[REQUEST] Opional Ken Burns Effect on Backdrops and FanArt for a Semi Animated look?

Does XBMC have the ability to animate backdrops like this video I stumbled on from MeediOS....http://www.vimeo.com/5437742

Well it can do that for your slideshow but personally I'd find that very distracting on menus.

If it was made optional for the user to enable/disable it in GUI settings then I think it could be really cool to have this for FanArt and Backdrop artwork images.



That type of panning, zooming, and fading animations is by the way referred to as a "Ken Burns Effect" or "Ken Burns Technique":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Burns_Effect
...and yes it is available in XBMC for picture slideshow, but I do not think that it is available in the skinning engine to skinners(?)

Some people though might like Hitcher suggest find it distracting, but it gives a showcase demo video like that an extra WOW! factor for the extra eye candy.




PS! Here are a few more videos showing of Ken Burns Effect animation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ken_Bu...ration.ogg
http://www.vimeo.com/742385
http://www.vimeo.com/5303064
http://www.vimeo.com/953122
http://www.vimeo.com/4568400

Use panning, zooming with screensaver.

Would indeed very nice to have the option to use it with fanart.
It looks far more dynamic.
But Hitcher has a point.

http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/6894
Sounds pretty nice to me Looks very polished in that video
As long is it is slow then I don't think it would be distracting.

Cool!!...That video is a good example yet bad because they have there backdrops transitioning every 2 seconds and the burns animations are quick too.

If it goes along side normal XBMC backdrops which are like every 10 seconds and the burns transitions are slow, or atleast have a variable for people to control like time="", it would look pretty sharp.

I agree at the speed they transition in the video is too distracting, if we slow it down as others have said, it would be much more subtle yet still very eye catching.

mcborzu Wrote:Cool!!...That video is a good example yet bad because they have there backdrops transitioning every 2 seconds and the burns animations are quick too.

If it goes along side normal XBMC backdrops which are like every 10 seconds and the burns transitions are slow, or atleast have a variable for people to control like time="", it would look pretty sharp.

actually in that video kenburns is set to 10sec but it can be dynamically adjusted to whatever speed... also if you look closely in the beginning of the video I was using next/prev actions in the top menu to manually change images so that's why they are flying by. There is also Stop slidehow action in top menu to stop slideshow completely and in that case slideshow stops but image still keeps slowly floating around ...there is more then meets the eye in those videos...

As a (nasty) hack, you could just add a couple of slow, looping anims to your multiimage control to do the ken burns thing. It just wouldn't change direction with each image, but at least it'd give you some idea of what it'd look like.

Cheers,
Jonathan

If a list of suitable animations (preferably with it implemented in the skin as a proof of concept) could be put together, I can look into it.

The main problem I have with this sort of thing (and it's not really a problem nowadays) is what to do when the current animation runs out while we're still rendering an image. Do we reverse the animation, just freeze the picture, or something else?

Also, how would this work when you only have a single picture in your multi-image control? Do you crossfade back to the same picture to restart the effect?

Cheers,
Jonathan