[grywnn]

Hi Fishman,
Can you access XBMCs web interface from the iPad? From the XBMC machine itself?
To check, open safari on the ipad and the browser of your choice on windows, and enter the following url:
http://(your XBMC ip)your XBMC port)/
Replace (your XBMC ip) and (your XBMC port) accordingly.
You should see XBMCs webinterface and be able to browse your movies / tv shows.

[xtlc]

Hey, since the last update, the XBMC Commander very often (like 3 out of 10 tries), shows me the disconnection symbol. Sometimes, after like 3 mins it works again. The problem is, I haven't been working ok my home entertainment sys in a while and now updated xbmc and the commander so I don't know where to search for the troubles What solves the problem immedeatly is restarting xbmc. But I don't even have a monitor connected usually.

[grywnn]

The fact that a XBMC restart helps suggests that maybe XMBC is too busy to respond to the http requests the app makes.
You updated to eden?
Did you change your skin to something that uses a lot of resources (glass for example)?
Does the webinterface work or does it show a similar behavior?

[Fishman]

Hi Fishman,
Can you access XBMCs web interface from the iPad? From the XBMC machine itself?
To check, open safari on the ipad and the browser of your choice on windows, and enter the following url:
http://(your XBMC ip)your XBMC port)/
Replace (your XBMC ip) and (your XBMC port) accordingly.
You should see XBMCs webinterface and be able to browse your movies / tv shows.

Good morning, grywnn.

I can access the web interface from my machine, but not the iPad.

I thought it could be due to the fact that I'm jumping back and forth with networks (daytime @ work and evening @ home), but I'm amending the IP and ports accordingly.

Thanks for helping.

[grywnn]

hey fishman,

now that clearly hints to some kind of network trouble.
I've had problems myself some time ago, where my ipad couldn't "talk" in my wlan after waking up. The only way around was assigning a new IP to the iPad every time, which for sure wasn't a solution at all. So i ended up exchanging my wlan router with a different model.

[phyrros1]

Hi grywnn,

I have some feature requests and I wonder if you might be able to add these to your great app.

1. I would like to have a "Pause" and a "Stop" button on the "Music", "Video" and "TV-Show" detail screen (see attached screen shots) There should be enough space if you make the other buttons ( "Play, Enqueue, Trailer IMDb" etc." ) a bit smaller. Reason behind that is that I prefer to use these screens to choose a movie, album etc. but If I have to pause or stop watching a movie for example I have to close the Movie/Music/Tv-Show detail screen and switch to the remote screen . From a usability point of view not really ideal.

2. Would it be possible to show the progress bar on the iPad when scanning the audio/video library ?

3. When I do a search on the YouTube screen I only get 25 entries with no chance to get more, or did I miss something. If not could this be changed ?

4. Could the custom buttons on the remote screen give an optical feedback when pressed , similar to the other buttons throughout the app?

Thanks

Cheers

Phyrros

[fatal.]

Hey grywnn,

A few more feature requests

1. Remote screen, while item is playing and the slider is available showing the current playtime of the item and allowing to shift the time...show the "total time" of the item playing to the right of the slider (just as you have the currently playing time shown on the left) so you know the total running time of the item playing.

Edit: hum, it seems to show for music (mp3s), but not for movies...I played an mp3 and it showed the total running time (counting down). While the mp3 was playing I then (without stopping) played a movie (which automatically loads the remote screen as per my settings) and the total running time of the mp3 was still displayed on the remote screen. Stopping the playing item cleared the remote screen and then playing just the movie again did not show the total running time for the movie.

2. When you drag the slider to timeshift the currently playing item on the remote screen show a popup or something which shows exactly what hour/minute/second etc you are dragging to.

3. Ability to go to back the detail screen (or show detail screen on remote screen) of the playing item from the remote screen when you click on the poster that is shown on the remote screen (assuming you show a generic poster for items w/o posters). For songs, it would show the tracks for the currently playing item (same layout as defined in music view), for episodes show the episode list for the current episodes season, etc. (don't know if this is possible or fits with your view of what the remote screen should be)

4. Option to always show the help text for gestures on the remote screen (even when item is playing with the fanart visible)

Also, don't know if you caught the line about the app crashing in my previous post...it crashes sometimes when going into the playlist view on commander...it's reproducible at times if you go to a picture folder in xbmc using the remote and then click on playlist (at this time playlist does not respond to any clicks) and try to go back to remote...sometimes just clicking on playlist crashes it...haven't been able to pin point the exact reason behind it but just FYI.

Thanks again.

Take Care

[grywnn]

@phyrros
1. i think adding playback controls in that area would be confusing for the typical noob user. And while there's plenty of space in the fanart view, things are a bit different on the dvd cases or the iPhone layout. I've already been thinking about having a globally available playback control, that you can drag open regardless of where you are in the app. But that's surprisingly difficult to do in these detail views.
Btw you don't have to go all the way to the remote. You can pull down playback controls in the library views by dragging down with two fingers (damn i really need to create some good documentation ... )
2. I get no progress feedback from XBMC, so no.
3. you didn't miss anything. Youtube support is pretty basic. I just wanted to be able to search for clips i already know the title of, without having to bother with xbmcs virtual keyboard. Improving youtube support is on my list, but rather low.
4. consider it done

@fatal
1. I'll check wether its a XBMC or an app problem.
2. No problemo. Will be added.
3. Hasn't been posible for a long time, but according to the forum XBMC is now (aka Eden) able to return database ids of the currently playing item. Jumping into the library tabs would be quite difficult though, so i'd rather opt for opening the details on top of the remote view. I'll have to experiment, can't promise too much.
4. No big deal, i'll add a switch to the system settings

As for the crash: I'll try to reproduce, didn't have time yet.

[phyrros1]

On one album i've imported, i get funky track numbers

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

i've imported a dozen or so albums, and this is the only one that shows weird numbers. In iTunes, Synology DSaudio and XBMC itself it's show correctly, but xbmc commander shows these numbers. It's not a big issue, but i'm wondering why XBMC shows them correctly, but Commander does not.

@phyrros
1. i think adding playback controls in that area would be confusing for the typical noob user. And while there's plenty of space in the fanart view, things are a bit different on the dvd cases or the iPhone layout. I've already been thinking about having a globally available playback control, that you can drag open regardless of where you are in the app. But that's surprisingly difficult to do in these detail views.
Btw you don't have to go all the way to the remote. You can pull down playback controls in the library views by dragging down with two fingers (damn i really need to create some good documentation ... )
2. I get no progress feedback from XBMC, so no.
3. you didn't miss anything. Youtube support is pretty basic. I just wanted to be able to search for clips i already know the title of, without having to bother with xbmcs virtual keyboard. Improving youtube support is on my list, but rather low.
4. consider it done

Hi grywnn,


1. Not even a tiny tiny play/stop button for the iPad version ? ;-)
4. Great, thanks

Something else,
On some of my albums the Commander shows some weird numbers in the album detail view. I could remember that this issue has been discussed once before and I found above thread. You replied to that one that you would add a workaround in one of the future updates and I thought you had. Anyway, either the problem is still there or is back again ;-).

This might help to isolate the problem by the way : I only see these weird numbers when an album which contains more than one CD's (Double or Triple album) has been separated by the "disknumber tag" only

Example: Double album Bob Dylan/Tell Tale Signs

CD 1

Artist Tag: Bob Dylan
Album Tag: Tell Tale Signs
Track Number Tag: 1,2,3 ......16
Disk Number Tag: 1

CD 2

Artist Tag: Bob Dylan
Album Tag: Tell Tale Signs
Track Number Tag: 1,2,3 ......16
Disk Number Tag: 2


The Commander will show CD 1 correctly, but from CD 2 onwards these weird numbers will show up.
Maybe the repeating track numbers of CD 2 etc. confuses the Commander , just guessing......

I could separate a double album by adding "CD 1" and "CD 2" in the album tag and solve the problem that way but it would bloat my music library view with
too many album covers of the same.

Cheers

Phyrros

[grywnn]

Just a very quick reply:
For some weird reasons XBMC sometimes returns these wrong tracks & discnumbers, which are exactly 2^16 off. Guess it's maybe got something to do with moving from a 32bit installation to a 64bit one.
Fixed this for the tracknumbers a while ago by simply subtracting 65.536. But i forgot the discnumbers. Another user pointed this out a week ago by mail, and i fixed it already.
Tracknumbers should be correct again in the upcoming update.

[clipper99]

Hi clipper,
I now hav been able to reproduce the issue. Looks like there is a bug in the imdb app that causes it to crash when switching to it while the device is in landscape mode.
When the device is in portrait orientation imdb opens witthout problems.
I'll try to contact the imdb devs about this.
For now, until the imdb app gets fixed, rotate the device before hitting the imdb button...

Hi grywnn.

I realized last night that another popular XBMC iPad remote that I own (that I won't name here but rhymes with "Installation") will not crash when switching to the imdb app. FYI.

Cheers

[kstrin01]

Hi grywnn. You have built a fantastic app! I have enjoyed it for several months.

When using the "Files" feature and browsing VIDEO sources on my media server, XBMC Commander does not see password protected folders. The source is setup in XBMC with the correct username and password, and the folders can be browsed and accessed on XBMC, but when browsing on XBMC Commander the password protected folders do not show up.

I am using Windows 7 Professional on my Media Server. To be able to view the folder in XBMC Commander, the folder has to be shared with "everyone".

I password protect all video folders that are not Rated G, PG, or PG-13. On the kid's XBMC machine, I do not provide username and password information, so they can't access the "R" Movies and TV Shows. It works great as far as using XBMC, but as I said, XBMC Commander does not see the protected folders.

[grywnn]

Thats a known problem - the JSON API strips the username / password information when returning the list the sources, but won't let you browse the source without the credential - kind of a chicken - egg - problem.
but good luck theres a workaround: Remove the login stuff from your sources.xml and put it into another file.
The last paragrap of my troubleshooting page describes how to:
http://xbmc-commander.com/page2/page9/page9.html

[kstrin01]

Thanks for the quick response. Problem solved!

[xbmc17]

The music / playlist crashes are Eden related and should be fixed with the update that i submitted to apple a few days ago. This update should ba available in a few days.
The fast scrolling crashes usually stop once all thumbnails are cached in the app.

As for your other questions:
I've been playing around with scroll lists a few times now, so far with no satisfying result. Works more or less when sorting alphabetical (although i got a few problems to get the letters right, since i let XBMC do the sorting), but when using other sort mechanisms things get ugly.

Enqueuing when pressing play makes perfect sense and shouldn't be too hard to implement (at least with eden), i've put it on my todo list.

Compilations should turn up in a "various artists". Thats because i'm scanning albums for this list, and XBMC returns exactly one artist per album. That's usually the main artist for regular albums or "various artists" for compilations (depends on how you tagged your music). If the app stumbles upon an album without artists info, it's sorted under "various artists" too.
But that reminds me that i wanted to double check the logic behind this, because i had a few reports about missing albums in the past.

Is there still the possibility of a toggle to make "Play" function as "enqueue"? Very frustrating when creating a playlist with friends and someone inadvertently clicks "play" by mistake and erases the entire playlist!

In "artist grouped" view, Various Artists doesn't appear anywhere so compilations don't seem to be available in his view.