Set standard backdrop? (1 Viewer)

[Felias]

Hi there,

I got a feeling, that this is something that's already possible, but i haven't been able to find the answer. So: Is it possible to set a standard backdrop that is shown whenever there is no individual backdrop available for the movie? It kinda sucks to have just a blank screen available.

Thanks a bunch,
Felias

 

[Darre]

If you know how to edit xml's you can just change the default background to whatever you like. You can even set it to be a multiimage, meaning it randomly picks a image from a folder of your choice.

Don't have MP anywhere near here so I can't really tell you the excact thing you need to edit; but it's located within movingpictures.xml

If you can't find it in there I suggest you look at Moving pictures skinners guide over at google code.

 

[Felias]

If you know how to edit xml's you can just change the default background to whatever you like. You can even set it to be a multiimage, meaning it randomly picks a image from a folder of your choice.

Don't have MP anywhere near here so I can't really tell you the excact thing you need to edit; but it's located within movingpictures.xml

If you can't find it in there I suggest you look at Moving pictures skinners guide over at google code.

Hi Darre,

thanks for the answer. And this will change online the backdrop of movie detail-pages for movies that do not have a current backdrop? Because i don't want to set one background for all movies, i just want it for those movies, where there currently is no backdrop available...

 

[fforde]

See this post, use that XML but change the texture to whatever you want for your regular backdrop. Doing a cycling one requires a different kind of control, but the conditional visibility should be the same.

 

[jonaskp]

About this, could the plugin include a default background of some sorts? THis could be some sort of a logo, a really cool movie Backdrop (perhaps with screens from diferent movies) or something similar?
It's just that the grey background gives a very bad look, when coming from other movies with great backgrounds. I know, I can just change it myself, but you are building the ultimate movie-manager-plugin, so why not make it perfect "out-of-the-box" ;-)

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

How about the ultimate backdrop like showing a montage of faces of all the famous actors\actresses, from Laurel and Hardy onwards, hmm, now going to see what i can find

 

[fforde]

While these are mostly skin issues, I see your point. The default skin is only a temporary solution, but it is still what a lot of people are using right now. I will see what I can do with the next release.

 

[marvenius]

you can also copy a select set of moviebackdrops and use it as stated in this: Moving Picture Public Beta: 0.5.4 - Page 20 - MediaPortal Forum post ;D

 

[pzycho]

First off, awesome plugin. Just a quick suggestion for this issue. I don't really know enough about skinning to implement it myself, but perhaps on the movies that don't have backdrops there could be some way to show a bigger version of the poster. I think this is the best solution because while I agree that the gray isn't the prettiest option, it would be confusing to go from backdrop matches to no matches.

In an ideal world, it would be easy to grab a screenshot from the video files, but that sounds like a plugin all by itself.

 

[fforde]

First off, awesome plugin. Just a quick suggestion for this issue. I don't really know enough about skinning to implement it myself, but perhaps on the movies that don't have backdrops there could be some way to show a bigger version of the poster. I think this is the best solution because while I agree that the gray isn't the prettiest option, it would be confusing to go from backdrop matches to no matches.

In an ideal world, it would be easy to grab a screenshot from the video files, but that sounds like a plugin all by itself.

Using a larger cover image is very easy to do, see here.

EDIT: I for some reason can't get the link right. Just scroll down from where that link takes you.

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As for displaying a random backdrop when the selected movie has no backdrop, I looked into it a little and there are two options, both requiring a code change.

Really I feel like the plug-in should be passing the skin the path to the backdrops folder. Then the skin should use this path to create a multiimage object (essentially the same thing that Aeon uses for it's cycling backdrops). The only problem here is that the multiimage code does not support absolute paths. This blows the whole idea out of the water. I don't really feel like there is any reason to not allow absolute paths, so I created a patch for core.dll (MediaPortal itself) and submitted it over here.

If I don't get much of a response over there, or the MP team decides not to implement it, and you guys really want this feature, I will consider going the second route, adding additiional code in Moving Pictures itself to support random backdrops. Not my desired course of action, but we will see.