[Ragnarok]

No worries! As I said, I'm not sure A) if it's possible, and B) it might fall outside the scope of what y'all are doing.

Either way, this looks to be leaps and bounds better/easier to configure than CE and can't wait to try it on my system.

To be honest, I'm not sure it's possible either. What I can tell you for sure is that we're going to focus on all the other stuff before we try to see if it's possible. I'm looking forward to the feedback for the UI design once we release a version for public testing. When we started to brainstorm how this should look, we had two major goals:

1. The UI needs to be as simple as a drag & drop UI, and very easy to manipulate (move modules, rename modules, enable/disable modules, etc.)
   
2. The add-on should work out of the box without a lot of configuration on the part of the end user
   

I'm pretty confident that we're meeting those goals at this point. Our developer has done an incredible job translating our ideas for improving what CE has to offer, and coming up with new ideas himself.

[jubilex]

One hope I would have for a future addition is aspect ratio awareness for those of us using constant height screens. I.e., to get the aspect ratio of the feature and use bumpers etc in the same AR -- ideally even crop trailers (and/or bumpers) so 1.85 trailers aren't bleeding off the edges of our 2.35 screens.

[Cinephile]

One hope I would have for a future addition is aspect ratio awareness for those of us using constant height screens. I.e., to get the aspect ratio of the feature and use bumpers etc in the same AR -- ideally even crop trailers (and/or bumpers) so 1.85 trailers aren't bleeding off the edges of our 2.35 screens.

For this to work we will firstly need to find a way to have Kodi read the aspect ratio correctly. Blu-ray rips currently show the wrong AR because Kodi reads everything as 16:9 (unless you re-encode via Handbrake, which reduces quality).

A straight rip includes the black bars of different ARs, which Kodi interprets as video information, thus labelling it as 1.78:1 (instead of 2.35:1 for example).

[Dave the Minion]

Those black bars ARE video information. Information to display black. As bars. No different than this poster having a white border. It's not a fancy picture but it is still a part of the actual image.



For the 2.35 AR cropping to work you'd need a completely different version of Kodi that is designed for either 2.35 projection of all material or is anamorphic to be unsqueezed by the lens. And then you would still need to produce all your CV videos in a 2.35 aspect ratio.

[Cinephile]

Why not use an anamorphic lens in front of your projector that automatically adjusts the aspect ratio (by means of electronic scaling)? It'd stretch your 16:9 image onto a 21:9 screen without having to zoom in.

Or does Kodi not support anamorphic lenses? If so, don't projectors have the ability to vertical stretch into an anamorphic lens?

[blackreign66]

You just need a projector with lens memory and a custom 21:9 resolution in order to view movies properly. I've been doing it for years with my setup with zero issues. My entire desktop is scope including Kodi.

[jubilex]

Yes, 2.35 projection is no problem these days.

I hadn't been thinking about blurays and direct bluray rips that include letterboxing (I almost entirely use re-encodes). That is a tough one. Bummer.

[Ragnarok]

One hope I would have for a future addition is aspect ratio awareness for those of us using constant height screens. I.e., to get the aspect ratio of the feature and use bumpers etc in the same AR -- ideally even crop trailers (and/or bumpers) so 1.85 trailers aren't bleeding off the edges of our 2.35 screens.

If this is something that team Kodi eventually adds as a detectable feature, we can certainly look at adding it down the road. Fair warning though, I'm not sure this is something that's on their radar, at least not in the immediate future.

In other news, our developer is is moving pretty quickly adding features and fixing the bugs that we find along the way during our testing. The first post has been updated to include percentages for the Modules, and more will be added as we round out the features for each module. Here are some of the new features that have been added:

• You can now jump entire modules forwards or backwards. This allows you to navigate through your preshow in either direction as if the modules were chapters.
  
• You can now navigate in the Trivia Slides module forwards or backwards. This allows you to replay or skip slides when people are done reading them. You can also jump to the end of the Trivia Slides module entirely, if you want to start the movie early.
  
• You can now make a copy of any module in your sequence, instead of having to create a similar module from scratch.
  
• A whole bunch of other things that aren't yet finished!
  

[Dave the Minion]

Could you elaborate a little on this - Play bumper based on hard-coded setting in module.?

Also, you seem to have 3 options for trailer sources. Will there also be the option for selecting a local folder that is already populated by videos?

Thanks!

[Ragnarok]

Could you elaborate a little on this - Play bumper based on hard-coded setting in module.?

Absolutely! That means that inside the module you can force it to play a specific type of Audio Format Bumper (i.e. Dolby Digital, DTS:X, etc). There are a few formats which are not currently widespread or supported, like Auro 3-D, Dolby Atmos, and DTS:X. In the case of Auro 3-D, it's mostly available in Europe, and there are only a handful of Blu-ray disks out right now that include support for the format. Dolby Atmos is pretty much the same way, but replace Europe with North America. Since Kodi doesn't have a way to detect those formats (that I'm aware of), we're including the ability to choose the format trailer that you want to play. When I say hard-coding, what I mean is that you can force the setting inside the module, which would normally auto-detect the format and play the appropriate video, to play a specific format bumper either directly or from a folder. Some of those options aren't yet in the add-on, as right now we're working on core functionality and making sure that everything behaves the way we want with randomized content.

Also, you seem to have 3 options for trailer sources. Will there also be the option for selecting a local folder that is already populated by videos?

While it's not currently available in the add-on, it will be there. You'll be able to tell the add-on where the trailers you want to play live. That can be in a specific local trailers folder (we actually make one for you when the add-on installs at whatever location you choose to store CinemaVision content), or with the movies in your library.

[Dave the Minion]

I understand what these audio formats all, I was more looking for clarification as to how CV is handling identifying them. From your explanation it sounds as though you'd always force one (or any) of these bumpers, even if the audio format is detected as something very different?

Also, any thought to video source bumpers, and if so, how would they be identified?

As always, thanks!

[jubilex]

One hope I would have for a future addition is aspect ratio awareness for those of us using constant height screens. I.e., to get the aspect ratio of the feature and use bumpers etc in the same AR -- ideally even crop trailers (and/or bumpers) so 1.85 trailers aren't bleeding off the edges of our 2.35 screens.

If this is something that team Kodi eventually adds as a detectable feature, we can certainly look at adding it down the road. Fair warning though, I'm not sure this is something that's on their radar, at least not in the immediate future.

Personally I would be satisfied if it basically followed the existing functionality of subtitles, which have a setting for where they will be displayed, e.g., bottom of the screen or bottom of the video, just going off the video resolution. This wouldn't work for blurays as mentioned, but it would work for everything else.

[Ragnarok]

I understand what these audio formats all, I was more looking for clarification as to how CV is handling identifying them. From your explanation it sounds as though you'd always force one (or any) of these bumpers, even if the audio format is detected as something very different?

Sorry about that, I misunderstood the question! So you don't have to force the Audio Format Bumper. CinemaVision will attempt to detect the format bumper if the module is set to auto detect, which is the default configuration. Alternatively, you can change the setting from auto detect to something like DTS:X for example, and it will play only DTS:X Audio Format Bumpers from the DTS:X folder. If CinemaVision is set to auto detect but cannot identify the format and play the appropriate bumper, it will play a bumper from the "Other" directory.

Also, any thought to video source bumpers, and if so, how would they be identified?

As it sits right now, this can be accomplished by using the Video Bumpers module. The functionality to auto detect the sound configuration and play a video based on that has not been added to the Audio Format bumpers, but it is on the list. Once we've finished implementing all of the other features we have planned, we're going to start adding some of the requested features from this thread.

[Dave the Minion]

So the current state for the new audio formats is either a) CV will auto-detect the DolbyTrueHD or dtsHD-Ma track and play the bumper(s) in that folder or b) always play a Dolby Atmos or dts-X bumper(s) from those folders? I understand Kodi can't yet tell if a TrueHD track had Atmos metadata but will CV be able to recognize filename tags similar to source or 3D?

[Soujirou Seta]

Antecipated date release?