User Fanart (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Inker
- Start date
United States of America
I'm thinking of adding support for fan art @ MediaIcons.org - Media icons for your media center, avatar and buddy icons
What do you guys think?
What do you guys think?
- December 6, 2004
- 2,055
- 318
- Thread starter
- #264
The general question is do we even want automatic downloads of fanart. It's only supported by specifc skins, some users don't like them + the filesize is relatively large.
Assuming we do, well, preferably they will be hosted at thetvdb.com, but that might take a while (if ever), so it could be an option. Can you handle the bandwidth of many daily queries downloads? Consider if you offer this not only MP may use it but other htpc software as well and you can quickly get lots and lots of traffic.
API: We would need seriesID + (optionally) season index. How about voting?
- Moderator
- #266
I think there should be categories as well, one for each of the different skin layouts. That way you are not going to get fan art that was designed for Spinsafe Resolve if you are using Xface or Monochrome. This same rule can also be applied to other HTPC software.
Sometimes Fan Art is good displayed in all skins, if that is the case then that skin belongs to all categories. I think is would be wise to also look into the future with more n more displays supporting 1080p. I have tested a few of the fan arts displayed in Spinsafe 1080 and you can really make use of the extra space if wanted.
I think automatic downloading of Fan Art is good but what I think is better and more bandwidth friendly is do something like XBMC does with Series/Season Banner selection. That is, have a menu option for the selected Season displayed that says 'Browse Fan Art'. When this option is invoked, a browse window is displayed that shows thumbnails of the available Fan Art for the current skin and/or all skins. This would query the server rather than look at local cache (possible option here).
When you upload the skin, there could be some checkbox which list out the different skins for HTPC software, Art Resolution 720/1080, Series, Season etc etc. This information gets added to the database, it doesnt matter what you name the file as all the information needed is in the DB so the server can rename if needed. The HTPC plugin can query the db using the API available to get what you want.
Damien
Sometimes Fan Art is good displayed in all skins, if that is the case then that skin belongs to all categories. I think is would be wise to also look into the future with more n more displays supporting 1080p. I have tested a few of the fan arts displayed in Spinsafe 1080 and you can really make use of the extra space if wanted.
I think automatic downloading of Fan Art is good but what I think is better and more bandwidth friendly is do something like XBMC does with Series/Season Banner selection. That is, have a menu option for the selected Season displayed that says 'Browse Fan Art'. When this option is invoked, a browse window is displayed that shows thumbnails of the available Fan Art for the current skin and/or all skins. This would query the server rather than look at local cache (possible option here).
When you upload the skin, there could be some checkbox which list out the different skins for HTPC software, Art Resolution 720/1080, Series, Season etc etc. This information gets added to the database, it doesnt matter what you name the file as all the information needed is in the DB so the server can rename if needed. The HTPC plugin can query the db using the API available to get what you want.
Damien
- Moderator
- #267
I mentioned this about a dozen pages back, but since it's come up again, if we are talking about automatic downloads from a central server, I'd go with bittorrent. Setup a server that stores .torrent files rather than .jpg files. There are several open source bittorrent libraries, so you could integrate a mini torrent client in the plugin itself. So that way everyone would be downloading fanart from each other rather than one central server where one person has to foot the bill. You could even setup an option to turn the feature off if people arn't comfortable with sharing a tiny bit of bandwidth from time to time, you'd just have to make it opt out for it to work well.
This obviously is not nearly as strait forward as image hosting, but it would alleviate the bandwidth problem, and it would scale very well.
This obviously is not nearly as strait forward as image hosting, but it would alleviate the bandwidth problem, and it would scale very well.
one idea could be when a user uploads a fanart an auto thumb is created ( relatively small in size so in order the tv series could preview it while inside mp)
then the user might be able to select which ones to download for the specific series so he wont have to download the whole bunch.
so when he chooses which ones he wants he gets to get the actual big fanart and not the thumbnail.
my .2 cents.
then the user might be able to select which ones to download for the specific series so he wont have to download the whole bunch.
so when he chooses which ones he wants he gets to get the actual big fanart and not the thumbnail.
my .2 cents.
- December 6, 2004
- 2,055
- 318
- Thread starter
- #269
So Fanart will be supported by thetvdb.com:
FanArt backdrop support added to XBMC's skinning-engine? - Page 3 - XBMC Community Forum
FanArt backdrop support added to XBMC's skinning-engine? - Page 3 - XBMC Community Forum
I don't think they are there just yet. I would guess the bandwidth would be prohibitive. Most of the images I do are capped at 2Meg because that is the limit on spuck's site. A plugin that can interface with spuck's site is still the best option, in my opinion.