4:3 skin ::: aMPed 2.0 final (3 Viewers)

[Latvian3Dman]

Thank You for your help, Dadeo. Got weather working on home pages now, nice.
About movies and their pictures. I have each movie in separate folder, and I also put there cover/poster picture in with filename "folder.jpg". MediaPortal shows them nicely (one side note, XBMC also shows picture if it exists in folder and is named "folder.jpg"). Its just that i really liked big pictures showing up on the left, when I browse folders in list mode / share view. Picture was in DVD-cover proportions. Now its smaller and that window is kinda "letterbox" (or how is it called) proportions. My JPGs still showing in that small window, but very small. I am thinking go back to older version, but then I like those new features that 2.0 final has. Any workarounds maybe?
Thanks!

 

[jamiro]

Thanks Dadeo,

I only use Radio, and LastFm (and not very often) as far as other music plugins go , so I have moved those over to the extras menu. I prefer to just go straight to my music collection form Basic Home. This setup is so much better, easier for the family to find stuff, and organised in a logical way now.

I am curious though, on the Amped page it mentions support for fan art in My Music. How does this work? Is is possible to see a screenshot? Couldn't find any guides or a how to. Is it similiar to what Latvian is doing above with My Videos?

Latvian, have you tried Moving Pictures for your Movie collection, it's great and supported by Amped as well.

 

[Dadeo]

jamiro - for MyMusic fanart, did you follow the instructions at the end of the readme file? Same thing in http://code.google.com/p/amped/wiki/Manual) Mind the warning about memory problems. Fanart is not officially supported in native MP, only in plugins so far. I don't use it but I threw one in for the screenshot. It only appears when music is playing. You can get some nice music fanart (artist backdrops) from Home Theatre Backdrops */*Home
P.S You could easily set up aMPed to display album covers as a background like it does in filmstrip view if you prefer that!

@Latvian - I understand your problem and I realize you are just getting used to MediaPortal. Since you have not indexed your movies, you can't use Titles view, right? They don't show up there? There are a few possible solutions:

1. Index your movies by setting up the location of your movie folders in MP Configuration - Videos. Yes it will take a while to scan them into the database, but you get a lot more info and features that way. Or you can just press F9 (info key) while highlighting a movie and select IMDB. This will download the IMDB info and index the movie in your database, then that movie will show in Titles view.
2. As Jamiro suggested, use the Moving Pictures plugin which will also index all your movies. It is a great plugin and has a beautiful interface in aMPed which supports fanart backgrounds and it is pretty easy to set up.
3. If you really want to stick with your current setup and not index your movies, you can just copy two files from the previous version of aMPed 2.0ß - common.facade.video.xml and myvideo.xml. That will give you the big covers back and you can have all the nice features and fixes of 2.0

Hope that helps! P.S. I do understand you wanting the big pictures, we made them as big as possible

BTW, both of you should enter your system specs in the UserCP (Control Panel) using the UserCP button on the Forum Menu bar. It is really helpful info when trying to get help to solve your problems.

 

[Latvian3Dman]

Thanks again, Dadeo! You are very helpful.
Changing those two xml files is exactly kind of fix i was hoping for, and it works. Kinda. There are issues. In filmstrip view that nice feature showing picture as background is lost. And, in icon view, going thru icons, filenames dont show up. So looks like i can not have best of both worlds...
I installed Moving Pictures, and it is nice of course, informative and good looking. I am just not very comfortable that i lose sense about how I organized those files in my folders and subfolders. Will try to use it some time, will see how it works when i add new movies, move movies from one subfolder to another (i have common "incoming" for all downloaded, and later i move to subfolders for genres). Moving Pictures with shares view - now that would be a blast!
And one minor question. I tried to change skin backrounds to darker black-ish ones from other skins, and by changing some files i managed to do that (each time deleting cache, i know). But again, i lost that nice background picture showing in Filmstrip view. Is it possible to change background files, keeping that feature.
Thanks a million for help! Much appreciated.

 

[Dadeo]

Oops, I forgot about those changes we made for 2.0 (background in filmstrip, filenames in icons view) Try the file attached. You can revert to the original common.facade.video.xml. What I did was copy the image codes from videotitle and import the common.facade.video.title for you. See if that works better. Who says you can't have the best of both worlds! I can't promise this file will be in the next version, so keep it if you want to stick with that setup.

I'm not an expert in MovingPictures but there is an excellent forum and google code page that provide a lot of information on it and I think about keeping track of moved files as well.

MovingPictures with Shares views? Interesting you should mention that since one of our ideas for the next release of aMPed is to design layouts like Moving Pictures for all Video views and perhaps MyFilms plugin as well. I'm not promising anything yet though!

About the backgrounds, did you follow the Customizing Backgrounds link in the Readme? If you changed the background-overlay.png to a solid background it will cover the background picture. It's still there, but your new background is obscuring it. The background overlay.png has to be somewhat transparent, as it is an overlay. To get a dark blackish background, you should change the background.png to the new one you want not the overlay. But you don't have to do that, you can add a <colordiffuse> tag to any image to alter the color. I plan to add some tips on that to the aMPed Customizing Backgrounds page. The background-overlay will still give you a bluish tinge when it is in effect. You can disable it altogether (for brighter backdrops), or you can use a different overlay, but as I said, it has to be somewhat transparent since it is an overlay .

 

[Latvian3Dman]

You amazing, thanks a lot for that specific XML file, it works great! I saved it for future in safe place(s).
Maybe I will try to play around with backgrounds later, its not that terribly important (but would be interesting), thanks for tips how to do that. Sorry for taking your time
Two small things (i promise thats last questions for today... ). I am wondering, is it just me, or is it common that My Trailers looks kinda "empty"? Only list and emptiness on the left (see pic). Or did i do something wrong maybe. And other: after installing (yeah, after, hehe) Moving Pictures, i read warning not to use universal skin version, if specific skin has support by itself. Now i wonder, do I have Moving Pictures as it supposed to look in aMPed (see pic)? Looking at aMPed screenshots in first post, looks the same, i think?
One more time big thankyous, please keep up this great work on this great skin, people still has 4:3 TVs, more than some may think.

 

[Dadeo]

You amazing, thanks a lot for that specific XML file, it works great! I saved it for future in safe place(s).

You're welcome, it only took a couple minutes, treat it as a welcome gift to aMPed.

Maybe I will try to play around with backgrounds later, its not that terribly important (but would be interesting), thanks for tips how to do that. Sorry for taking your time

It is fun to do, but you are right it's probably better to get MP set up and working the way you want first.

Two small things (i promise thats last questions for today... ). I am wondering, is it just me, or is it common that My Trailers looks kinda "empty"? Only list and emptiness on the left (see pic). Or did i do something wrong maybe. And other: after installing (yeah, after, hehe) Moving Pictures, i read warning not to use universal skin version, if specific skin has support by itself. Now i wonder, do I have Moving Pictures as it supposed to look in aMPed (see pic)? Looking at aMPed screenshots in first post, looks the same, i think?

I don't use MyTrailers, yet. So you'll have to wait for Joz to get time to answer that. He is really busy atm which is why I am answering so much, but he knows a lot more than I do.

Yes, you are using the correct aMPed layout for MovingPictures. No other skin uses the details ticker tape at the bottom - it was Joz's invention and I love it cuz it saves cluttering up the screen with data that I only check sometimes. We use it on most of the video related screens now cuz there is just too much data to fit on a 4:3 and still have nice big graphics, fanart, etc. AND be easily readable.

One more time big thankyous, please keep up this great work on this great skin, people still has 4:3 TVs, more than some may think.

Thanks for the appreciation! I agree there are still a lot of 4:3 TVs out there. That's exactly why Joz started aMPed with the larger fonts! I got so excited when I found it I offered to help out!

Don't worry about all your questions/suggestions. We really rely on feedback to improve the skin, we just can't find everything ourselves.

 

[jamiro]

Thanks for the tip on the music fanart, this is really cool!

I think I have run out of compliments to give you guys about this skin, it is starting to get a little embarasing

I second Lat on this one too, great to see quality support for 4:3. I will be stuck with my CRT TV for awhile to come as well.

 

[Dadeo]

Don't worry Jamiro, there are lots more treats in store - have you tried out background video yet (when video is playing)? You can use it on MyHome (fullscreen video button) and BasicHome (special background video button). We wanted to implement it everywhere but it doesn't work properly in MP imo because when you turn it off it reverts to the default video overlay window even if that xml has a differently defined video overlay window (am I getting too arcane?). I set it as a key on my remote (background toggle) cuz I love it, but I'm just careful to go to the home screen to turn it off so it does not end up overlapping other graphics or data. It looks very cool though and you seem to love background graphics!

OK, enough tips for the day, don't want to give them all out at once LOL!

IMO there can never be too many compliments in this world, and it is really great to have such supportive and active users, so back at ya!

I really love seeing all the 4:3 users 'come out of the closet'.

 

[joz]

Latvian3Dman

MyTrailers has nothing more to show than a list so yes I agree it's empty but there's nothing I can think of (yet) to fill it with.
I know you're going to suggest displaying the selectedthumb, however this can't be done with this plugin. Try switching to big or small icons and you know why (too long download time to get the high res images)

p.s.

The thanks button maybe makes things a little less obvious saves typing too