Shoot, missed the window to edit. 2 things i forgot, after playing around more with it. 1, I would like to see the 'Feature Presentation' low res. snapshot get removed, ruins the whole quality of the skin. 2, Move the on screen info when playing a video more to the top instead of to the right side and about 3/4 to the top. Seems very out of place. Or at least AT the top, and centered. Volume looks fine currently. I also noticed (looking at my LCD display) that it's showing 0-1MB freemem when using "ICONS" view, and around 6-7MB when using "BIG ICONS" view. I mention this in case, i didn't notice other skins getting quite this low. I'll double-check though.

Idea's to replace the "Feature Presentation"
1- Noticed using a bad,low-res animated pic, maybe you could replace with a film,"(3). . (2). . (1). .,blackscreen" effect like a black screen showing the 3-2-1 countdown til a movie starts. Lower res wouldn't look that bad since it's already low detail with that going on.

or

2- Have the semi screen look currently still there, but have it fade to black, then switch to the chosen menu. (similar to showing the screen, like current but without the Feat.Pres. picture showing up, and then having the screen turn dark like the lights are going dark in theater.)

Some idea's to think about at least.

"QUOTE"Idea's to replace the "Feature Presentation"...

NO WAY! This feature is what makes it stand out more. The 3-2-1 feature has been used time & time again in other skins like unleashX. Maybe a little more higher res though. The skin is amazing.

1st, it hasn't been used time and time again, 2nd, unleashx ISN'T a skin. Ouch. It doesn't blend with everything else, due to the quality, and the way it does it.

1st, wrong! I used to make skins for unleashX. 2nd know what your talking about before you say something.

Umm, who's words were these? Your need to know what your talking about. Your the one that said it. Read it again before you talk the walk. If you meant the wrong thing, then fine, but YOU called unleashx a SKIN, so yes i DO know exactly what i'm talking about. Maybe you MEANT to say "skins FOR unleashx", which would've been correct, but you didn't, hense the reason why i called you out on YOUR exact words. Don't cut others down for a simple mistake on your end. I was simply joking about you calling it a skin. ALSO, who WOULD care about how many skins for unleashx that have that when this is XBMC forums? Back to the topic now please

I've never seen a 3-2-1 countdown in an unleashx skin before... maybe give us an example of all these skins? and even still thats not the issue here. Don't need to always get in fights, the main issue here is a disagreement about the "feature presentation" ... I personally dislike it and agree with djdafreund. the Back-row skin is an otherwise amazing skin, but when you go from an amazing looking skin to basically a low res animated screen shot that visually has nothing at all to do with the skin's appearance it, in my opinion detracts from the skin.... maybe upscale the rez for the picture and make it visually more similiar to the rest of the skin so that it's not like a foreign object in an otherwise great skin...

Personally, I do think the 3-2-1 would be great... maybe an opening of the curtains to reveal that oldschool grainy black and white 3-2-1 animation.

Yeah I agree it does look out of place - to be honest I only put it in there because I was so surprised that gifs worked at all and I was all excited

I've done something else to replace it and kind of gone for a movie trailer green classification screen thingy that appears over the white screen.

I did try a countdown style gif but I thought that looked just a cheesy as the Feature presentation gif. But you never know I might alter it again.

That's sounds cool (green thing), or even just have it kind of look like the screens turning black to ready for the movie. (lights going out.) Anyway, looks great, and thanks again for your skin. Lovin' it.

I cant download the skin off of that 4share thing, keeps sending me in a loop.

Could you please host it on a less malware/spyware infested site. Thanks!

Yes, it was a typo. Unx is a dash. I have created skins in the past using the 123 method. Here is one I just made for the xbmc. lo res example. Also the skins I made arn't for download, either are the ones I paid for before learning to do it myself from "BOA".

http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/7688/featureru6.gif

"I've done something else to replace it and kind of gone for a movie trailer green classification screen thingy that appears over the white screen"

Don't look right. The way u had it was fine. Maybe higher quality.

No more animations

I'll code it how I want

Hi

I've updated the skin to include an old black and white style movie countdown gif in the home screen selection which is sort of projected onto a white movie screen. /fairly pleased with how it looks now.

Also I've tried to address the small icons view running out of memory problem that djdafreund mentioned (scaled it back a little bit basically) - seems to be running okay (for me now at least anyway).

Anyhow, once again, thanks for reading and hope you can check it out.

Cheers

Just tried it. 1st of all, thanks a bunch. That looks SO MUCH better!!!!! Not to be picky, but if possible just for tweaks sake, what would you think of the idea of speeding up the new gif, just so it's a little more faster. I don't know what setting you have the speed on now with the gif file, but it seems longer then it should(almost like double-time length in seconds). Even if it's slightly faster just to make it work right, since it's the overall effect it's creating, rather then now it's looks great but yet creates a longer delay, or should i say it's almost double-time counting. Just food for thought. Either way, i still think it's great, and is exactly what i was hoping for. Thanks for adding that, big time. Looks great, and fits SO much better.

I notice in the icons view, it's still showing some blank ones, i don't know if it's because i am using 256x256 icon size, just so they look better when using 3d cover art, as well as list view w/big pic on side, and Big icon view.

Yeah I can speed up the gif a bit - that's not a problem - I'll experiment a bit.

The icon view thing is a worry though - I've got my advancedsettings.xlm running with the 512x512 icon size toggle in place - and I can see all my tilted 512x512 icons showing up fine in regular icons view. I saw the odd blank one in the earlier version but this one seemed to fix it - for me. Weird - I'll check it out more tomorrow.

Thanks for considering the speedup. Will make it perfect. I double checked my thumbsize, and i AM also using 512 size. Must have forgot i changed it higher from 256. Currently i have an average of 90-100 movies. And after further checking. I noticed that when the icons (especially LIST view.) are mostly blank, my LCD show "Freemem: 0MB" or "1", so it looks like something having to do with caching/running out of memory to check. I think one reason other skins i use don't have this effect is due to some views not showing close to as many icons on screen at once. Like a lot show, guessing from memory, 10-12 icons or so, verses 18 with yours using 'Icons' view.
But when in 3d cover, i notice a random blanked out one or 2 when flipping through, and mem shows 3MB Free. Hope this helps. I could always resort to using 256 for now, which still looks ok i guess. I'm using it on an HDTV 80 16x9 projector display in my theater, and also on my 37inch 16x9 HDTV in my room. (720p on both, 1080i with pictures)
Update- More researching, noticed that in LIST view using xTV, it doesn't show any missing icons, but in your it does, my guess is the difference of that your skin shows big icon on left (like xTV) AND small thumbnail icons next to each title in list, so it's using more memory. (Never drops below 31MB Freemem using list view in xTV, verses 0-1MB in list view with Back-Row) And also, it does also drop 1 or 2 icons as well in xTV in Icon view, just not as many though. Hope that all helps.

oh that's even stranger then as I have no problems at all in list view - it was only ever a problem in small icons.

I've got a similar amount of movies and am running it in 720 - what screen size are you running in?

Oh right just caught your edit - so is it a 1080 thing do you think?

No, i'm using 720p, only my pictures are set to use 1080i. I'm deleting my Thumbnails\Video files, and setting my thumbnails to 256, and will try it again to see how thats effecting things if so. I'll post my findings though. Very weird indeed.

Also the coverview is flawless in xTV. I also noticed no animation with this build. But the above states there is? I just get the black & white screen?

I would double check your installation. Just to be sure, since the animation is definitely there, and is working just fine. Looks much better then then last one we saw. Fits much better too. I'm happy at least.

Here's some testing.

View_____256 Thumbsize used____512 Thumbsize used
========================================
List__________22-23MB Free___________2-4MB Free
Big Icons_____25-26MB Free___________2-4MB Free
Icons________15-16MB Free___________1-2MB Free
Jukebox______21MB Free_____________15-17MB Free

And i did notice that Freemem would change a lot as you scrolled down the list. IE- It started off in one case 12MB Free, and almost each time (in jukebox) i moved one over to the right, it lowered to 10, then 8, then 6, then 4, then stopped at 4, and sometimes i noticed after that, hitting the trigger right for a half second or so, it jumped back up again to like 11-12, and did it again if i move left or right spots.
Maybe actually a XBMC bug? If so, i can post that finding in the bug forum. Maybe for now i'll use 384 Thumbsize for now, which still looks good, just not quite 512, but still looks good either way for now.

OK, last update for the night. Wish i could edit previous ones. Sorry.

View_____384 Thumbsize used
=======================
List___________17MB Free
Big Icons_______18MB Free
Icons___________9MB Free
Jukebox________19-21MB Free

Since i found out that a few other skins also blank out/run low on memory of xbox, just not quite as much though as Front-Row skin, not by any BIG difference of course, maybe like 4-5 missing at most while going through jukebox view, instead of 2-3 using 3d cover view (same thing.) of other skins.
It seems as though for now, that with a big video collection, Thumbsize at 384 is a good blend, and removes this from happening, and at 384, the icons still look pretty good when viewing big, and in 720p res.

Thanks for the info dida. But on another note, I installed the update to 3 of my xbox's. And all 3 don't show the animation. So the problem isn't on my end. I'm using a 4.3 tv if this helps. Here is the screen below I get instead of the animation? Infact since he added the countdown I have not been able to see his animation? All other skins work flawlessly. I do like how he finally fixed the coverview properely.


http://img234.imageshack.us/img234/9735/screenve1.png

Make that 4 xbox's? My buddy just downloaded & installed. Same thing for him. No animation? He told me sharpe has it set most likely for bigger tv's. & thats prob why its not working.

works fine on my other 4:3 tv - could it be the build of XBMC being used?

I'm using the newset build? Thats weird bro. I can't explain it? But I sure would love to see the animation in action. I have a copy of the old build with animation still. But the views are not as good as the recent updates. Thanks for responding. All three xbox's are chipped with the SmartXX One soft modded, my friend.
x2.5035.137 bios, running current xbmc on the first three xbox's. My friend still running his old ass EvoX with x2 4981.06 bios.

Ok, just got home and tried it using plain ol' NTSC 4x3, and the animation is working fine still, so it's definitely not the skin, as long as it's the most current one your using, which i'm sure it is, so the skin can be ruled out as the problem. How bout trying some other things.
Redownload newest xbmc, or if you build it yourself, build one again, and re-copy your files over from smartxx's ftp program (Ed proggie.) so you can make sure all files are able to override. Also, since i build my own, i noticed (1st time actually i've seen this), the other day when they added the new IMDB enhanced scraper, it wasn't working, and noticed it was one of 4 files in all that didn't copy over properly, so i recopied, and it was fine. So double checking files is another good start.
Also, it doesn't hurt here and there to delete the directory (Front-Row) skin and copy the newest back over from scratch. I'm hoping one of those works. Xbox installs aren't exactly rocket science on one hand, but when things aren't going right, it would baffle me too. Hope that works out for ya buddy. You'll like the countdown, it looks nice!!! I can't personally think of anything else other then what you may have already done (The basics of completely resetting all XBMC stuff properly, deleting CACHE, etc.) Good luck!!!

Thanks bro..I will give some of your advice a try.

Thank you Sharpe, and thank you djdafreund. Problem now solved thanks to you both.

Someone throw me a towl...I'm drooling everywhere. "LOOK AT THE NEW COVER VIEW"

Cheers - He's meaning this little graphic I added to the video coverflow modes - nice suggestion thanks for the idea.



I've also made the video coverflow views a bit bigger for 4:3 mode.

oh and here's a picture of the countdown screen when you make a selection in "home"

sharpe do you think you can upload the skin on an different site?im having trouble with the curent one

sure no probs

http://www.sendspace.com/file/pf753s

thanks mate

Hi again

Here's another update - I had a request to include a TV section on the home screen, so I've done that. You can toggle between defaulting to Library mode (which is what's it's intended for) or regular video files mode in the skin settings.



Cheers

It does not work bro? Whatever is showing on the movies tab is always displayed on the tv tab? U can't choose what u want with out it showing up in both areas. xTV had the same problem, thats why I never really cared using it. Hope u can fix this, for it has been an ongoing problem for most skins I have used.

It works with the Library mode

Forgot to add you can disable it from showing in skin settings.

This keeps just getting better and better Sharpe!! Thanks for that. One thing i just noticed after playing with things more and more, maybe a bug, maybe not. I noticed the countdown is random almost when it's playing. Sometime you go into something, it shows "5-4-darken" sometimes it shows "3-2-darken", sometimes it shows "2-1-5-darken" oops. Wanted to point this out in case it's fixable, since i didn't notice this trail with last update. Or at least it always started at 5. But i do want to add it's much nicer timewise, quicker, and more fitting.
I'll feel odd if you come back with "Weird, i didn't modify that yet", since it's definitely doing something different with newest update. Haha.

Also noticed, when in cover view, in movies, when you bring up the dialog box. after like 3 sonds, you'll notice the "NOW PLAYING" overlay appear over the middle cover. Don't know if it's the way xbmc is coded, hense a glitch, but it might actually look cool if you could have that normally displayed. Maybe try it and see if it looks cool to always have that overlay on. Just a though.
And also, would it be possible to add or replace something in the dialog list (the one to allow changing views) to "Movie Trailers" when in library mode, so we don't have to loose that functionality? (Preview doesn't seem to do anything currently)

Maybe a toggle button added for some people who may not like the now showing feature. I personally love it, so do all my buddies on game night last night. Thanks Sharpe for the help. I forgot to delete the guisettings in xbmc, now when entering the tv home menu, it does go directly to the tv section. Coool. I hope in the future there can be something done about having the tv section by itself. An xbmc issue. I like how u add the toggle section for peolpe who want to alter just a touch.

Thanks for the feedback and for spotting a few things mate.

The Gif is a very weird thing - It's something I keep working with but it's like it has a mind of it's own sometimes. I'll keep tweaking it.

The Now Playing overlay is on a 2 second delay - I tried it appearing all the time but it made the coverflow scrolling look a bit "wrong" to me - I've changed the banner timing so that it apears after 2 seconds along with the movie poster case - after you settle on a selection. I kinda like that personally - However, like Maximus says, I could always stick a skin setting toggle on it or something.

Good spot with the movie trailers option not being there in the library mode - I've fixed that - cheers.

@Maximus - glad you got the TV option working in normal file mode as opposed to library mode.

If you name your Movies source bookmark in normal video file mode as Movies it will default to that bookmark in Normal file view mode whe selecting "Movies" from the homescreen

and..

If you name your TV source bookmark in normal video file mode as TV it will default to that bookmark in Normal file view mode when selecting "TV Shows" from the homescreen.

Hope that might help.

Thanks.

QUOTE: @Maximus - glad you got the TV option working in normal file mode as opposed to library mode.
Yeah. If I back out then everything in my movie sectiona appears in the tv section. So I just stay in the tv folder for the tv home screen. Here's a little tweak I did with your new tv png file for the media folder.

http://www.4shared.com/file/25896260/d0116...l?cau2=403tNull

Hey Sharpe Thanks alot for the TV section. This skin has come a long way ( youtube Video)
thanks again

What did u update?

Just some changes to the different colour themes.

Hi Sharpe,

Last week I discovered your skin and I love it

Here are some things that I would change:

- Can there be a button to scripts from the main menu screen?
I think its a few steps too much to get to scripts.

- remove "settings" from the main menu scroller, it somehow looks akward seeing that toolimage when flipping
through the menu. (maybe you could put it under the same button as scripts?

- Would it be possible to only have the curtains/countdown timer work when selecting "Movies" and not the
others?

well thats it, i love the rest.

Thx for reading

QUOTE:Would it be possible to only have the curtains/countdown timer work when selecting "Movies" and not the others?

No way. That effect looks to sweet the way it is. Also I for one, would not like to see a srcripts section added.
I never use them, nor do any one I know. I also enjoy the settings tab, because I changed all the main icons.

Hey RSkillz - glad you like the skin mate.

I'll have a look at a few things and see what I think although it's 3 steps to scripts. Down, select and select or you can always bookmark the ones you use in the submenu as well.

I think Maximus is right about the curtain transition though - I don't know I think it would make it look unbalanced.

I can probably add a toggle option to remove settings from the home screen and put it in the sub-menu - It'll just take a while.

I've also just added another view to Videos - a DVD cover wrap list. Kinda looks nice with the new gradient theme backdrops.



Cheers

You can never go wrong with adding views. It makes your skin that much more superior.

Oh yeah, when u get around to it, could u please add that toggle button for the now showing? My buddy's a weirdo, but hey each to there own I guess. Nice updates btw.