The first development series in the 1.4.0 series is available on the projects github site. This version is concentrating on a couple of improvements within the app.
Implementation of a Sliding Menu for optional items and navigation.
Adding support of for queuing and continuous playback of videos.
I'm not a fan of always having say an action bar or left navigation bar available all the time, but do see the benefits of making available some options in a slide out menu that can be hidden when it isn't needed. To this affect version 1.4.0-M1 implements the menu drawer which can be slide out from the left side if you are using a tablet, or using the Menu key on the Google TV remote. If your device does not provide a menu key, there will always be a Slide Out Menu indicator icon that can be navigated to using the D-Pad and clicked, this will also bring up the slide out menu. Dismissing the menu is done by either selecting an Option in the menu or by hitting the Back key on the device.
To start off the Home screen has the slide out menu available, as does the Movie Browser menu. On the later you can now toggle between the Grid View and the Detail View from the slide out menu. This works the same on either a TV or a tablet device.
Upcoming development versions will start to add support for Playing Back all episodes, Adding videos to a queue, and possibly the ability to have a trailer be played for a movie or an episode if one can be found on YouTube.
In addition I'd like to add more native language support to the app, particularly for Dutch and German speaking countries, but need help with the translations. Google Translate only does a fair job and sometimes even then it mangles things. So if interested in helping translate the app into these languages let me know.
Implement Video Queue and Continuous Playback from queued videos
Fix issue with Subtitle dialog not displaying for TV Episodes if subtitles are available
Seek videos by percentage during playback with keyboard/remote numeric keypad. 1 = 10%, 2 = 20%, 3 = 30%,.... 0 = restart
Clean up Infographic icons for better clarity
Add "Clear Video Queue" option to main side menu on the first screen.
Long press a video and select "Add Video to Queue" to add it to the playback queue.
Long press any video and select "Play All Videos from Queue" to play back any videos in the queue.
Video Queue support currently only works with internal player.
This is a first cut at Queueing videos for playback and continuous play. So it is bound to have some bugs and usability issues. One known issue is that if you have queued videos and press the Back button it will start the next video not take you back to the prior activity screen. Will look into a prompt that will allow you to completely get out of the video queue playback.
Videos are queued using a FIFO (First in First out method). Once a video is started playing it is removed immediately from the queue. If you need to clear the queue, just go to the main menu, select options or hit the menu button on the remote, and select Clear Video Queue from the sliding menu.
Single videos can still be played, just make sure your Video Queue is empty. More enhancements and refinement to come in 1.4.0-M3. Please provide feedback and suggestions for improvement.
You’ll need to figure out the long press combination for your remote. For example it is the touch pad on the Sony gs7 remote. It is pressing a - and long pressing the touchpad on a Vizio CoStar. Every remote is different.
With 1.4.0, one can queue up videos and have continuous playback. This is great for binge viewing of TV shows, queuing up music videos, or adding the whole series of Dora the Explorer to keep the young one occupied for several hours.
A couple of questions on how playback and exiting should work.
1. I'm thinking of having the back button immediately exit you out of continuous playback mode. Currently it plays the next video in the queue. With the immediate exit mode, it will let you know if there are more videos in the queue that haven't been played. With out this and you add a bunch of videos you'll have to exit multiple times until the queue is empty.
2. When playing videos from a Queue... Videos currently prompt you if you want to resume if they have been partially watched. I'm leaning toward just having it start from the beginning again with out prompting.
3. I'm going to be moving the Play All from Queue to the side bar menu instead of a long press. Long press will still be used to add the videos but the side bar menu seems to be more relevant and the option can be made available across the application whenever the sliding menu is available.
4. Will be adding a Play all and Add All. Play All will immediately start playing back all episodes either for an entire show or for a season, depending on what level you select it. Add All will just add them to the queue and you will still need to play them later.
5. Continuous Play and the Video Queue will work with external players. There may be some limitations due to limited result codes that are returned by external players. Will look at making this work with the second screen functionality as well if possible.
6. If there are videos in the queue and you do a normal play on a video (i.e. click it to start playback), the existing queued items will be cleared and playback will on consist of the one item. Use Play All from Video Queue to play videos from the queue.
Moscard, I know you have some issues with the long press. I can try mapping the functionality to another remote button. Does your remote have the color keys on it:
Yellow
Green
Blue
Red
If so I can try to map it to one of those, of course your remote would need to send the correct keycode in order for it to be activated.
Any additional thoughts on the video queue and continuous play back?
Main reason for consistency when switching between Grid View and Detail view in the movie browser. Need to keep it consistent between the two to access the menu key. Have you reported the long press issue back to the MINIX developers as it might be something they can fix with a software patch or might be able to explain why it happens.
Main reason for consistency when switching between Grid View and Detail view in the movie browser. Need to keep it consistent between the two to access the menu key. Have you reported the long press issue back to the MINIX developers as it might be something they can fix with a software patch or might be able to explain why it happens.
Yeah, the reason I mention checking with the manufacturer is because when I talked with the Google TV devs about this, they said the manufacturers are bad about getting the long press mapping wrong.
But unseen issue on 1.4 -> Image resolution (720p, 1080p,...) is no more there and encoding is alway x264 even on MPEG2 video. The sound icons are correctly displayed.
This should be an issue with Serenity and not Plex server because on my tablet using 1.3.8 these icons are rightly displayd (sound bofore and image resolution and ratio after without encoding mode.
I removed the image resolution from the infographic row. I'll be playing around with the size of the icons a bit, and if I have room or tweak some of the space on the existing graphics I can add them back. Wasn't sure anybody actually used those or not. I'll look at the MPEG2 video, I probably messed something up there.
In fact for me the image resolution (720p, 1080p, 577p, SD or 480p,..) is one of the most important information with sound type (2.0, 5.1 & DTS, AC3, Dolby digital,...).
Imgage encoding (X264, MPEG2) is less important, because it do not have a big impact on playback.
In fact for me the image resolution (720p, 1080p, 577p, SD or 480p,..) is one of the most important information with sound type (2.0, 5.1 & DTS, AC3, Dolby digital,...).
Imgage encoding (X264, MPEG2) is less important, because it do not have a big impact on playback.
BR
Thanks, I added the image resolution back. I've also re-arranged them a bit so it follows the following order:
* videcodec
* resolution
* aspect ratio
* audio codec
* audio channels
Any US TV rating information was moved as well so that the infographic appears next to the title.
This versions enhances and solidifies the new video queue support and solidifies the D-Pad navigation with the sliding menu. Also included are a couple of new features that you may notice.
Change Log
The Google Play store really limits what one can say when a new version changes. The Change Log will pop up one time after installation or upgrade of a new version to let you know what is new in the app.
Rating Reminder
A gentle reminder will appear once asking you if you would like to rate the app. You can select NO and never see the dialog again, Remind Me Later to have it prompt you later, and Rate It which will take you to the Google Play store listing where you can rate the app. The rating prompt will occur 14 days after the initial launch with the app installed.
External Players
External players can now use the video queue support. 1.4.0-M4 will bring enhanced compatibilty for ViMu and MX Player as they either already have the necessary api or will be adding it in future versions. This will provide similar functionality to the built in internal player when using the video queue.
- Icons -> nice, just a smal remark : I find the Sound voices (2.0, 5.1,...) too big in regards to other things.
- Icons the video codec is still wrong ti displays always x264 even for Divx and Xvid. However I cannot compare with other Plex clients because they do not display the video codec.
I discover another small bug : On parameter -> starting filter "on Deck" and "recetly viewed video" are exchanged. I do not know if it is only in french but when we chose one we receive the other.
- Icons -> nice, just a smal remark : I find the Sound voices (2.0, 5.1,...) too big in regards to other things.
I'll look at tweaking the Audio Channels icons a bit, I noticed after my last tweak they were a bit bigger than I liked as well.
- Icons the video codec is still wrong ti displays always x264 even for Divx and Xvid. However I cannot compare with other Plex clients because they do not display the video codec.
This is a plex issue, the meta data is always returning H.264 for videos encoded with the older xvid, or divx. I have several like this myself, and it always shows up in plex as H.264.
I discover another small bug : On parameter -> starting filter "on Deck" and "recetly viewed video" are exchanged. I do not know if it is only in french but when we chose one we receive the other.
Thanks. I'll take a look at the translation.
As a side note, I've been talking with the MX Player developers and they are open to adding better Remote control support to the player. Also there is a new option to allow me to better control MX Player with the new video queue support in serenity.
