Disable Redshift automatically for movies

[Jendrik Seipp]

It would be a great feature addition if Redshift could automatically deactivate itself when a video is watched and reactivate itself after the movie.

[Jon Lund Steffensen (jonls)]

It certainly would. How do you propose this should work? Is there an API for detecting whether a movie is playing that don't know of?

[Jendrik Seipp (jendrikseipp)]

We could use the MPRIS DBUS specification. I implemented a small script that displays the status (playing, paused or stopped) for totem. The MPRIS specification is supported by most major video players (totem, vlc).

[Jon Lund Steffensen (jonls)]

That's pretty cool. Your script seems to be specific to totem, however. Could it be made to be agnostic to the media player program in use? I sometimes use totem for playing audio files, in which case I wouldn't want redshift to be disabled. Would it be possible to detect this distinction?

[Jendrik Seipp (jendrikseipp)]

This script can be used similarly for every media player that supports
the MPRIS DBUS specification. Every major player does that, I think.

MPRIS also supports querying the URI of a file (
http://xmms2.org/wiki/MPRIS_Metadata#.22location.22), so we should be
able to determine the filetype and disable redshift only for movies.

The question that remains is though: How do we get notified when a movie
is started? I have not tried it, but listening to this DBUS signal
http://xmms2.org/wiki/MPRIS#TrackChange should do the trick.
Does redshift already have some kind of DBUS interface?

BTW: Is there a way of disabling redshift from within another program
(keeping the indicator alive of course)?

[Jon Lund Steffensen (jonls)]

2011/12/16 Jendrik Seipp <email address hidden>:
> This script can be used similarly for every media player that supports
> the MPRIS DBUS specification. Every major player does that, I think.
Yes, but it would still only work for a specific media player, not for
any MPRIS media program that I may decide to launch. In other words, I
would have to tell redshift to montitor totem before I launch totem,
right? Not a great solution, but it could work.

> MPRIS also supports querying the URI of a file (
> http://xmms2.org/wiki/MPRIS_Metadata#.22location.22), so we should be
> able to determine the filetype and disable redshift only for movies.
Same thing here.. not a great solution. We can't really be sure that
the file type can be inferred from an URI (e.g. *.mkv or *.ogg could
be video or only audio).

> The question that remains is though: How do we get notified when a movie
> is started? I have not tried it, but listening to this DBUS signal
> http://xmms2.org/wiki/MPRIS#TrackChange should do the trick.
Yes, should be pretty straight forward.

> Does redshift already have some kind of DBUS interface?
No, but it should :)

> BTW: Is there a way of disabling redshift from within another program
> (keeping the indicator alive of course)?
You can of course send SIGUSR1 to the redshift process, but then
gtk-redshift will lose track of it (I'm currently working on fixing
this so it will probably be possible in the next release).

[Jendrik Seipp (jendrikseipp)]

Do you still want to include this feature in redshift? How do you think
we should go about this?

[Jendrik Seipp (jendrikseipp)]

Maybe a simple solution could be to add the options "Disable for 1 hour"
and "Disable for 2 hours" to the indicator menu.

[Jon Lund Steffensen (jonls)]

2012/1/13 Jendrik Seipp <email address hidden>:
> Maybe a simple solution could be to add the options "Disable for 1 hour"
> and "Disable for 2 hours" to the indicator menu.
That would probably be a better solution right now, and also easier to
implement.

[Jendrik Seipp (jendrikseipp)]

Would it already be possible to implement the "suspend for 1 hour" functionality, or should we wait for DBUS support?

[Jon Lund Steffensen (jonls)]

2012/2/1 Jendrik Seipp <email address hidden>:
> Would it already be possible to implement the "suspend for 1 hour"
> functionality, or should we wait for DBUS support?

Should be pretty easy to implement in gtk-redshift. If you can write a
small, clean solution I will apply it this week, and possibly get a
release out in the weekend :)

[Jendrik Seipp (jendrikseipp)]

Ok, I'll see what I can do ;)

[Jon Lund Steffensen (jonls)]

Good stuff. Merged.

[Fred (eldmannen+launchpad)]

Maybe not when you watch the video in a window, like if you're just on YouTube and listening to music.
But disable it while the video window is in fullscreen.

[Fred (eldmannen+launchpad)]

Also you _may_ want to disable redshift when playing fullscreen games.

[ACG (acgimael)]

Is there a way to turn this feature off? The brightness of some videos can be rather disturbing, especially when watching a video at night.

[Jendrik Seipp (jendrikseipp)]

To clarify, redshift does not turn on or off automatically (if I remember correctly). If you don't turn it off manually, it will stay on during the movie.

[ACG (acgimael)]

That's odd... Every time I try to watch a video on full screen it seems like redshift is deactivated. From the previous records it seemed like this feature was added, especially seeing as that's what I observed.

[Kuba Niewiarowski (marsjaninzmarsa)]

So, is it resolved or not? "For 2 hours" doesn't mean "automatically", so I think that this should be rather split into two separate issues...

[Jendrik Seipp (jendrikseipp)]

That's true, I agree.