Skin With Menu Editor (1 Viewer)

VSCurtis

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Hi Guys,

I just recently completed a major cleanup and reorganization of my media library. My media library is stored on a 10 TB external USB hard drive. I have a second drive of the same size and type being used as a mirror backup. My media is broken down into the following categories Audio types are Music and Audiobooks. Video types are Movies TV Series Anime Motion Comics and Concert Videos. I am now looking for a Media Center front end that will allow me to access my various media types rather than just flipping my way through folders. I would like to have a Main Menu item for each of my media types. Accessing a given media type then presents a thumbnailed view of the available items possibly organized by genre. This is already done on the drive by using folders for each genre. Music is further categorized by Studio Live Compilation Boxed Set Demo and Bootleg folders. Clicking on a thumbnail plays the item if it's video or presents a track list if the media type is audio. I've presented this information to give you a clear picture of how my media is organized. My question is this, is there a skin available that has a menu editor that will allow me to customize the main menu to suit my media types? If so which one? Any help you can offer is appreciated. Thanks in advance.
 

ajs

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  • February 29, 2008
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    categories Audio types are Music and Audiobooks
    In Media Portal, this is one plugin (one button in home), but it can be divided into categories depending on the tags in the music. Music View
    Video types are Movies TV Series Anime Motion Comics and Concert Videos
    For TV Series - TV Series plugin, for Concert Videos - mvCentral plugin, for Anime - My Anime 3 plugin
     

    VSCurtis

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    AJS, so are you saying that the available menu items in the menu editor are based on plugins that are installed? Please bear with me as I am a newbie here and am not familiar with the inner workings of media center software other than it seems to use XML as a backbone. I'm a software engineer so I am capable of understating the techie stuff. Are there any sources that I can access to learn more about the technical aspects of Media Portal?
     

    ajs

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    Depends from skin and plugins and within the scope of the skin's potential...

    --
    WBR, ajs :):whistle::coffee:
     

    ajs

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    If you wish, you can create your own skin, skin theme. As I did, I use a Titan skin and an Ares skin-based home screen.

    --
    WBR, ajs :):whistle::coffee:
     

    VSCurtis

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    As I'm not that familiar with skin creation procedures I don't think I'm ready for that just yet. I would like to study some technical documentation if there is any available. The skin I'm most interested in is the LCARS skin. I'm a big Star Trek fan so that skin would be perfect for me visually if I could tweak the Main Menu to suit my needs.
     

    CyberSimian

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    I would like to study some technical documentation if there is any available.
    The answer is "yes and no", but mostly "no". The Wiki contains a section on MP1 skins: start with this page. But this is really a reference, and not a tutorial. So if you are new to skinning, it is likely to be difficulr to understand.

    Also, like many volunteer programming projects, the quality and completeness of the Wiki is highly variable.

    I created my own skin for MP. So far it has taken me three years (on and off), and I have completeed only perhaps one third of the base product (the third that I use). Creating a new skin is not a trivial task. However...

    Modifying an existing working skin is much easier (that is what I did). So look at the xml file for the panel that you want to modify, change something (e.g. perhaps change the colour of a text field), and then test it to see if your change is working.

    -- from CyberSimian in the UK
     

    CyberSimian

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    if I could tweak the Main Menu to suit my needs.
    One very useful characteristic of MP1 is that you can edit most skin files while MP is running. When MP needs the xml file to display a particular panel, it checks to see if that xml file has been modified on disk, and reloads it if it has been changed. So you can quickly experiment with different colours, text size, text or icon location, etc.. You simply exit that panel and then re-enter it to cause MP to load the changed xml file.

    There are a few xml files where it is necessary to exit and restart MP in order for the changed file to be used. These files are not documented anywhere. :(

    -- from CyberSimian in the UK
     

    VSCurtis

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    February 24, 2020
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    Thanks for helpful advice. I will look at the LCARS skin files to see what I can learn from them. The menu editors I've looked at seem to limit your choices to a predefined set and do not let you create your own. Why is this?
     

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