[Android MiniClient] Now in BETA

[jusjoken]

Originally Posted by stuckless

but are the images physically resized to size you need, or are they scaled to the size you need. For example if the poster is 500x1000 but software scales to 50x100... then I'm getting the 500x1000 sized image on the MiniClient and then hardware scaling it. (at least I think that's how the images work )

Either way, I need to check the MiniClient... I'm pretty sure I'm actually holding a reference to ALL image textures as they are send from the sagetv and rendering them in the render loop. ie, it's not a get an image, render and image, and then proceed until there are not images. The reason for this is really that on Android I have to avoid doing work on the UI thread, but this is all UI stuff over the network.. and I can't access network on the UI thread, etc. It can be tricky.

I use phoenix calls to create a cached copy (if it is not already in the cache by key) that uses a specific percentage of the UIWidth to scale the image. The percentage can be set by image type (poster, banner etc) and the user can change those settings in the Advanced Image Scaling settings. One example is a poster I checked and the original fanart was 595k and 1000 x 1500 in size. The cached version on my test system was 21.5k and 156 x 234 in size.

I also read a certain number of these images into a list to hold in memory to save going back to disk for them and replace the oldest ones when something new is requested for display.

We can discuss more if there is a better approach that may help with the UI performance....I wrote this a LONG time ago and I know the code is complex (and has a couple bugs in it too).

k

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by stuckless

but are the images physically resized to size you need, or are they scaled to the size you need. For example if the poster is 500x1000 but software scales to 50x100... then I'm getting the 500x1000 sized image on the MiniClient and then hardware scaling it. (at least I think that's how the images work )

Either way, I need to check the MiniClient... I'm pretty sure I'm actually holding a reference to ALL image textures as they are send from the sagetv and rendering them in the render loop. ie, it's not a get an image, render and image, and then proceed until there are not images. The reason for this is really that on Android I have to avoid doing work on the UI thread, but this is all UI stuff over the network.. and I can't access network on the UI thread, etc. It can be tricky.

I was under the impression that the miniclient didn't deal in actual widgets, and just got display updates from the server, so that it wouldn't matter how the image was cached on the server, as it was just sent 'update this area of the screen with this new picture data', in which case all scaling would en up being done in the UI process on the server. However, I have not gone too detailed into the miniclient protocol, so I may be mistaken.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I was under the impression that the miniclient didn't deal in actual widgets, and just got display updates from the server, so that it wouldn't matter how the image was cached on the server, as it was just sent 'update this area of the screen with this new picture data', in which case all scaling would en up being done in the UI process on the server. However, I have not gone too detailed into the miniclient protocol, so I may be mistaken.

I think you are partially right. the miniclient doesn't deal with widgets, just rendering instructions. That being said, rendering instructions like images take a source and destination rectangle argument. So, in the case of a poster, it could send a poster that is very large and ask that it be rendered into a smaller rectangle, or vice versa.

My understanding is that sagetv is not scaling before sending. I'm basing this off a conversation I had with Jeff when I introduced the "scale screen to half native". I thought that by telling sagetv that my screen size was half native then it would send me "smalller" images, and I'd upscale them on the client, but that is not the case. ie, doesn't matter what I tell sagetv my screen size is... it will send me the same physical sized images, and then just ask the client to render it smaller/larger (based on the rectangles). ie, the server doesn't scale and resize before sending. So my "brilliant" idea of rendering half native to save on bandwidth, actually doesn't do anything useful, except make the screen look bad

[Gustovier]

Stuckless

Do you think that at least for the directional buttons you could add in a long press as sending multi events. As it currently sits the directional buttons really get a work out when traversing the EPG.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Gustovier

Stuckless

Do you think that at least for the directional buttons you could add in a long press as sending multi events. As it currently sits the directional buttons really get a work out when traversing the EPG.

You mean this
https://github.com/OpenSageTV/sagetv...ient/issues/37

[kklee]

First off, many thanks for the great work on the mini client.

The mini client works fine with my Samsung tablet and phone. I have a couple of HD300's that also connect without issue.

However, there's an issue when I connect with a Sony Xperia Tablet Z.

When the mini client initiates a connection with SageTV, SageTV terminates. The GUI loads on the tablet and SageTV disappears off the PC (which is running Windows 10).

I'm guessing that it's an issue with SageTV rather than the mini client, but I can't find anything in any of the SageTV log files to determine the root cause. There's nothing in the Windows event log either.

I'm currently running Beta 0.08 and also tried 0.06.

A snippet from the mini client log shows the connection loss while it's caching files.

10:25:43.812 [GFX-172.16.1.99] DEBUG sagex.miniclient.GFXCMD2 - PREPIMAGE: CACHED: Loading 33
10:25:43.821 [GFX-172.16.1.99] DEBUG sagex.miniclient.GFXCMD2 - PREPIMAGE: CACHED: Loading 34
10:25:43.830 [GFX-172.16.1.99] DEBUG sagex.miniclient.GFXCMD2 - PREPIMAGE: CACHED: Loading 35
10:25:43.839 [GFX-172.16.1.99] DEBUG sagex.miniclient.GFXCMD2 - PREPIMAGE: CACHED: Loading 36
10:25:43.945 [GFX-172.16.1.99] DEBUG sagex.miniclient.GFXCMD2 - LoadImageCompressed: 2145839201, CACHED: /data/data/sagex.miniclient.android/cache/stv1615781162img
10:25:46.275 [Media-172.16.1.99] ERROR s.miniclient.MiniClientConnection - Error w/ Media Thread
java.net.SocketException: recvfrom failed: ECONNRESET (Connection reset by peer)
	at libcore.io.IoBridge.maybeThrowAfterRecvfrom(IoBridge.java:601) ~[na:0.0]
	at libcore.io.IoBridge.recvfrom(IoBridge.java:565) ~[na:0.0]
	at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.read(PlainSocketImpl.java:485) ~[na:0.0]
	at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.access$000(PlainSocketImpl.java:37) ~[na:0.0]
	at java.net.PlainSocketImpl$PlainSocketInputStream.read(PlainSocketImpl.java:237) ~[na:0.0]
	at libcore.io.Streams.readFully(Streams.java:81) ~[na:0.0]
	at java.io.DataInputStream.readFully(DataInputStream.java:99) ~[na:0.0]
	at java.io.DataInputStream.readFully(DataInputStream.java:95) ~[na:0.0]
	at sagex.miniclient.MiniClientConnection.MediaThread(MiniClientConnection.java:1921) ~[na:0.0]
	at sagex.miniclient.MiniClientConnection.access$000(MiniClientConnection.java:32) ~[na:0.0]
	at sagex.miniclient.MiniClientConnection$1.run(MiniClientConnection.java:389) ~[na:0.0]
Caused by: android.system.ErrnoException: recvfrom failed: ECONNRESET (Connection reset by peer)
	at libcore.io.Posix.recvfromBytes(Native Method) ~[na:0.0]
	at libcore.io.Posix.recvfrom(Posix.java:185) ~[na:0.0]
	at libcore.io.BlockGuardOs.recvfrom(BlockGuardOs.java:250) ~[na:0.0]
	at libcore.io.IoBridge.recvfrom(IoBridge.java:562) ~[na:0.0]
	... 9 common frames omitted

Any idea as to where to look next?

[Gustovier]

Originally Posted by stuckless

You mean this
https://github.com/OpenSageTV/sagetv...ient/issues/37

Doh!

I saw this reasoning before, but I thought it could be done at a per key granularity(I swear I've seen apps support both types). The directional buttons should almost never need a long a press to mean anything other than a repeated press. This is why i only mentioned directional odd.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by kklee

Any idea as to where to look next?

A couple of things comes to mind, especially since you said the SageTV exits (which I understand to mean the server). I've several people have issues with sagetv existing due to an exit bug in Foncour's tcp server plugin. So, if you have that installed, then I'd go searching the thread for that.

I think the sagetv server log would show more/better information, especially if debug logging is enabled. The log snippet that you showed, basically indicates that the server killed our connection. The server could be running out memory, or something else on the server is happening.

Originally Posted by Gustovier

Doh!

I saw this reasoning before, but I thought it could be done at a per key granularity(I swear I've seen apps support both types). The directional buttons should almost never need a long a press to mean anything other than a repeated press. This is why i only mentioned directional odd.

I was curious if it was related to that particular issue, or something completely different. "dumb" remotes are especially hard to work with, and I agree that in most cases directional arrows can be repeated, except, when you've remapped them to mean something else In the case of the Android MiniClient today, the directional arrows do get remapped during video playback. (long press right/left is directional left/right, since single press left/right is remapped to skip back/forward) I also map the long press down to page down and long press up to page up. Hence the need, I think, for a configuration option to allow the user to enable/disable long press actions. Now that the server is sending us information about which screen we are on, we can potientially do this per screen, etc. But the real challenge is how to support both. Android has support for long press and repeats, but the challenge is trying to figure out an intelligent way to "know" which should be considered.

[stuckless]

This "may" be the last beta before I release it on the play store.

A couple of minor things
1. SPACE was an unmapped key, so that's fixed (ie, you can use space the virtual keyboard)
2. When you exit, it will exit to the home screen (configurable in preferences)

A bigger thing is that Jeff provided me with a PSExtractor so that ExoPlayer can support playing MPEGPS streams. (ie, MPEG2 Video in a MPEGPS container)

This works, but, like when we started out with TS support there are quirks. Hopefully we can address those quirks over time.
1. Seeking is not working
2. Some videos that I tried had mixed results (in once case video appears to play 2x)

[thatdude90210]

Suggestion. I don't know how easy or feasible this is, but the on screen navigation might work better if it's arranged like a remote. It would make it easier to get to get around and I don't think blocking a little bit of the screen is too big a deal.

[wayner]

I got an Android TV box and I have installed Sage - one problem is that I can't figure out how to get to the Options screen from the main menu so that I can load the Gemstone settings. To be honest I am not 100% sure that Gemstone is even loaded as it looks like the default UI.

Can you use Gemstone on the Android client?

And how do I get to the Options screen in the main menu that can normally be accessed by a right click on the mouse or by pressing the options button on the remote?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by wayner

I got an Android TV box and I have installed Sage - one problem is that I can't figure out how to get to the Options screen from the main menu so that I can load the Gemstone settings. To be honest I am not 100% sure that Gemstone is even loaded as it looks like the default UI.

Can you use Gemstone on the Android client?

And how do I get to the Options screen in the main menu that can normally be accessed by a right click on the mouse or by pressing the options button on the remote?

Does this post help?
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=62439

[wayner]

Yes - thanks - I was looking for the info in this thread. My box is supposed to be quad core and and an octa core GPU but it seems to be underpowered as the UI is kind of laggy and slow compared to what I am used to on an HD200. And I may also be having network issues with the box right now.

In addition I am not sure how to do the mapping so that the Home key on my remote takes me to the SageTV home rather than to the Android Box home screen.

[kklee]

Originally Posted by stuckless

A couple of things comes to mind, especially since you said the SageTV exits (which I understand to mean the server). I've several people have issues with sagetv existing due to an exit bug in Foncour's tcp server plugin. So, if you have that installed, then I'd go searching the thread for that.

I think the sagetv server log would show more/better information, especially if debug logging is enabled. The log snippet that you showed, basically indicates that the server killed our connection. The server could be running out memory, or something else on the server is happening.

Thanks for the tips.

The SageTV debug log didn't show anything, so I tried disabling the tcp server plugin and that did the trick.

[dinki]

Originally Posted by stuckless

A bigger thing is that Jeff provided me with a PSExtractor so that ExoPlayer can support playing MPEGPS streams. (ie, MPEG2 Video in a MPEGPS container)

This works, but, like when we started out with TS support there are quirks. Hopefully we can address those quirks over time.
1. Seeking is not working
2. Some videos that I tried had mixed results (in once case video appears to play 2x)

I'm trying to get MPEG2 720p working on the Nexus Player with the source being an old HDHR dual. I checked the NP capabilities within the client and it does list MPEG2. Can you tell me if you've tried this new version with success with the MPEG2 720p samples you have? If so, can you tell me what settings you've used? Does the HDHR use TS or PS?

Thanks again!

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by dinki

I'm trying to get MPEG2 720p working on the Nexus Player with the source being an old HDHR dual. I checked the NP capabilities within the client and it does list MPEG2. Can you tell me if you've tried this new version with success with the MPEG2 720p samples you have? If so, can you tell me what settings you've used? Does the HDHR use TS or PS?

Thanks again!

I've tried this on a ShieldTV using various mpeg2 streams... They all seemed to play, but some play better than others. ie, the PS ones will play but there are still some issues. The TS ones appear to be OK. This is all using ExoPlayer. IJKPlayer will play anything, just, it will use software decoding for mpeg2 video.

I guess the first step is get the mediainfo for the files you are playing and see what it says, and always, I'll need to know which player you are using.

[dinki]

I've tried with both players and really have no preference but it sounds like ExoPlayer would be the obvious choice as it should use hardware decoding if I'm reading you correctly. Here's the media info on one of the files:

General
Complete name                            : D:\Media\tvrecordings\Shark Tank - S07E15 - 13573998-0.mpg
Format                                   : MPEG-PS
File size                                : 3.72 GiB
Duration                                 : 1h 0mn
Overall bit rate                         : 8 763 Kbps
Movie name                               : DR. KEN
Law rating                               : TV-PG (L)

Video
ID                                       : 224 (0xE0)
Format                                   : MPEG Video
Commercial name                          : HDV 720p
Format version                           : Version 2
Format profile                           : Main@High
Format settings, BVOP                    : Yes
Format settings, Matrix                  : Custom
Format settings, GOP                     : Variable
Duration                                 : 1h 0mn
Maximum bit rate                         : 8 420 Kbps
Width                                    : 1 280 pixels
Height                                   : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate                               : 59.940 (60000/1001) fps
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Color primaries                          : BT.709
Transfer characteristics                 : BT.709
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.709

Audio #1
ID                                       : 128 (0x80)
Format                                   : AC-3
Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
Compression mode                         : Lossy

Audio #2
ID                                       : 189 (0xBD)-128 (0x80)
Format                                   : AC-3
Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension                           : CM (complete main)
Format settings, Endianness              : Big
Muxing mode                              : DVD-Video
Duration                                 : 1h 0mn
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 192 Kbps
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel positions                        : Front: L R
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 KHz
Frame rate                               : 31.250 fps (1536 spf)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Delay relative to video                  : -585ms
Stream size                              : 83.4 MiB (2%)

Text #1
ID                                       : 224 (0xE0)-CC1
Format                                   : EIA-608
Muxing mode                              : A/53 / DTVCC Transport
Muxing mode, more info                   : Muxed in Video #1
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Stream size                              : 0.00 Byte (0%)

Text #2
ID                                       : 224 (0xE0)-CC3
Format                                   : EIA-608
Muxing mode                              : A/53 / DTVCC Transport
Muxing mode, more info                   : Muxed in Video #1
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Stream size                              : 0.00 Byte (0%)

Text #3
ID                                       : 224 (0xE0)-1
Format                                   : EIA-708
Muxing mode                              : A/53 / DTVCC Transport
Muxing mode, more info                   : Muxed in Video #1
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Stream size                              : 0.00 Byte (0%)

Text #4
ID                                       : 224 (0xE0)-2
Format                                   : EIA-708
Muxing mode                              : A/53 / DTVCC Transport
Muxing mode, more info                   : Muxed in Video #1
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Stream size                              : 0.00 Byte (0%)

Text #5
ID                                       : 224 (0xE0)-3
Format                                   : EIA-708
Muxing mode                              : A/53 / DTVCC Transport
Muxing mode, more info                   : Muxed in Video #1
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Stream size                              : 0.00 Byte (0%)

Text #6
ID                                       : 224 (0xE0)-4
Format                                   : EIA-708
Muxing mode                              : A/53 / DTVCC Transport
Muxing mode, more info                   : Muxed in Video #1
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Stream size                              : 0.00 Byte (0%)

Text #7
ID                                       : 224 (0xE0)-5
Format                                   : EIA-708
Muxing mode                              : A/53 / DTVCC Transport
Muxing mode, more info                   : Muxed in Video #1
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Stream size                              : 0.00 Byte (0%)

Text #8
ID                                       : 224 (0xE0)-6
Format                                   : EIA-708
Muxing mode                              : A/53 / DTVCC Transport
Muxing mode, more info                   : Muxed in Video #1
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Stream size                              : 0.00 Byte (0%)

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by dinki

I've tried with both players and really have no preference but it sounds like ExoPlayer would be the obvious choice as it should use hardware decoding if I'm reading you correctly. Here's the media info on one of the files:

What's the issue you are having. is that you get an error, or that the video starts and then crashes. no audio? etc.

[AzJazz]

Hi, stuckless - I have Beta V.09 installed. This is pretty amazing!

A lot of the time, I would probably want to use the Mini Client to remotely check / schedule recordings over the internet. Unfortunately, I think I need to use a placeshifter license to get this to work.

I purchased a used HD-100 a year or so ago that I don't use right now. Can I use the unused HD-100 license to act as a placeshifter for the mini-client?

Thanks,

AzJazz

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by AzJazz

Hi, stuckless - I have Beta V.09 installed. This is pretty amazing!

A lot of the time, I would probably want to use the Mini Client to remotely check / schedule recordings over the internet. Unfortunately, I think I need to use a placeshifter license to get this to work.

I purchased a used HD-100 a year or so ago that I don't use right now. Can I use the unused HD-100 license to act as a placeshifter for the mini-client?

Thanks,

AzJazz

Yes, the HD-100 license is the same as placeshifter. Alternatively, if you upgrade your server to v9, there is no licensing, and you can connect a theoretical unlimited amount of clients, local or remote don't matter.