Tinted Glass Skin Development/Support

[rorsdors]

Haha, aeroglass, subdued light - thats exactly wot I've been working on for my 1920x1080 LCD. Thought this screen may be of interest. Will seem dark on a CRT, but just right for my Samsung LCD

[mememe]

Haha, aeroglass, subdued light - thats exactly wot I've been working on for my 1920x1080 LCD. Thought this screen may be of interest. Will seem dark on a CRT, but just right for my Samsung LCD

That looks great. How long have you been working on it?

[rorsdors]

On & off for a couple months on the graphics & resizing my existing screens (Sidsjuke3). I am also adding movie, picture and video functionality to this version.

[Marbles_00]

For the track add, track play, album add, album play...etc, typically these are usually events you tie to buttons, so the user opens the track list screen/overlay, they have an option of pressing a button to select a specific "mode" of operation (I'll say it like that) to play tracks/entire albums, or add tracks/albums to the playlist. Then any track will then be added to the que/playlist, or automatically played depending on the "track mode" or an entire album will be added to the playlist, or automatically played depending on the "album mode" selected.

That being said...and if I'm understanding you correctly, you don't want to use the Events selection in the catagory state, nor the typical Item/button Event tab. Most likely you will want to add a track add event to the Screen Enter event found under the Skin Edit/Screen tab for that overlay screen. That way by default, when entering that overlay, you should be able to add tracks to the playlist. Then have additional buttons on the overlay to select play track/album or add entire album.

I hope that's what your looking for.

*EDIT*
Oh by the way...nice looking skin.

[mememe]

I ended up just assigning a click event of music>add track and it works perfectly for what I was trying to do. I just have winamp setup to auto play whenever a file is added to the list and none existed previously, then the track is removed from the list after it is played. I'm adding a clear playlist button for if I want to play a track immediately and there is alred a queue. I might try doing it the other way, but right now I'm focused on TV integration so I can get rid of MCE all together. As long as I can listen to music, I'm fine for now. I'll shake out the details later.


I don't suppose you have any insight on my "music viewer" problem?


Does anyone know if it is possible to have xlobby use a SQL database instead of the .xml method?

[Cabinetguy]

Hi,

Just wondering how you got your coverart for tv series?

Thanks,
Brian

[mememe]

http://thetvdb.com/

I'm slowly, but surely, writing a plug-in using their API to scrape the site for the art and series/episode information rather than relying on a spider. It's an open source project designed specifically for HTPC users and projects like xlobby. XBMC and Meedio both use them for that reason. It also has the advantage that they don't change the site in order to keep people from getting the info so once written, the plug-in shouldn't become obsolete.

[Cabinetguy]

Thanks for the link.
They have great cover art and banners.
Looking forward to a plug-in. I sure wish I could code so that I could help out with some of these projects.

Thanks,
Brian

[mememe]

I've been working on this whenever I have free time. Realized I hadn't updated in a long time so here are some pics of my progress:

main menu

main movie window

movie viewer (overlay)

main music window

music viewer (overlay)

music controls (overlay)

playlist editor (overlay)

now playing (overlay)

main tv show window (recorded shows and dvd collections)

tv show window (inside a series)

tv show viewer (overlay)

main pictures window


As you can see I've made some changes since my last post. I decided that the use of "glass" was getting way out of hand and decided to subdue it's use some. There is still a definite "glass" aesthetic to it, and all overlays are partially see through to carry that over without actually having to use a glass image. Bascially, I've stuck with my original goal designs but found a much cleaner way to approach them. I've also allowed the movie/tv/cd artwork act as the main focal point of the user's attention (based on my friend's reactions).

I've vastly expanded the music capabilities. It originally had play/stop functionality only. It now has equalizer access, full controls, a playlist editor, a now playing window, and the ability to add individual tracks from the overlay track list window. I haven't decided how I want to handle the sticky buttons (e.g. up, down, delete, etc) for stuff like the playlist editor so I haven't made graphics for them yet. That is next on my list of things to do.

The tv section, which is DVD collections and recorded shows, was revamped because I didn't really like the banner look. Now it uses mini 16/9 "TVs" instead. I've also begun using all of my own screens and series art now, but am still refining my spider for tvdb.org to scrape the series info.

The movie section is pretty much the same, just some minor tweaks and the uniform change of the overlay. I still need to add more info to the overlay page since the top bar no longer shows when the overlay is active.

Pictures is the same with a minor face-lift to match everything else.

Stand up comedy and music videos are sections I've begun working on, but are nowhere near finished.

Things to do still:
--------------------------------
finish coverart for all movies and tv
edit databases for uniformity
rewrite metamask for proper import of files (almost done)
add live TV functionality
optimize for network usage

Any suggestions, comments, or ideas are welcome.

[mememe]

I finally got a chance to change some of the button styles and such. I also overhauled the "selected" image, and fixed certain elements. I also changed the "glass" for the databases and such as well as adding a tinted "glass" to certain elements to tone down their brightness. The times new roman type was getting old, and was always meant to be temporary, so I added a new font.

Personally, I like the new look better. It seems to carry the glass theme while not being "in your face". I'm interested in comments on the font. Does anyone find it hard to read, etc?

I realize that my personal choices are rather dark and may not show the glass effect to their fullest, so I created a screenshot with an alternate background to demonstrate that the entire feel of the skin can be changed with a simple background change.



The buttons have a slightly opaque rectangle behind them for readability, but the color of the rectangle can be changed to fit any color scheme. I'm just partial to the black tinted look because it fits my goal of this being used on my first gen plasma which doesn't like bright static images. I'm keeping maximum flexibility for changing the theme a top priority. As it is now, the skin uses about 7 images total, and can be completely changed to a new feel within about 5min with minimal effort. All I did for these two was change the background image. Took about 5sec.

I'm thinking I might let others try it out if the want to. It would help me discover usability issues I may not have forseen. Please let me know if anyone would be interested. I'm pretty much at the debugging and final polish phase of the actual creation. My next task is to add a fully integrated TV/PVR/Guide function for it. Any pointers to others that have tried would be greatly appreciated. As usual, comments, questions, and general feedback are always appreciated.

[lar282]

Really cool work. I'll be willing to try it out if u want.


//Lasse

[mememe]

I'll take you up on that. I'm actually following your directions for integrating tevengine3 right now. I'm just wondering if 127.0.0.1 (loopback) is acceptable for an ip if running everything on one machine, or do I need to keep it set to my machine's actualy ip? I would just prefer to use loopback because I can still use dhcp for address handling, but I can set it up as a static ip if necessary.


I could also use someone's help with the import metamasks. I'm having trouble understanding the syntax used. All of my files have the following naming scheme:

\TV\seriesname\season\seasonnumber epnumber - filename.xxx (xxx == file extension)

for example

\TV\Angel\Season 01\S01 E01 - City of.xxx

When I use the default mask I get the full file path for both the <display> and <name> values (e.g. \Angel\Season01\S01 E01 - city of) . Ideally I would like it to parse the information and enter it into the database this way:

\TV\<series>\<season>\<epnumber> - <name>.xxx
(the items in <> are the only values I want or need)

Is there a tutorial or a thread on how this works, or could some kind sould explain it to me?

[lar282]

there's a thread about loopback in mp's forum. Can't remember what the deal was. Best is always(I think) to have a static adress for the htpc.


I use tvseries like this

True Blood
-------------S01E01.fgdfg.dfgsdfg\filename.mkc
-------------S02E02.sdfsdf.sdfasdf\filename.mkc


it's the point . that is important. Works for me(in movies). In recorded tv I use differently. I have a flat structure there.


//Lasse

[mememe]

I'll set it up as a static IP then. Thank you.

However, I can't seem to get that far. I get through the configuring the tv server part, but there is no xlobby.xml file when I am done. Has something changed?

[lar282]

I'll set it up as a static IP then. Thank you.

However, I can't seem to get that far. I get through the configuring the tv server part, but there is no xlobby.xml file when I am done. Has something changed?

It should get created when u enable the plugin Xlobby in the tv server!
Enable plugin
close tv server
see if it's there


EDIT:Make sure u look in the correct dir. They changed it all so now the files are under the profile. there's a button in the tv server config that takes u to the directory.:EDIT

//Lasse