adding a mask to fanart (1 Viewer)

[2BitSculptor]

Thought I would pass this along to skinners.

I was able to successfully add a mask to fanart, so I wouldn't have to create an overlay. With an overlay above the fanart, I sometimes noticed the fanart flashing momentarily above the overlay in the transition from image to image, as well as visible edges in non-widescreen, or panoramic images.

The mask allows me to show images of differing aspect without the annoying edge showing in tall images or square (artist thumbs) from Last.FM, used by the fanart handler in NowPlaying, Last.FM and other areas. The mask fits to any image regardless of aspect. and all my fanart now plays nicely in the background without having to artificially stretch the image.

I ran into a small problem, but can be worked around. The size of the mask can inhibit the display of the fanart, so experiment until you can find a balance; even 720X440 sized masks can cause interference, eg., not all images display in full color depth or just appear as a slight ghost of the image.

Not all skin designs will work with this method, but you can get pretty creative with the mask. I'm using a rectangular vignette, with rounded corners, for my purposes.

- Chuck

PS..... Just wanted to thank the team for implementing this feature in MP 1.2. I had asked for it a couple years ago, and although it was intended to enhance the display of thumbs in Music and Videos, it is nice to see it has other uses.

 

[XTails]

I'm not sure what the limitation was you're describing above but i think it might be related to a problem i'm having.

I've been busy trying to add latestMediaHandler support to the skin i'm running (Fidelity) and all is going well. Up to the point where i wanted to change the mask for an image. Even though i'm quite sure it's a valid mask-png it will make the thumb disappear entirely instead of masking it. Now i'm still strugling with "skinning" so i try out some stuff to see what's wrong.

It turns out that when i assign a mask-png that's used elsewhere in the skin it applies correctly. When i use my own file it doesn't. When i simply rename the working file and point to that it doesn't work anymore. When i rename my own mask-png to the the working file it doesn't work either. lastly, when i remove the working file from the \Media dir and point to that it still gets applied.

I can't see the logic behind that so i'm hoping one of you can help me out to get my own mask applied.

Thanks and greets