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brohawk · (This post was last modified: 2015-06-11, 23:54 by brohawk.)

Blank, as in absolutely nothing showing on screen w/ 100% transparency during music playback. Hoping this is an easy request for anyone w/ more knowledge than me.

Thing is, I like the default dim screensaver for when I've paused a movie or Kodi is otherwise idle, but during music playback, I enjoy using & watching the Artist Slideshow addon. However, the screensaver eventually kicks in during that too and ruins the experience. Since Kodi doesn't treat AS as an actual music visualization but instead as a program addon, the system setting for the screensaver to "play visualization instead of screensaver" doesn't stop the screensaver from coming up after X minutes. From what research I've done, if I could select a blank visualization to play during music playback that would solve my issue. However, I have no programming skills whatsoever so creating my own visualization ain't gonna happen. Option 2: I've been googling how to create my own preset w/ ProjectM (running OpenELEC on a Chromebox which is the only stock visualization that allows presets) but that's been a steep learning curve for me that's also going nowhere. So I'm hoping somebody has a blank template for either a visualization or a Milkdrop preset that would do what I'm asking. Anybody??

**da-anda** · 2015-06-12, 09:36

well, I think better would be support for python based vizualisations - that way artist-slideshow could become a native viz - but that's a bit tricky I've been told.

**popcornmix** · 2015-06-12, 14:43

Can't you use the Dim screensaver, but in settings change the Dim level to 100%?

brohawk · 2015-06-12, 17:55

Yes, would be nice if AS could become a native viz eventually. But what to do in the meantime.

Not following you on the dim level to 100%. Wouldn't that turn the screen totally black? Then I wouldn't see AS do its thing at all once Dim kicked in.

**popcornmix** · 2015-06-12, 18:32

(2015-06-12, 17:55)brohawk Wrote: Not following you on the dim level to 100%. Wouldn't that turn the screen totally black? Then I wouldn't see AS do its thing at all once Dim kicked in.

100% appears to be completely transparent. 0% is completely opaque.

brohawk · 2015-06-12, 18:41

Oh gotcha. But then I wouldn't have a screensaver that did its job when I wanted it to, i.e. when a movie (or even music) is paused, or Kodi is otherwise idle. It just wouldn't dim at all. I've got a plasma, so I'd like it to actually dim when idle, but don't need it to when playing music as the background is constantly changing. If I only cared about viewing AS during music playback, things would be easy. I'd just disable the screensaver. But in this case, I need both working. Which Kodi happily does if I were to use any other visualization besides AS during music playback. See what I mean?

brohawk · 2015-06-12, 18:57

Going back to my blank visualization idea, probably not what Team-Kodi would prefer as it's not a true fix like support for python-based viz's would be, but if a blank viz came shipped w/ Kodi, and was named Artist Slideshow, it would be at least somewhat intuitive for users. I don't think I'm alone in that I originally assumed by selecting "play visualization instead of screensaver during music playback" in the screensaver settings, I would get exactly what I'm after, rather than what actually happens now. Hope I'm making sense to you.

**ronie** · 2015-06-12, 23:59

instead of creating your own visualization, it might be a lot easier to just modify the skin you're using.
simple remove the visualisation control from MusicVisualisation.xml and you're done.

some skins even offer a setting to completely hide the visualization.

brohawk · 2015-06-13, 00:54

Thanks for the suggestion Ronie. I'll try poking around in the xml file.