FanArt backdrop support in XBMC's skinning-engine and scrapers (for Music and Videos)

sounds excellent I look forward to at least the possibility of something like this being added to xbmc. I think it could really add something to the music and tv sections of skins

Simply amazing !!! custom individual page, great idea ....

This would be an awesome addition to XBMC

any state of progress ? or may this is not possible to have : /

Something as in -depth as shown I don't think it going to happen, and a lot of what MIGHT happen would depend on the skin being used as well - IE how much they support fan art.

With that said this does intrigue me, and if it intrigues me enough and we can work something out I might be willing to do this.

Seems to me we could do something very close with a couple pieces of information.

1) An image infolabel that would return the fanart backdrop
2) A conditional that you could use to return a color scheme. This would most likely be very VERY simple and limited -- perhaps a dozen color schemes hard coded. The skin could then use that to display any gradients or changes needed. This would be up to the skin.

I just woke up so I apologize for not expounding a bit more, but i'd like to get some feedback. I can explain a bit more later on if you all want, but as a skinner I see how I can make this work with that information. Most likely what would have to happen is have TheTVDB include that fanart backdrop as szori mentioned and it would just get scraped along with the show using that new zip interface. TheTVDB should give the backdrop and a color scheme.

To expand on the color scheme -- again since the skin would have to make it work and can't dynamicly generate any color in the world, it would have to be restricted to a set of predefined colors. Kind of like how webpages have certain colors you can specify via text.

Anyway let's get some discussion goign and if we can work out something more basic like this i'm willing to do it in the code, and make a skin to show it off.

A cursory glance at this thread looks very promising. If szori adds fanart to thetvdb as scrapeable images a simple <info>container.fanart</info> seems in order. If there is no fan art to scrape perhaps manually adding a fanart.png to the main folder of each tv show that would then be called with the same info tag. Just kind of talking out loud. cheers.

I'm still hoping this gets implemented one day
Few months ago i made a mockup of how i would implement this in Vinci:

Normal library, no fanart:


Fanart with two colors (darkblue & white):

Now in this example you would also need coloroverlay options for images :o
(flowers in the corners, menuhighlight)

Mntz Wrote:I'm still hoping this gets implemented one day
Few months ago i made a mockup of how i would implement this in Vinci:

Well i'm still looking for some discussion on my proposals before I do anything.

In my mind for months I've had a temporary solution to this... The 'FanArt' way is a lot better...But my way is actually possible for now, and would only require 1 xbmc addition...

I'll try my best to explain, sorry in advance im not the greatest with words... Here goes:

So basically, the 'Folder.jpg' will be the 'FanArt'... The Folder.jpg would be full size (720p)... And it would use the 'Show Current Folder.jpg' method thats not implemented in XBMC, as well as a 'Custom View' for that specific TV Show...

Heres an example:

Your browsing your TV Shows...and you see Lost's icon (The 720p wallpaper, but of course its shrunk down now so u can view other shows)...So you go into the folder, and now that 720 icon is your wallpaper as you view your episode and your 'Custom View' is specific for Lost, can even make the view name Lost

The only problem I face with this, is if you have your shows in folders like 'Season 1', 'Season 2', 'Season 3', you will lose the previous Folder.jpg as soon as you jump into that subfolder...Which brings me to my point of what needs to be added to XBMC: Keep original 'Show Current Folder.jpg' thruought its subfoldeers...

Heres a mockup I did while writing this:

http://pics.apartment808.com/users/NineT.../House.png

All that is possible right now with XBMC...Its simply a 'Custom View' and 'Show Current Folder.jpg' (The Folder.jpg being 720p)

Only problem is if your going into a season subfolder, that whole 720p wallpaper will disapear... the solution would be XBMC keeping the previous folder.jpg

Anyway, its nothing special, just an alternate method, maybe ideas will form from it, just trying to help

FanArt in TheTVDB will be included in the near future, but I don't think we'll be including a color scheme along with each image. The reason being is that it's simply not necessary if the skin works right. All the skin needs to do is create its menu and either have a border around the whole thing or each individual items, plus an alpha-blended background for said menu. If that doesn't work for the skinner, they can also apply an alpha-blended overlay to the entire fanart image, as Aeon currently does with its wallpapers (it calls them vignettes, I believe).

The other reason the color scheme won't be included is that it's impossible to specify the color scheme for some images. Do we store the primary color only? The two main colors? What if the image is perfectly split between 4 colors? How do we verify that people are selecting the correct color scheme for those images. There's just too much going on there that we can't pin down accurately, so it's best to leave it out and let skins/software handle things more elegantly.

As for how to make it work, just add a database table for tvfanart with 3 fields: id, seriesname, and fanart location. Then it would be relatively easy to have a script or scraper populate the information, and have the skin engine return the fanart location for the skins to use.