Simple 'Slide Show' Capability

[totallymaxed]

One feature that would be a great addition to LinuxMCE is to integrate picture 'playlists' so that users could create a list of images and have them displayed in a specific sequence... possibly as an extension to the PSS. Then you could use 'Play', 'Pause', 'Skip' & 'Replay' buttons on the remote to control the images displayed... if after a few minutes no user action was detected then the PSS would continue to animating your playlist as it does now.

It would seem like the PSS might be the basis for adding this capability... I am guessing its possible to send commands to the PSS in addition to a list of images to be displayed. Another approach would be to add a separate 'slide show viewer' device which might have some advantages in that it might then be possible to build 'playlists' that contained multiple types of media eg;

Picture1 -> Video2 -> audio3 -> Picture4 -> Picture5 -> PIcture6 -> Video7  etc etc etc etc

Any comments, suggestions... alternative ideas/approaches.... anyone interested in helping/contributing to figuring out what this might have feature wise and then getting this built?

Post replies here and lets see if we can pull together a group who can build this :-)

All the best for the new year!

Andrew

[tschak909]

This will take some thought.

Basically, it would actually mean IMPLEMENTING the Photo mediatype, instead of just having it go to the details page and have a screenhandler remove the play button (COP OUT!).

This would be pushed to a Photo Plugin, which would route to the Photo Screen Saver.

We would need to modify the Orbiter Plugin a bit to pass back the requested pictures that are fed from the playlist on the media plugin.

The _COOL_ thing here is just how much we can leverage everything in the system:

The MD becomes the main viewer, but keep in mind that while viewing a piece of media, the Orbiter is also displaying a remote control, right?

New Photo Remote control, with a nice big objPhoto designobj, that gets updated with Update Object Image from the Photo Player, and a set of simple controls to traverse the playlist.

As for handling multiple types of media, this will take some restructuring of Media Plugin to handle playlists of composite types (in short, STL SUCKS! We have to make sure to type-cast and convert-cast our media stream types back and forth between the media plugin and the appropriate media player plugin, this is just one example why this part's not gonna be easy...)

[totallymaxed]

This will take some thought.

Basically, it would actually mean IMPLEMENTING the Photo mediatype, instead of just having it go to the details page and have a screenhandler remove the play button (COP OUT!).

This would be pushed to a Photo Plugin, which would route to the Photo Screen Saver.

We would need to modify the Orbiter Plugin a bit to pass back the requested pictures that are fed from the playlist on the media plugin.

The _COOL_ thing here is just how much we can leverage everything in the system:

The MD becomes the main viewer, but keep in mind that while viewing a piece of media, the Orbiter is also displaying a remote control, right?

New Photo Remote control, with a nice big objPhoto designobj, that gets updated with Update Object Image from the Photo Player, and a set of simple controls to traverse the playlist.

As for handling multiple types of media, this will take some restructuring of Media Plugin to handle playlists of composite types (in short, STL SUCKS! We have to make sure to type-cast and convert-cast our media stream types back and forth between the media plugin and the appropriate media player plugin, this is just one example why this part's not gonna be easy...)

Yeah it is cool that we can leverage so much existing functionality to build this off.

- Guess as with other media types if you are remotely controlling the 'playback' of some PHOTO media on an MD from another Orbiter then you should see an on screen remote locally on that Orbiter. However if you are directly controlling the PHOTO media playing on your local MD then I guess the media would play full screen?... with control from say your IR remote? Not sure about that part I have to say... needs some thought. But I feel that you should be able to 'play' the PHOTO media without seeing any on screen controls.

- Multiple mixed media types in a single playlist can come later in my view. Getting the basic PHOTO media playback working is in my view more important in the initial implementation.

Thanks for the input Thom :-)

Happy New year!

Andrew

[tschak909]

Well, keep in mind too...That the media plugins have a concept of OSD and non-OSD.

OSD:

For the V2 variation, we simply use the NowPlaying menu on the left, combined with the existing gyro screens to change playlist, etc.

For the V1 variations, it is a full screen app desktop, with an onActivate to jump to the Photo FS Options screen. This gives us the playlist etc, with a smaller window of the photo. a Timeout is given which jumps back to the full screen after.... 5 seconds of non-input or so.

Non-OSD:

Similar pattern as above, but instead of an App Desktop, a broadcast video designobj is used, grabbing its images from the Player running on the MD.

This pattern will work on virtually every single orbiter.

-Thom

[jondecker76]

Another simple approach for "photo playlists" would be the ability to save the photoscreensaver attribute for all pictures.
For example, after you mark which images to include in the photo screensaver, you can save that as a group (just use mysql to dump all picture primary keys that have the photo screensaver enabled, and save it). Then you can renable that group any time you want (for example, make a certain set of pictures enabled for a house party only, then switch back to your normal photos for inclusion in the screensaver after the party). Granted that this would not be an actual true playlist (playorder would still be random as it is now), but would be extremely simple to implement as the only code required would be in the web admin to
A) Save a "Screensaver Set"
B) Load a "Screensaver Set"
The existing photoscreensaver framework would remain 100% the same.

Still, not as cool as having full playlist implementation of course, but cool none the less.

[tschak909]

We can do this alongside the method I propose.

-Thom

[totallymaxed]

Another simple approach for "photo playlists" would be the ability to save the photoscreensaver attribute for all pictures.
For example, after you mark which images to include in the photo screensaver, you can save that as a group (just use mysql to dump all picture primary keys that have the photo screensaver enabled, and save it). Then you can renable that group any time you want (for example, make a certain set of pictures enabled for a house party only, then switch back to your normal photos for inclusion in the screensaver after the party). Granted that this would not be an actual true playlist (playorder would still be random as it is now), but would be extremely simple to implement as the only code required would be in the web admin to
A) Save a "Screensaver Set"
B) Load a "Screensaver Set"
The existing photoscreensaver framework would remain 100% the same.

Still, not as cool as having full playlist implementation of course, but cool none the less.

Thom's right of course.

and i think your proposal would be a very nice enhancement in its own right too... great idea! :-)

Andrew