Suggestion: Central Fan Art / Background Location (1 Viewer)

[revs]

With many skins now allowing backgrounds/fan art I suggest that they all share a common location for storing the images.

Currently I have 3 or 4 themes with fan art, and thus have 3 or 4 copies of all my backgrounds in each theme.

I suggest that possibly the background images are all moved to the User Data folder (where thumbs and tv logos are stored etc).

 

[ThaClown]

I agree, good idea!

 

[Darre]

Problem is with the in-built MP video, and the skins in general, that isnt easy to do. By default every folder you specify within the skinfiles defaults to the skin folder itself, so you have to \..\ yourself out. The sollution with the built-in video, and for the skins in general, is to use a folder located within the skins folder called "fanart" or something like that. I'm not sure if it can be done within the skin files of aeon to make it get its backdrops/fanart from a dynamic location like userdata. Simply because the "fanart" we use is kind of a hack.

For moving pictures this is allready done, the fanart is stored in thumbs\movingpictures\.

 

[mattsk88]

Problem is with the in-built MP video, and the skins in general, that isnt easy to do. By default every folder you specify within the skinfiles defaults to the skin folder itself, so you have to \..\ yourself out. The sollution with the built-in video, and for the skins in general, is to use a folder located within the skins folder called "fanart" or something like that. I'm not sure if it can be done within the skin files of aeon to make it get its backdrops/fanart from a dynamic location like userdata.

For moving pictures this is allready done, the fanart is stored in thumbs\movingpictures\.

You are right the location of the thumbs folder changes location depending on the operating system This makes it impossible to really have a central location. From now on music Fanart is the only real fanart ill be linking to in my skins as Moving Pictures covers fanart much better.

 

[SMa]

It doesn't have to be a dynamic location, as long as its a shared location.
If skins could just do this: \..\fanart

 

[Darre]

But we could agree that a skins\fanart folder is standard and all skinners just apply it to the skins.. But then theres the problem with the folder names inside that folder again, there will have to be a standard there as well.


edit:

It doesn't have to be a dynamic location, as long as its a shared location.

beat me to it

 

[revs]

Hmmm yes - i didnt think about the paths relative to the skin.

Maybe there needs to be a global path stored that can be used - i.e. %fanart% which is configurable via MP to point to a certain directory.

I guess this probably needs to be a post MP 1.0 item as its a new feature.

 

[VashStampede]

Maybe it's an idea to make the use of shortcuts available? Within the backdrop folder of the skin you use, you could make a shortcut to the folder where you own backdrops are located. MP then also scans that folder for more image files to use as backdrops.

No clue what is possible, but it's an idea

 

[kiwijunglist]

My music is setup as

e:\music\%artist%\%album%\%artist% - %album% - %track#% - %trackname%.mp3
e:\music\%artist%\folder.jpg (Picture of the artist)


Could i use

	               <control>
				<description>fanart</description>
				<type>image</type>
				<id>1000</id>
				<posX>0</posX>
				<posY>0</posY>
				<width>1920</width>
				<height>1080</height>
				<colordiffuse>40ffffff</colordiffuse>
				<texture>[B]e:\music\#Play.Current.Artist\folder.jpg[/B]</texture>
				<animation effect="fade" time="400">WindowClose</animation>
				<animation effect="fade" time="400">WindowOpen</animation>
			</control>

 

[Dadeo]

Revs - I think it is a great idea, I have often felt the same way myself. But I think you already figured out there are a number of issues.

In MP 1.1.0, skins will move to the Userdata folder, which does vary between operating systems. but it should mean that we can reference common folders using \..\ as SMa suggested. I am hoping that means I will no longer need a Media\fanart\music or video folder in my skin. I can reference a common folder in userdata.

You used the term backgrounds/fanart but I think it needs to be defined more clearly. There are several types of backdrops being used.

1. Fanart - which is stored in diff locations depending on the plugin. For example I get movie fanart automatically in Showtimes and MovingPictures. I can also use fanart in MyFilms and can set my own location in that case. Or I can add fanart to the skin Media\Fanart\Video folder for use with MyVideos. For Music I have fanart in userdata\thumbs\MVids\fanart and in the skin Media\Fanart\Music folder. In my skin I also use Artist Images downloaded by the Audioscrobbler plugin and stored in userdata\thumbs\Music\Artists because they often work well as fanart and who has time to download fanart for 2300 artists? Unfortunately every plugin uses a different way of naming fanart, so that would have to be made consistent before a common folder would work.

2. Mutliimages - many skins use cycling images as backdrops. These are normally stored in the skin Media\animations folder! You don't want to reference a common folder with tons of images in it for multiimages as they all have to load into memory. Plus diff skins use diff resolutions! However, they could all be in userdata\backdrops\skinname as long as the multiimage path tag can find them there!

3. Default Backdrops - more and more skins are using these, usually a single jpg file stored somewhere in the skin Media folder or subfolder. However, some skins use the same backdrop images and it might be nice to have them all in one place for skinners or users to select which ones they wish to use. That may be possible to do in MP 1.1.0 using \..\ but again the resolution might be an issue.

I don't mean to confuse or discourage the idea. I actually think these issues could be easily dealt with and then your idea would work really well.

EDIT: BTW, did you see Joz's post on LinkShellExtensions? That might be another way to go!