New: Video Backgrounds for MP2 (1 Viewer)

[morpheus_xx]

New Skin Feature: Video Backgrounds for MP2

Thanks to an idea of @chefkoch I extended our BackgroundManager Plugin to support video backgrounds. If you don't know what I mean, check the beautiful clips from http://dreamscene.org/.

The videos are played in background and will be auto-repeated. The video can be selected by the user in the settings section (Settings -> Appearance -> Skin -> Video background). Currently only the Reflexion skin makes uses of this feature.

The development is done in https://github.com/MediaPortal/MediaPortal-2/tree/EXP-VideoBackground, but I hope this extension of the BackgroundManager plugin will be included in MP2 Alpha 2 .

Some screenshots:


You can also watch a short clip here or check out the branch mentioned above.

 

[tourettes]

This is a quite eye catcher for the public. I remember lot of MeediOS users drooling over the feature when such was announced on their forum.

Here is some future ideas (some of them might be already possible):

• Allow multiple videos to be specified (either as a playlist or as different view background) - for example having a "dynamic" weather background based on the weather could be quite nice (
  ,
  etc.)
• Build a custom DS source filter (maybe source for LAV splitter) that can handle the looping on DS level. This would improve the clip boundaries so there wont be any missed frames (on a loop the timestamps would be adjusted for the next loop)
• Allow fade out for the BG video when starting a video
• Allow skin to specify / provide the background video without user have to configure it (I can already imagine how huge downloads we are going to see for the skins when

And a bit related area - we should try to find a open source DirectX based visualization library. Such could be used in similar way as video clips, but in more dynamic nature (just think of the wave that @morpheus_xx has used in the show case video, but instead of it being a "static" video clip it might drop few jaws tp the floow when starting a music playback it would come alive).

 

[JoeSmith]

great feature -> this will make mp a lot more "sexy", at least when showing off to friends ;-)

 

[Spragleknas]

Holy crap! The vid looked smashing!
I guess it will chew CPU....?

Oh, and could you possible attach a zip with the plugin? (Not everyone is playing with github )

 

[blair_haynes]

Very, very cool. Ability to have this dynamic based on what's displayed on the screen at the time would be cool - as already said, for example the weather.

I think the backgrounds only need to be very subtle in their changes, like Windows Media Centre. Just makes the screens look more "alive"

Keep up the fantastic work!

 

[MaxMan23]

Cool, thats what i am looking for. It would be greate if every Menu can have its own Video. So you can create cool effects like changing things on a tv.

Or thomething like that:

Or like this

 

[Arturas1976]

if this would be fast enough could be animated menu switching done. Cool to enter main menu items and have visualizations as dramatic as those examples

 

[mpsam]

The changes on the TV screen suggestion by MaxMan3 is interesting. Consider those 3D background screens that had been done for the home screen, A cool effect could having the image come out of the screen to become 3D when the menu is entered and returning to 2D on exit. That would be cool.

These backgrounds

https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/3d-background-images-for-basichome-screen.90749/

 

[Dragy]

Really cool feature! Now we can have Playstation 3-like menu.

Download here: http://rocketcheetah.com/2010/11/playstation-3-waves-animated-desktops/

 

[chefkoch]

@morpheus_xx
Should we stop or pause the video background if MP2 is minimized?

@Lyfesaver74
Would it be possible to create an MP2 default background, which can be included in the installation, using some effects from the videos for the blogs?