What skin resolution? (1 Viewer)

[tomtom21000]

best is to join the irc channel and discuss this with samsonite, harley or mrmario. they have most experience with the graphics.
i think mp itself takes care of resizing.
the higher resolution is more about the xml like having more icons of mp3´s on a screen and such.
and be aware that you have to leave a certain area at the boarders blank for overscan.
don´t ask me details, i don´t really know anything about this stuff

tomtom

 

[Boilermaker]

Hmmz, what's the output resolution to your tv? I thought making a widescreen skin was just a questiion of repositioning the objects on a wider surface, leaving the aspect ratio of the images themselves the same.

elow, if you were asking me, my resolution is 1280x720. i started out by just as you said, using the xml file to reposition the elements chaning the height and width in the xml file, allowing mp to resize some images. i think you are right, if you keep the same aspect ratio, then letting mp stretch it for you, there is no need to edit the image. but going from a 5:4 skin to a 16:9 skin, i didnt leave many of the elements the same aspect ratio, such as the buttons, because it made poor use of the screen space, and looked terrible.

its probably easiest if you see what i did, so here's a link to the skin, let me know if you have any problems downloading it or if the files were corrupted in the zip process:

ftp://www.knwd.net/mce1280x720.zip

a little note on the skin...its done for my setup so it may not look very good anywhere else, and definately not at any other resolution. (edit: after reading tomtom's post, on of the things that my not translate well in my skin is the amount of area left blan for overscan). i've redone only about 2/3rds of the skin which covers most of the things i use the most, such as my tv, my videos, etc.

 

[deecue]

Not sure How does this work for computer images displayed on that screen? Is it stretched? Cropped? Right now I output it to my tv where it displays a 1024x768 desktop.

Without knowing how you have your setup, I can't really answer that. It all depends on a few things of what software is being used and what it's doing with a video file with non-square pixels and more importantly, how you're outputting to your tv..

For example, my work is in design, motion graphics, visual effects, 3d animation, etc. At home I have a two monitor setup with a tv to the side for color correction. The TV is connected through a composite out on my video card. Now, this is just my home setup and not very professional whatsoever (i'll use an actual edit suite to output master tapes), but I know that when I'm working on my stuff off the TV through the composite, my consumer level video card is not readjusting itself to display correctly. So I make sure that when I'm seeing things on it, i know they are actually slightly wider than they are supposed to be.

Without knowing what MP does with these types of things, I can't really say. Most likely, it's nothing I assume.. Unless you work in the broadcast industry, you shouldn't have to be dealing with non-square pixels ever anyways, so I really wouldn't worry about have video files with a non-square flag. Plus, it depends on your output and what your card is doing. A simple composite or s-video out is probably not doing much to correct itself. A DVI connection to a tv may be a different story.. I dunno, I've never tried it to see what happens.

I know it sounds somewhat complicated but the best way to find out what is going on after you've gotten your display to your TV is this: Use your graphical application of choice and make perfect 1:1 ratio circle. Now, throw that up on the tv signal. Go to your tv. Is the circle still perfectly round or is now squished/stretched at all? If it's squished/stretched, then your output is obviously altering it. If it nice and perfect, then you're getting a clean copy of what your computer screens would have. Most likely everyone here will get a slightly stretched circle horizontally on the tv. (take a ruler real quick and measure the vertical and horizontal diameter of it and compare). And since that's the case, that's why MP is skinned at 720x576. Because it will get slightly stretched horizontally making it close to 768x576 or 4x3.

I'd be interested to see if anyone's messed around with a DVI connection (or some other connection) and see if they get a perfectly round circle. That would be great if it did because you could be making your HD 1280x768 skins and know that that's exactly what you're getting on screen with no stretching whatsoever.


Does that kinda answer what you had in mind...?

 

[eLow]

deecue:
Thanks for your thorough explanation. I did some measuring on a 720x576 rectangle on my TV. It had an actual ratio of 5:4. So by default, my MP shows up stretched on the TV. My setup is a common one I guess. I use the tv out of my graphics card with all default settings. Another thing I noticed is the option to adjust the aspect ratio in MP itself.

Boilermaker
Can't download the zip file. :-( Didn't think of the extra real estate that becomes available. That would mean some extra work, but a nice advantage when using a wide screen.

[edit: downloading the file now ]

tomtom
I'll give the IRC thing another try and see if I can find one of the experts.

 

[Boilermaker]

eLow, one thing i forgot to mention. if you open my skin up in full screen, i think mp will resize it to your resolution and it will look terrible. try opening it in window mode, hopefully it will open a window that is 1280x720, which i know is bigger horizontally than your desktop, but it will allow you to see what i've done at the correct sizes.

 

[eLow]

Downloading your skin didn't work. Could you email it to me? Will pm you my address. I'll check it out windowed. My desktop res 1280x960 so it'll fit nicely.

 

[azyl]

Boilermaker,
I downloaded your modified MCE Skin. I'm using LG LCD Wide 1280x768 and skin looks great. In future will be good to have wide skin format. Good job,
cheers.

 

[Boilermaker]

thanks. maybe if there is enough interest, i'll start a thread or something for it. even since i've posted that link, i've changed it some because i made an error in the xml code regarding checkmarks. they didnt work on some of the settings pages before.

btw, eLow, i saw the screenshot on harley's skin page. that is a nice looking skin, keep up the good work.

 

[eLow]

btw, eLow, i saw the screenshot on harley's skin page. that is a nice looking skin, keep up the good work.

Thanks, but it's still just a bunch of icons on a background. Didn't really work on my skin last weekend, but did do some thinking. I've decided that it is going to be a 1280x720 skin. This way all my graphics will be in high resolution, it will have an actual 16:9 aspect ratio and I can benefit from the work you already did on the MCE skin xml.

I also suggested a one-skin-fits-all approach to the devs, taking into account aspect ratio and visible screen layout. That's hopefully something that will be implemented in the future, one way or the other.

Thanks all for your input.

 

[Boilermaker]

I've decided that it is going to be a 1280x720 skin.

i like that decision. if you need some help creating the xml files, let me know. i'm not great with graphics, but if you give me a template of where you want everything placed, i can do some of the busy work and save you some time.