Germany
- Thread starter
- #51
Hi ziphnor.
I would love to see our plugins become one. Under the line it is just a question how managed this by keeping the functionality of both.
If I understand you plugin right, then your approach is a little bit different to what I was planning as I began developing my plugin.
The Viewmodeswichter was originally not planned to do any frame analysation. As I described in the first post I just want to switch to a zoom-mode depending on the source video format. I use a additional zoom-mode here on my box which is based on the 14:9 mode but stretches the result to fit the screen (I guess its the same like this https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/patch_new_feature_new_zoom_mode_zoom-t25507.html). I want the plugin to use the mode on 4:3 broadcast and automatically switch back to normal or stretch when a 16:9 broadcast is detected.
As I was ready with this I noticed that the only kind of signal that my plugin was not able to detect was a letterbox broadcast and because of this I integrated the letterbox detection.
Because of potential subtitles you analyse the picture from the upper and lower edge to the center until you found some content and use the result to calculate a frame that fits the whole screen. If that is right, than that means that a CinemaScope movie (21:9) will be cropped on the left and right edges heavily if you don't have any subtitles.
Here in Germany we don't have much subtiles and because of this it will look much better (from my point of view) if the "zoom" mode is used which keeps the black bars on the top and the bottom (on a 21:9 movie at least... with a 16:9 movie you will not have any bars at all).
To keep the whole functionality of both plugins we may think about the following approach:
We create a additional option (maybe a radio button, grouped with the letterbox option) for your autocrop function under the rule details of ViewModeSwitcher:
here is the screenshot of such a rule detail:
On this way the users are able to choose which detection mode they want to use.
The disadvantage for the users of your autocropper is that they have to create a rule first that enables the autocropping. The advantage is that the autocropping is only active if the current video (or broadcast) does fit the rule (important for HDTV broadcasts).
The manual crop should be still available via a remote action.
Maybe we should discuss this further at some other place.
PS: I have a much newer version of the viewmodeswitcher plugin here. It has a additional functionality to move the picture up and down while watching. You are also able to store a vertical offset for a special channel (to see the news banner of a news channel for example). The plugin is able to detect channel chances now and resets the letterbox detection and so on...
Unfortunately this has also a disadvantage... because I want to support the old and the new tvengine it was necessary to build a helper.dll (a wrapper) for each. And the users have to copy the right dll to there plugins folder.
Bye
Lars
I would love to see our plugins become one. Under the line it is just a question how managed this by keeping the functionality of both.
If I understand you plugin right, then your approach is a little bit different to what I was planning as I began developing my plugin.
The Viewmodeswichter was originally not planned to do any frame analysation. As I described in the first post I just want to switch to a zoom-mode depending on the source video format. I use a additional zoom-mode here on my box which is based on the 14:9 mode but stretches the result to fit the screen (I guess its the same like this https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/patch_new_feature_new_zoom_mode_zoom-t25507.html). I want the plugin to use the mode on 4:3 broadcast and automatically switch back to normal or stretch when a 16:9 broadcast is detected.
As I was ready with this I noticed that the only kind of signal that my plugin was not able to detect was a letterbox broadcast and because of this I integrated the letterbox detection.
Because of potential subtitles you analyse the picture from the upper and lower edge to the center until you found some content and use the result to calculate a frame that fits the whole screen. If that is right, than that means that a CinemaScope movie (21:9) will be cropped on the left and right edges heavily if you don't have any subtitles.
Here in Germany we don't have much subtiles and because of this it will look much better (from my point of view) if the "zoom" mode is used which keeps the black bars on the top and the bottom (on a 21:9 movie at least... with a 16:9 movie you will not have any bars at all).
To keep the whole functionality of both plugins we may think about the following approach:
We create a additional option (maybe a radio button, grouped with the letterbox option) for your autocrop function under the rule details of ViewModeSwitcher:
here is the screenshot of such a rule detail:
On this way the users are able to choose which detection mode they want to use.
The disadvantage for the users of your autocropper is that they have to create a rule first that enables the autocropping. The advantage is that the autocropping is only active if the current video (or broadcast) does fit the rule (important for HDTV broadcasts).
The manual crop should be still available via a remote action.
Maybe we should discuss this further at some other place.
PS: I have a much newer version of the viewmodeswitcher plugin here. It has a additional functionality to move the picture up and down while watching. You are also able to store a vertical offset for a special channel (to see the news banner of a news channel for example). The plugin is able to detect channel chances now and resets the letterbox detection and so on...
Unfortunately this has also a disadvantage... because I want to support the old and the new tvengine it was necessary to build a helper.dll (a wrapper) for each. And the users have to copy the right dll to there plugins folder.
Bye
Lars
