That sounds great, go for it! - I'd try to go for keeping the resolution down to 1280x720 though - otherwise I think the xbox really will struggle. Would you drop me an email and let me see them mate? - to be honest I pretty much switch the curtains off myself and using various backdrops these days but still it would be nice to update the old look.



You're welcome.

Are you meaning you'd like to use TV show posters within DVD cases instead of wide banners for the TV shows? If so that's not something currently available in the skin - I could make it an option I suppose....hmmn - let me get back to you.

Ok, cool. I can use 720 resolution, that will still make things look a lot better then now. Hey, were did you get all the backdrops? I downloaded about 3 gigs from somewhere (can't remember now) but lost them with a system restore unfortunately.

Update- I did grab about 300-400 images since then i found on some good spots, but wondered which ones you use. I always use the fanart views in the individual modes myself, but for the main screen, it would be cool to have a fair amount to flip through for the sections.
I got a bunch of movies, some tv shows, and some weather ones. I don't get games because i only have 2 and a number of emu's i use once in a while.

Yeah, like you, I use a load of movie, TV and music fanart images and then just various backgrounds I like for the other home screen options and the menu wallpaper. I'm running it on a mac mini these days and it seems to work well.


@ hubemx - I've added a skin settings toggle that lets you use posters for TV shows instead of banners if you prefer. The default setting is to use banners.

I hope you can do it.
Thanks.

I have done it - go into settings then skin options - browse down to view options and click "TV Show Banner / Poster toggle" <---that will swap between using Banners and Posters in the library TV Fanart view.

Wow....I hope some updates are coming soon? The media skin is the top one out right now.

Got another function to add Sharpe. An overlayed alphabet letter that displays as your going through the media list, like in PM3. As your scrolling through the long list, it shows the letter of what order you are in as your scrolling.

Like when your on "GoodFella's" and the next movie title is "Hellboy" as also the 1st title of H's, it displays an "H" in the center of the screen so you know which letter of the list your in when scrolling fast.

Hi mate - that sounds like a good idea - I've just added it. It shows the letter in the lower left corner when scrolling fast. I've also improved the fanart transitions from image to image.

How's your curtains coming along?

I might have to pm you an image. It's not looking quite as good as i was hoping actually. The resolution is there, but the detail isn't quite as good as a was hoping, still better then now. I dunno. I may have to end up searching for yet another. I'll see what you think 1st.

Wow, it's been a while... this skin has come a long ways since the last time I've checked this thread. Good work to all involved.

Shame on you!! Were have you been? I haven't seen much of you for a while. Hope things are going good with you. Nice to hear from ya again.

@Sharpe,
Ok, found a bunch more, but really there is 1 that i think will work out perfectly, and also the seats image i am going to redo. I want to give it more a classy, proffessional look to it. A little more like your in a theater. Not a huge change or anything, just a little more nicer of a theater look, and of course definitely higher quality since we need to move our skin to the next level. I noticed the video progress marker is still missing. I was thinking you said you fixed that by noticing an image wasn't right or something like that. Actually though, in the media graphics, it looks like it's also the same color red, which would definitely be hard to see, but even then i would think when your scanning forward you would still see SOMETHING, even if a little line. I am going to mess with that and see what i can come up with. I finally have some more free time to do some changes now. Work has been really crazy for a while now, which is good but yet bad. So i will be working some more now.
1- Countdown, will brush up on and make higher quality ( of course both 4x3 and 16x9)
2- Make the HQ curtains (Main, sliding dual's, left side favorite's.)
3- Better looking chairs HQ, and more rows giving the illusion of depth.
4- I will try to see if i can make the 'Now SHowing' graphic border if depending on how it looks.
5- I'll look at a lot of the graphics and see what i can vamp up a bit.

The fan art views you have been tweaking alot looks really terrible, wow. I am completely kidding of course. Gotcha!!! Seriously, i am liking the differences i am noticing in speed on the xbox version. No problem of course on my pc version. I don't know what you did the past day or so, but the other day i was noticing for a short while too, that it was showing blank covers here and there with memory at like 0-3, but trying it today, it seems like it really doesn't drop much below 7 megs that i've seen so far. So this is nice!!! Pretty much stays between 7-16megs. I was about to see if we could drop just 2 or something covers to help this out (which i definitely didn't want to have to resort to asking, since i LOVE having 9 COVERS shown.) That looks so beautiful having the whole bottom showing movie covers, and makes finding movies so much easier when scrolling through a big list. And the speed of showing the fan art while looking is actually getting pretty decent.

I wondered what you thought about changing the red stars to maybe yellow or just something a little more visual to see in the info board above and to the right? Kind of a bit on the dim side currently.Maybe same with the other words "Director, Year, Rating" It sort of clashes just a little with a black background, and darker colored words.
The images i am talking about with vamping up, (Curtains,chairs,etc.) aren't really much bigger in file size then right now. I think the curtains is like 700+-kb but the resolution is 1033x768, so the quality is much better, but not really much bigger filesize wise. I know, I AM keeping that in mind since we're still using the xbox's. I need your e-mail again if you can drop me a message. Had to redo my whole system because of a major overhaul. Now everything i throw at it runs lightning fast, even Crysis runs beautiful, and that's a MAJOR challenge to all.
I'll save your e-mail this time. Sorry

Talk to ya soon!!!

Hey competes2win - good to see you mate - thanks for the encouragement!

djdafreund - that all sounds really excellent, I'm completely down with all those ideas. I'll send you an email and we can compare stuff.

As for the skin's movie fanart view working better on the xbox now - yeah good, I'm glad it's performing better. I've been using "platform xbox" visibility conditions to try and make it work better on the xbox compared to other platforms and "not visible when scrolling" conditions to speed up the searching thing. Like I said I've been using the skin on a mac mini for a while now and, obviously, what works fine on that doesn't always work fine on the xbox - so it takes a while to get a decent compromise in place.

Hey Sharpe,
Could we add another view (or just modify case wrap2, since it's mostly the same as Plot List view anyway.) for movies that will basically be just like 'DVD Case Wrap', but with a little smaller DVD covers, and then add 1 more on each side, making it show 7 instead of 5? I was just getting the idea from the FanArt view, and how good it looks with a bunch on the bottom, but only for this view you would just have 7, and no FanArt showing, and still in the center like DVD Case Wrap view is now. And make the DVD in the center a little bigger then the rest (IE- More then currently, since it will be a little smaller when doing this, it still stands out a little more then DVD Case Wrap view does.

I will be doing some work on this tonight (graphics we talked about, then i will e-mail you them when i am finished with them.)

Here's a few mockups to get an idea. The lower part can either be blank, or an info banner. If an info banner is used, it would be nice to be able to have at least plot, MPAA rating, and length of time. That way it's easier to scroll through the list and see that without going into the movie info just to see, for when kids come over. Easy glance.






I did a mockup of no banner at bottom (same as DVD cover), one with a banner and basic plot info, one with Plot/MPAA rating/Runtime/Year, and with all but spaced differently and with no banner background.

Yep that's a great idea fella - I really like second mockup best so I've gone ahead with that one for now.



I've actually altered the DVD Case Wrap 1 view (the 5 cases) as I think the second wrap view is more distinctive being left as 3 cases. Oh well see what you think.

Oh and superb work with your replacement curtain graphics they look very good.

Yeah, that looks nice buddy!!! Would you prefer the 1st line to be there, or at the bottom since it will mostly be longer in text then the others, and more will appear in the black then instead of partially in the reflection of the center, and also it would be more properly laid out.

I still have some more images that i am about to try uploading again. I started get forced drops from the skin's SVN last night after the 1st 4 images i uploaded. Hopefully it lets me now, now that it's been a good 12 hours or somewhere around then. The weather background will need some code position changed since i made more canvas to allow me to have the top part open. I'll start tweaking them more now that i finished them. Until they 'look just right '

Good work mate - those replacement images look good.

Oh btw, I've made an alteration to the 2nd dvd case wrap view (shrank the cases and included a fanart backdrop).

I noticed that. I was honstly going to request (with my other view you changed) a view to have something similar but have the fanart behind it, but thought "Eh, don't know if you'd go for that idea", and 1 day later, i saw the SVN change with that exact view done!!! LOL. THAT'S just crazy man!!! Thanks for doing that. Looks great too.
I did notice the overall moving between is smoother in the normal FanArt view then this new view with fanart background, i dunno. Was thinking it should be the same, if not better since there's less stuff on the screen even.

It's that telepathy thing again I think.

I've changed the way it scrolls to match the other fanart view so hopefully it should now be the same.

Added HQ theater seats, and more rows to give a more realistic feeling of being at the theater. Something i realised though, currently the objects are darker in appearence and get lighter when you select a choice, but seems backwards. Should be reversed so when you click something the curtains and chairs get darker as the screen opens and shows the countdown, like the lights are dimming.
Also, which graphic is the proper one for the seekbar progress notch, and is it still coded to be used? I want to take a whack at making one, as i used that a lot and of course it hasn't been present in a little while now.
And, are you cool with me fixing up the 3 bottom buttons a little, as currently it's very bland with them all being black and white, then turning the highlighted one deep red? I was planning on keeping the metal part all in tack, but giving a little proper color to them, and making them look more like a lit up version of it when selected.

New theatre chairs. Looks good except they are way to dark?

There actually not. That's why I was just asking about that above. XBMC is dimming them and the curtains, then when an option is selected, it slowly brightens them as the curtains open. It SHOULD actually be reversed so both are brighter, then go darker as an option is selected.

Nice work mate - looks good!

Okay I've done something with the lighting - basically it's constant now. Until I figure out a way that looks right.

Proper graphic is named "seekbar-marker.png" and yeah it wasn't coded to be used (it is now if you want a crack at it).

Totally cool with any changes to those buttons - go right ahead.

djdafreund maybe its my tv then. Also u never got back about the fanart info.

I was agreeing that it was darker then normal, but what i was saying it that it wasn't the image that was the reason it looked that way, the skin darkened it, for an effect, then slowly turned it bright when something was selected, which is why i mentioned that was sort of backwards of an effect. It should have been lighter, then got darker when something was selected, like the way lights in a movie theater go dim when it starts.
Sharpe made a change since that fixes that anyway, sort of until the darken effect can be changed, from the older lighten effect.
I'm sorry, what was the question you asked again? Very busy with some stuff on this skin and mostly stuff with FoF related things i'm working on.

I'm sorry, what was the question you asked again? Can u give me a small step-by-step method for setting up Fanart? I have read all sorts of stuff, but nothing ever works 4 me. No movie or tv show info or backdrops ever happen 4 me. Please help bro.

Sure, here's some help. You almost don't have to do anything for it to work, since it's mostly all automated and does everything itself. But here goes-

-Go into your movie source, choose 'Set Content', choose IMDB, go into settings (of this scraper), make sure 'Enable Fanart' is enabled, that is it for movies-
-Go into your tv shows source, choose 'Set Content' , choose TVDB, go into settings ( of this scraper), make sure 'Enable Fanart' is enabled, that is it for tv shows, you do need to fresh rescan in most cases for it to properly re-grab the fanart now and everything else.

If you don't see these options BTW, goes back to main rules, 'Make sure your using the most current version of XBMC', but i am sure you are already. There's nothing else to have to do for this to work, other then choosing the FanArt View obviously, or DVD Cover 2 view now. Not to sound harsh, since i don't mind helping people, but since it's an X-S forum rule, this honestly isn't the correct forum for that question, and has nothing to do with the skin, should have posted it in 'XBMC Forums' or help area, since it's a XBMC related question, not skin related. But anyhow, that's the answer still. Now go have some fun with it!!!

@Sharpe
Hey, on the marker note. Which file and location controls the size and position of the marker image? Currently it's (the test one i made temporarily) just a 10-25 image, and it's being displayed pretty wide and also 3/4 worth below the progress bar. This will allow me to make the changes and also tweak the image to make it look good.

@Sharpe
Update. For now i just made a quick sample, even though the size and position is all weird, and needed to ask you something that is erratic behavior since you might already know why it's doing this.

When the bar segment is all towards the left side of the seekbar position, the red progress bar is quite a bit over to the left of the marker. Then as you move it over to the right, by the center position of the bar it seems to be properly matched up with the red bar, then continuing toward the right side of the bar it is a bit farther ahead of the marker. Almost like the whole seekbar was stretched to fill the entire screen, and that's what causes the alignment issues with the marker.
If this is the case, i would just recommend to make the same stretch sizing adjustments to the marker code, so they will be the same, since i also definitely prefer the current look of the seekbar filling the whole screen (left side to the right side.) Gives you more control that way over skipping through a movie by having it wider like that.

Quote:should have posted it in 'XBMC Forums' or help area, since it's a XBMC related question.
Thanks for your help I'll try it out in the morning. I have posted it in the right forum before but no one responded. Alot of people don't really care about helping others. But not you big guy. Thanks

djdafreund, first off there is no such settings on my xbmc? No option for enabling fanart anywhere? Also all my xbox does is constantly bring up a little dialog box that says enter move name? Even after I name it, the box continues to pop up with no movie info or fanart? & yes i am in library mode when doing all this. This is down right frustrating. I have tried several movies, the last one being "COLLEGE".

in that case, thats telling me that your using an old version of xbmc then. always make sure your using the most current version. that explains why you dont see those functions, and since the scrapers changed, why your also its not able to retrieve any titles. go grab the newest tech release and you will be just fine.

I'm using the newest version? But I don't see any of those options u mentioned in the skins settings??

No, i didn't say under skin settings, i said under the scraper settings of both TV Shows and Movies. What revision xbmc of SVN or TECH build are you using? Also are you using the latest version Back-Row? If you are of both, under both scrapers you WILL see these settings.

Hey Sharpe, i was wondering about the 2 following as some idea's.
1) Possible to have the tv banner mode (2 rows of 4 i think it is.) actually made so the banners show bigger, so they fill some more of the screen, having less space between each. Make the banners 20% bigger or 25% even, and make the selected one be 15% bigger (20 goes a little off the screen actually because of current size difference), and instead of the black border at bottom being black, use the 'plotlist' view's shading lowing image would look good. Or even make them bigger yet if we can still have it look right for the selected choice one looking a little bigger then the others and still look right. That would make it look a little more like a wall view sort of.



2) Having the view showing episodes. ('Plotlist view') either changed, or better yet have 'Plotlist 2' view and have it show more thumbnails on the screen, like 5 instead of 3, easier to scroll through looking for the one. And can even make the lower info dialog show more of the info to fill more screen. Like adding "First Aired" and "Season # / Episode #" info or something just for idea's. Just doing some thinking.

Maybe even have an option to display the FanArt behind instead of the curtains. I like the curtains myself, but might like the choice of showing the FanArt instead also. I guess it depends if it ends up looking good or not.

Good ideas mate - I've just implemented them in the SVN.

Yeah man, they look great!!! Good job I'm picking heads or tails on if it's fitting for the fanart or curtains that looks better though now that i am seeing how much of the FanArt is being covered. Maybe an option if possible? I dunno. I love the views though. Thanks.

Yeah you're right - I've just done some work to make the fanart a bit more visible in the TV section of the view.





/Still a bit of a work in progress but it's in the SVN if you want to check it.

yeah, that looks great buddy!! I honestly wasn't even thinking about using transparency for the big bottom section, nice thinking!!! I might recommend to have just a little less transparency on the thumbnails though. Otherwise it looks great now. Thanks!!! I guess we could add just a LITTLE tranparency to the film strip border this view maybe. Not much,just to the point where you can just start seeing the background through, not quite as much though as the bottom bar (I love the bottom bar now, shows the FanArt through very nicely, yet can easily read the text still, very nice touch ).I might do that just to sample and see if it turns out ok i guess.

Hi Sharpe!
Do you remember me? I've been away from here for a while, but always using your excellent skin.

I just updated it to the last version. I'd just like to ask for some little tweaks, if possible:

- can you make fonts for the 4:3 version a little bigger? Especially in the options screens it's really hard to read
- would be possible to have the "time bar" (don't know how it's called) in video and music OSD in red instead of light blue? I think it would fit better with the rest of the skin colours. If not by default, at least in the red theme of the skin.
- there is a way to get rid of the "plugin video" source among folders in the "Movies" section? I tried to remove it, but every time I go back there it appears again.

Thank you very much for your work!

Uli666

Hello mate - course I remember you how's it going?

I'll have a look at the 4:3 fonts and see what I can do. - To be honest I need to set some time aside to update the 4:3 version to match the new changes to the Widescreen version.

Yep I also plan to update the "themes" and will make the red theme have a red seekbar.

The "plugin video" source is a weird one - is this in file mode or library mode? Do you get this source appearing in other skins or just Back-Row? Might be an XBMC thing rather than a skin thing.

Hello!

Thank you for having an eye at the 4:3 version too. What does it miss compared to the widescreen version right now? And also for the red seekbar, would be a good touch imho.

Yes, the "plugin video" is really weird. It is in file mode. But I think you are right, it happens in other skins too, so the problem should be on XBMC side...

Let me know when you'll update 4:3 and seekbar!

Thanks a lot!

Uli666

bummer, i just got it changed to blue because of having too much red and because it seemed to deep a color anymore with all the updates we are currently in process of doing, and now were switching back? oh well.

On no mate sorry - he's meaning the red theme that's available at the alt download link - it's a separate xpr to the default one in the SVN. I like the Blue too!

Ahhhh yeah, i almost forgot all about THOSE. Whew!!! That's a relief to hear. Cool. I know the weather screen needs to be code tweaked still for the new screen i made just in case you haven't checked it out yet.

Nice one - I've updated the weather labels to fit the new background.

The blue doesn't go with the theme? Need to put red back in.

Yes it does. You don't know what we're working on. It was WAY to much of all red, and with all the changes we've so far done, and are in process of, it will end up being much more even and balanced. You can still use the older red texture pack if you prefer, but you will be missing out. We're moving forward to making this constantly better, and improving this all the time, everything red isn't fitting things anymore, just hang in there though.
Did you ever update your XBMC like i said to be able to see those options? Hopefully that helped. It clued me when you said you didn't see those options, even after i mentioned to make sure you were using a current version, that it wasn't possible to not see those options as long as you were using a current version, so hopefully you decided to update it, and found those options. It's SUCH a nice feature!!! Take it easy, and hope I helped.

OK, just finished and added the new buttons for the bottom (moving down at main screen.) All 4 buttons. There is only 1 thing left to do, which is to add the blueish glow/glare on the ring just outside the inner button.

@Sharpe,
I am going to make a new mute button from scratch, and a higher quality resolution, which is most likely going to look bigger until the code is changed to compensate. I will e-mail you when i finish so you know when to make the adjustment. The current is 32x32, and the new one will probably be 3-4 times the resolution, but i'm not sure just yet, i'll let you know. I already have the speaker image, which i did at 344x344, which i can reduce to maybe 120x120 or if you want to use something like 200x200? Just lemme know.

The buttons look great mate. Your call on the sizing - just shout when you've done it and I'll have a looksie.

Sharpe, now that atlantis is released for xbox. Can u help me modify the xml in your skin to see my icons that are custom made for my movies. I have 3 xboxs, but have kept one in tact without changes. Its the one with your old skin. This skin has the custom xml's u used to do for me. Alot of the movies on there look choppy? So I was hoping u could help me with the 3 xml's so i can enjoy my custom look, as well as an upgrade to the codecs. Thanks alot......Love the skiiiiin...

Sorry mate - not been keeping up to date with the forums recently and I missed this. It's finding time that's the tricky thing these days. I'll see what I can do when I get more free time - it's quite a fiddly thing.

Anyhow just thought I'd mention I've done another update - mainly just adding fanart to the List View and speeding up the fanart transition in Plot View. (Always tricky getting the compromise right on the xbox between making the list move smoothly and the fanart delay).