Advanced GUI settings for XBMC

Perhaps addons are the way to do this. With AE as an example, there's a plethora of settings and tweaks both existing and in-potentia. Audio is one of those things where the ability to compare settings "live" or on the fly is an advantage.

An addon would work well in this case, offering a GUI window or two for thing like DSP-chaining, dithering, remapping, etc. It would be far more user-friendly than as.xml, give the ability to test settings on-the-fly or live, present them in a meaningful context, and shield the tender noob from their complexity...

Mad-Max - I came up with the feature request JM mentioned. For me the current UI is way to overloaded - especially the video-settings and audio-settings OSDs. I think that 95% of the users don't need settings for "Pixel ratio", "Post processing" or even care about the deinterlace and scaling methods. Also stuff like "output stereo to all speakers" or "Audio output" are things that most users don't need nowadays. So those settings could be moved to a "expert mode" - be it either some kind of foldout/toggle in the OSDs themselves or a global setting.
Also subtitle handling should be improved - I never understood why the "subtitles" button in Confluence triggeres the Addon (subtitle search) instead of a global subtitle OSD where I can enable, select or search for subs (so move the subtitle stuff from the audio OSD to a custom subtitles OSD and probably only crosslink it from the audio OSD.

As for moving as.xml settings to the GUI. Personally I'd be fine with it as long as two things are met:
- Those can be configured in a separate section
- The section displays a warning dialog when opened

(2012-05-07 00:42)Montellese Wrote:  You assume that almost every user visits the XBMC wiki and finds the advancedsettings.xml article and then just copies random things from it to give it a try. That on a completely different level then just opening XBMC, going into the settings and activating a setting that is visible there.

I don't assume that every user copies random things to as.xml but in my proposal the settings are not just there...You still have to take a look at the wiki and make an entry in the as.xml to make it visible.
So to enable MySQL you still have to edit as.xml. NVM I'm convinced that this will likely not gonna happen.

(2012-05-07 00:42)Montellese Wrote:  You think but basically you got no clue about this. You just assume that that's the way it is.

(2012-05-07 00:42)Montellese Wrote:  Let's be fair and say there are 500k XBMC users (which is probably far too few). Then 2000 users (of which probably not all have an as.xml but let's say they do) are still only 0.004% of XBMC's real userbase. That's almost nothing.

What sample size do you think is realistic to be represantative?
What I mentioned with the 2000 users is just "MY" experience. I'm sure I'm less experienced than most of the members from Team XBMC
but I wouldn't make a poll here to see what people are using as.xml only because here are more members.
Sorry for being a bit OT...

(2012-05-07 00:42)Montellese Wrote:  We in the team sometimes have to remind ourselves as well that the people in this community here are only a fraction of the people using XBMC and they are probably the more "nerdy" part of the userbase so it may not always be the best thing to do what a few people ask for in the forum.

I agree, but you will never know what people think about the changes if they do not come to the forums.
You can not be sure if they want to have such a feature or not, because you don't get feedback from them. IMHO it's wrong to say:
"There are non-nerdy users that do not want this feature", without knowing what they realy want based on no feedback.

(2012-05-07 00:42)Montellese Wrote:  PS: Please don't put those smileys behind your statements like "I think it's less than 95%" if you want to really discuss this topic. They give me the feeling that you are either joking or don't really care about the points we raise which leads to losing interest in the discussion very fast.

Sorry, it was not my intention to joke or something. And yes, I care about the points you raised. Based on first post it should be clear that I'm serious.
Otherwise post #1 would have been:
I think as.xml needs to be inside GUI settings...any opinions? iI want it that way!!!! xD
or something like this...
Sorry again!

(2012-05-07 09:49)da-anda Wrote:  Mad-Max - I came up with the feature request JM mentioned. For me the current UI is way to overloaded - especially the video-settings and audio-settings OSDs. I think that 95% of the users don't need settings for "Pixel ratio", "Post processing" or even care about the deinterlace and scaling methods. Also stuff like "output stereo to all speakers" or "Audio output" are things that most users don't need nowadays. So those settings could be moved to a "expert mode" - be it either some kind of foldout/toggle in the OSDs themselves or a global setting.
Also subtitle handling should be improved - I never understood why the "subtitles" button in Confluence triggeres the Addon (subtitle search) instead of a global subtitle OSD where I can enable, select or search for subs (so move the subtitle stuff from the audio OSD to a custom subtitles OSD and probably only crosslink it from the audio OSD.

Fully Agree with the points you mention above. I do not use these options, too. At least most of them.

(2012-05-07 09:49)da-anda Wrote:  As for moving as.xml settings to the GUI. Personally I'd be fine with it as long as two things are met:
- Those can be configured in a separate section
- The section displays a warning dialog when opened

Point one would require a new section besides apperance, system, addons and so on...hmm...might be doable but also might need some adjustments to Confluence

Point two is reasonable and might also be configurable via as.xml
---advancvedguisettings(safemode) show warning
---advancedguisettings(godmode) no warning
Hmm...might be a bit too much...

cheers,
Max

(2012-05-07 10:53)mad-max Wrote:  Point two is reasonable and might also be configurable via as.xml
---advancvedguisettings(safemode) show warning
---advancedguisettings(godmode) no warning
Hmm...might be a bit too much...

You'd only need one of those as you can only either show the warning or not. But then again I bet that everyone who'd add that option to as.xml would also set safemode to false (or godmode to true) because everyone hates those warnings that pop up everytime you try to do a specific action.

(2012-05-07 11:30)Montellese Wrote:  You'd only need one of those as you can only either show the warning or not.

From a non coder side I thought you need both.
One for showing the options and the pop up and one for showing the options and not popup.
Having only one would lead to problems with showing the opitions at all...
I hope I was clear enough

(2012-05-07 11:30)Montellese Wrote:  But then again I bet that everyone who'd add that option to as.xml would also set safemode to false (or godmode to true) because everyone hates those warnings that pop up everytime you try to do a specific action.

I agree

if there is a warning shown I personally don't see a reason to hide the section by default or a need to enable it via as.xml. We could just have a GUI-Setting for "expert mode" and than a) show the advanced settings for audio/video OSD and b) show the "Advanced Settings" section in the system menu.

the setting to hide the warning could be a as.xml only setting then. But honestly, do we really need a option to hide it? How often will those advanced settings be changed anyway?

(2012-05-07 16:26)da-anda Wrote:  How often will those advanced settings be changed anyway?

IMO this depends on what will be hidden...
Basically stuff like <useddsfanart> won't be changed after it has been setup...
But there might be some other features like <splash> that some people activate and deactivate more often as this is a preperation for the
IntroMovieAddon...

If some of the OSD features for audio/video will belong to expert mode, I think these are the ones that are changed most often.
Changing some scaler stuff or audio settings on the fly would be cool. And as Damian said, there will be quite a lot of new audio settings
coming up with AE...DSP stuff and so on...
That would be a candidate for it...

mad-max

mad-max - those options could show up in the according Audio/Video sections I think - only generic and reaaaaaally low level as.xml stuff should probably move to the "expert" section. Or maybe we find a better concept for it?

(2012-05-07 17:22)da-anda Wrote:  mad-max - those options could show up in the according Audio/Video sections I think

Well, Damian seems to have a hard fight to get it in there...

(2012-05-07 17:22)da-anda Wrote:  Or maybe we find a better concept for it?

Yeah, maybe...will think about this whole settings section again...

BTW: Thanks to all that came up with the good points to push XBMC beyond...

cheers,
Max

What about this addon:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=87524

I've used it in the past and works well enough for quick adjustments.