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[jmarshall]

1. No idea - I'm sure people have hacked PM3 up before - try searching the forums here and the official forums.

2. Yes, it's possible.  You just need to open up MusicVisualisation.xml (in PAL folder of PM3 most probably - check the PAL16x9 and use that one if it already has one there) and find the image control with the thumb (<info>MusicPlayer.Thumb</info> and change the <width>, <height> and <posx>, <posy> etc.)

This seems like a nice "skin mod" tutorial for the online manual - please type up what you did and I'll add them to the official manual.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[jmarshall]

Read the online manual on skinning.

Currently the only things available are the current song information, so you can't display the upcoming stuff.

[PantsOnFire]

I've been reading this thread a little, and it's of interest to me too (modifying thumbnail size/position) etc.


My main goal was to increase size of the album art on screen, which I've managed, just one observation though:

When the image is increased in size, it does become a touch blurry,  (even if not stretched a great amount).
I'd like to be able to see this image in better clarity- is it possible that xbmc full-screen vis mode does something that impairs the image clarity?  (even if un-intended).


By the way, this is when using the PMII skin.

cheers.

[spiff]

see the advancedsettings.xml manual page - it lets you adjust the resolution thumbs are created at.

[PantsOnFire]

I just toyed with the same things this time using  MC360 skin and the result is the same,  I guess the blurring of the image is something that can't be helped?


One thing I was trying to do:

When in full-screen, I wanted to add a reflection image (like apple use in their ads) as if the CD is sitting on a glossy black table.

So I opened photoshop, did a simple black fading to transparent gradient and saved as PNG.

I figured, looking at the xml that I'd be able to add another item to this screen (the gradient),
and also another (up-side-down) image of the album art.  Lay the gradient image over the inverted album art to get the effect I'm after.

But, I came to look at the xml again and noticed for items like the background panel (which typically the album infos are laid on top of), they are referred to by xbmc as 'textures'. A quick hunt through the xbmc folders on the xbox and I see textures.xpr,   is this the file that contains the panel graphic PNG I mentioned?    If so, it looks like I am stuck right?  Unless I can edit that XPR file somehow?    (or is that not really allowed as such)?

Other than this, I can't see how I can achieve what I'm after.

Bit stuck, any help appreciated.
Cheers.

[jmarshall]

What part of the online skinning manual do you not understand?

The page on GUIImage tells you pretty clearly what is and isn't "allowed" in terms of images.

There's further information on how to generate an XPR pack there as well.

Perhaps you could write up a "beginners guide to altering a skin" with what you have done and the issues you faced, and I can add it to the online manual?

Cheers,
Jonathan

[spiff]

adjusting the thumb cache size obviously wont work if you dont delete the cache so it can recache the thumbs.

[PantsOnFire]

I created a file for AdvancedSettings.

And I entered into it:

"
<advancedsettings>
    <thumbsize>576</thumbsize>
</advancedsettings>"


I went into the dir:
/E/Apps/XBMC/UserData/Thumbnails/Music

and deleted the entire contents  (all of the thumbnails).

I then let xbmc create all the thumbs again.

I look at my thumb of a random album in full-screen vis mode in xbmc, and I find it still to be blurry.
And if I FTP browse the directory I find the thumbnail filesizes are still as small as before.
I dragged a random one off the xbox onto PC and check its properties.  And it is showing as 192x192 pixels still.

Have I created the AdvancedSettings file wrongly?

[jmarshall]

Assuming you named it:

AdvancedSettings.xml

And didn't have any of those quotes it in it would have worked fine.

One presumes your thumbs are in fact higher quality to begin with?

[PantsOnFire]

That's just what I've done, I've checked again many times to be sure, also made new music album folders as tests, and downloaded really high-res album cover JPGs for those folders.

Not that this is incredibly high-res, but here is one example:

ORIGINAL:
Original FOLDER.JPG
http://farm2.static....c6edbef16_o.jpg

THUMB
XBMC-processed file



The thumb has come out as 192x192.

I just can't tell what is going wrong, but it isn't taking the config used in my XML, I'm pretty sure of that.

 

[Jezz_X]

You have done your AdvancedSettings.xml wrong because 192x192 is the default

[jmarshall]

Nah - he's done it right, it's just that 576 is outside the allowable bounds.  512 is the max.

Anything outside the bounds is treated as the default.

[PantsOnFire]

cheers guys,

512 is great,   chugging when i scroll down through albums a bit  (i guess it caches the thumb not just for full-screen vis, but also when browsing in My Music?)

Might stick it down to 300 or so.

Thanks again.

[Jezz_X]

the chugging is because every time it loads a thumb on the screen it has to load a bigger image dimensions as well as KB and scale it to fit the thumb size

Oh and I forgot decompress it