[Android MiniClient] Now in BETA

[jm9843]

Android N is released to developer preview today for supported devices, including the Nexus Player. And one of the new features specific to Android TV is Picture-in-picture

Is this something that the MiniClient could leverage to overcome the "blank" background video phenomenon?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by jm9843

Android N is released to developer preview today for supported devices, including the Nexus Player. And one of the new features specific to Android TV is Picture-in-picture

Is this something that the MiniClient could leverage to overcome the "blank" background video phenomenon?

I'm not sure what the black background video phenomenon is So, once I understand that... I can maybe answer you question. As for PIP... are you expeciting a SageTV source for the PIP source? If so, that's not likely to happen. That would require that I implement the tuner framework in Android TV to use a SageTV video source, which would not be trivial... and just to get a PIP would not be worth it, in my mind.

[jm9843]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I'm not sure what the black background video phenomenon is

Sorry, I had considered opening an issue but couldn't remember if what I was seeing was a regression or not. In the screenshot that I included in my last post (RC3 on Shield TV), you'll notice the black frame in the upper-right corner captioned with 802 WHPDT. I can reproduce this by starting live TV and issuing the SageTV home command (via the on-screen buttons). Audio continues to play in the background but the video doesn't display in the PIP window.

Originally Posted by stuckless

As for PIP... are you expeciting a SageTV source for the PIP source? If so, that's not likely to happen. That would require that I implement the tuner framework in Android TV to use a SageTV video source, which would not be trivial...

No. Reading over some of the developer stuff, it seems that the PIP feature has more in common with the new multi-window support in Android N and doesn't have much (anything?) to do with the TV Input Framework stuff.

I thought that the "blank" PIP on the Android TV miniclient that I describe above might be a limitation with how the Player activity exists with the rest of the rendering of the SageTV UI. Which, if I understand correctly, is just a bunch of drawing instructions sent from the server which the client then renders. With the 'hints' that were added to v9 for the stateful remote, perhaps you could detect when sent to a UI element with a video preview and then, if it exists, put the Player activity into PIP mode which the system then handles by putting into the corner.

Feel free to just shut me down if I'm way off.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by jm9843

Sorry, I had considered opening an issue but couldn't remember if what I was seeing was a regression or not. In the screenshot that I included in my last post (RC3 on Shield TV), you'll notice the black frame in the upper-right corner captioned with 802 WHPDT. I can reproduce this by starting live TV and issuing the SageTV home command (via the on-screen buttons). Audio continues to play in the background but the video doesn't display in the PIP window.



No. Reading over some of the developer stuff, it seems that the PIP feature has more in common with the new multi-window support in Android N and doesn't have much (anything?) to do with the TV Input Framework stuff.

I thought that the "blank" PIP on the Android TV miniclient that I describe above might be a limitation with how the Player activity exists with the rest of the rendering of the SageTV UI. Which, if I understand correctly, is just a bunch of drawing instructions sent from the server which the client then renders. With the 'hints' that were added to v9 for the stateful remote, perhaps you could detect when sent to a UI element with a video preview and then, if it exists, put the Player activity into PIP mode which the system then handles by putting into the corner.

Feel free to just shut me down if I'm way off.

Yeah, this is an older issue...
https://github.com/OpenSageTV/sagetv...lient/issues/3

I haven't implemented the SageTV video preview, yet. It involves me have to resize and reposition the player, and then punch a hole through the UI layer to see the video layer. SageTV is sending the instructions to do it, and I've played with it a little bit, but, repositiong the player was causing me some grief.

Maybe android's PIP could help with this, but I don't think it's really needed, and if do it the "sagetv" way, it would also work on tablets, etc. But, I'll check out Android N's PIP to see what does.

[RayGannon]

I'm running the 1.0-RC4 MiniClient on an Nvidia Shield TV under Marshmallow.

When I click on "Hardware Decoders" in the Server Selection Settings menu I get a "Unfortunately SageTV MiniClient has stopped" message. When I select "ok" in the dialog it looks like the MiniClient restarts.

Is this a bug ?

[hvymetal]

I have the Android client installed on my NexusPlayer Android V6 connected via usb Ethernet. Overall videos playback from original HDR works well. There is a slight pause at the beginning of the playback of the video. Also there is some noticeable shuttering sometimes during fast movement in the video. Overall the experience is very close to my HD200 which is very impressive.

I know this is going to flamed and not the highest priority but is there any reason that SageMC do not work in the client? I found SageMC requires the least explaining in my household. I wish that the newer UI replacements had a SageMC theme.

Stuckless thanks for the great work and it is impressive to finally have an option to get new hardware extenders that will eventually exceed and out preform the original SageTV versions.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by RayGannon

I'm running the 1.0-RC4 MiniClient on an Nvidia Shield TV under Marshmallow.

When I click on "Hardware Decoders" in the Server Selection Settings menu I get a "Unfortunately SageTV MiniClient has stopped" message. When I select "ok" in the dialog it looks like the MiniClient restarts.

Is this a bug ?

Open a bug for that one.
https://github.com/OpenSageTV/sagetv-miniclient

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by hvymetal

I know this is going to flamed and not the highest priority but is there any reason that SageMC do not work in the client? I found SageMC requires the least explaining in my household. I wish that the newer UI replacements had a SageMC theme.

Stuckless thanks for the great work and it is impressive to finally have an option to get new hardware extenders that will eventually exceed and out preform the original SageTV versions.

SageMC is just a STV running on the server... it will run on this MiniClient like the HD200, etc. I don't think there is a plugin for SageMC, so setting it up might be your biggest barrier. And, of course, no-one is supporting it, so if you do have issues, not sure you'll get many answers But, there's no reason it can't run.

[hvymetal]

Originally Posted by stuckless

SageMC is just a STV running on the server... it will run on this MiniClient like the HD200, etc. .

There is kind of plugin you can load with SageTV 7/9 that loads the the STV on the filesystem of the server. You still have to load the STV manually from the SageTV 3 folder for each client. The problem when I load it using the Android client the graphics and fonts do not load and does not work properly. It is like the overlays are out of sync thus not usable. Also it does not redraw the screen so when you move the menu bar it starts to have a shadow effect. SageMC does work with the my HD100 and HD200.

Please see attached screenshots.

[hvymetal]

I got SageMC STV working. I had to turn off Core Animations. Since the interface did not work I did the following: With the client closed I copied the client .properties located in \SageTV\SageTV\clients from a working HD200. Then renamed it to the ID of the Android client. With the required options set the Android client loaded the SageMC STV correctly.

I believe the option required in the .properties file to change is the following

ui/animation/core_enabled=false


Also attached is the the setting in SageMC when the interface is working

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by hvymetal

I got SageMC STV working. I had to turn off Core Animations. Since the interface did not work I did the following: With the client closed I copied the client .properties located in \SageTV\SageTV\clients from a working HD200. Then renamed it to the ID of the Android client. With the required options set the Android client loaded the SageMC STV correctly.

I believe the option required in the .properties file to change is the following

ui/animation/core_enabled=false


Also attached is the the setting in SageMC when the interface is working

Glad that worked. I'm not likely to do any testing using SageMC, so, glad this worked.

[jm9843]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Yeah, this is an older issue...
https://github.com/OpenSageTV/sagetv...lient/issues/3

I haven't implemented the SageTV video preview, yet. It involves me have to resize and reposition the player, and then punch a hole through the UI layer to see the video layer. SageTV is sending the instructions to do it, and I've played with it a little bit, but, repositiong the player was causing me some grief.

Maybe android's PIP could help with this, but I don't think it's really needed, and if do it the "sagetv" way, it would also work on tablets, etc. But, I'll check out Android N's PIP to see what does.

I get the impression that the new PIP mode is intended to alleviate the need to go through the hassle that you describe (resize, reposition, punch a hole through the UI layer, etc.). Point well taken about it not working for phones/tablets, but if the new API's make it trivial to implement then it might be worth considering for TV-only at first.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by jm9843

I get the impression that the new PIP mode is intended to alleviate the need to go through the hassle that you describe (resize, reposition, punch a hole through the UI layer, etc.). Point well taken about it not working for phones/tablets, but if the new API's make it trivial to implement then it might be worth considering for TV-only at first.

THe challenge with the PIP is that this embeds an activity in a window... the SageTV UI and the Video are the same activity, just different layers of the same activity. After reading through the PIP stuff, I didn't get a sense for how I could use it within SageTV, but I could use it to show sagetv PIP in another application/activity.

[jm9843]

Originally Posted by stuckless

THe challenge with the PIP is that this embeds an activity in a window... the SageTV UI and the Video are the same activity, just different layers of the same activity.

Ah, this is the part that I wasn't sure about. Probably not as trivial as I had hoped for then for the purposes of "fixing" the in-Sage video preview.

Originally Posted by stuckless

After reading through the PIP stuff, I didn't get a sense for how I could use it within SageTV, but I could use it to show sagetv PIP in another application/activity.

Although this still has some potentially interesting use cases. Perhaps add a PIP button to the MiniClient's onscreen buttons when video is full screen. This would allow, for example, someone to dropout to another app (e.g. Pandora) to queue some music, check a fantasy sports app, etc. while Sage continues to play in the corner.

wonders out loud how many people would use such a feature

[SteveW]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Haven't honestly heard of many plugins that people actually use not being available anymore. in fact, many of the ones that people DO use have been moved recently to different servers (because of google code shutting down at some point).

Just found one while trying V9.... Shadeblue's Info Popup / Caller ID is failing a dependency.... It's for the .stvi that I actually have disabled on my production system anyways, but it's blocking the install of the plugin itself...

It's odd, I can follow the link mentioned on the error screen and see the option to download it in the downloads section and can manually download it but the plugin system can deal with it anymore.

I would assume this would still work in the mini client, assuming the repository issue can be sorted out...

[stuckless]

Well, if you are affected by the recent IJKPlayer crash, then I'm not sure there is a fix.

I've followed the threads, and it's not an IJKPlayer issue, but rather a FFMpeg issue, that is caused by Android M. Neither FFMpeg nor Andriod Team will fix it.

The affected users are x86 users running Android M. Android M decided to change the underlying system to prevent certain code from running (for whatever reason), and causes ffmpeg to fail to load. There is a work around for ffmpeg in that you can disable-asm which allows it to load, but, also makes it run much slower.

Here's the ffmpeg (won't fix) defect
https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/4928

Here's the IJKPlayer (won't fix) defect
https://github.com/Bilibili/ijkplayer/issues/709

Here's the Google (works as designed) defect
https://code.google.com/p/android/is...tail?id=191235

So, basically there is a stalemate.

Given that this "works" in the previous build, it got me thinking, that this must be something I trigged in the new build. And sure enough, in the new builds, I was targeting Android M and in the previous builds I was targeting Android L. So, I've rebuilt everything using Android L, and sure enough it works again.

I'll try to push out a new build later today (or tomorrow).

[stuckless]

This release should fix the previous issue whereby some x86 units would fail to work when playing a video using IJKPlayer. It also fixes the exit to homescreen issue as well.

Like before, this is a TV ONLY release. Do not install this on a Phone/Tablet. And updated Phone/Tablet image will be released at a different time.

EDIT: Note, you will need to UNINSTALL your previous version, and then install this version. This will again, force you to have to reconfigure the client. Unfortunately there is no way around this.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by stuckless

This release should fix the previous issue whereby some x86 units would fail to work when playing a video using IJKPlayer. It also fixes the exit to homescreen issue as well.

Like before, this is a TV ONLY release. Do not install this on a Phone/Tablet. And updated Phone/Tablet image will be released at a different time.

EDIT: Note, you will need to UNINSTALL your previous version, and then install this version. This will again, force you to have to reconfigure the client. Unfortunately there is no way around this.

IJKPLayer still has problems playing H.264 Comcast files ... on the Nexus Player EXOPLAYER plays everything fine. Plus EXOPLAYER is more responsive IJKPlayer when it tries to close a file or open it to play takes a while. ExOPLAYER responds right away.

EDIT with RC5 I now longer get a picture when playing 1080I H.264 videos with EXOPLAYER but backed off to RC4 and it plays fine.

RC4 Is just a great fit with my Nexus Player and the mixture of recordings I get from Comcast it plays everything and seeks using EXOPLAYER

[dinki]

RC5 is by far the best yet for playing my 720p MPEG2 files with IJKPlayer. The video playback is smooth and comskip works well. The only noticable 'issue' is constant audio dropouts. These happen about every 2-3 seconds. It's not obnoxious but is noticable. I'm not sure what the cause might be. This is all on a Nexus Player running Android M on a wired connection.

The same recording does not play well at all in Exoplayer, however. The video does start but keeps playing the same the first five seconds over and over again. It's like it's resetting and starting the file playback over every five seconds.

At any rate, bravo on the great work!

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by dinki

RC5 is by far the best yet for playing my 720p MPEG2 files with IJKPlayer. The video playback is smooth and comskip works well. The only noticable 'issue' is constant audio dropouts. These happen about every 2-3 seconds. It's not obnoxious but is noticable. I'm not sure what the cause might be. This is all on a Nexus Player running Android M on a wired connection.

The same recording does not play well at all in Exoplayer, however. The video does start but keeps playing the same the first five seconds over and over again. It's like it's resetting and starting the file playback over every five seconds.

At any rate, bravo on the great work!

Are you just on OTA I am on OTA and Comcast Cable. I am using OPenDCT for both ota and cable and I have no problem playing anything and seeking using exoplayer in RC4. If you are just OTA then you have no H.264 recordings.

These are the type of files I can record on my system.

MPEG2-TS 1080i
MPEG2-TS 720P
MPEG2-TS 480i
H.264 TS 1080i
H.264 TS 1080p
H.264 TS 720p