[jmarshall]

hi all,

as you have seen, there has been some work on developing a musicosd stuff done.

before i get too carried away with it, i'm looking for suggestions on how you would like it organised, and what you want to be able to do.

currently as you know, there are 2 .xml files in cvs regarding this stuff:

1. musicoverlay.xml
2. playercontrols.xml

now, the musicoverlay.xml file is special in that it is always displayed in every window, as long as the <overlay> tag is set true in the window's skin file. we have a bunch of extra code in that class, however, to handle the sliding in/out of this window when in visualisation mode. ideally, i'd like to remove this and replace it with controls either directly in the visualisation window, or with controls on a separate musicosd dialog perhaps - i haven't yet decided, and thus need your input!

there's been a couple of suggestions of what we want to achieve:

1. an indication as to what is playing in the gui.

2. a "now playing" screen with more info, including stuff like a few previous + some next songs to allow some small amount of playlist management without going to the playlist window.

3. a popup control window in the full screen visualisation to allow player control + perhaps future visualisation control.

4. an indication as to what is playing in the full screen visualisation (album cover, track name etc.) that can be turned on and off as the user wishes.

5. a popup control window in the gui to allow basic player control (playercontrol.xml as it is now for instance).

we need to decide how to arrange this best from an .xml layout perspective. most of the controls/buttons will be generic in that they can be placed anywhere and still work, so that code duplication is kept to a minimum. some stuff requires custom code though, so we'll have to keep that in mind.

of the above, number 4 seems most suitable to be a set of controls in the visualisation window itself, that are hidden by a keypress (perhaps with a nice fade). that way you have the entire window to lay stuff out like you wish.

number 1 can be either done by keeping the musicoverlay as is, or (as some of you have done) by placing infolabels/infoimages in the window skin files themselves. the problem with the latter approach is the amount of effort that goes into it!

number 2 is definetly setup for a new window altogether. i forsee this being swapped to via the x on the controller. it'll toggle gui -> now playing -> visz.

number 3 is the full-on musicosd. there's not actually all that much more to put on this than is currently in cvs on the playercontrols.xml window, other than perhaps control for shuffle/repeat, and for changing visualisations (and perhaps in future, visualisation parameters). it is tending to be heading towards it's own musicosd.xml file though, which will work similar to videoosd.xml.

number 5 can either be placed in the window files themselves (the controls are generic) or can be done via a popup dialog. i've done it as a unique .xml file for now, as it only pops up if music is playing. a tag could be used to determine that, though, and it could thus easily be done using a custom*.xml file in that case.

that's about it for now. i'm very interested in your thoughts.

cheers,
jonathan

[KoTiX]

hi jonathan, here my opinions:

1. it's fine as it is now.

2-4. i see it differently: i press x on controller and xbmc switch to visualization mode, it show the now playing info (label, artist,song etc) fading in/out, then i'd like to have an option in audio settings to "always show", "show timed", "never show" the infos. for the extra stuff i'll press the black button to show the playlist, next and previous song etc..
i think it's not comfortable to press 2 times the x button to switch to different views

3. music osd, wow, cool!! don't forget the karaoke settings, will be great to change the voice mask while the song is playing, and of course change some of the audio settings including the info on/off

5. yes, a tag to use it or not like the overlay will be very usefull. i think i'll use them in the windows files

[Livin]

jmarshall,
my suggestion is to look at skins from htpc apps like meedio, xlobby, and media portal. they have tons of skins to look at and typically have the most flexible skinning abilities. xlobby especially.

here's a few images from skins that have some nice overlays and layouts for the media:

nice xlobby examples

[BritneysPAIRS]

1) my suggestion is the same timed/on/off for info

2) a setting in "music visual settings" for a timer. say i set it to 60secs then if i play music and havent hit a key for 60secs the visuals will start up. if i hit any key then it will switch back to list (i know this will break the fastforward rewind in visual but its better than having to hit stop to get back to list if its switched automatically (for newbes like my mom). if its switched manually then you will need to hit back to back out.) something like this would be great even if you had to press back to exit it.

3) total play time of songs under my music eg total play time is "2 days 12 hour 4 minutes" like i tunes

4)and of course fastforward rewind in steps like my divx movies and even the triggers like divx movies

also cheers for your work always great

[Chokemaniac]

yep a timer would be cool - better than the screensaver for sure

not sure about the playlist popup during viz. i'd rather have a windowed viz on a proper playlist screen - along with cover etc

we tried to add mplayer skip already, didnt we? what happened to this?

[jmarshall]

just a small update:

full audio control (and video control) on buttons has been in cvs for a few days (see the v1.2+ skin thread) similarly, analog fastfoward/rewind is in cvs as well. all mappable via the keymap.xml file.

also, as chokeman points out, we're thinking of working on a now playing screen with the following elements:

playlist. (not sure how complete this will be - depends on space etc.)
small vis window - started on doing this last night. just gotta make a control to handle it all now.
info on currently playing track.

my current thinking is that the now playing screen would be the main place to be for music, with the full screen visz just triggered off that (perhaps just by way of a screensaver type timeout, though i'm not really sure).

naturally, this sort of thing is quite fluid still. thus, i need all of your ideas

cheers,
jonathan

[j_guzzler]

thanks for all the work jmarshal, skinning has always been set up the same, lots of different "colored" skins out there, but essentially all the same.  but everyday, there are more ways to make it more unique.

as for the now playing window that would be great.

what i'd like to see for this window

1. mini vis (toggable to full screen)
2. playlist
2a.  the ability to move up,down, delete items from the playlist
3. file list (click a button to add to playlist)
4.  album art and info display.
5. either onscreen display controls (buttons for ff,rew, play ect) or toggle remote control only (like the visualisation now, only remote control while vis is working)

also have another idea that could be applied later on.
right now navigation is controlled by id's eg. myprograms--<up> go to mymusic <down> go to my pictures ect.  that has worked great, but now more and more items are being added to the screens and naviagation is becoming cumbersome.

in the future i see a mini media player (like the ones that windows media player uses, just a minimized player) but how would one navigate to the buttons, you would have to go through a whole list......but, say you press the left thumbstick button (just an example) it will send the navigation to a new level......so you are playing music, you have the mini player on the home screen, you are on my programs, you press the left thumbstick you are now on the play button go right to pause, go left to stop ect...press the left thumbstick and you are back down again.....now you wouldnt have to navigate through 20 icons to get to the miniplayer or other set of icons.  just an idea....

hope it makes sense.....

j_guzzler

[Loto_Bak]

have you looked into a seek bar style navigation of audio files? (would be interesting to see if its possible in videos as well). it would require mplayer to be able to seek to a specific time or % of the file. it would also need the total lenth of the file and the current time or %

apple's ipod handles the seekbar very well. basically you scroll it back and forth, as soon as you dont move the position for about 2 or 3 seconds it seeks to the current location you have selected.
analog triggers may work quite well for this, remote may prefer regular ff/rw and maybe 10sec steps with the arrows on the seek bar.

displaying the bar is easy enough $currtime/$totaltime and use this % to apply the location to the gui. but seeking to a specific time/% is a must for changing the position in the style above.
*crosses fingers for mplayer to support it*

[jmarshall]

loto_bak: mplayer partially supports it, yes. not too flash with vbr mp3 files, but we may have a solution on the way for that i think. the main thing is that it isn't very good with a digital button setup (ie with the remote). it's more of a visual thing really of showing in a more intuitive manner where you are in the movie/song.

j_guzzler: press start while in the gui with pm1. as for the now playing stuff, that's pretty much what i invisioned, though probably a little too much on that poor little screen! i think dropping the filelist, replacing it with an obvious way to go to the real filelisters would perhaps be a better plan.

vis on a control is pretty much ready - just gotta make sure it updates on the fly in the case that someone puts it on the music overlay and you go to settings and change it

let's keep the ideas coming!

cheers,
jonathan

[Loto_Bak]

jm: yeah, remote is tricky. remotes always have ff/rw available so that functionality is not lost. they could perhaps do 10sec skips forward/back during the seek. when i use a remote i wouldn't use it to seek anyways. i personally miss this sort of seeking interface when playing music without an easy was to navigate the song. ff/rw is so 80s :p :joker:
allowing skinners to make the seek bar at any angle they want (or at least vertical/horizontal) would allow more flexability.

i appologize i havnt looked at the 'current playing' window so sorry if these are not what your thinking... but you could put various buttons/lists under 'tabs' such as in kai to reduce clutter.
i'm sure your already on the 10 next songs in random you have mentioned before (perhaps the random could be fixed into shuffle while its being looked at?)

great to see music stuff getting nice and polished. with the database views and the now playing window being added things should be very user friendly

[jmarshall]

ok, finally "fixed" the last remaining bug (the hardlockup caused by logging in the visz) and now the visz in a control is ready to go into cvs.

i'll detail the control in the post 1.2 skin thread.

as a tempter, here's a couple of screenies of something i don't recommend:




note the smaller visz window in the top left the engine can only handle one at a time, so it won't work very well, but the screenshot also shows that seeing as the fountain screensaver is designed as being transparent, you can see what cool stuff could happen when you put this on top of a gui

special credit if you can tell me when the song was last performed live.

cheers,
jonathan

[Chokemaniac]

latest pm3 teaser with windowed viz

thanks again for adding this for me jonathan :bowdown:

[j_guzzler]

jm: how bout 1979 (due to the death of john bonham)

[BritneysPAIRS]

those vis look all good for pm3 surprised what is the blue stuff music vis or video or surprise (id say not vis cause of osd). id still recomment a change to right thumb graphics and icons in that skin. id say the ones i did look good in that skin but its up to you have them if they help and even mod them (others did like them)

also is geforce vis transparent?

[jmarshall]

j_guzzler: it's "the ocean" by u2 off their first album, boy. they played it last night in la for the first time since 1982.

all: visualisation stuff is in cvs now. one thing that has cropped up is that the viz's require a z-buffer. currently only the boxalizer viz has this, but others probably will require it eventually. as the viz can be anywhere in the gui, this means we require the gui to always have the z-buffer enabled. i'm not sure of the most efficient way to do this, but i believe it requires always having the z-buffer around (which means more memory - 2 bytes/pixel, for around 4mb or so in 1080i.)

any ideas on this front would be appreciated.

cheers,
jonathan