v19 Fullscreen playback goes black in 10 seconds
#1
Been using Kodi 18 forever and happy. Installed 19 to try it out. Admittedly still Alpha but many suggest stable enough for daily use and I want to crack on with Python 3 development and be part of the forward moving vanguard.

That said, a new experience is upon me. I use Kodi mainly as a Jukebox (music player), I queue songs, and play, then press TAB and enter Fullscreen playback. All good. In 10 seconds roughly the screen blacks. If CU lyrics finds lyrics they appear on that (later). If I press ESC to leave Fullscreen playback it's normal again for 10 seconds. I can go round and round.

I checked for screensavers and such, nothing is turned on. Odd new phenomenon. Will collect a debug log and submit. But wondering if there's an obvious thing I'm forgetting. It behaves like a screensaver, albeit a 10s one. it's not likely system based, as Is aid, just moved from v18 and it wasn't happening.
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#2
Have since noticed just moving the mouse refreshes the Fullscreen playback.

I recorded a debug log in that I let it go black, moved the mouse to refresh it, pressed CTRL_SHIFT+D, waited 10s, it went black, I moved the mouse to refresh, and pressed CTRL+SHIFT+D again to turn off debug logging and the resultant log is here:

https://paste.kodi.tv/duleroqoki.kodi
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#3
Sadly the log doesn't reveal anything.  It might be better if you enable debugging from the start (either via AS.xml or putting Kodi into debug and restarting) and grab a full log of it happening.  Not saying that it will be more helpful, but it might be.

Other than that, I have no idea at the moment and I'm running 19 on two Linux boxes and don't see this issue.
Learning Linux the hard way !!
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#4
(2020-06-19, 09:36)black_eagle Wrote: Sadly the log doesn't reveal anything.  It might be better if you enable debugging from the start (either via AS.xml or putting Kodi into debug and restarting) and grab a full log of it happening.  Not saying that it will be more helpful, but it might be.

Other than that, I have no idea at the moment and I'm running 19 on two Linux boxes and don't see this issue.
Can try that. Unlikely to show anything. I'm not experienced reading them, but I did look and couldn't find anything either. The log is odd, in that it reveals when debugging is turned off and that it saw the keystroke, but it does not show when it started. And the start has a lot of seeming boot strap info, from which one could conclude that turning debugging on dumps that cached bootstrap info to disk. I also noticed it's a tad fragile, if I delete kodi.log then I can turn debugging on and no new one appears. It seems not to force a disk write when I turn debugging logging on. But I'll do a full cycle and see. It doesn't look like a bug or a video card issue or anything liek any of the stuff I find when I search "black screen" in the forms. It's consistently about 10s, like some deliberate thing which is why checked for screen savers and such. Will get that log and report back.
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#5
Can you confirm which skin you are using? I see log entries for Amber so is this the active skin? Could you also also confirm what you mean by goes black? what exactly do you see when you first go fullscreen? and does that all completely disappear?

If you are using Amber then try switching back to the default Estuary skin to see if that does the same. If Estuary is ok, then it's a skin problem that needs to be reported to the skin author.

Note it's normal behaviour for the info to appear when entering fullscreen and for it to then disappear after 10 seconds, it will then reappear for 10 seconds at each track change, if you want info displayed all the time then after info disappears by I or Info button on keyboard/remote and the info will stay permanently on screen until you press I or Info button on keyboard/remote to dismiss it.
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#6
(2020-06-19, 10:39)ThumbOne Wrote: if I delete kodi.log then I can turn debugging on and no new one appears.

If you delete the log whilst Kodi is running then no, it doesn't get re-created.
(2020-06-19, 10:39)ThumbOne Wrote: The log is odd, in that it reveals when debugging is turned off and that it saw the keystroke, but it does not show when it started.

Yes, it does.

xml:
2020-06-19 17:08:33.891 T:10782 INFO <general>: Enabled debug logging due to GUI setting. Level 2.

After that little bit of info, it's probably what jjd-uk said Nod
Learning Linux the hard way !!
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#7
(2020-06-19, 11:01)jjd-uk Wrote: Can you confirm which skin you are using? I see log entries for Amber so is this the active skin? Could you also also confirm what you mean by goes black? what exactly do you see when you first go fullscreen? and does that all completely disappear?

If you are using Amber then try switching back to the default Estuary skin to see if that does the same. If Estuary is ok, then it's a skin problem that needs to be reported to the skin author.

Note it's normal behaviour for the info to appear when entering fullscreen and for it to then disappear after 10 seconds, it will then reappear for 10 seconds at each track change, if you want info displayed all the time then after info disappears by I or Info button on keyboard/remote and the info will stay permanently on screen until you press I or Info button on keyboard/remote to dismiss it.
Thank you!
  1. Switched back to Estuary and the problem goes away. My bad there, as I thought Estuary did it too (I was using Estuary for a day then found Amber-matrix, I'd used Amber for a long long time on v18 without issue).
  2. The I key is interesting! It creates the issue. That is in either skin, if I press I the I key get a blank screen. Blue in Estuary, black in Amber. To wit one thought is that Amber is displaying Info after 10 sec and there may be an Amber setting for that. I shall explore and report.
  3. Normal you say? That is interesting too as I have no recollection of losing Fullscreen in v18, in Estuary when I used that nor in Amber when I discovered that. Which raises the possibility that (if it's Normal) that I did encounter it in my early days with Kodi, found a fix and have forgotten?
So I walked through all the Amber skin settings, there are a great any alas and the names not always so useful, but ... the problem went away. Hmmm. So I rewalked them trying to recreate it. No luck. Can't seem to coax amber into blanking screen after 10s of inactivity. And boy have I tried. I can't seem to find a setting now that makes it happen.

In a nutshell then, it seems like yes, after 10s of inactivity in the equivalent of an I press was happening. But only in Amber, not in Estuary,  but no more after switching skins then back and                          walking through setting arbitrarily turning a few things off that looked like background or visualisation or information related, but unable to reprouduce it by trying th  revers walk. But loads of settings easy to have missed something.
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#8
(2020-06-19, 15:58)ThumbOne Wrote: Normal you say? That is interesting too as I have no recollection of losing Fullscreen in v18

You are not losing Fullscreen, the Info bar is just hidden which is expected behaviour. Maybe you previously had Visualisations set which are no longer enabled?
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#9
(2020-06-19, 16:08)FXB78 Wrote:
(2020-06-19, 15:58)ThumbOne Wrote: Normal you say? That is interesting too as I have no recollection of losing Fullscreen in v18

You are not losing Fullscreen, the Info bar is just hidden which is expected behaviour. Maybe you previously had Visualisations set which are no longer enabled?

Thanks you for clarifying! What do you mean by "Visualisations" set. I associate Visualisations with that psychedelic patterns that respond the sound (and never have any truck for them).
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#10
(2020-06-19, 16:16)ThumbOne Wrote:
(2020-06-19, 16:08)FXB78 Wrote:
(2020-06-19, 15:58)ThumbOne Wrote: Normal you say? That is interesting too as I have no recollection of losing Fullscreen in v18

You are not losing Fullscreen, the Info bar is just hidden which is expected behaviour. Maybe you previously had Visualisations set which are no longer enabled?

Thanks you for clarifying! What do you mean by "Visualisations" set. I associate Visualisations with that psychedelic patterns that respond the sound (and never have any truck for them).
Yes exactly, the patterns etc are the Visualisations. So it sounds like you just want the Info bar to be displayed permanently on screen and not hide after 10 seconds? I don't know that there's an option for this on Amber or Estuary, but Arctic Horizon seems to do it by default.
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#11
(2020-06-19, 15:58)ThumbOne Wrote: [*]The I key is interesting! It creates the issue. That is in either skin, if I press I the I key get a blank screen. Blue in Estuary, black in Amber. To wit one thought is that Amber is displaying Info after 10 sec and there may be an Amber setting for that. I shall explore and report.

In Estuary if there is a fanart image for the artist of the song being played then that will be display as the background, if there is no fanart available for that artist then the blue background is displayed as a fallback. If not for the blue fallback image then Estuary too would have a black background. The details of the track being played is placed above the background image (either fanart or the blue fallback), so when this disappears you are not exiting fullscreen (losing as you put it), but are merely seeing the fullscreen background without the info overlay.

So default behaviour is to display the track info for 10 sec when first entering fullscreen music and then subsequently for 10 sec on each track change, this is so the info does not obscure any fanart images. However as it seems you don't have any fanart scraped all you are seeing is the fallback background image.


(2020-06-19, 15:58)ThumbOne Wrote: [*]Normal you say? That is interesting too as I have no recollection of losing Fullscreen in v18, in Estuary when I used that nor in Amber when I discovered that. Which raises the possibility that (if it's Normal) that I did encounter it in my early days with Kodi, found a fix and have forgotten?

Perhaps Kodi being clever has caught you out, as default behaviour can be changed.

1. Starting from default - After entering fullscreen the track info disappears after 10 sec, after this happens press I and track info will appear again. After pressing I, if you do not press I again then the track info will remain permanently displayed, as the I button toggles the track info on & off.
2. Now the clever bit. If you stop your music and exit fullscreen when the track info was being permanently displayed, then this will be remembered for the next time you enter fullscreen, and track info will remain permanently displayed when you do enter fullscreen again. Therefore the manual press of I from the last time you were in fullscreen has now overrdden default behaviour.
3. The behaviour in 2 will only be changed if you press I when in fullscreen so the track info disappears, thus causing a reversion to default behaviour. So now the info will be back to only display for 10 sec on track changed. Like before if you stop the music and exit fullscreen, then the last state will be remembered for when you next enter fullscreen.
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#12
(2020-06-19, 16:38)jjd-uk Wrote:
(2020-06-19, 15:58)ThumbOne Wrote:
  • The I key is interesting! It creates the issue. That is in either skin, if I press I the I key get a blank screen. Blue in Estuary, black in Amber. To wit one thought is that Amber is displaying Info after 10 sec and there may be an Amber setting for that. I shall explore and report.
 
(2020-06-19, 15:58)ThumbOne Wrote:
  • Normal you say? That is interesting too as I have no recollection of losing Fullscreen in v18, in Estuary when I used that nor in Amber when I discovered that. Which raises the possibility that (if it's Normal) that I did encounter it in my early days with Kodi, found a fix and have forgotten?
3. The behaviour in 2 will only be changed if you press I when in fullscreen so the track info disappears, thus causing a reversion to default behaviour. So now the info will be back to only display for 10 sec on track changed. Like before if you stop the music and exit fullscreen, then the last state will be remembered for when you next enter fullscreen.
I didn't know this, but it makes sense. That is indeed a clever feature, does it persist after a reboot, it seems to for me Smile
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#13
(2020-06-19, 16:55)FXB78 Wrote:
Quote:3. The behaviour in 2 will only be changed if you press I when in fullscreen so the track info disappears, thus causing a reversion to default behaviour. So now the info will be back to only display for 10 sec on track changed. Like before if you stop the music and exit fullscreen, then the last state will be remembered for when you next enter fullscreen.
I didn't know this, but it makes sense. That is indeed a clever feature, does it persist after a reboot, it seems to for me Smile

Yep the last state for display of info while in fullscreen is always remembered, even if you exit Kodi or reboot the system/device Kodi is installed on, not sure how Kodi does this but I'd guess something gets stored somewhere in one of the userdata files.
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#14
I don't think Estuary does this, but skins can save some of that state info in skin settings.  Some skins have option to immediately load the "full screen" (called visualisation) window when music playback is started.  What info gets displayed in the visualisation window is set by skin (binary "visualization" addon, art, artist slideshow addon info, lyrics, progress bar/ seek bar etc).

scott s.
.
maintainer of skin  Aeon MQ5 mods for post-Gotham Kodi releases:
Matrix see: Aeon MQ5 Mod Matrix release thread
Nexus see: Aeon MQ5 Mod Nexus release thread
Aeon MQ 5 skin and addon repo 11.1.0
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#15
This is most awesome learning.  So all it boiled own to was that I have to press I to display the Info and leave it that way! And perhaps I did that in my testing totally clueless to the notion that that preference would be saved ;-).

While I concur that this is clever I don't think it's particularly good UX in that it took this conversation for some of us to learn it.  In short Kodi could probably do with a standard setting somewhere that makes this behaviour more discoverable like "Display info on Fullscreen for:" and a setting that can be 10s by default set to some duration or a special value "Always". Maybe under Settings > Player Settings which currently lists Videos, Music, Discs, Pictures, Language, Accessibility, a new entry: Fullscreen playback can contain some settings got that, notably this one, but could also make the TAB shortcut key configurable a short key to display the playlist etc.
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