Slideshow as a Screen Saver

[Narflex]

This has been asked for a few times, and I just thought of how to do it in a few easy steps, so here's how you do it.

How to Use a Slideshow for the SageTV Screen Saver in 11 Easy Steps

1. Open up the SageTV Studio using Ctrl+Shift+F12
2. Find the 'Screen Saver' menu and expand it one level
3. Select all of the children under the 'Screen Saver' menu and hit Ctrl-B (Break from parent)
4. Find the 'Picture Slideshow' menu and expand it one level
5. Select all of the children under the 'Picture Slideshow' menu and hit Ctrl-C (copy)
6. Select the 'Screen Saver' menu then hit Ctrl-Shift-V (Paste as Reference)
7. Right-click on the 'Screen Saver' menu and select New Child->Attribute
8. Enter 'SlideshowImages' (no quotes) for the name of the new Attribute
9. Right-click on the new Attribute and select Properties
10. For the Value field, enter this:

FilterByBoolMethod(GetMediaFiles(), "IsPictureFile", true)

11. Click OK to close the Properties dialog

Your'e done! Now it'll do a slideshow through your whole picture library for your screen saver. It'll use the same parameters as that for your slideshow configuration. Selecting which pictures to show is left as an exercise for the reader.

[dougrob]

Narflex,

I've made your suggested changes to the SageMC STV. It seemed to work fine at first, but I discovered that the slideshow would start and run fine until the Sage screen saver timout kicked in. At this point the slideshow screen saver would freeze (another screen saver instance kicking in behind it??). I edited the screen saver key in Studio again, placing the orginal hooks back in to alert the system that the screen saver is active on BeforeMenuLoad, but I'm not getting good consistent results. Could you help me out with this?

Thanks,

dougrob

[Tiki]

I've noticed the same problem. In fact, I was just about to see if I could figure out what I did wrong, when I noticed your post. Thought you'd like to know you're not the only one with this problem.

[Tiki]

Well, I looked into this a little bit last night and couldn't figure it out.

I did fix one other problem that it caused though - Comskip. I use the Malore STV (or a modified version of it) and it is set to automatically run Comskip when ever Sage is Sleeping. This slideshow screensaver broke that functionality.

The Malore STV added hooks to the ScreenSaver menu for AfterLoad and BeforeUnload to set/clear a variable called ScreenSaver. The Slideshow menu has its own hooks for these events, so you need to combine the two into a single set of hooks. However, you don't want to replace the hooks in the SlideShow menu, you just want to use them for the SlideShow/ScreenSaver Menu (otherwise Comskip will run anytime you view a slideshow).

I hope that makes sense.

[tmaddison]

Tried this, didn't work. When I went back in to check my work I discovered none of the changes to the screen saver item were there.

Ran through it again, except this time at the end I went to File/Save to make sure the changes got saved, and when I clicked that I got..

"There was an error saving the file:java.io.IOException: Access is denied"

Don't quite get why I don't have access - my media center is a Win2000 machine that I run logged in with admin privileges..

Anyone know what's up?

Thanks,

Todd

[Opus4]

What version of SageTV are you using, what file were you editing/saving, and was that file set to read-only?

- Andy

[lotusvball]

Originally Posted by tmaddison

Tried this, didn't work. When I went back in to check my work I discovered none of the changes to the screen saver item were there.

Ran through it again, except this time at the end I went to File/Save to make sure the changes got saved, and when I clicked that I got..

"There was an error saving the file:java.io.IOException: Access is denied"

Don't quite get why I don't have access - my media center is a Win2000 machine that I run logged in with admin privileges..

Anyone know what's up?

Thanks,

Todd

I had the same problem. Using Win XP, Sage 4.1.3

[Humanzee]

Is there a way to disable the sage screen saver, or minimize Sage, or temporarily disable FSE when the sage screen saver initiates? I'm using a third party windows based screen saver that I prefer. The problem is that with FSE enabled the windows screen saver and the sage screen saver compete with each other for focus. They actually switch back and forth. I have a button mapped to launch sage from any application so it is trivial to re open sage again, but I need a way to hide sage.

Being that this is a HTPC it is conceivable that we might be running other applications than sage, and would like to run the windows screen saver for our other applications. It would be nice if there were a way to elect to use the windows screen saver in lieu of the sage one. Currently I can’t get them to play nice with each other.

edit
Ok I read the manual, it looks like I should be able to sleep sage to the system tray, but im still not certain that I can do this instead of running the screen saver. The manual references entering sleep mode via the power button not after a time out. I could swear I set the properties file to screensaveronsleep="false" which should minimize sage to the tray, and I think it does. But what I want it to sleep at screen saver time out instead of starting the screen saver. Is this possible?

[tmaddison]

Opus, thanks, obvious questions...

I'm using Sage 4.0.0.56 (looks like the user above me has a newer version? Not sure if that's a factor..)

I'm editing C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV\STVs\SageTV3\SageTV3.stv - but not by choice, it's what opens when I cntrl-shift-F12 in Sage and open the Studio.

And, yes, if I expand the Studio box all the way out the end of the path says "READ ONLY" on it... Duhh..

Changed the properties of that file, tried again, didn't work - same error...

So... then I realized perhaps I should exit out of SageTV and back in? Threw in a reboot for good measure. Not sure why that changed anything but at that point I was able to modify the settings - and it now works as described..

Thanks for pointing the Way...

Todd

[tmaddison]

Update on this...

When I left it all appeared to work, however since then I've found that the screen saver slide show will "freeze" on a single picture - usually somewhere around 10-20 pictures into the show. It's rarely the same picture and does not seem to be tied to some event happening in the background (for example, a timed recording starting or some windows housekeeping in the background.)

As far as troubleshooting, I've tried..

1) Closing all processes not needed to run Sage. There's not much on this machine - all it DOES is run Sage - but there were a few things.

2) Renaming the pictures to shuffle the order they display in, just it case it was related to a specific image file.

3) Reloaded the screen saver images from the original files (again, just in case one file is corrupted..)

4) Resized all images to 1024 x 768 (my standard catalog size..)

All resulted in same thing - freezing on an image at some semi-random interval, usually more than 10 pictures into the show and less than 20.

When the picture is frozen, the machine is not - it will continue to execute background processes, record shows, etc in the background. Pressing a remote key or clicking the mouse will interrupt the screen saver and restore the Sage menu as normal (although it seems to take longer than it does when you're in a normally-progressing slideshow...)

Any troubleshooting clues?

Thanks,

Todd

[gplasky]

I'd take a look at your CPU utilization. If it goes real high some of the symptoms would be frozen screen and slow reaction to button presses.

Gerry

[Tiki]

As I posted before, I have the same problem. The screen saver launches and the slide show appears to work, but after several minutes it stops advancing. Pressing a key on the remote wakes it.

It does not appear related to CPU utilization.

Has anyone been successful using the slide show as a screen saver?

[tmaddison]

No change for me. Have tried everything I can think of but no change in symptom - still "semi-random" lockup when doing slide show as screen saver. Never gets more than perhaps 30 slides into the show before stopping. Always comes right out of sleep mode with remote keypress (or mouse click).

I have a windows screensaver that will cycle through the same images in the same folder fine, so unlikely random images are damaged in some way.

Fortunately not a key feature of Sage, I'll "just live with it" and perhaps some day in some update it will start working...

Todd

[hammondr]

Originally Posted by Narflex

Selecting which pictures to show is left as an exercise for the reader.

Aw, can I get another hint?! This was the first thing I did today after purchasing my first SageTV license. The instructions worked perfectly, but I'd still like to "complete" the project by specifying (w/in Studio if necessary) a path to the folder to use for the slideshow.

I get how FilterByBoolMethod(GetMediaFiles(), "IsPictureFile", true) is working, and I know I can add other methods to the second argument by separating them with pipes (|), but I couldn't find another method to use that could parse a MediaFile path, etc.

Could someone help me find a way to do this? I am a complete Studio novice, but I can make it through a set of instructions and usually pick this stuff up pretty quickly.

This would make my wife's day, since all she *really* wanted was a digital picture frame ... the other SageTV features are just extras to her.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by hammondr

Aw, can I get another hint?!

Well... my hint would be to wait to use the next version. It has an optional slideshow screensaver built in now, plus a few more options for slideshows in the photo library. The screensaver slideshow still displays all your photos, instead of just a subset, but if you only want a subset, there is some code in there that would probably make it easier to get such a list, because the photo lib has to do something similar to be able to show the slideshow from just a single dir with or w/o its subdirs. It is a bit beyond what I would want to try to explain in the forum. (And, no, I don't know when it will be out.)

If you really want to mess with it right now, you can get the full file path for a picture via:

GetFileForSegment(MediaFile,0)

- Andy

[ChePazzo]

Can I get the slideshow screensaver to display on my extender?

[Tiki]

It works on my extender (using Sage 5.04 with an extender license and a custom STV modified as described earlier in this thread).

Incidentally, the bug reported earlier in this thread where the screensaver freezes after awhile has been corrected (I think in Sage 4).

[hammondr]

If anyone is looking for a way to limit the photos used in the slideshow screen saver, this worked for me. Thanks to Andy for the pointers!

When creating the attribute SlideshowImages in step 10, use the following expression:

FilterByMethodRegex ( FilterByBoolMethod (GetMediaFiles(), "IsPictureFile", true ), "GetFileForSegment", "[Your_Path_Info_Here]", true, false, 0)

where [Your_Path_Info_Here] provides a case-sensitive part the of the photo path you desire. I want to show photos of my kids, so my value is:

FilterByMethodRegex ( FilterByBoolMethod (GetMediaFiles(), "IsPictureFile", true ), "GetFileForSegment", "Babies", true, false, 0)

This works for me since only one part of my photo directory path has the word "Babies" in it.

Hope this works for others, too.

-Ryan

[hammondr]

I'm a little confused about some attributes and global variables I'm seeing in Studio with the new Sage v6.0 beta. I've seen the following potentiall useful attribs in the xml file, but I'm not sure how to use them like I'd like:

Attribute: AllowScreenSaver (usually set to true)
Attribute: ScreenSaverActive (usually set to true)
Action: SetScreenSaverTimeout(GetScreenSaverTimeout())

I've modified my copy of the SageMC 16x9 STV so that the screen saver shows a slideshow of a specific media/photo folder. That's working great, and kicks in whenever the normal screen saver timer times out.

I'm trying to further modify that STV so that the screen saver won't start if I'm already in the middle of a user-initiated slideshow. I'm hoping to use one of the above constructs (and/or any others) to get this to work.

Any ideas or pointers?

Right now I have added or modified both above attributes to true since that's what I found in the ScreenSaver menu section of the STV. Setting allowscreensaver to true is counterintuitive in both the ScreenSaver menu and the PictureSlideshow area, so I'm stumped.

Thanks,
Ryan

[Opus4]

When the screen saver shouldn't be allowed to kick in, SetScreenSaverTimeout(GetScreenSaverTimeout()) is used to prevent the screen saver from starting. Usually, it would be called during any transition from one image to the next during a slideshow, or other similar events when the UI isn't expecting user input & you don't want the screen saver to start.

AllowScreenSaver is true when the screen saver should be allowed to turn on or continue. If it isn't defined, then it won't be true, so you may not see it defined at all for some menu that references the same section of code that the screen saver/slideshow/song info display uses.

- Andy