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[competes2win]

QUOTE(maximusoctavious @ Sep 25 2007, 09:07 AM)

1st, wrong! I used to make skins for unleashX. 2nd know what your talking about before you say something.

I've never seen a 3-2-1 countdown in an unleashx skin before... maybe give us an example of all these skins? and even still thats not the issue here. Don't need to always get in fights, the main issue here is a disagreement about the "feature presentation" ... I personally dislike it and agree with djdafreund. the Back-row skin is an otherwise amazing skin, but when you go from an amazing looking skin to basically a low res animated screen shot that visually has nothing at all to do with the skin's appearance it, in my opinion detracts from the skin.... maybe upscale the rez for the picture and make it visually more similiar to the rest of the skin so that it's not like a foreign object in an otherwise great skin...

Personally, I do think the 3-2-1 would be great... maybe an opening of the curtains to reveal that oldschool grainy black and white 3-2-1 animation.

[Sharpe]

Yeah I agree it does look out of place - to be honest I only put it in there because I was so surprised that gifs worked at all and I was all excited

I've done something else to replace it and kind of gone for a movie trailer green classification screen thingy that  appears over the white screen.

I did try a countdown style gif but I thought that looked just a cheesy as the Feature presentation gif. But you never know I might alter it again.

[djdafreund]

That's sounds cool (green thing), or even just have it kind of look like the screens turning black to ready for the movie. (lights going out.) Anyway, looks great, and thanks again for your skin. Lovin' it.  

[maximusoctavious]

Yes, it was a typo. Unx is a dash. I have created skins in the past using the 123 method. Here is one I just made for the xbmc. lo res example. Also the skins I made arn't for download, either are the ones I paid for before learning to do it myself from "BOA".

http://img263.images.../featureru6.gif

[maximusoctavious]

No more animations

[Sharpe]

I'll code it how I want

[Sharpe]

Hi

I've updated the skin to include an old black and white style movie countdown gif in the home screen selection which is sort of projected onto a white movie screen. /fairly pleased with how it looks now.

Also I've tried to address the small icons view running out of memory problem that djdafreund mentioned (scaled it back a little bit basically) - seems to be running okay (for me now at least anyway).

Anyhow, once again, thanks for reading and hope you can check it out.

Cheers

[djdafreund]

Just tried it. 1st of all, thanks a bunch. That looks SO MUCH better!!!!! Not to be picky, but if possible just for tweaks sake, what would you think of the idea of speeding up the new gif, just so it's a little more faster. I don't know what setting you have the speed on now with the gif file, but it seems longer then it should(almost like double-time length in seconds). Even if it's slightly faster just to make it work right, since it's the overall effect it's creating, rather then now it's looks great but yet creates a longer delay, or should i say it's almost double-time counting. Just food for thought. Either way, i still think it's great, and is exactly what i was hoping for. Thanks for adding that, big time. Looks great, and fits SO much better.

I notice in the icons view, it's still showing some blank ones, i don't know if it's because i am using 256x256 icon size, just so they look better when using 3d cover art, as well as list view w/big pic on side, and Big icon view.

[Sharpe]

Yeah I can speed up the gif a bit - that's not a problem - I'll experiment a bit.

The icon view thing is a worry though - I've got my advancedsettings.xlm running with the 512x512 icon size toggle in place - and I can see all my tilted 512x512 icons showing up fine in regular icons view. I saw the odd blank one in the earlier version but this one seemed to fix it - for me. Weird - I'll check it out more tomorrow.

[djdafreund]

Thanks for considering the speedup. Will make it perfect. I double checked my thumbsize, and i AM also using 512 size. Must have forgot i changed it higher from 256. Currently i have an average of 90-100 movies. And after further checking. I noticed that when the icons (especially LIST view.) are mostly blank, my LCD show "Freemem: 0MB" or "1", so it looks like something having to do with caching/running out of memory to check. I think one reason other skins i use don't have this effect is due to some views not showing close to as many icons on screen at once. Like a lot show, guessing from memory, 10-12 icons or so, verses 18 with yours using 'Icons' view.
  But when in 3d cover, i notice a random blanked out one or 2 when flipping through, and mem shows 3MB Free. Hope this helps. I could always resort to using 256 for now, which still looks ok i guess. I'm using it on an HDTV 80 16x9 projector display in my theater, and also on my 37inch 16x9 HDTV in my room. (720p on both, 1080i with pictures)
Update- More researching, noticed that in LIST view using xTV, it doesn't show any missing icons, but in your it does, my guess is the difference of that your skin shows big icon on left (like xTV) AND small thumbnail icons next to each title in list, so it's using more memory. (Never drops below 31MB Freemem using list view in xTV, verses 0-1MB in list view with Back-Row)  And also, it does also drop 1 or 2 icons as well in xTV in Icon view, just not as many though. Hope that all helps.

[Sharpe]

oh that's even stranger then as I have no problems at all in list view - it was only ever a problem in small icons.

I've got a similar amount of movies and am running it in 720 - what screen size are you running in?

Oh right just caught your edit - so is it a 1080 thing do you think?

[djdafreund]

No, i'm using 720p, only my pictures are set to use 1080i. I'm deleting my Thumbnails\Video files, and setting my thumbnails to 256, and will try it again to see how thats effecting things if so. I'll post my findings though. Very weird indeed.

[djdafreund]

I would double check your installation. Just to be sure, since the animation is definitely there, and is working just fine. Looks much better then then last one we saw. Fits much better too. I'm happy at least.

[djdafreund]

Here's some testing.

View_____256 Thumbsize used____512 Thumbsize used
========================================
List__________22-23MB Free___________2-4MB Free
Big Icons_____25-26MB Free___________2-4MB Free
Icons________15-16MB Free___________1-2MB Free
Jukebox______21MB Free_____________15-17MB Free

And i did notice that Freemem would change a lot as you scrolled down the list. IE- It started off in one case 12MB Free, and almost each time (in jukebox) i moved one over to the right, it lowered to 10, then 8, then 6, then 4, then stopped at 4, and sometimes i noticed after that, hitting the trigger right for a half second or so, it jumped back up again to like 11-12, and did it again if i move left or right spots.
  Maybe actually a XBMC bug? If so, i can post that finding in the bug forum. Maybe for now i'll use 384 Thumbsize for now, which still looks good, just not quite 512, but still looks good either way for now.

[djdafreund]

OK, last update for the night. Wish i could edit previous ones. Sorry.

View_____384 Thumbsize used
=======================
List___________17MB Free
Big Icons_______18MB Free
Icons___________9MB Free
Jukebox________19-21MB Free

Since i found out that a few other skins also blank out/run low on memory of xbox, just not quite as much though as Front-Row skin, not by any BIG difference of course, maybe like 4-5 missing at most while going through jukebox view, instead of 2-3 using 3d cover view (same thing.) of other skins.
  It seems as though for now, that with a big video collection, Thumbsize at 384 is a good blend, and removes this from happening, and at 384, the icons still look pretty good when viewing big, and in 720p res.