Feature Wishlist (Plugin Addons)

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Revision as of 11:31, 17 April 2007 by Matthias (talk | contribs) (→‎MythBrowser: https)

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This article represents a subsection of the Feature Wishlist.

Plugin Addons (to existing Plugins)

MythBrowser

  • Pop-up keyboard for text input on web pages, controllable from a simple remote control (like the keyboard used in all other parts of myth).
  • support for Adobe / Macromedia Flash
  • https:// support for bookmarks (currently http://https://url.com is created)

MythDVD

  • When playing a DVD, MythTV leaves the X resolution at the configured GUI resolution. It would be nice if we could switch to a user-configured resolution for DVD playback, similar to how we allow user-configured resolutions for video playback.
  • If mtd isn't running, don't ask user to push numbers on their keyboard - just offer to start it and report any failures. If pushing random numbers on the keyboard is the only way to do it then at least simulate pushing random keys on the keyboard as opposed to actually making the user do it.
  • Option to rip separate chapters into separate files (good for things like TV series on DVD.)
  • Implement support in mtd and MythDVD to support CD+G format using libcdg123
  • Option to eject the DVD after it's been ripped
  • Option to use Matroska as Container to store DVD menus+video contents (+ripping multiple subtitle/audio languages)
  • Batch processing and Cluster ability for video transcoding ala DVD::Rip This would only be useful to users who use multiple frontends and backend.
  • Apply settings for one title to all titles. For example, set to rip at excellent quality, press one button and these settings apply to all titles on the disc.

MythGallery

  • Add EXIF display option for photos in myth's photo gallery. Also, create thumbnails of very large jpgs to speed up display.
  • make myth's photo display more flexible to allow display of variable number of photos per screen (like iPhoto or picasa)
  • take transition effects from xscreenaver and implement them for myth photo module
  • Add ability to define extension types to activate specific command line for a given extension. Like MythVideo.
  • Aspect Ratio key to zoom and stretch the picture to fit widescreen TV's
  • Select audio track to play during slideshow
  • Add Ken Burns Pan and Zoom Effect to slideshow
  • Print option to photo on local printer
  • Confirm deleting pictures or maybe using a Trash bin system - images can easily be deleted by accident using this plugin.
  • Display filenames underneath thumbnails as caption.

MythGame

  • Support for an option to search for a rom!
  • Add support to MythGame for epsxe (Can be used with the new MythGame!) - Also add support for mtd to detect Playstation 1 cds (This not!)
  • Add simple games that can be played via the remote control (i.e. arrow keys and enter) - like some type of simple minesweeper or sokoban
  • Add the ability to quit an emulator with the remote (not all people have keyboards plugged in). I may be mistaken, but I think each emulator needs to support interfacing with the lirc daemon to listen for an appropriate "exit" signal.
  • Add a "Game Display Order" option for grouping roms by the First Letter of the Game Title. Example: Airwolf & Arkanoid show up in the "A" category, BurgerTime & BubbleBobble in the "B" category etc...
  • Add Support for ScummVM based Games like Maniac Mansion or Sam`n Max Hit the Road. You CAN do this with a gamelist.xml file, but that's not very clean.

MythMusic

  • Use an MPD based backend
  • Interface with an MPD based backend like ampache ( http://www.ampache.org/ )
  • Allow browsing of physical folders on hard disk rather than requiring the user to create a playlist. This can be done with Freevo. It would be great if MythTV can do it as well!
    • MythMusic does some basics of that to some extent, but not for real. You can get some of that by ignoring mp3 tags and "Show the entire music tree". But it's not cleanly ignoring the mp3 tags per the setting option, and going only by the folders. Thus you get a mix that is not one to one with your folders, which makes it not usable enough. The "Ignore ID3 Tags" option tries to "determine Genere, Atrist, Album, and Track number and title from the filename", which apparently is not as good as going just by directories.
  • Ability to play music in the background? Pardon me if I'm stupid and haven't noticed how to do this. :)
  • 24-bit sound file playback with sampling frequences up to 96 kHz, at least with FLAC decoder.
  • CD Cover Gallery Mode - ie. touchscreen kiosk- Browse by pic of artist -> Album
    • I saw something really cool like this implemented in Hollister Co. (the clothing store that's like Abercrombie) Basically it had a real slick interface with the cover of about 100 CDs they sell in the store, and you can touch any CD cover, choose a song, and it'll start playing it back in the store. I think this is real classy and could be implemented just like the MythVideo Gallery display option. You would require the files to be in some sort of directory structure or sort by ID3 tags but that would probably be slower. I think this should probably be the 1st thing on the development list.
  • Don't group A-G, H-K, etc.... It makes no sense to not group 1,2,3,4 and then group by alpha characters, especially when you have thousands of MP3s...
  • For Audiobook-lovers like me this two things would enhance the mythmusic experience by far:
    • Add Resume to the Mythmusic. It would be great, if MythMusic would start with the last played Song not with the first in the Playlist.
    • Add Sleep-Timer to Mythmusic.
    • Add a Bookmark feature, which allows one bookmark per mp3, so it asks: "Jump or play from beginn?"
  • Implement libvisual into MythMusic for additional effects
  • Provide ability for MythMusic user to select music by Genre - this would be an easy way to deal with large music colletions and playlists
  • Store CDDB ID for ripped CDs, 2 for easy fetching of updates from CDDB. (Is this already in? Or even handy?)
  • Lyrics it would be great to see what those songs really said... I guess you'd have to put some simple timebased scrolling... or go the manual scroll
  • a complete overhaul of the playlist editor is urgently required.
  • Add visualization similar to [http:/figz.com/gdancer gdancer] where figures "dance" to music changes
  • Add a Flickr stream as the visualizer, and for extra points, match the music & image emotion!
  • Similar to above, add a visualizer option for items in MythGallery or a specific folder.
  • Similar to above, add MythWeather and MythNews as visualizers. A background mode for MythMusic would make this redundant, but if that can't be done for some reason this is a good alternative.
  • Create a way to quickly move through long lists.
  • Add Support for http://last.fm like in amarok, which enhaces the Music enjoy a lot!
  • Option for Ripping to occur as a background task/thread (ie start copying the .WAV files to hard disk immediately, put into queue for compressing/encoding). Use MythNotify to prompt the user for verification of CDDB results, etc. Allows ripping while watching TV. It would be nice if this was possible whilst listening to music as well. It would help with parties and people wanting to add their CDs to the mix.
  • The ability to transfer playlists from one frontend to another. IE: I'm listening to a playlist on a portable frontend and I want to transfer the currently playing music to the entertainment center. Extra points to have the music pick up at the same point in the current track.
  • Somewhat akin to above, add support for a "global" playlist. Where the frontends would sync their playlists and track positions. I realize this may be impractical due to timing and performance differences between frontends, but this _is_ a wishlist.  :)
  • Download the artist, song, and album information off of Wikipedia like Amarok does. It would be a great way of learning more about the music that is currently playing.
  • Performance enhancements for resource challenged hardware (XBOX). A large music collection can choke the machine. Here are some performance suggestions: 1) Load the music catalog on demand instead of all at once. 2) Pause playback when editing playlists. 3) Clear the playlist when exiting or have a single key to clear the playlist instead of having to edit the playlist.
  • Support albums stored as a single FLAC file with embedded CUE information defining each track.
  • Option to have centralized playlists and library instead of each front end having seperate lists.
  • Auto Download Album Cover and embedding in MP3 tag.
  • When in full screen visualize mode, if the user changes volume, postion, or mute have a pop up display showing this action and location.
  • Add support for disc numbers, for song sorting purposes: the value should be read (if exists) from the ID3 tag or the AAC file metadata, stored in the Matadata class, and used for the song sort.

MythNews

  • Add the ability to track user-supplied RSS feeds! Yes, it would be GREAT if you can add your own RSS feeds - like you can do when running Freevo.
  • Add the ability to feed RSS information to MythOSD with a scroller mode, to accomplish a news-channel-style ticker that can be displayed over other television shows, or even just in the GUI.
  • Similar to above, but perhaps simpler: Ability to pull up MythNews while watching live TV, similar to launching the Program Guide, with LiveTV shown in a small PIP window as when viewing the Program Guide. This would allow us to read news stories while watching live TV during commercials, and we would know when our program comes back on.
  • Honour the http_proxy environment variable, or should allow a http or socks proxy to be set up elsewhere. (also applies to MythWeather)

MythNotify

MythPhone

MythVideo

  • Under the Video Manager, instead of a single vast list of all available movies, use the tree form that is available in the regular MythVideo window. When you have more 100+ videos it becomes increasingly annoying to scroll down for 2 minutes to find a movie to edit.
  • Add on ability to show other films major named actors/actresses starred in.
  • Have the ability to use a screen capture as the cover image for videos that aren't found on IMDB (similar to how the TV recordings shows a screen shot). <-- If you find a movie cover someplace on the web, just right click, save, then move the poster over to where the rest of them are. Now you are able to add it successfully.
  • Playback speed control would be nice. Up to a few percent, it doesn't need to have pitch correction, at least not for one to enjoy an episode of Law & Order a few minutes faster.
  • Ability to automaticly change Xine/MPlayer (etc.) keybindings file when you change MythTV hotkeys (seems difficult to me - HenkPoley). Or just a webpage with Xine/MPlayer configs that conform to MythTV default keybindings.
  • Search feature.
  • Browse by genre (e.g. Select a movie by Action->Adventure->Terminator or Adventure->Action->Terminator etc. Like the tree view but genres instead of directories. Would be very fast to find a movie you want to see.
  • Series browser Broken Link A small idea to make series browsing easy in MythVideo.
  • DVD Chapter names, and Matroska Chapter names. It seems other media players connect to a web service to retrieve chapter names based on the DVD. These would be a nice addition to the current "Title 18 of 23" text.
    • Not only for Mythvideo... for MythDVD too please :)
  • Make Matroska-support of the Internal Player perfect. (Make seeking and subtitles work)
  • Tree browse by genre. Maybe even multiple genres.
  • Allow browsing of multiple directories (possibly on multiple harddrives) (<-- a quick workaround is to use links)
  • Solve the following scaleability problem, on a system with a large number of movies (and tv episodes) you get "L'embaras du choix", from observing users watching habits it was found that long-term users of the system watched a disproportionate number of movies that start with A, B and C or sometime complaining about a lack of choice or "new" because on a system with a vast selection going through the list that's a lot of time even on fast systems (because of technical and practical reasons this can be improved a lot, but not enough to solve this problem, you can't browse faster than you can read) another fundamental reason why this happens is because users aren't compelled to watch unknown movies, often just reading the title isn't enough to motivate the user, in this way mythvideo helps by displaying a poster picture but it doesn't quite cut it at this point more is needed to "sell" the movies in the list, this can be done by adding new browsing modes and other ideas might be found by looking at how movies and rentals are advertised to the consuming public, movies trailers are probably one of the most effective and implementable way to do this, since they are free for download on the internet
  • there are many suggested possible improvements
  • make browsing faster on big systems (with a thousand movies it rarely takes less than 500 milliseconds to display a new line, there is no technical reason why this should take more than 10 milliseconds and can be done by simple optimization (some fail-safe are too easily triggered causing a huge hit in performance))
  • a "skip to random" function, the user press a key and the interface jumps to a random movie
  • a randomnize function, in this mode the movies are sorted randomnly instead of by alphabetic order
  • a watch movie trailers function, ideally this plays a previously downloaded movie trailer, ideally while watching a trailer pressing a certain key would start the movie associated with the trailer (this makes using mplayer "bare" difficult, maybe mythvideo could start mplayer embedded and trap certain keys) another key could skip to the next trailer, rewind or pause the trailer and finally return to mythvideo (maybe with the associated movie selected) additionnally the title could be displayed on OSD while the trailer is being played maybe along with other information such as IMDB rating, and randomly selected IMDB comments
  • along with the preview function , there could be an option to play a pre-determined number of trailers when a movie is selected (just like in a cinema where you see the trailers of upcoming movies before the main feature)
  • scrolling pages, this mode could be just like "browse view" except that the movie being reviewed changes after a certain amount of time, and not just "jump" but scroll horizontally or vertically at a slow pace, it would be interesting to have this mode randomnly select the next movie to display, the advantage of this is that no user intervention is needed so the user doesn't have to actively "reject" a movie also the scrolling sets a pace for browsing so that the user doesn't get bored too quickly
  • continuing on the topic of minimizing user interaction there could be a button to "just play a random movie" removing the burden of decision making from the user , this way the user doesn't actively choose a movie, it is assumed that the user will stop the movie if he doesn't like it later on, what is great about this is that it will increase exposure of movies the user does not think he will like based only on the promotion material (title,poster,trailer and "word of mouth"), watching movies is a passive activity, it is only natural that the process of choosing a movie be as little involving as possible ~~ mythvideo-at-domn-dot-net ~~
  • Keep in mind that many mythtv, and by extension, mythvideo users already have a sizeable collection of sorted movies. So setting up mythvideo should more easily adapt to a pre-existing sort method, rather than a user having to fit his movies into the way mythvideo wants to catalog them. For example: I have my movies already categorized by directories. A directory name for type of movie (DVD, adult, Divx, etc), then _individual_ directories underneath that for each and every movie. This is a very common way of sorting movies. The reason for this is that the directory name gives specific details about the the movie, whether its DVD9, divx, xvid, etc.
  • In mythvideo setup, allow a user to define categories, and allow a user to add his collection based on his already-sorted.movies to those categories. Example: If I have a directory called "adult" then mythvideo should automatically assume that every file and every directory underneath that are adult material. The same with DVD movies. I could "mass-add" an entire category of movies soley based on the directory in which these movies reside.
  • Mythvideo should remember the directory name that every movie resides in. The reason for this is that if you move your movies around, mythvideo forgets which IMDB thumbnail picture belongs to which movie.
  • ... or adding to the dir mame the IMDB magic number so the retrivial imdb script can go without any hesitation.
  • MythVideo should implement a kind of hashing method for the single file movies (ISO, avi, mpg, etc) to separate the relationship from the filename and the IMDB informations.
  • Ability to add custom filters for sorting. If I, during setup, added a category "dvd9" then there should be a filter to be able to sort by that. OR, mythvideo should display this category that I defined, so that I may browse through those movies.
  • Sort movies by datestamp while browsing.
  • Ability to, while adding IMDB thumbnail pictures to your movies, to filter out, a: movies that will never have a thumbnail or imdb information, and b: movies that already have imdb information. This way you can easily "fix" any movies that dont have this information yet, opposed to searching and scrolling through hundreds of movies already added, trying to find the broken or newly added movies.
  • Ignore underscores on title display. Filename: Foo_bar.mkv. Display: Foo bar
  • Better TV support - find TV titles on IMDB (allow users to specify filename format, maybe), in gallery view, show only one entry per show which lets you select a particular episode, etc., etc., etc...
  • Ability to sort videos by file creation date. When you rip and add a bunch of movies at once, it can be easy to forget what's new in your collection. It would be nice if there were a 'Recently added' section or at least some way to display movies by file creation date.
  • Mark in different Color (yellow etc..) Videos/Movies that have been watched before, so new videos/movies are easily distinguished from already viewed ones!
  • Different view modes for different directories, or categories maybe. Essentially looking through directories of movies it would be nice to see the Gallery view to see the imdb posters, but TV shows just need the browse or list view as no posters are available and number of episodes make the gallery view infeasible.

MythWeather

  • some Generic pluggin system to get local more detailed or up-to-date local weather info.
  • add ability to scroll through different favorite locales. I commonly want to see weather in 2-3 select places and don't really want to change my home location.
  • change from using current system to using NOAA for weather reports, I notice that they are more reliable than places that take their data and reinterpret it to be what they want to try to make a few $$. Not to mention that NOAA does experimental forecasts by lon/lat for every location in the USA.
I second this - Data from NWS updates faster, is more accurate, etc - XML SOAP service available http://www.weather.gov/xml/
  • I agree with both of the above, perhaps combining them into something like http://www.weather.gov/forecasts/graphical/sectors/ where it can give me my info normally, but it'd be nice to be able to see what the weather is going to be like in other places like if I want to go do something outdoors and need to figure out where it's dry or sunny or even where it's windiest.
  • One glaring hole in the program is a forcast for today. It's great to say what the current conditions are, but that can usually be determined by stepping outside, it doesn't help me decide if I need to bring a raincoat or if the game is going to be canceled, at the very least, how about a screen for today similar to tomorrow?
  • Cache weather data locally - even if it's only for an hour or so. Don't download it every time.
  • Get system to download weather data in the background so that the user will never have to wait it.
  • Honour the http_proxy environment variable, or should allow a http or socks proxy to be set up elsewhere. (also applies to MythNews)

MythWeb

  • One button click to run mythfilldatabase
  • Show the real file name of the each recording example: 1005_20070217223400.mpg
  • Add ability to transcode a recorded program
  • Add photo album support to MythWeb (something like JAlbum or gallery)
  • update mythweb to graph TV usage/watching over time. Include time tv is on, most watched channels, most watched programs, most recorded programs, link to logs of mythtv usage per day
  • Add option to MythWeb "backend status" to bump encoders out of LiveTV into "local" (i.e. - you left the TV in livetv mode, and nobody's watching)
  • Add option in MythWeb to send a line of text to MythNotify - like a one-way page (probably most useful to add under backend status - where you can see that TV is on, and someone is likely to be in front of TV)
  • Add search by title, actor, keyword, and new shows options to MythWeb. When searching for terms from mythweb, I would like to have them stored as search terms in myth GUI for future reference.
  • How about rendering a mythtv page or set of trees based on a bluelava webpage or config and using a lynx/elinks like navigation? That would suit me fine and would provide a great solution for integration without reinventing heyu, br, and bluelava.
  • Template Engine for Mythweb, for a easier way to create skins.
  • Compatability with non-apache server daemons (such as lighttpd)
    • I have mythweb working fine on lighty. All that is required to make mythweb work with lighttpd is to create the necessary rename rules in your lighttpd.conf. Unfortunately, since lighty only reads one config file, it's not possible to have a drop in configuration, although it might be possible to provide a text file with the configuration that the user needs to put into their lighttpd.conf file...
  • Recognize program categories (in program listing) independantly of interface language (ie 'Doku' should not only show up as documentary when interface is German, ...)
  • Add podcast support - could use the [MagepieRSS] library.
  • Use Mythweb to control a front end by web interface, for those with wireless Tablet PCs.. Equally, Mythweb pages don't seem to render in Pocket Internet Explorer or Opera for Windows Mobile 2003 SE, it would be really nice if they did.
  • Ability to change the job queue (remove a job from the queue, stop a job, etc.)
  • Ability to manipulate recorded programs -- eg, transcode, toggle auto-expire, view when it's on again, etc.
  • MythWeb weather should use data straight from NWS instead of from weather.com - NWS updates faster, more accurate, etc - XML SOAP service available http://www.weather.gov/xml/
  • In the Recorded Programs view, have at least one of the program fields show the full filename of the recorded file in the URL (i.e. when filesize is selected the URL is http://myserver.mydomain.net/mythtv/recordings/1031_20060502183000_20060502190000.nuv)- I think the 0.18 version had a link like this.
  • Add a "short" option to the "Recorded Program" view. Omit the image, description and flag list so that each entry is only one or two lines long on the screen, sort of like the "Upcoming Recordings" screen.
  • Currently, the image, title, and subtitle fields are all links to the actual mpg file. Make one of these a link to a new screen or pop-up window with all of the details about the recorded program from the database.
  • Add the "original air date" field to the end of the description for each item in the "Recorded Programs" view which has one.
  • Add RSS feeds for more information to MythWeb, similar to what MythWebRSS does.
  • Ability to use MythArchive through MythWeb, making it a fast way to select recordings.
  • Setting to only show first 30 or so entries of each listing that Mythweb shows (if you have 200+ recordings you can wait for ever for a page to build)
  • Ability to modify MythMusic Play Lists
  • Split the chan-edit page into pages of 30-40 channels per page since when having more than 100-150 channels it becomes horrible slow and above 300 channels it's impossible to do anything useful via that page. And sql-queries, in all their glory, should not be a requirement to modify channel-info :)
  • To simplify the initial setup of mythtv the following ideas might be useful. (all from the chan-edit page)
  • Ability to add the missing channel icons through MythWeb.
  • Add a way to update the Videos list through MythWeb (as is, the Video Manager needs to be accessed through the frontend for this to be updated. Setting the Video browser to automatically update the list does not seem to update MythWeb's list - only the frontend's) This is helpful to monitor podcast/bittorrent imports.

1. Button to get a snapshot that opens a new window with an image from that channel so it's easy to identify what channel it is.

2. If you have run a tv_grab of the channels you have via xmltv without having the correct xmltvid's you get a dumb list without any freq's. Skip to display those but use them for a dropdown menu that you then can use to select what a specific channel is, and set the name a and callsign too from the xmltv data too. This should probably be an option since it can still be useful to get a plain list that you just then type in the freq's for the different channels.

  • Add ability to use rrdtool to graph things like hard drive temp, processor and memory usage, hard drive space, disk i/o, network, uptime, etc. I have a couple of scripts that accomplish this, mainly from other sites, but they are not polished and don't integrate with mythweb currently.
  • When scheduling a recording to have the ability to change the order in which user jobs run. With the current interface you have to run jobs in a strict order, it would be nice to be able to run User Job #4, then transcode, then User Job #3, then commflag, etc, etc, instead of being locked into the order of jobs.
  • Add flash video streaming for recordings/videos. This would allow for game consoles, such as the Wii to use the web browser as a MythTV frontend. Here's a collection of scripts that accomplishes this.
  • In the keybindings section - Some way of seeing which keys are free to bind. I can see this would be in the keys.php file, but my php is too basic and not object oriented. Will try to get a book to dig this up if I can [added 2007-01-29].

MythFlix

  • Add ability to add movies to Netflix queue.
  • Make MythFlix completely configurable from Mythfrontend

MythArchive

  • Add ability to deinterlace MPEG2 files. Let user select this, as some HDTV signals say they are progressive, but they broadcast interlaced in a progressive "wrapper"
  • Add ability to crop video image screen. Some HDTV broadcasters add black bars on the right and left of the older 3:4 format screens to make it fit the HDTV 1080i transmit signal. Allow cropping on right/left and top/bottom of video program. Some older programs have about 6 lines across the top that are not video information.
  • Ability to cut video that is of a specific aspect ratio without the need to transcode the original MPEG2 (useful for older 4:3 programmes that have guaranteed 16:9 adverts), in a similar way to how ProjectX does it.
  • Ability to order the programmes in the menu, so that for a series/season the episodes are in order.
  • Although the DVD themes/styles released together with MythArchive are quite pretty and stylish already, the pre-defined menu backgrounds and audio clips might not be suitable for all types of recordings. Hence it might be nice to let the user select from a collection of background images (perhaps taken from MythGallery?) and menu music tracks (from MythMusic?) and dynamically insert the corresponding paths into the selected theme xml file. (In the old MythBurn web interface this was quite easily acomplished by just dropping all your background images and audio clips into the right MythBurn installation directories and re-installing MythBurn, which was, from my point of view, way easier than editing xml files manually...)
  • Pleeease bring back those animated menu thumbnails we used to enjoy with MythBurn...! [Implemented with Ticket #2667 -- thanks! :-)]
  • Another feature that I really miss in MythArchive, as compared to MythBurn, is the automatic re-compression of recordings in order to fit on a DVD. In case this gets re-implemented, it might be smart (though time-consuming) to determine the re-compression factor after applying cut-lists since this usually shrinks recordings anyway. [Heureka -- just realised that this feature is already implemented in the 0.20-fixes branch! :-)]
  • I would really like to see subtitle support in the burned dvds. Since mythtv already has information about the different subtitles/languages in the stream perhaps this is something that could be used by mytharchive? I would really like to see a list of available subtitles next to the "use cut list". That way you could easily select the subtitle you would like to include in the dvd. Project-X supports extracting subtitles to ".sub" format which is also supported by dvdauthor/spumux to add subtitles to a mpeg2 video stream.
  • Support for splitting large files into several smaller files when burned in native format. I like to burn my HD recordings the same way they were broadcast so as to not loose quality, but can't burn anything larger than ~4GB due to ISO9660 level 3 limitations. Another possible alternative is to add UDF burning support which supports larger files, but I've had troubles with some large files on this too.

MythWelcome

  • Currently the Tuner status section of the display shows the status of only one tuner then flips to the next, instead it should scroll through a continuous list of all the tuners. The current method wastes screen space by showing only one line for idle tuners, making you wait for ages for it to get to the active tuner/s. An alternative may be to bunch all of the idle tuners into one page so that the user doesn't have to wait for it to flip through several pages.
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