STV: Cayars17 Ultimate STV (Release 17 - Jan 18)

[alon24]

I noticed that when I use the mini guide, it starts from the last position it was in and not from the current channel, can you fix this, since in my opinion, I want to view the mini guide starting from the current channel, like it is in any cable/satelite box.

Thanks

[Jkimmell]

Cayars,

Great work on this STV. I am loving it!

I wanted to report 2 issues that were reported by others that are still lingering in Rel E.

1. MP3 Music skips and is unplayable. This seems to have gotten worse in Rel E. It only happened with the visualizations active in D2.

2. Cover Art for DVDs (folder.jpg) are not showing up in the root folder view of imported videos.

Thanks for the great work!

[Cayars]

Two schools of theory on this. One is to start at the current channel you are on. The second is to start where ever you left off. I originally started coding it to do the first but quickly coded it to use the latter approach and here is why.

First approach:
Let's say you're watching channel 80. You hit the mini-guide and it starts on channel 2/3 and you flip through channels until you get to 20. The OSD times out while your reading it. Now you hit the mini-guide key again and it starts at 80 and you have to surf all the way back to 20 again...

Latter Approach:
Let's say you're watching channel 80. You hit the mini-guide and it starts on channel 2/3 and you flip through channels until you get to 20. The OSD times out while your reading it. Now you hit the mini-guide key again and it starts at 20 so you can continue where you left off. Much less confusing overall.

[Cayars]

Originally Posted by Jkimmell

Cayars,

Great work on this STV. I am loving it!

I wanted to report 2 issues that were reported by others that are still lingering in Rel E.

1. MP3 Music skips and is unplayable. This seems to have gotten worse in Rel E. It only happened with the visualizations active in D2.

2. Cover Art for DVDs (folder.jpg) are not showing up in the root folder view of imported videos.

Thanks for the great work!

1) I haven't touched the music section at all except for sorting I think but this has nothing to do with playing the music. I'd bet you experience the same thing with the original STV since that's basically what code you're using in my STV.

2) I added nothing to support cover art as this is supposed to be handled by the code in 2.1 itself. I'm actually questioning this in the private forums since it does not work for me even in the original STV as per the manual. If in fact it's not supported then I will add support for this in my STV.

[Opus4]

As I've mentioned previously... video thumbnails work as shown on page 82 of the v2.1 manual. You may be used to the way it worked in mlbdude's v2.0 STV & it has changed in the core program now, so you may have to set things up differently. For ripped DVDs, see p. 82 AND Appendix I, on p. 200.

It works for me on my system the way I described it in the manual.

- Andy

[abasu2003]

i don't know about "much less confusing"

The problem in the first approach can be dealt with with a longer delay (I think mls already brought this up). And the problem with the approach you have now (besides it being counterintuitive for the digital cable box users) is that the starting position of the mini-guide is a little strange if you're on channel 80 and it starts on channel 2.

I have no beef either way, I'm just happy that its there at all. Just somethign to consider. I have no idea how easy it is to code an option to control teh behavior (or if you'd even want to. too man options....)

[mls]

Since it's only the very first time you call up the mini-guide I guess it isn't a big deal. However, in Mlbdude2 the first call up would be whatever channel you were on at the time, or if watching a recording it would come up with the last channel you had been watching in LiveTV.

So, since it's only the very first time it's called up, I guess it's not all that much of a problem, but would seem to be more logical if it did initially start with the current channel. Probably would have to check the properties file for last tuner used and last channel it was on to make it work that way. Not sure.

[mls]

One minor bug that didn't get fixed. The transparent blue background still does not go to the bottom to cover the white border in the Options pop-up when watching LiveTV or Recordings.

[Cayars]

I never really played with the mini-guide in Mlbdude's STV. I briefly took a look at it and then got people to describe how it should work and I coded it based on this info.

I'm not apposed to changing it but when I was coding it as explained previously I started with channel 2. I could have it default to the channel you're on for starters. But what should the logic be after that? For example if the OSD times out do you start at the last channel you were in on the mini-guide or do you start back on the channel you are actually watching?

I'm thinking that I could add a variable (configurable) that is a mini-guide timeout. It could be set at 60 seconds for example. If the mini-guide times out and the mini-guide is restarted and we're still under 60 seconds it would start back where you left it in the mini-guide. If the mini-guide is restarted after 60 seconds it would start the mini-guide on the channel you are actually watching.

Just in case someone really wants it to always start on channel 2 (first call to mini-guide) instead of the channel they are on I could add a config option for this.

So I would add a config option Cayars/MiniGuideAllwaysStartOnFirstChannel and another Cayars/MiniGuideTimeOutValue config option to control the timeout. I think these two would cover it.

[Cayars]

Originally Posted by mls

One minor bug that didn't get fixed. The transparent blue background still does not go to the bottom to cover the white border in the Options pop-up when watching LiveTV or Recordings.

The problem isn't in the STV file but in one graphic file located in your Cayars directory. The "matte50%.png" file needs to be longer and wider and the problem will be solved. It's a little tricky creating this type of file unless you know what you're doing. I know how to do it but don't happen to have any good graphic programs loaded on my PCs at the moment. If someone doesn't create one soon, I'll load up some software and create a proper file.

I have been trying to get help on this here in this thread: http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ead.php?t=8092.

So, in a nut shell, a replace PNG file (under 25K probably) dropped into the Cayars directory will solve this without any STV work.

[ToxMox]

Originally Posted by Cayars

If someone doesn't create one soon, I'll load up some software and create a proper file.

I have been trying to get help on this here in this thread: http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ead.php?t=8092.

Carlo,
Did you try the files I posted in this post a couple of days ago?
http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...6408#post66408

[Cayars]

Yes, and they didn't work for me. BTW if you open them up in and look at them it appears they are "stretched" to get the desired height/width which won't work.

BTW, know that it's more clear what I'm doing with them if you want to try again you know how to test them.

[ToxMox]

Carlo,
What are you viewing these files in? They are not stretched. Really they aren't. I can guarantee it. If you had a good image editor and viewed these up close you would see that the pattern hasn't changed from the original file and that I have copied and pasted the pattern to tile it. I didn't stretch them. I do image editing for a living.

BTW see this post http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...7000#post67000 for the most recent versions.

[ToxMox]

OK so now I am trying to test the semi-transparent stuff out. I usually use VMR9 so I switched to Overlay and enabled semi-transparent OSD in the detailed setup and haven't touched the matte50% file yet and the OSD looks solid to me. Am I doing something wrong?

EDIT: never mind figured it out. Needed to enable overlay color keying.

[jdbrown]

Originally Posted by Opus4

As I've mentioned previously... video thumbnails work as shown on page 82 of the v2.1 manual. You may be used to the way it worked in mlbdude's v2.0 STV & it has changed in the core program now, so you may have to set things up differently. For ripped DVDs, see p. 82 AND Appendix I, on p. 200.

It works for me on my system the way I described it in the manual.

- Andy

They do work as the manual says in Original2STV for me as well. They do not work with this STV version E while in folder view, but do work in List view. I have tried placing folder.jpg at both locations and restarting Sage:

e:/dvd/movie title/folder.jpg
and
e:/dvd/movie title/video_ts/folder.jpg

Opus, do these work for you using the Cayars STV?

[mls]

Cayars -

Your idea for the extra settings for the mini-guide sounds great! That would pretty much cover just about anyway someone might want it to work. Glad you can work that all in somehow (wish I could get my hands on Studio to play with).

As for the semi-transparent stuff, I saw you were trying to get some help with that, but thought you had gotten that all worked out already. So, OK, we know it's in the works.

Otherwise you've made one super fantastic STV. Now waiting for it to become final before I go hacking up the menu.xml to my own liking.

[ToxMox]

OK so now that I've actually done some testing with the semi transparent overlays I can see that my files look whacky at 1600x1200 so I took that file of mine. Cropped it back down to the original size and saved it out the same way and it works fine. So now I know for sure that my files are good and that the problem must be elsewhere. I'll play some more and report back. BTW I tested with my matte50%1600index.png file.

[Jkimmell]

Originally Posted by Cayars

1) I haven't touched the music section at all except for sorting I think but this has nothing to do with playing the music. I'd bet you experience the same thing with the original STV since that's basically what code you're using in my STV.

2) I added nothing to support cover art as this is supposed to be handled by the code in 2.1 itself. I'm actually questioning this in the private forums since it does not work for me even in the original STV as per the manual. If in fact it's not supported then I will add support for this in my STV.

I just double checked, the DVD folder.jpg and the MP3 playback works fine for me in the Original STV

Any suggestions?

[Jkimmell]

Originally Posted by Opus4

As I've mentioned previously... video thumbnails work as shown on page 82 of the v2.1 manual. You may be used to the way it worked in mlbdude's v2.0 STV & it has changed in the core program now, so you may have to set things up differently. For ripped DVDs, see p. 82 AND Appendix I, on p. 200.

It works for me on my system the way I described it in the manual.

- Andy

These are the directions I followed to get it to work in the OriginalV2.STV and they work for it and several other STVs I have tried. I double checked and it still works fine in the originalv2 and malore21. But not in cayarsv21e

[mls]

Originally Posted by ToxMox

OK so now that I've actually done some testing with the semi transparent overlays I can see that my files look whacky at 1600x1200 so I took that file of mine. Cropped it back down to the original size and saved it out the same way and it works fine. So now I know for sure that my files are good and that the problem must be elsewhere. I'll play some more and report back. BTW I tested with my matte50%1600index.png file.

I tried both you files (dropping them in and renaming of course) and didn't see any difference in the pop-up Options. Still didn't fill to the bottom. And here's the weird part... according to Windows your files are much larger dimensions than the original (like 1600 x 1200), but I'm only running at 640 x 480 out to my SDTV. Your's should be far more than what should be needed to fill things, so seems like there's something else not scaling things correctly just for the Options pop-up.