RobOS Movie Player

Full Interactive Walkthrough & Live Roku TV Tour: See the flagship landing page at /movie-player/ (or /video-player/).

RobOS Movie Player (packages/movie-player) is the cinema and video companion to RobOS Audio Player. It shares the exact same warm dark theater palette (#15120f, #1c1814, #26211b, #e8a33d, #f1e9dc) and multi-pane architecture, translating every audio player capability—100,000-item virtualized libraries, cloud byte-range streaming, AI playlists, a spoken Virtual Host, open-source metadata/artwork enrichment, procedural soundscapes, and zero-cloud Smart TV & Roku OS streaming—to movies, TV series, and video collections.

flowchart TD
    subgraph LibraryAndWatchlists["100k Movie Library & Watchlist Engine"]
        Scanner["Worker Thread Scanner\n(scan-worker.js)"] --> Cleaner["Scene Filename Cleaner &\nffprobe / .nfo / music-metadata"]
        Cleaner --> LibIndex[("Movie Library Cache\nmovie-library.json")]
        ArtStore[("Content-Addressed Poster Cache\n~/.cache/robos/movie-player/art")]
        Cleaner --> ArtStore
        WLStore[("Watchlist Store\nmovie-playlists.json")] <--> WLEngine["Watchlist & M3U Engine\n(AI Watchlists / Reorder / Seed)"]
    end

    subgraph CloudCinema["Cloud Cinema Byte-Range Proxy"]
        CloudProviders["Google Drive / OneDrive /\nDropbox / S3"] --> RangeProxy["HTTP 206 Partial Content Server\n(/cloud-stream/:trackId)"]
        RangeProxy <--> LRUCache[("2 GB LRU Video Cache\n~/.cache/robos/movie-player/cloud")]
    end

    subgraph CinemaStage["Now Playing Cinema Stage & AI Host"]
        VideoStage["HTML5 Video Stage\n(4K/1080p, Speed, Fit, PiP, Frame Snapshot)"]
        TransportDeck["Synchronized Transport Deck\n(react-h5-audio-player .robos-rhap-theme)"]
        Subtitles["Synced Subtitles & Dialogue\n(.srt / .vtt / .lrc / ffmpeg stream)"]
        VirtualHost["Virtual Cinema Host\n(AI Intros + RobOS Voice TTS)"]
        VideoStage <--> TransportDeck
        Subtitles --> VideoStage
        VirtualHost --> VideoStage
    end

    subgraph OutputRouting["Local & Zero-Cloud Smart TV Cast"]
        LocalScreen["Local Cinema Display &\nPicture-in-Picture"]
        CastSvc["CastService HTTP Range Server\n& CastV2 Media Receiver"]
        mDNS["LAN mDNS Discovery\n(_googlecast._tcp.local :8009)"]
        SmartTVs["Google TV / Chromecast /\nSmart Displays"]
    end

    LibIndex --> VideoStage
    WLEngine --> VideoStage
    RangeProxy --> VideoStage
    VideoStage --> LocalScreen
    VideoStage --> CastSvc
    mDNS --> CastSvc
    CastSvc -- "HTTP 206 Video/Audio Stream" --> SmartTVs

Features

1. Cinema Video Stage & Synchronized Transport Deck (Now Playing)

• Theater Video Viewport: Plays .mp4, .mkv, .webm, .mov, .m4v, .avi, .ogv, .ts, .m2ts, and .mpg files locally or over HTTP byte-range streams.
• Live On-Screen Closed Captions: Renders active subtitle cues in a high-contrast amber-bordered theater caption pill directly over the bottom of the video stage (CC On / Off).
• Stage Controls:
  • Playback Speed: Cycle between 0.5x, 0.75x, 1x, 1.25x, 1.5x, and 2x.
  • Aspect Fit: Switch between CONTAIN (letterbox), COVER (fill frame), and FILL (stretch).
  • Theater Mode & Fullscreen: Expand the stage vertically (Theater) or double-click the video viewport for native fullscreen.
  • Picture-in-Picture (PiP): Float the movie in an always-on-top Picture-in-Picture window while working in other apps.
  • Frame Snapshot (Frame): Captures the exact current video frame at native resolution to a PNG in ~/Pictures/RobOS Movie Snapshots/.
• Synchronized Transport Deck: Uses the .robos-rhap-theme transport bar (react-h5-audio-player) with 10-second jump steps, shuffle, repeat, and a Screen Output selector for one-click switching between local playback and LAN Google Cast TVs.

2. Synced Subtitles & Dialogue Panel

• Multi-Format Subtitle Parser (lib/lyrics.js): Automatically discovers sidecar .srt (SubRip), .vtt (WebVTT), .en.srt, .en.vtt, or .lrc files beside any video, or extracts embedded subtitle tracks (0:s:0) on the fly via ffmpeg.
• Interactive Transcript: Highlights and auto-scrolls the current dialogue line as the movie plays. Clicking any line in the panel seeks the video (and any active Cast TV) directly to that timestamp.
• One-Click Subtitle Import: Load external .srt, .vtt, or .lrc files for any movie via the Load .SRT/.VTT button; imported captions are cached in ~/.cache/robos/movie-subtitles/<trackId>.json.

3. 100,000-Movie Virtualized Library Browser

• Browse by Cinema Category: Collections (franchises, box sets, TV series), Directors, Movies, Genres, Decades, Studios (writers/composers), Watchlist (Loved), Recently Added, Recently Watched, Most Watched, and Folders.
• Scene Release Filename Cleaner (cleanMovieFilename): Automatically strips scene tags (2160p, 1080p, 720p, 4K, UHD, HDR10, BluRay, WEB-DL, WEBRip, x264, x265, HEVC, AV1, AAC, DTS, release groups) while extracting the 4-digit release year, SxxExx season/episode numbers, resolution badges (4K, 1080p, 720p), and video codecs.
• Content-Addressed Poster Cache: Embedded cover art, folder posters (poster.jpg, cover.jpg, fanart.jpg, folder.jpg), and extracted video frames are hashed (sha1) into ~/.cache/robos/movie-player/art/ so 100,000 movies never hold image buffers in RAM.

4. AI Watchlists & Virtual Cinema Host (Optional AI)

• ✦ AI Watchlist (src/AiPlaylist.jsx / lib/ai-playlist.js): Describe a movie marathon, director retrospective, era, or mood (e.g., “4K sci-fi double feature for a rainy night” or “short animated films under 20 minutes”). Your configured RobOS agent picks and orders films from your indexed library, falling back to a deterministic local scorer when offline.
• Virtual Cinema Host (src/useVirtualDj.js): The movie counterpart to the Audio Player’s Virtual DJ. When enabled, the agent writes short 1–2 sentence cinema introductions a few movies ahead in the screening queue (in personas like Classic Theater Host, Film Festival Curator, or Late-Night Drive-In), spoken aloud between films with RobOS Voice (or cast to your Smart TV).

5. AI & Open-Data Movie Metadata / Poster Fixer

• ✦ AI Fix Metadata (src/AiFixMetadata.jsx / lib/ai-metadata.js):
  1. Cleans messy scene filenames and folder hierarchies (Director/Collection/Movie (Year).mkv).
  2. Reads Kodi/Jellyfin/Plex .nfo sidecar XML files (<title>, <director>, <set>, <studio>, <year>, <genre>).
  3. Probes video/audio streams with ffprobe for exact dimensions (3840x2160 → 4K), codec (HEVC, AV1, H.264), and duration.
  4. Extracts a representative video frame (at 10% runtime) via ffmpeg as a real thumbnail poster when no poster image exists, or synthesizes a warm cinema SVG poster.
  5. Optionally invokes your RobOS coding agent with @skill(robos:fix-media-metadata) and writes updated tags/posters back to local .mp4/.mkv containers via lossless ffmpeg -c copy.

6. Cloud Cinema Storage & Zero-Cloud Smart TV Cast

• Metadata-Only Cloud Indexing (lib/cloud-storage.js): Indexes movies across Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, and S3 without downloading video bodies. On play or Cast, streams video on demand through a local HTTP 206 Partial Content proxy (/cloud-stream/:trackId) backed by a configurable 2 GB LRU disk cache.
• Zero-Cloud LAN Smart TV Streaming (lib/cast-service.js): Discovers Google TV, Chromecast, and Nest Hub displays via mDNS (_googlecast._tcp.local) and streams local or cloud movies directly over the LAN. Also includes the Theater Lobby Clock Display and Cast Theater Ambient Soundscape cards.

7. Tablo 4th Gen OTA DVR & 3-Row Roku OS Channel

• Tablo 4th Gen LAN Client (packages/robos-lib/tablo-client.js): Discovers Tablo 4th Gen OTA DVR appliances on the LAN (:8887), signs REST requests with HMAC-MD5 (Authorization: tablo:<key>:<sig>), and fetches sports events, series episodes, movies, and local news recordings alongside OTA guide channels (47.1 WMSNFOX, 15.1 WMTVNBC, 27.1 WKOWABC, 3.1 WISC-TV).
• Broadcast Recording Thumbnails + Live Frame Capture: Caches 16:9 broadcast recording snapshots (~/.cache/robos/tablo-images/) and automatically captures a live 640×360 JPEG frame via ffmpeg -frames:v 1 for active in-progress (state: "recording") broadcasts.
• Dual-Path Streaming & 3rd Roku Top Tab (TABLO DVR): Adds a 3rd top-level TABLO DVR tab to the 3-row Roku OS SceneGraph channel and :19210/movie-player portal, serving real-time H.264/AAC fragmented MP4 streams (/api/tablo/stream) to desktop players and rewritten native 60fps MPEG-2/AC-3 HLS playlists (/api/tablo/roku.m3u8) to Roku TVs.

8. Same Library and Watch History on Every Computer

• Portable watch history (packages/robos-lib/media-history.js): every resume point, finished episode, unwatched mark and loved title is also kept by what it is (tv:the office:s3:e12, movie:dune:2021) rather than by its file path, so another computer that streams the same Google Drive folder knows where you left off.
• Google Drive sync: with RobOS Preferences → Config Sync → Back up to my Google Drive on each computer, the player syncs its folders, playlists and watch history with the vault itself (a few seconds after it opens, every 2 minutes, and shortly after you watch something). Watch history changed on two computers merges entry by entry, so it never needs a conflict decision. Folders added on the other computer are indexed when they arrive, and the open window shows “Watch history updated from ".
• Where did we leave off?: RobOS Voice and Home Speaker answer “what season of The Office did we leave off on?”, “what episode are we on in Severance?”, “have we seen Dune?”, “what are we watching?” and “continue watching The Office”. Agents use the robos-media MCP server (node packages/movie-player/bin/media-mcp.js) or the CLI (node packages/movie-player/bin/watch-status.js show "the office"); see the media-watch-status skill.
• Control API: GET /api/watch-status?show=, /api/movie-status?title=, /api/continue-watching, /api/history, /api/shows, /api/media-sync; POST /api/set-watched, /api/play-next-episode, /api/media-sync-now (token in ~/.config/robos/movie-player-control.json).

Files & Configuration

• App directory: packages/movie-player/
• Library cache: ~/.config/robos/movie-library.json (stays on each computer; rebuilt from the folders)
• Watchlists storage: ~/.config/robos/movie-playlists.json
• Watch history (synced): ~/.config/robos/media-history/movie-player.json
• Watch counts & Loved marks (this computer’s track IDs): ~/.config/robos/movie-track-stats.json
• Managed folders: ~/.config/robos/movie-folders.json
• Poster art cache: ~/.cache/robos/movie-player/art/
• Subtitles cache: ~/.cache/robos/movie-subtitles/
• Cloud LRU video cache: ~/.cache/robos/movie-player/cloud/
• Frame snapshots: ~/Pictures/RobOS Movie Snapshots/
• Control API: ~/.config/robos/movie-player-control.json
• Snapshot debug port: 19214