[UlfSchmidt]

Speaking of rework I wonder how big the (honestly: your) effort would be to support grid views also for picture folders? I would really love to browse through my collection of slides in a similar way as I do with movies or albums. Or would this be simply impossible due to a missing functionality in Kodi's API?

Another thought of mine: would it be (easily) possible to introduce some kind of "offline" browsing mode in the App? Everything could be read from the App's cache, couldn’t it? Currently I have to turn at least one of my Kodi machines on in order to check whether a specific album, or movie, or TV series is already in my media archive. And this power-on feels often so unnecessary…

Happy Halloween 🎃

[Buschel]

The rework of the fullscreen mode on iPad is done in a first step. Before, all item sizes were same between the grid view and the fullscreen mode. This could result in different layout on different screen sizes, e.g. having quite huge spaces between items (see the screenshots from the iPad Air 5G). With the changes the items sizes will be scaled to fill the screen -- except a small spacing to separate the items for best readability. This way there might be different amount of columns shown on different screen sizes and the item sizes are different in portrait and landscape. But the look is same, with always same spacing.

Now also the fullscreen follows the "Hide label in wall view" setting. All labels will be removed if enabled. But I am not sure, if this makes sense for the "Recently Added" view. Without the labels this somehow misses information from my point of view. But of course it is consistent with the setting.

In addition I made the label font for movies and albums a bit brighter, which makes it easier to read. Also the spacing of the labels is properly calculated now.

Set 1: https://abload.de/img/bildschirmfoto2023-11qqd6u.png (albums)
Set 2: https://abload.de/img/bildschirmfoto2023-11gcfpt.png (movies)
Set 3: https://abload.de/img/bildschirmfoto2023-11z2dow.png (recently added)

A downside of this is, that for performance reasons the image cache on iPad will increase as there are now four (instead of two) different images sizes (list, grid, fullscreen portrait, fullscreen landscape) which have dedicated thumb sizes.

[Buschel]

Speaking of rework I wonder how big the (honestly: your) effort would be to support grid views also for picture folders? I would really love to browse through my collection of slides in a similar way as I do with movies or albums. Or would this be simply impossible due to a missing functionality in Kodi's API?

As far as I remember the picture browser uses the file mode API. I don't think this provides thumbnails. But I would need to double check.
Edit: Now checked this, the file mode API is used and the API supports request of a thumbnail. The App requests this, but receives an empty string from the API.

Another thought of mine: would it be (easily) possible to introduce some kind of "offline" browsing mode in the App? Everything could be read from the App's cache, couldn’t it? Currently I have to turn at least one of my Kodi machines on in order to check whether a specific album, or movie, or TV series is already in my media archive. And this power-on feels often so unnecessary…

This is a long standing wish from several users. For first level browsing, e.g. entering albums and showing them, this is technically possible for those main menus which use caching. But first, not all main menu use caching, like Live TV channels lists or pictures. And second, the next levels, e.g. when looking at an album, use the API and read from Kodi server. To me this would not feel like a consistent use experience.

[UlfSchmidt]

[…]
But I am not sure, if this makes sense for the "Recently Added" view. Without the labels this somehow misses information from my point of view. But of course it is consistent with the setting.

[…]
Set 3: https://abload.de/img/bildschirmfoto2023-11z2dow.png (recently added)

I even did not know that there is a dedicated different view for "Recently added" items. So, when I first read your post I wondered what the hell you are talking about

So once again a big thank you for your continuous contribution and dedication! Can’t wait to get a version of the app supporting these reworked features.

[amasephy]

Doesn’t really affect me but I do like the new style for iPad fullscreen. 👍🏻

For the recently added view this view is the same on iPhone and is one I had previously requested be available as a third option for all movie. I love the look of it but at the time it was started that this was not trivial to implement.

[Buschel]

1.13 build 4105
Release Notes

Adds translations for newly added strings and the fix for the "iPad playlist empty after browser call" issue. We are preparing to release this via AppStore.

[Buschel]

Version 1.13 is released on AppStore. Thanks to all testers, supporters and everyone who helped improving the app!
Special thanks to @kambala, who reviewed all changes, helped to improve the code and and does all the TestFlight and AppStore related work.

[amasephy]

Congrats on the new release!

I would like to raise a new issue. I can’t quite figure out what is causing it but for some reason a lot of the time when I start a tv episode or movie with the app the fanart in the now playing screen becomes low resolution. I can confirm that the high resolution art is there. As soon as I detect it I jump on my iPad and the art there is full resolution.

There is definitely some glitch surrounding this. I tried clearing the cache with the app setting but it doesn’t clear the now playing cache. Not really sure how to go about identifying the sequence that causes it.

[UlfSchmidt]

I may confirm @amasephy ‘s issue, as I made similar observations yesterday evening. What I saw on my iPad is, while playing music, that on the now playing screen and in the playlist some album art was firstly not shown at all. But after switching to another app and back, album art was suddenly shown, but now in very low resolution. Then I tried browsing and had the same effect in grid view, for some albums no cover at all, for some low resolution (as if the thumbnail has been used). Rarely, for maybe less than one percent of my albums, but the issue is real and annoying.

Never saw this before. I hope you can deliver a hot fix soon.

[Buschel]

The last changes which touched NowPlaying or images have been in TestFlight since July, it is somehow strange it only is reported now. With which version of Kodi do you see this? The current 21 builds have problems with the image cache.

[UlfSchmidt]

The current 21 builds have problems with the image cache.

Then it in fact might be related to Kodi 21 beta, but on my big screen all images show full resolution. Only in the app they appear either missing or pixelated.

[Buschel]

Thanks for responding. I am aware of missing images and delayed loading with Kodi 21. This was just fixed a few days back and is not part of any beta release yet. The low resolution topic is new, but could be related as well. To support debugging you could provide a screenshot and also see, if the same happens with Kodi 20 or 19.

[amasephy]

It’s happening on v20 and it is not a brand new issue related to latest build of the app. I noticed it maybe a month ago or longer but figured it was a one off glitch. Now that I’ve seen it three times I know it’s a problem.

Originally I thought it had something to do with an add on that automatically plays the next episode (Netflix style). I have seen artwork disappear on Kodi server temporarily when the next episode is triggered with the addin and I swear it messed up artwork at least once on the app.

But please note- in this instance I started a single episode by navigating Kodi server with the app remote.

I suspect it’s related to the massive work you did overhauling the code that handles artwork. Probably related to that third party code you said was 11 years old or something.


No picture of the now playing screen but the same low res images appears in tv show details screen when the issue has manifested. Loading up one of the other episodes in the tv series displayed high res images just fine.

[Buschel]

Ok, so missing and delayed is related to 21, lowres might be something else. Is this fixed when re-entering the view? Or does it stay like this? And does it happen on the same file after cleaning image cache?

[amasephy]

Stays like this no matter what I tried. Even cleaning image cache does not clear it.

I checked on a movie that was exhibiting the issue awhile back and that now had high res art.