Video Playback Overlay

[jacob-willden]

Thanks for creating and maintaining this plugin! I have a question about overlaying images over each channel, like was mentioned in an old thread on the Kodi forums.

I'm creating a Kodi add-on that provides image overlays during videos, and I've tried creating the overlay using xbmcgui.WindowDialog, but whenever the window is shown (using the show() method), it prevents user access to the rest of the video interface. After I heard about this plugin, I dived into its code (particularly the overlay.py file), and was surprised to find out that the overlays also appear to be created using WindowDialog.

My question is: how does this plugin display the image overlays while still allowing the user to control video playback? Thank you so much for your time and help!

[Lunatixz]

It doesn't, unfortunately the WindowDialog class gains complete control of all actions and clicks.

Looking at your post. If your overlay is not for video, you can use WindowXML which does not gain action control.

[jacob-willden]

Interesting, I'll try that out. Thanks so much for the help!

[Lunatixz]

You can find docs here: https://xbmc.github.io/docs.kodi.tv/master/kodi-base/dd/d4d/group__python__xbmcgui__window__xml.html

[jacob-willden]

By the way, I found another way to accomplish this on a Kodi Forums thread, which actually uses object. Once I get the functionality fully working, I'll share it here for the benefit of future developers. Thanks again!

[Lunatixz]

I believe it's technically impossible! The dialog class intercepts all actions while the window is open. Keep me updated, THX

[jacob-willden]

I've got it fully working now. This is the class for the overlay (source):

class OverlayScreen(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self.showing = False
        self.window = xbmcgui.Window(12005) # Inheriting from 12005 (fullscreenvideo) puts the overlay in front of the video, but behind the video interface
        origin_x = 0
        origin_y = 0
        window_w = self.window.getWidth()
        window_h = self.window.getHeight()
        self._background = xbmcgui.ControlImage(origin_x, origin_y, window_w, window_h, os.path.join(addonpath,"resources","skins","default","media","overlay.png"))

    def show(self):
        self.showing=True
        self.window.addControl(self._background)

    def hide(self):
        self.showing=False
        self.window.removeControl(self._background)

    def _close(self):
        if self.showing:
            self.hide()
        else:
            pass
        try:
            self.window.clearProperties()
            print("OverlayText window closed")
        except: pass

Once inside the main execution section of the script (if __name__ == '__main__':) and once xbmc.Player().isPlaying() is true, a variable can be assigned OverlayScreen() and then its methods can be called. Thanks for sending me in the right direction for this!

[Lunatixz]

IC, you're adding a new control to an existing window... Interesting approach though it has limitations. THX for letting me know.