DOWNLOAD: Moving Pictures Public Beta 0.6.6 (3 Viewers)

[fforde]

absolutely great work!

my hand picked poster.jpg's worked after changing some settings
over 200 movies with no problems

BUT (theres always one), this happens: , and there doesn't seem to be a way to fix it

also something i'd like: "remove movie, keep file" (why does the X say "ignore files of this type"?) and "clear database"

Yeah that one seems odd with Lord of War. I tried and failed to reproduce the problem with a dummy file with the same name as in your screen shot. It gave me a correct auto match with that filename. Maybe it has something to do with the folder structure? In some situations it will pull the folder name rather than the file name. Regardless though you should be able to search with a custom search string (one of the buttons on the toolbar) to get a correct match.

I am not sure what you are referring to as far as the "clear database" text. On both the importer and the Movie Manager though, there is a button (a red X) to remove the movie from the database but keep the files on the hard drive. This essentially excludes the file from future searches. From the Movie Manager you can also reassign a set of files to a new movie. Basically send it back to the importer. This is done via the Green Down Arrow button on the Movie Manager.

 

[Twitchstick]

I'm using MovPic with Blue3wide & Generic Moving Pictures skin files. Tried to set "largethumbs" in Settings.

If I leave the thumbs on the right side (push right Button on last thumb at right side) I can't get back to other thumbs. MP has to be restarted to select/move to other thumbs. I expected to get to the next line (prefered solution) or at least to the beginning of the current line.


Other Problem with thumbs The Background/Fanart is transparent.

Hrmm your first issue sounds like a usability problem with the generic skin. I will see about getting an updated version for you. I am not sure what you mean by the backdrop is transparent though. Could you give more details?

1. Still have a problem (with Largethumbs) and leaving list right side: No more moving possible. I have to restart MP to select/move other movies.

2. With largethumbs there seems to be the title under the first row.

3. Backdropps with thumbs are fine, thanks!

I have the same issue w/ selecting movies in largethumbs.

 

[marvenius]

getting stuck on the spinners is a known issue:
Issue 191 - moving-pictures - Google Code
and is currently being worked on.

 

[Der_Bub]

getting stuck on the spinners is a known issue:
Issue 191 - moving-pictures - Google Code
and is currently being worked on.

It seems that I have to be a little more patient with the moving problem.

What about the Title in the second row: Can anybody reproduce this?

 

[carmenm]

First thing, i have been playing with it yesterday, using streamed MP and it looks really really great, so great work to everyone!
Now by playing with it i realised that fanart was quite slowing things down. So i was wondering if we could have a option to download only 720p fanarts. Because i know it s a lot quicker to load. You could use a lib to convert 1080p fanarts to 720p. What do you think? If you it is not a bad idea, i ll add it.

 

[Darre]

I like the idea of optionally resizing (or even converting) fanart. BMP's may take 10x the space, but they also load way faster, on a slow computer try to load a 1080p.jpeg compared to a 720p.bmp.

 

[fforde]

Well i am working on improving the responsiveness of the fan-art loading right now. The biggest problem is that at least with a vanilla setup, MediaPortal does not load image resources until they are needed, specifically when they are needed for rendering. Then the loading process is done in the rendering thread, which makes the GUI feel sticky and unresponsive. Especially when you are loading a large image with each button click. To partially solve the problem, in 0.5.3 I added a delay to loading fanart. This means that if you are rapidly moving through the facade, artwork will not automatically be loaded and the UI will not become slow and jittery. This of course creates the perception that fanart just takes forever to load though. Which may partially be the case, but like I said, intentionally delayed for performance.

So the solution is to just load the artwork myself in a separate thread and pass the image resource to MediaPortal rather than have MediaPortal load it for me. The multithreaded approach should allow the artwork to load pretty much as fast as the system will allow, and the UI should stay smooth and responsive.

Sorry all that is kind of technical. Basically though I am working on faster loading and a smoother interface. As for the image resizing, I think that is a good idea as well and went ahead to create an issue for that.

 

[carmenm]

Thank you very much. i love the technical details Good to know how it is coded
And thanks for the issue.

 

[mzemina]

fforde - "the loading process is done in the rendering thread..." have you though about have a very simple "please wait" or "loading..." text (BTW - I think it best if the user could edit that text) appear, like we see on websites with flash or other large graphic file loading. It would show that something is happening in the background and would allow for the delay process if the user is moving through many movies.

 

[fforde]

Thats not a bad idea, maybe a placeholder graphic that is preloaded so it could be swapped in quickly while the actual backdrop is being loaded.. I am going to have to play around with things, I think experimentation is going to be the best way to make things feel smooth and natural.