Android MiniClient v1.2.0 - Released

[stuckless]

So the big things in this release is that that you can use the SageTV Aspect Ratio command to toggle aspect ratios. The MiniClient now implements "Source", "Stretch" and "Zoom".

"Source" will just use the whatever is in the video file (so 4/3 will show black bars, etc).

"Stretch" - for 4/3 it should stretch the horizontally... for 16/9 it will fill screen.

"Zoom" - for 4/3 it will zoom a 16/9 mode from the center of the content. For 16//9 it assumes letterboxed content, and will zoom to remove the black bars.

The other big thing in this release is that the Video preview now works. So if you have show video on menus, etc, you should see it show up.

There were other smaller rendering fixes as well.

I've been using this for about a week on my production tv... seems to be working ok for me.

Release Notes
- Fixed #62 - Implemented SageTV AR Mode Changing (Source,Stretch,Zoom)
- Fixed #64 - When Animations are disabled Video overlay doesn't render correctly
- Fixed #3 - video not showing in preview window
- Removed need to "disable animations" property
- OpenGL: Fixed "CLEAR_RECT" implementation
- OpenGL: Fixed Clear Screen issues

[cculpepp]

Seems to be working well so far. The AR fix and preview window are nice additions. Nice work.

[KarylFStein]

Did something change in the audio? I sometimes use Bluetooth headphones. With this release, however, audio goes to my AVR. All other SHIELD audio goes to the headphones, though. (And in the last release audio went to the headphones fine.)

[KarylFStein]

Originally Posted by KarylFStein

Did something change in the audio? I sometimes use Bluetooth headphones. With this release, however, audio goes to my AVR. All other SHIELD audio goes to the headphones, though. (And in the last release audio went to the headphones fine.)

Nevermind, this is ExoPlayer bitstreaming and not new to this release.

[rickgillyon]

Anyone having trouble downloading from Play? Mine sits on Downloading but never starts, all machines on my network. My phone gets it okay using mobile signal, but via broadband, all fail... :/

Edit: Just downloaded it from Bintray instead. This version gives me real problems in the UI, as I move through the menu, areas of the screen just black out, and I can only see the current item. If I get into my Videos folders, the thumbnails appear one-by-one and then disappear again, leaving only the last one showing. Screen stays like that until the time changes, then the time appears and the last thumbnail disappears. Weird. Back to the previous version and all is okay.

This is running on an Android TV Box, running MM on an AMLogic S905X.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

Anyone having trouble downloading from Play? Mine sits on Downloading but never starts, all machines on my network. My phone gets it okay using mobile signal, but via broadband, all fail... :/

Edit: Just downloaded it from Bintray instead. This version gives me real problems in the UI, as I move through the menu, areas of the screen just black out, and I can only see the current item. If I get into my Videos folders, the thumbnails appear one-by-one and then disappear again, leaving only the last one showing. Screen stays like that until the time changes, then the time appears and the last thumbnail disappears. Weird. Back to the previous version and all is okay.

This is running on an Android TV Box, running MM on an AMLogic S905X.

Do you have Animations disabled? In my testing on Shield and emulators everything in the UI appears to work fine.... but, I just installed on my phone, and when I turn off the Animation system in SageTV, the screens does get pretty messed up.. This doesn't happen in the emulators.

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Do you have Animations disabled? In my testing on Shield and emulators everything in the UI appears to work fine.... but, I just installed on my phone, and when I turn off the Animation system in SageTV, the screens does get pretty messed up.. This doesn't happen in the emulators.

Wow, got it in one. I didn't realise I had animations disabled, I've no idea where it defaults that from. But with animations enabled it works fine. Thanks!

[cculpepp]

Ok, I spoke a little too soon when I said everything was working great. The aspect ratio appears to be out of whack on US OTA SD channels that broadcast in 16:9. When AR is set to Source, 16:9 SD channels look like they are being squeezed to 4:3 making the picture look very skinny. Switching AR to stretch really doesn't solve the problem, just makes it look more disproportionate. Seems like this is just the opposite behavior before the 1.2 update. Before the update, 4:3 SD channels were stretched the fit the screen and 16:9 SD channels looked normal. Now 16:9 SD channels look squeezed and 4:3 SD channels look normal with the black bars on the side.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by cculpepp

Ok, I spoke a little too soon when I said everything was working great. The aspect ratio appears to be out of whack on US OTA SD channels that broadcast in 16:9. When AR is set to Source, 16:9 SD channels look like they are being squeezed to 4:3 making the picture look very skinny. Switching AR to stretch really doesn't solve the problem, just makes it look more disproportionate. Seems like this is just the opposite behavior before the 1.2 update. Before the update, 4:3 SD channels were stretched the fit the screen and 16:9 SD channels looked normal. Now 16:9 SD channels look squeezed and 4:3 SD channels look normal with the black bars on the side.

I'm going to need to some samples... I have bunch of test videos that I'm using to test various scenarios... And all these videos appear to work OK. So, if I can get samples of your videos, and also some information about your screen... ie, screen pixel size (you can get that in the miniclient setting screen).

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by cculpepp

Ok, I spoke a little too soon when I said everything was working great. The aspect ratio appears to be out of whack on US OTA SD channels that broadcast in 16:9. When AR is set to Source, 16:9 SD channels look like they are being squeezed to 4:3 making the picture look very skinny. Switching AR to stretch really doesn't solve the problem, just makes it look more disproportionate. Seems like this is just the opposite behavior before the 1.2 update. Before the update, 4:3 SD channels were stretched the fit the screen and 16:9 SD channels looked normal. Now 16:9 SD channels look squeezed and 4:3 SD channels look normal with the black bars on the side.

I rechecked my 16/9 stretch, and I did have an issue there I'll try to push out an update tomorrow (I'm off).

[mackb]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

Edit: Just downloaded it from Bintray instead. This version gives me real problems in the UI, as I move through the menu, areas of the screen just black out, and I can only see the current item. If I get into my Videos folders, the thumbnails appear one-by-one and then disappear again, leaving only the last one showing. Screen stays like that until the time changes, then the time appears and the last thumbnail disappears. Weird. Back to the previous version and all is okay.

I am having the same issue on my Mi Boxes with animations turned off. It becomes unusable but works with animations turned on. I am using the Blue to Grey theme but I doubt that matters.

Thanks,
Mack

[Fuzzy]

I was playing around with the aspect controls, trying to figure out just what all works and what doesn't. It still appears to ignore sage's DAR settings (though honestly, I think the HD300's do as well).

Example scenario, is a 1920x800 video (cropped and re-encoded from BluRay source). The mkv file does't have a specific aspect ratio set in it, so sage assumes it is square pixels, so the ratio is 2.4 - GetMediaFileMetadata([MediaFile],"Format.Video.Aspect") returns 12:5. This is correct, and in the windows client is displayed properly (on a 16:9 display, it is letter-boxed) when the aspect ratio is set to source. On the windows client, setting the display aspect ratio to 2.35 (as if using an expanding lens on a projector), sage will display the video almost full screen, as it should. Doing the same with the miniclient, however, it still letterboxes the video, essentially always assuming the screen is 16:9 (1.78), no matter what the DAR setting is in sage. I know for most people, this will end up being correct, but it is not the way it 'should' work, as I do know a few HT folks who have wider than 16:9 screens.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I was playing around with the aspect controls, trying to figure out just what all works and what doesn't. It still appears to ignore sage's DAR settings (though honestly, I think the HD300's do as well).

Example scenario, is a 1920x800 video (cropped and re-encoded from BluRay source). The mkv file does't have a specific aspect ratio set in it, so sage assumes it is square pixels, so the ratio is 2.4 - GetMediaFileMetadata([MediaFile],"Format.Video.Aspect") returns 12:5. This is correct, and in the windows client is displayed properly (on a 16:9 display, it is letter-boxed) when the aspect ratio is set to source. On the windows client, setting the display aspect ratio to 2.35 (as if using an expanding lens on a projector), sage will display the video almost full screen, as it should. Doing the same with the miniclient, however, it still letterboxes the video, essentially always assuming the screen is 16:9 (1.78), no matter what the DAR setting is in sage. I know for most people, this will end up being correct, but it is not the way it 'should' work, as I do know a few HT folks who have wider than 16:9 screens.

I'm not 100% sure what the HD300 does, but, for what there is now, in the Android MiniClient, is basically the resolve of 30+ emails with Jeff

In one email form Jeff, he explains, very simply the 3 modes...

1. Source mode (you already got this right in your Fit mode)
2. Zoom mode, if the content is 16:9, then center cut the smaller 16:9 rectangle to fill the whole 16:9 space. If the content is 4:3, then cut out the 16:9 rectangle in the middle to fill the whole space as well.
3. Stretch mode, if the content is 4:3, then just expand it to fill horizontally and if the content is 16:9, then cut out the center 4:3 rectangle and expand that to fill horizontally.

"Source" in this sense, really is (as you described), taking the video and scaling it proportionally to fit inside your display. The end result is that in a non 16/9 display you will end up with black bars.

I have no issues improving this... the hardest part is really testing. I have a good suite of video samples (thanks to Jeff), but, in terms of hardware, everything I own is actually 16/9 display. If you have any thoughts in how I could test this, I'm open to making it better. Literally in all the years I've had sagetv, I've never hit an AR button until working on this I'm even open to shipping some debug apks, if I get a sense for what the math of this should be... doing it that way is pretty tedious... I've literally pushed 1000s of updates in getting the current AR stuff where it is now

[stuckless]

This is quick fix for the following issues found in v1.2.0

- Fixed: When animations disabled, the screen shows junk
- Fixed: 16/9 stretch does a shrink instead

[mrcandu]

Had a quick play around on v1.2 last night on an MI box.

The aspect ratio feature has changed things a bit....
On the previous version of the client, AR was fine by default for all content (UK DVB-T 16:9)
On v1.2 With source selected, content is now displayed squashed as its 4:3 source.
Stretch seems to expand wider than it should so the sides are cropped.

Will test a bit more later on - happy to provide any logs etc.

Cheers.
Mat.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by mrcandu

Had a quick play around on v1.2 last night on an MI box.

The aspect ratio feature has changed things a bit....
On the previous version of the client, AR was fine by default for all content (UK DVB-T 16:9)
On v1.2 With source selected, content is now displayed squashed as its 4:3 source.
Stretch seems to expand wider than it should so the sides are cropped.

Will test a bit more later on - happy to provide any logs etc.

Cheers.
Mat.

Sample files will likely help more than anything... 5 minute sample of the video that isn't displaying well.

Also, running mediainfo on the file would help as well, since that will tell what is encoded into the fiile int terms of AR and video size, etc.

[Fuzzy]

The issue I was describing was due to there not really being any 12:5, or similar native displays out there. Most outside of a movie theater are using 16:9 projectors, and stretching the image with a lens to get the wider aspect ratio. Because of this, it is no longer square pixels, and as far as the source is concerned, it'd still be 1920x1080. Sage has great correction for this in the windows client, using the display aspect ratio setting, where you can simply tell sagetv what the ratio of the screen is, so it knows how much to stretch or shrink the image to get it right.

A proper test, would be to use a 1920x800 file, set the DAR in sage to 2.4. In SOURCE aspect mode, it should be playing the video using the entire 1920x1080 display. An actual 1920x1080 16:9 video would actually be rendered at 1422x1080, pillar-boxing the video in the center of the extra wide display.

All of this math appears to already be done in BasicVideoFrame.refreshVideoSizing(), and in my testing, works as described in the windows client. I'm not deeply invested in this, as I do not have an extra-wide HT as I've described, and if I did, I think I'd probably run a windows client for it anyway, but in the interest of completeness, I do see the current misbehavior as a potential problem, especially the fact that it behaved differently than the windows client. I only brought it up because you appeared to be working in the AR controls, so I started testing the various scenarios I was aware of.

[cculpepp]

1.2.1 did not fix the aspect ratio issue. 16:9 is still being squeezed on certain SD channels. Working on a video sample for you now.

[mrcandu]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Sample files will likely help more than anything... 5 minute sample of the video that isn't displaying well.

Also, running mediainfo on the file would help as well, since that will tell what is encoded into the fiile int terms of AR and video size, etc.

PM'd you details of sample clip.
Cheers
Mat.

[stuckless]

So, I think found and fixed the 16/9 in a 4/3 container...

I'm actually out of town for 2 days... so, if this fails miserably... then I apologize, but i can't look at it until I get back on thursday.

I also added a debug preference for "Debug Aspect Ratios" only enable this if you really want to geeky information about your video and screen size and the "known" aspect ratios of each, etc... if you enable it, it shows a very annoying window over the video with that information... so it has very little value, except in trying to understand why a video may be stretched when it shouldn't, etc.

EDIT: And thanks for the video clips... it helped. (I hope I've resolved the issues... they appear to be resolved on my end)