got to Enabled Addons and select xtv-SAF, that shows the current download % next to it but I don't think it updates (it was at 93% by the time I did this anyway, so it might have updated had I got there when it was at 50%).

This lack of feedback is a XBMC issue I know and I posted a thread about it here http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=169680 but it hasn't got any response from the devs unfortunately, which is a shame because I really think user-friendlyness is one of the most important things, hence why I like your skin so much and have installed it on my brother's RPi, as it's nice and simple to navigate and find what you're looking for

I've started another thread about it here http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=179354 so hopefully that will get more attention.

[wyrm]

doveman2,

Sorry sport don't really know what to say on this. Only work I have been doing on the skin is on the Horizontal home menu shelf icons, definitely have not touched the code for the sub menus. Really I'm just doing little bits and pieces while I wait for translations to come thru.

And yes I agree, lack of feedback on addon installs is a serious usability issue, but if the devs don't feel the itch needs scratching, nothing will happen on this.

All I can say is to turn off autoupdates, swap to another skin and then download your new skin and just leave it do its thing. I don't change back to the original skin until I see that it is no longer showing in the Addons/Update list. And yes, while a quicker system will reduce the wait time, I still see this occurring on my 3.2GHz i5 (and definitely see it on the family AppleTV).

That said, there will be a small update in the next day or so as I have a few very minor fixes and updates to the shelf. If after that makes an appearance you are still having problems, post another debug log and a description of the problems you are seeing and I will take a much closer look at things from my end.

Wyrm (xTV-SAF)

[doveman2]

Cool, I'll test the update when it's ready.

I update the way you suggest, switching skin first and then doing it manually, as I've had problems before trying to update skins whilst they're active. I can only guess that autoupdates got turned on for my brother's system, so I'll double-check that's off and make sure he knows to leave it like that

[wyrm]

doveman2,

made a push to my Googlecode page earlier today (r1015), so you should see this appear on Passion repo tomorrow morning. Again mainly changes to the horizontal home menu shelf. I have also made some private code public that shows the image file in the lower right hand side of the screen (I'm calling this image a watermark, setting is in the skins General setting menu). Is used at Wyrm home to distinguish between the Kids and Adults profiles (so I know if I have left the Adults profile open for the kids to see by just looking at the watermark image).

Also changes to some of the images used by the skin to make the skin look more FruityTV Gen2 like.

As I said before, should not really be anything to cause major issue with Gotham builds, but make sure you update in the manner I previously mentioned to try to make sure it updates correctly. Let me know how you get on, and any comments on how the skin looks and feels.

Wyrm (xTV-SAF)

[bubbanc]

Sorry for the confusion, I was not on Gotham. I did rebuild my Apple TV (or use a backup) and restored my XBMC configuration from another working Apple TV in my home. Knock on wood, no issues thus far with skin issues that make it unusable or with the issues I had previously where menus would seem to not properly update when scrolling/thumbnail issues.

EDIT: Nope, had the issue with the the scrolling/thumbnails again today.

[wyrm]

Just a quick heads up for anyone that has been good enough to translate my skins strings via Transfix.

alanwww1 (Whom I just learned has a new addition to his household) has made a major push of changed skin strings to to Transfix, and so now all of the languages that were at 100% are sitting at 90%. Could people please check out the 10 or so strings and submit translations so that I can make a repo pull request to get 1.3.4 into the main repo.

Meanwhile, I have been using the time to cleanup the Horizontal home menu and a number of the skin textures to make the skin look a little more familiar. Looking pretty close now as long as you don't move anything, will try to bring a number of animations to the skin before I submit to the main repo.

bubbanc, sorry mate not seeing any problems on my AppleTV and I'm running 12.2 and version 1.3.4.1015. I'm convinced its either a problem with your image database in XBMC or some sort of problem with the plugin you are using. Other than that I have no idea.

Wyrm (xTV-SAF)

[lipo]

doveman2,

made a push to my Googlecode page earlier today (r1015), so you should see this appear on Passion repo tomorrow morning. Again mainly changes to the horizontal home menu shelf. I have also made some private code public that shows the image file in the lower right hand side of the screen (I'm calling this image a watermark, setting is in the skins General setting menu). Is used at Wyrm home to distinguish between the Kids and Adults profiles (so I know if I have left the Adults profile open for the kids to see by just looking at the watermark image).

Also changes to some of the images used by the skin to make the skin look more FruityTV Gen2 like.

As I said before, should not really be anything to cause major issue with Gotham builds, but make sure you update in the manner I previously mentioned to try to make sure it updates correctly. Let me know how you get on, and any comments on how the skin looks and feels.

Wyrm (xTV-SAF)

FruityTV Gen2 ??
i got to see this, any info what images that changed?

[bubbanc]

Wyrm, thanks for your help on my issues. So I've done the following:

1) Removed unnecessary plugins.
2) Removed Textures13.db and Thumbnail directories and forced rebuilding of all thumbnails.
3) Disabled debugging initially and only enabled it when I can reproduce the problem.
4) Gone back to an old old SVN version of XTF (554) which doesn't experience this issue.

After all of this, it appears the issue happens more frequently now running the most recent SVN version. I can go to bed and it looks like this every morning (stacked thumbnails, showing incorrect shows).

https://www.dropbox.com/s/m30d01pyd08jhw....29.57.mov

The log that goes with this video is below:
http://xbmclogs.com/show.php?id=94427

Here is a dir listing of a typical show I've recorded:

Code:

$ ls /storage/hellanzb/done/TV/The\ Berenstain\ Bears/
extrafanart/  fanart.jpg  folder.jpg  Season 1/  Season 2/  Season 3/  Season 4/  tvshow.nfo

If you have any suggestions for me, I'm all ears. The next thing to do is to NOT do an upgrade from the old version of XBMC, wipe out all user directories and only save the necessary XML files and go that route. If I still have issues then, I guess I'll have to change skins. Any help you can provide would be great.

Thanks!

[wyrm]

Wyrm, thanks for your help on my issues. So I've done the following:

1) Removed unnecessary plugins.
2) Removed Textures13.db and Thumbnail directories and forced rebuilding of all thumbnails.
3) Disabled debugging initially and only enabled it when I can reproduce the problem.
4) Gone back to an old old SVN version of XTF (554) which doesn't experience this issue.

After all of this, it appears the issue happens more frequently now running the most recent SVN version. I can go to bed and it looks like this every morning (stacked thumbnails, showing incorrect shows).

https://www.dropbox.com/s/m30d01pyd08jhw....29.57.mov

The log that goes with this video is below:
http://xbmclogs.com/show.php?id=94427

Here is a dir listing of a typical show I've recorded:

Code:

$ ls /storage/hellanzb/done/TV/The\ Berenstain\ Bears/
extrafanart/  fanart.jpg  folder.jpg  Season 1/  Season 2/  Season 3/  Season 4/  tvshow.nfo

If you have any suggestions for me, I'm all ears. The next thing to do is to NOT do an upgrade from the old version of XBMC, wipe out all user directories and only save the necessary XML files and go that route. If I still have issues then, I guess I'll have to change skins. Any help you can provide would be great.

Thanks!

Ok bubbanc,

can't see anything that stands out in you log other than this issue. Ignoring that this maybe causing you some issues, lets see if we can pin down exactly where the problem maybe with my skin. So will need you to work your way thru this list and report back your answers so that I can pinpoint where in the code it is failing.

1 - Have you tried to see if the issue occurs in other skins (try Confluence, as if there is a problem here, it is most definitely a XBMC problem and I'm sorry but I won't be able to help with that)?

2 - Does the problem only happen in the "List" view, or does it happen with some or all of the other views (list the views that you see the problem with)?

3 - Does it only occur in the TVShows part of the library, or does it also occur in other parts of the video library, again list where?

4 - Does it only occur on certain TVShows, or does it occur anywhere and at anytime?

I will be taking a quick look thru the video library code to see if I can spot anything, but be aware that the code for the video library stuff is almost 100k, so if you can help narrow the search, I will have a much better chance of success.

Wyrm (xTV-SAF)

[doveman2]

doveman2,

made a push to my Googlecode page earlier today (r1015), so you should see this appear on Passion repo tomorrow morning. Again mainly changes to the horizontal home menu shelf. I have also made some private code public that shows the image file in the lower right hand side of the screen (I'm calling this image a watermark, setting is in the skins General setting menu). Is used at Wyrm home to distinguish between the Kids and Adults profiles (so I know if I have left the Adults profile open for the kids to see by just looking at the watermark image).

Also changes to some of the images used by the skin to make the skin look more FruityTV Gen2 like.

As I said before, should not really be anything to cause major issue with Gotham builds, but make sure you update in the manner I previously mentioned to try to make sure it updates correctly. Let me know how you get on, and any comments on how the skin looks and feels.

Wyrm (xTV-SAF)

wyrm,

I haven't tried it myself yet as I didn't have the Passion Repo installed but I'd forgotten to disable auto-updates on my brothers's RPi, so it auto-updated to this and he phoned me as it had got messed up again.

From what he tells me, the first problem he experiences is that video playback stops working and he only gets the audio. It's not until he reboots to see if it will fix this problem that he gets the messed up menus and missing cursor, so I'm guessing that the skin has auto-updated in the background and somehow this causes the video playback problems but the new menu files are not loaded until he reboots.

I've disabled auto-updates for him now, so it won't happen again and as you say, it's best to switch skin before updating manually but if auto-updating skins does break it, then really the auto-update feature should be removed completely from XBMC, as there's no way to enable it for everything other than skins.

I'll try manually updating on my RPi anyway to see if that works OK.

[bubbanc]

can't see anything that stands out in you log other than this issue. Ignoring that this maybe causing you some issues, lets see if we can pin down exactly where the problem maybe with my skin. So will need you to work your way thru this list and report back your answers so that I can pinpoint where in the code it is failing.

1 - Have you tried to see if the issue occurs in other skins (try Confluence, as if there is a problem here, it is most definitely a XBMC problem and I'm sorry but I won't be able to help with that)?

2 - Does the problem only happen in the "List" view, or does it happen with some or all of the other views (list the views that you see the problem with)?

3 - Does it only occur in the TVShows part of the library, or does it also occur in other parts of the video library, again list where?

4 - Does it only occur on certain TVShows, or does it occur anywhere and at anytime?

I will be taking a quick look thru the video library code to see if I can spot anything, but be aware that the code for the video library stuff is almost 100k, so if you can help narrow the search, I will have a much better chance of success.

Wyrm (xTV-SAF)

1-3) I will try the next time it happens.
4) It happens on any TV Show. It seems to take some amount of time to start happening again (i.e. started after sitting from 10pm til 8am)

It may not happen again for me since I did the only thing I could think of and blew away the XBMC userdata folder. The only files I retained were my sources.xml, passwords.xml and advancedsettings.xml. I reinstalled the only plugins I needed and it's been fine for the past 24 hours. It was getting to the point that my wife was ready to throw the thing out the window, so I had to do something. If it does happen again, I'll be sure to help continue debugging, but honestly, I hope it doesn't happen again.

Thanks!

[wyrm]

wyrm,

I haven't tried it myself yet as I didn't have the Passion Repo installed but I'd forgotten to disable auto-updates on my brothers's RPi, so it auto-updated to this and he phoned me as it had got messed up again.

From what he tells me, the first problem he experiences is that video playback stops working and he only gets the audio. It's not until he reboots to see if it will fix this problem that he gets the messed up menus and missing cursor, so I'm guessing that the skin has auto-updated in the background and somehow this causes the video playback problems but the new menu files are not loaded until he reboots.

I've disabled auto-updates for him now, so it won't happen again and as you say, it's best to switch skin before updating manually but if auto-updating skins does break it, then really the auto-update feature should be removed completely from XBMC, as there's no way to enable it for everything other than skins.

I'll try manually updating on my RPi anyway to see if that works OK.

doveman2,

Sorry but there's no point in telling the postie that the milkman keeps leaving the milk in the mail slot (and yes, the milkman reference dates me, as I'm sure there is no such animal in most places anymore). You need to tell the postie about postal problems and the milkman about milk delivery problems.

Skinners write xml code to display (or not as the case may be) information that XBMC provides for each screen. Any problems with XBMC crashing or problems with media playback or addons not loading correctly, that's the XBMC devs that you need to talk to. Now I know that the Raspberry Pi is a special case at the moment, but remember you are running nightly versions of XBMC (so read that as very unstable as a rule). I have a Pi myself, but I will not bother to even pull it out again until the beta's are available as I don't have time to keep on top of new builds and to report problems to the devs in a meaningful and helpful manner.

At the moment my dev system is running Frodo, and the family AppleTV is running Frodo (although it would certainly benefit from the performance improvements of Gotham) as I am still coding the skin for Frodo and I can't be arsed spending all my time sorting problems on the family AppleTV.

In short you should manage your expectations on what you do with your poor wee beastie (and remember it's about a bezillion percent better now than it was this time last year).

Wyrm (xTV-SAF)

[doveman2]

wyrm,

Yes, I know you're not responsible for coding the auto-update feature in XBMC, just thought you might like to note that using it with your skin, whilst the skin is active, breaks XBMC, so that you can warn other users to disable auto-updates when using your skin. I have no idea if that's the case for other skins as I haven't tried.