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Author Topic: Widescreen Wip  (Read 104 times)

koldfuzion

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Widescreen Wip
« on: February 16, 2004, 08:10:00 AM »
figured it was time those with widescreen sets had a skin of thier own.  So I'm asking for a little feedback of this before i get too far into it.

I know MXM only supports 640X480, but the graphics and videos will be made to 720x486.  I know this isnt 1080, but it should scale ok.. or am I wrong?

Since I dont have widescreen set... I will eventually need someone to test it out also.


This is just a rough concept layout.. any thoughts?

user posted image

Also,  Just in case someone was wondering.  No, the menu will not have text for each menu item, only the current one..... unless there isnt an icon visible.. then the text will appear where the icon was.

EDIT: I guess I make my vote for the MXM Icon.
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chilin_dude

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Widescreen Wip
« Reply #1 on: February 16, 2004, 08:53:00 AM »
Damn that looks good.... make a non widescreen one too!
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Yuyu

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Widescreen Wip
« Reply #2 on: February 16, 2004, 09:24:00 AM »
Very nice indeed can't wait to see how it looks on the widesceen...

one thing is maybe you could keekp the imag the saem size it is, then use your editing program to resize it to 640x480 but, in fact the file and picture size are the same.....

but then again maybe what you are saying will work also, I don't know...
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koldfuzion

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Widescreen Wip
« Reply #3 on: February 16, 2004, 09:38:00 AM »
well i believe most people with widescreens "stretch" the screen using the tv's functions to do that.  This should actually make the skin look the way its suppose to.  On a regular tv.. the images/video will probably look squeezed together
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fLEx7325

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Widescreen Wip
« Reply #4 on: February 16, 2004, 12:55:00 PM »
Nice! I like the whole concept.  I dont know how good it will fit, but I could test it with my widescreen tv.  You could call it 'Hexagonal', like cirkular lol.  I also noticed my icon in there  smile.gif
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geniusalz

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Widescreen Wip
« Reply #5 on: February 16, 2004, 01:37:00 PM »
hekzagonal  wink.gif
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BenJeremy

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Widescreen Wip
« Reply #6 on: February 16, 2004, 03:04:00 PM »
How it handles it depends on the attributes of the image element.... if you specify proportional, it will probably try and proportion it to a square aspect ratio.

That's one aspect of HDTV that makes things difficult - it's a lot more than just resizing the output resolution.
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koldfuzion

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Widescreen Wip
« Reply #7 on: February 16, 2004, 04:29:00 PM »
thanks for that reply -fourdoor-,  the possibility of difficulties is definitely there.  

QUOTE
That's one aspect of HDTV that makes things difficult

thats an understatement.

I went with the 720x480 why?   because thats the DVD res my video editor will let me save an mpeg2 at.

But if you look at the options for photoshop or premeiere or after effect... its clear that there is no easy - perfect answer.

user posted image

So this is what I will do.  I will create a background only skin using my video capture.. then post the same skin here so you can try on your set.  Hopefully it will work out the same on all sets? (that would be too easy though, so its not expected)
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koldfuzion

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Widescreen Wip
« Reply #8 on: February 16, 2004, 05:40:00 PM »
maybe this is not yet do-able.. Not sure what I was thinking, well, i do and i dont.

One day, the widescreens will be free from the chains that hold em down, free to see the whole skin as intended and not a window of isolation.. free to - <--- shut the hell up.
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ub312g0d

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Widescreen Wip
« Reply #9 on: February 19, 2004, 07:34:00 PM »
This most definitely should be doable.. Take a look at that star-trek LCARS skin or whatever it is, It is sized so that it properly stretches in widescreen.
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diffident

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Widescreen Wip
« Reply #10 on: February 20, 2004, 06:03:00 AM »
It is do-able. Because MXM always outputs 640x480, you'll get best results if the input is also 640x480 - that means a 640x480 (4:3) skin that will look 'right' when the TV stretches it to 16:9.

To get there, I'm pretty sure the best way is to design all the bits of your skin with a final size of 853x480 (16:9) in mind, making them look right at that size. Then, when you've really finished in Photoshop or wherever, scale the artwork to 640x480, making sure you let the image editor 'squeeze' the image (ie don't constrain the proportions). That gives you a 640x480 skin (so MXM doesn't have to do any scaling) that looks wrong in 4:3, but will look right when stretched to back 16:9 by the widescreen TV.

I think you should be able to get thumbnails and preview videos to look right as well by getting MXM to squeeze them so they look right again when stretched by the TV. There isn't, I don't think, anything you can do about the text because you can't squeeze it in MXM - the best you can do is pick a narrow font that looks OK stretched 1.33 times its original width.

Using DVD's 720x480 (in NTSC land...) introduces another variable (it means MXM has to scale your skin down to 640x480 before it gets stretched by the TV) which makes it very difficult to know how the design is going to look on the widescreen TV. 720x480 only gives you widescreen 16:9 because it's 720x480 non-square pixels, whereas pretty much every still image editor (eg Photoshop) is square pixel only.
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