Can you loop a sequence to run infinitely?

[Hemophilus 2]

So I'm using CinemaVision just as a theater intro, not to play movies.  I'm using my BluRay player for that. So all I want CinemaVision to do is play an infinite sequence of trailers, trivia and courtesy video/short films. That way I can start up the theater without messing with the Raspberry Pi (hopefully) as well as switching back to it after a movie.  I want to do all this without having to pull out the keyboard for the Raspberry to start the sequence again.

So nothing seems to work without having a Feature module in the sequence, but I can disable it and it still works so that's fine.

But if I add a Command module to have it go back X number of steps and loop the sequence, it never does that if the Feature module isn't active.  If I set it to loop with the queue either full OR empty, it just terminates when it hits the Command module.  If I pick "none" for that option, it locks CinemaVision with a black screen before it plays anything and won't escape or respond to the keyboard.

So is it possible to do what I outlined in the first paragraph?  Seems like it shouldn't be hard...just a simpler loop version of the Command module?

Thanks!

Sorry one clarification: when I said "I set it to loop with the queue either full OR empty" I meant setting the option in the Command module setup. I never have anything in the actual feature queue since I'm not playing the movies that way. Hope that helps!

[Ragnarok 197]

13 minutes ago, Hemophilus said:

So I'm using CinemaVision just as a theater intro, not to play movies.  I'm using my BluRay player for that. So all I want CinemaVision to do is play an infinite sequence of trailers, trivia and courtesy video/short films. That way I can start up the theater without messing with the Raspberry Pi (hopefully) as well as switching back to it after a movie.  I want to do all this without having to pull out the keyboard for the Raspberry to start the sequence again.

So nothing seems to work without having a Feature module in the sequence, but I can disable it and it still works so that's fine.

But if I add a Command module to have it go back X number of steps and loop the sequence, it never does that if the Feature module isn't active.  If I set it to loop with the queue either full OR empty, it just terminates when it hits the Command module.  If I pick "none" for that option, it locks CinemaVision with a black screen before it plays anything and won't escape or respond to the keyboard.

So is it possible to do what I outlined in the first paragraph?  Seems like it shouldn't be hard...just a simpler loop version of the Command module?

Thanks!

Sorry one clarification: when I said "I set it to loop with the queue either full OR empty" I meant setting the option in the Command module setup. I never have anything in the actual feature queue since I'm not playing the movies that way. Hope that helps!

We made the Feature Module required because too many people were complaining about the add-on failing to play their feature. It was failing because no Feature Module was in the Sequence.  Disabling it is the right way to go, I think. So honestly, we've never had anyone try to do what you're doing. The behavior you're seeing seems like a bug to me, so could I get you to post a debug log for me that I can shoot to our developer? If a module is disabled, it should just skip that module and go to the Command Module at the end and skip back. We might need to add something in the command module that allows you to skip back to the beginning, or to the end of the Sequence, as well as a setting that just loops the Sequence. Once I get your log and chat up our developer, I'll have a better idea of what direction we need to go.

I will say that CV relies pretty heavily on data from the library to do things like pick trailers. What I'd recommend is that you create media stub files for your physical BD media that Kodi will scrape in as if it were local video content, and use that to start your Sequence. That way you get all of the proper data (genre, rating, etc.) that CV uses to create your Sequence.

[Hemophilus 2]

Yeah I get why the Feature module is mandatory, I'm sure that caused you some headaches before setting it that way!

I posted the log from CV, hopefully it has info that will help you track this issue down.

So I'm surprised nobody has ever wanted to employ CV this way before...it seems a natural use for it! A little background: before this I was using an old DVD player with a disc that I burned which had similar content.  Lots of trivia slides for the most part, with cinematic background music. Basically the player's only job was to play that disc forever so that I could switch back and forth between it and the movie (I have a remote that controls all equipment with macros including lighting etc). That's what I hope for CV to do...always playing so that when a less tech oriented person switches on the theater in "Welcome mode" all the equipment comes on, and the preshow is already running without poking around on the Raspberry Pi. Of course this had the advantage that I can easily change the content by switching the directory content, rather than having to re-burn a disc.

I totally get what you're saying about the stub files, but hopefully you can see from above why that doesn't really matter for me. I don't really want a defined sequence that has the rating bumper etc because I want it to be able to jump in and out at any point rather than having a defined length and sequence. If we can get the looping working, I would probably structure no more than half a dozen modules that just repeat infinitely. Plus all the content is fully family-friendly so I don't really need it to filter the content.

Couple of other things that might interest you:

1. When I set the trailer module to "directory" it initially wouldn't work, then suddenly did. But then after it started working, I never had to repeat the "update content" action to get it to recognize when new trailers were dropped in the folder...they just started playing in the rotation all by themselves!

2. You may notice in the file that I have the trailers now in the Feature Outro folder. I started trying that since it had the randomize option, and I don't use that folder for anything else. Just in case you're wondering why they're being pulled from there...

BTW thank you so much for being so responsive. Even though I'm using CV in a bit of a quirky way, maybe it will help someone else down the road!

cinemavisionlog.txt