Pushed 1.5.1-M1 out for testing. It is basically a bug fix release for some issues, particularly when switching views (detail/grid) with the Genre category selected.
Also added German as a supported translation for the app.
https://github.com/NineWorlds/serenity-android/wiki/Downloads#151-m1-available
No it currently isn't designed for phones. Only tablets and Android TV devices. It may work if the device reports itself as a large device, but most phones even those with a 5 inch display report themselves as Medium screen sizes, and thus can't find the layouts needed. With this said, I am looking at updating Serenity so that will have some phone style layouts. But I won't begin work on that until sometime next year.
Source code is available on the projects GitHub site if anybody wants to help get it working on a Phone.
For 1.6.0 I plan to add some experimental support for phone screens. Keep any eye out for the announcement.
Discoverd a new issue:
When we chose "Recently viewed shows" as stating filter, no way to reach the top slidebar in order to choose a different filter with remote dpad. I have to use the mouse.
On this filtered screen using dpad the focus disapear -> pressing "ok" (selection button) the left pane apears even if I deactivated this pane in settings.
It seems when we use dpad the focus goes on left closed pane and there is no way to get out but pressing "ok" button which make the pane to apear; but even on this case it is still not possible to reach the top slide bar.
Discoverd a new issue:
When we chose "Recently viewed shows" as stating filter, no way to reach the top slidebar in order to choose a different filter with remote dpad. I have to use the mouse.
On this filtered screen using dpad the focus disapear -> pressing "ok" (selection button) the left pane apears even if I deactivated this pane in settings.
It seems when we use dpad the focus goes on left closed pane and there is no way to get out but pressing "ok" button which make the pane to apear; but even on this case it is still not possible to reach the top slide bar.
I'll see if I can reproduce with the OUYA and Google TV those are my only D-Pad devices currently.
I’m not sure if this has already been reported, but I have one remaining issue with the ‘watched’ status flags not being set properly.
For TV show episodes these flags are set correctly only if I start the episode playback from ‘inside’ the episode list of a season.
If I just browse into a show and first select the season in the lower screen section, and then move the selection highlight cursor into the episode list in the higher screen section and start the episode playback from there, then the ‘watched’ status flag fails to update after finishing the episode.
I don’t know if the player choice matters, but for all my recent tests the selected player is “MX Player Pro”.
Best regards: dlanor
I'll add it to the list to see if I can replicate. I typically use that same scenario but with the internal player, so will try it with the external player as well. Do you let the show complete all the way or stop it before it completes entirely by itself?
I'll add it to the list to see if I can replicate. I typically use that same scenario but with the internal player, so will try it with the external player as well. Do you let the show complete all the way or stop it before it completes entirely by itself?
Serenity relies on the video player to report the end time or if playback completed normally itself (i.e. the video played all the way through). If the player for some reason is not reporting the correct playback time or how video playback ended, then Serenity can't update PMS correctly.
Also, Serenity should detect if playback went greater than 90 percent, then it should mark the whole thing as watched. I've seen some situations where Serenity from older versions had left some dirty progress information and it messed up the playback positioning. Usually in these cases a toggle to Unwatched status resets things, and future updates work as expected.
Haven't had a chance to go through all the scenarios but will try this evening.
I'll write up a wiki page about the testing for this as well, and will probably open it up for people to update the page as well to add further test cases.
One last item, please make sure MX Player Pro is selected as Preferred External Player in the Settings. This will make sure that Serenity is passing the correct information and looking for the return information from MX Player as well.
Serenity relies on the video player to report the end time or if playback completed normally itself (i.e. the video played all the way through). If the player for some reason is not reporting the correct playback time or how video playback ended, then Serenity can't update PMS correctly.
Yes, I know. But it's not just the player itself which is responsible for this, as it can only work with the data present in the stream sent to it by PMS. So if PMS has in any way messed up the stream that could make the player misinterpret the playback length info.
Also, Serenity should detect if playback went greater than 90 percent, then it should mark the whole thing as watched. I've seen some situations where Serenity from older versions had left some dirty progress information and it messed up the playback positioning. Usually in these cases a toggle to Unwatched status resets things, and future updates work as expected.
If you mean future updates for the same episode, that's not a very useful workaround, as it will usually be a VERY long time before I want to watch the same episode again. If you mean future episodes of the same show, then you've got me confused, as I don't see how or why progress info for one episode would influence the next.
Haven't had a chance to go through all the scenarios but will try this evening.
I'll write up a wiki page about the testing for this as well, and will probably open it up for people to update the page as well to add further test cases.
That will be useful, so we can agree on the most meaningful tests for such issues, best optimized for exposing their causes.
One last item, please make sure MX Player Pro is selected as Preferred External Player in the Settings. This will make sure that Serenity is passing the correct information and looking for the return information from MX Player as well.
It was so selected for all of my reported tests.
That is how I normally use it.
Btw:
About 'MX Player Pro' I have to say that I'm a bit disappointed with playback results on my OUYA.
While it does stutter less than the internal player of the OUYA does, it's still far from perfect.
I get 1-2 seconds of stutter in the startup of appx half of my show episodes and in appx half of the cases there is also a second or two of stutters somewhere in the middle of the episode. This is probably due to the fact that they haven't made any OUYA-optimized codec package, so I have to use the one for the closest related phones/tablets, this being the one named "MX Player Codec (ARMv7 NEON)". (At least I think that's the best one. I also tried one without the NEON tag, but it didn't work well at all).
Best regards: dlanor
Btw:
About 'MX Player Pro' I have to say that I'm a bit disappointed with playback results on my OUYA.
While it does stutter less than the internal player of the OUYA does, it's still far from perfect.
I get 1-2 seconds of stutter in the startup of appx half of my show episodes and in appx half of the cases there is also a second or two of stutters somewhere in the middle of the episode. This is probably due to the fact that they haven't made any OUYA-optimized codec package, so I have to use the one for the closest related phones/tablets, this being the one named "MX Player Codec (ARMv7 NEON)". (At least I think that's the best one. I also tried one without the NEON tag, but it didn't work well at all).
Best regards: dlanor
For issues with playback on MX Player Pro, your best bet is to post a message on their support forums so they can address things. They have other issues as well with the OUYA to address like Overscan, lack of D-Pad navigation, etc. More people request or report the issue the more likely they are to address things. The D-PAD navigation issue isn't something that is overly hard for them to fix.
If there are playback issues, I'm sure they would want to know about them.
I'll continue to look into the other issues listed, just haven't had much time lately with the job searching taking up the vast majority of my time.
Discoverd a new issue:
When we chose "Recently viewed shows" as stating filter, no way to reach the top slidebar in order to choose a different filter with remote dpad. I have to use the mouse.
On this filtered screen using dpad the focus disapear -> pressing "ok" (selection button) the left pane apears even if I deactivated this pane in settings.
It seems when we use dpad the focus goes on left closed pane and there is no way to get out but pressing "ok" button which make the pane to apear; but even on this case it is still not possible to reach the top slide bar.
I tried to replicate this today on my Google TV device, and haven't been able to. Will try and replicate the issue on my OUYA which uses a newer version of Android to see if I can replicate the issue. So far I can get to the Menu option just fine on the TV Show browser with Recently Viewed Shows set as the default filter.
I tried to replicate this today on my Google TV device, and haven't been able to. Will try and replicate the issue on my OUYA which uses a newer version of Android to see if I can replicate the issue. So far I can get to the Menu option just fine on the TV Show browser with Recently Viewed Shows set as the default filter.
It seems when I use the dpad to go up, the focus goes on left pane, but this one remains close. If I press ok it opens and then left I go out the pane but no way to reach the top filter list.
The menu button is set to not open the pane. No Animation. Start filter to "Last viewed TV Shows"
Hope it could help.
some bugs are back on 1.5.1.
I am sure I have tested this one :
- See a part of the video
- go out
- togle the viewed status -> ok it apears
- togle another time -> no way. we have to exit and then come back to be able to re-togle the status.
I am sure you fixed this behaviour on a previous version.
I am almost sure the issue with dpad up to reach drp down list (filters) was working fine in a previous version
Am I wrong ?
Haven’t found any of those issues yet. Tried on both Ouya, Nexus 7,and Google TV with 1.5.1.
Ok,
On 1.5.1, I do not find anyway to reach the filter list form TV show menu with remote dpad only. I need to activate the mouse.
In addition to that, some times it crash when I try to browse and reach this list and the focus is hidden in the closed left pane.
Ok,
On 1.5.1, I do not find anyway to reach the filter list form TV show menu with remote dpad only. I need to activate the mouse.
In addition to that, some times it crash when I try to browse and reach this list and the focus is hidden in the closed left pane.
I just pushed out a 1.5.2 version. I've tried to replicate your issue on both Google TV and OUYA using D-Pads and still haven't been able to do so. Anyways, please try 1.5.2. It fixes a possible force close issue when in poster view for TV Show browsing. Also it removes the rating nudger for compatibility with the Amazon App store apk tester.
https://github.com/NineWorlds/serenity-android/wiki/Downloads#152-m1-available
Many thanks to try to fix it.
But it is still not fixed in this version.
I found a work around that wok on TV Shows but not in movies:
- I go totally left with dpad + 1 more left and the focus go to Filter list.
- On movies when I go totally left +1 it jump at the end of movies (I remember I asked for that).
Another way that work only on show is to use fast forward (jump forward), when dpad right, and here the focus jump to filter list. This do not work on movies.
I do not know if it helps
For force close, I do not know, I expericened it only a couple of time with 1.5.1.It is not really frequent.
Many thanks to try to fix it.
But it is still not fixed in this version.
I found a work around that wok on TV Shows but not in movies:
- I go totally left with dpad + 1 more left and the focus go to Filter list.
- On movies when I go totally left +1 it jump at the end of movies (I remember I asked for that).
Another way that work only on show is to use fast forward (jump forward), when dpad right, and here the focus jump to filter list. This do not work on movies.
I do not know if it helps
For force close, I do not know, I expericened it only a couple of time with 1.5.1.It is not really frequent.
Okay, can you open a bug on the Issue tracker, with EXACT steps to replicate, including what views (Detail or Grid and if for TV Shows if it is in Banner or Poster view).
I'll continue to try and replicate any reported force closes. In those cases where you can't report the force close back through Google play, a LogCat would be helpful as it contains a stacktrace of why it crashed.
Serenity for Android 1.5.3-M1 is available.
* New preference setting to allow application to startup automatically after a device boots.
* Updated to Android-Universal-ImageLoader 1.9.0
If you are still having issues with getting to the Filter option in TV Shows or Movies, this release doesn't address that. I have yet to find a device that I have access to where I can reproduce it. If you have this issue, please let me know the device model number, as I'm looking to purchase a similar device early next year for testing and development purposes.
https://github.com/NineWorlds/serenity-android/wiki/Downloads#153-m1-available
