[bripeace]

Here is a patch that adds support for Video fanart.

This first patch is more or less a proof of concept. It currently only works with VideoFiles though audio files should be possible later.

How it works:
There is now a new button in the BookmarkOSD which will allow you to add FANART type bookmarks to the databse. You add a start bookmark and an end bookmark to define a region which will be played as the Fanart. When you have the Fanart view selected for TVShows and a show selected, after a short delay you're video fanart will play.

This is just about a days work, and has a few minor issues specifically:
- It is coded currently to only work with TVShows. A few changes will enable movies
- It is only currentlyactive on the TVshow list Fanart View. Activating it on the episode view should be possible to add as well
- Quickly scrolling thing a bunch of tv shows and then playing a video will cause the video that is selected to stop playing after a short time (I know why this happens and will get to fixing it)
- Only currently works when using Keyboard/Remote. Specifically anything that tripggers ACTION_MOVE_UP/ACTION_MOVE_DOWN

Features:
- Works on a delay so if your scrolling through a bunch of shows it won't keep trying to play fanart
- If the fanart is playing and you navigate somewhere else it will stop playing
- If the fanart is not playing it will show regular fanart.
- It's completely skinnable
- Should work on all XBMC plaforms (nothing windows specific) It definately works on Windows and Linux where I have tested it

There is a lot of potential for some neat eye candy for those that want it, and just a neat feature to show off XBMC. It really did turn out better than I expected it would.

Here is a demonstration:
http://www.screenjelly.com/watch/kCyqul1jdcA

Trac/Patch Here:
http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/6978

[HexusOdy]

Nice proof of concept. WOuld be great to see this become a standard option.

[natethomas]

Would it be possible to activate on the shows view, but then maintain as you move from the shows view to the season and episode view without restarting the video?

[Gamester17]

Could you possibly add an option to only play the audio/sound track, so that is works the same way but instead of displaying the video you only hear the audio stream from that video, and not actually see the video.

That way this feature could work as an alternative the background ambiance Theme Music for TV Shows that Plex features, but since it takes the audio stream from a video file that the user already has it works around the copyright issue that Plex has, see here:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=41455

Also, could an existing EDL (Edit Decision List) or SceneMarker standard be used for this feature, or maybe customize/modift it to better fit the need for this feature to create a new standard that is specifically designed for video fanart?

http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=EDL_(commerc...er_support

The reason I ask is if that is the case the the end-users could share those EDL (Edit Decision List) or SceneMarker files among themselves, or they could possibly even be hosted on TheTVDB.com and TheMovieDB.org websites and scraped automatically by XBMC scrapers if the video files can be identified via a hash or something.

This way each end-user would not have to manually create those bookmarks for all their TV Shows and Movies themselves, they would instead just enable scraping for it and XBMC's scrapers would automatically download the correct EDL (Edit Decision List) or SceneMarker files from TheTVDB and TheMovieDB websites.

[bripeace]

Would it be possible to activate on the shows view, but then maintain as you move from the shows view to the season and episode view without restarting the video?

Yes it's certainly possible. I venture we are very very very early in the development of this, so things are going to change dramatically.

Could you possibly add an option to only play the audio/sound track, so that is works the same way but instead of displaying the video you only hear the audio stream from that video, and not actually see the video.

That way this feature could work as an alternative the background ambiance Theme Music for TV Shows that Plex features, but since it takes the audio stream from a video file that the user already has it works around the copyright issue that Plex has, see here:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=41455

Yup, i'm sure we'll be able to do this when all is said and done. I think at the end most of these sort of things (where/when/what plays) will be left up to to skinners and end users.

Also, could an existing EDL (Edit Decision List) or SceneMarker standard be used for this feature, or maybe customize/modift it to better fit the need for this feature to create a new standard that is specifically designed for video fanart?

http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=EDL_(commerc...er_support

The reason I ask is if that is the case the the end-users could share those EDL (Edit Decision List) or SceneMarker files among themselves, or they could possibly even be hosted on TheTVDB.com and TheMovieDB.org websites and scraped automatically by XBMC scrapers if the video files can be identified via a hash or something.

This way each end-user would not have to manually create those bookmarks for all their TV Shows and Movies themselves, they would instead just enable scraping for it and XBMC's scrapers would automatically download the correct EDL (Edit Decision List) or SceneMarker files from TheTVDB and TheMovieDB websites.

There are plenty of things we can use to define a region inside of a video file. EDLs, Special Bookmarks, a new kind of thing specific for avFanart. I would like to see these things be scrapable - at least from the standpoint of an nfo file. This way people could use the various external media managers to quickly setup, or adjust, what plays for what.

As for them being shareable/hostable. That actually touches on a much more complicated issue, which is identifying files of different sizes, sources, and formats, that contain the same content. Some people just download files off the internet, others rip dvds, some record them from tv. Some of these files have slightly different content: some have credits, others don't; some have commercials others don't; some are different cuts of the same movie etc...

If you could actually identify these files are the same and how they differ then assign a unique universal timecode to tehse varying different versions THEN you could easily share these things. But beyond that you could do a lot of other very very very cool stuff.

For this case you may be able to come up with something relatively simple, but it is a hard problem. That said sharing avFanart specs for some shows and many movies would be simple. For instance Futurama and the Simpsons in most cases (i believe all) start with the first 29 seconds devoted to the theme. You could easily define a 0-29 second avFanart template and then have XBMC play a random opening from one of the episodes (which are all different).

Further for movies the number of sources and differences between varying copies among users is actually pretty small. Sharing some sort of fanart SPEC/Bookmark (not files of course) should be relatively easy. Most themes/openings are within the first 10 minutes of a movie, a period where any sort of differences between copies should be small if nonexistant.

I think ultimately it will be a very cool feature, and there is a lot to do. The biggest hurdle right now is getting together how it will work, but I'm committed enough to stick with it, work with the team and hopefully get something done and in svn.

[FourTwentySmilz]

Any progress on this?

I think the video intros would look stunning, if added, but only for HTPC builds. Tv set the way you have it in the Video sample.....and for Movies, it could autoplay the trailer.

What about an "Audio only" version for xbox users? Like when you focus on a TV show, the Fanart is the usual Fanart backdrop, but it autoplays the theme music for the show in focus. The xbox should be able to handle that, right?
For Movies, the xbox could autoplay a audio trailer......similar to the voice descriptions "MoviePhone" gives out......or an audio rip from the actual movie trailer.

[spiff]

this will NEVER, EVER, yes i said NEVER, be coming anywhere near an xbox.

[FourTwentySmilz]

Way to live up to that "Grumpy Bastard Developer" title, you got there Spiff. Not even a reason why........

I mean, all I suggested was audio. I thought this was an open forum to discuss ideas.

[natethomas]

Grumpiness is an important part of the persona. I think you just have accept it and eventually learn to love it.

As to the why, I'm guessing it's because the xbox has already been pushed about as close to the limit as humanly possible. Plus, only one xbox dev is still doing optimization work for xbmc, and that plate is already insanely full.

Now, if some code were provided to make it work well, I doubt any dev would say no. That just seems like an unlikely occurrence.

[spiff]

^^^ what he said.

how was i grumpy? i was maybe not at my most verbose, but hardly grumpy.

oh, to be a smart ass; no, this is not a forum to share ideas unless those ideas are written in C++

XBMC Development Developers forums for XBMC related development. Programmers/Coders only!
No end-user support, no bug reports, and no feature/function requests here!
Please, add platform prefix for suggestions that are not platform-independent!:

[Geeba]

Not knowing exactly but how different is this to the xbox running a movie in the back ground when you access the menue with it playing Xbox does that without so much as breaking a sweat....

[natethomas]

That's an excellent point, Geeba. Code is welcome.

[Geeba]

That's an excellent point, Geeba. Code is welcome.

Trust me if I could... I would! - My IT path is unfortunately Networking....

I was a dab hand at Basic and Forth... not alot of call for that these days