The thing that keeps holding me back from Shade.

I keep wanting to use this skin. It looks great, works fast, has most of the features I'm looking for, etc. BUT

The posters are all squished! Why are they resized on almost all of the movie views? Any of the horizontal scrolling views (Welo, fanart, etc.) the movie posters are short and fat and It's really annoying. I'm stuck with just the small wall view and one other big poster view which don't do that.

Resizing is tacky... it's like watching 4:3 stretched on a 16:9 screen... ewww.

I don't have this problem, maybe you should post a screenshot?

Not at the moment...

But you can take a look at this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeBiYgHU1Ns at 1:09 for "the back-up plan". And compare to the same poster http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3601304832/tt1212436

Also on that video at :53 you can see the posters aren't squished like they are on the other views at 1 minute +.

While the proportion differences aren't huge, they are there and noticeable.

What resolution has your display? I noticed compressed posters at 4:3 resolutions (1600x1200) but they are looking fine at 16:9 (1920x1080).

they are definitely a bit squished at 1080p. It's not too much tho.

I'm running 1920x1080. They're definitely squished. But yeah, it's not a ton.

Just looked through the code a bit, used the Welo view since I know that one looks squished to me. I have no experience with skinning, but it looks like this is where the poster is displayed.


216 / 160 = 1.35

US Poster sizes:
* One sheet, 27 inches by 40 inches (686x1020mm), portrait format = 1.48148148
* Bus stop, 40 inches by 60 inches (1016mm x 1524mm), portrait forma = 1.5

That's a pretty significant difference. I also see it's set to "stretch" which would cause it to squish since the vertical is smaller than it should be.


For comparison mini wall, which I use, has a size of 140 / 100 = 1.4 which is closer, but still squished a little. Also the "Poster list" view uses 320 / 220 = 1.45 (closer still).

Well, I think posters are looking good enough on 16:9 screens (it's difficult for me to see it). In my opinion the most important thing is the correct aspect ratio of movies while playing them

dan1son Wrote:I'm running 1920x1080. They're definitely squished. But yeah, it's not a ton.

Just looked through the code a bit, used the Welo view since I know that one looks squished to me. I have no experience with skinning, but it looks like this is where the poster is displayed.

Code:

<control type="image">
                                                        <posx>0</posx>
                                                        <posy>0</posy>
                                                        <width>160</width>
                                                        <height>216     </height>
                                                        <bordersize>8</bordersize>
                                                        <aspectratio scalediffuse="false">stretch</aspectratio>
                                                        <fadetime>200</fadetime>
                                                        <texture background="true" diffuse="shade/posterdiffuse.png">$INFO[Listitem.Icon]</texture>
                                                </control>

216 / 160 = 1.35

US Poster sizes:
* One sheet, 27 inches by 40 inches (686x1020mm), portrait format = 1.48148148
* Bus stop, 40 inches by 60 inches (1016mm x 1524mm), portrait forma = 1.5

That's a pretty significant difference. I also see it's set to "stretch" which would cause it to squish since the vertical is smaller than it should be.


For comparison mini wall, which I use, has a size of 140 / 100 = 1.4 which is closer, but still squished a little. Also the "Poster list" view uses 320 / 220 = 1.45 (closer still).

What you can do then is keep the horizontal size (216) and change the height to 146. Shouldn't break anything at all.

fr500 Wrote:What you can do then is keep the horizontal size (216) and change the height to 146. Shouldn't break anything at all.

Agreed... I'll wonder through the code a bit more and make some changes.

I don't use the discs or cases images so I doubt it'll mess anything up at all. Might even be able to make them slightly taller.

Played around with modding this skin a bit last night to have proper poster proportions. Unfortunately it's not as simple as just making them narrower or taller (well it is sort of). Each view has the standard unfocused posters, the focused posters, and the animations in between. Some views can also have discs sticking out of the top which all need modifications to match.

I have 0 experience with skinning so the parameters in the XML are a bit cryptic. I'll have to do a bit of research to understand the different items and what their positions and sizes are relative too. The animations are a bit odd, for example. The end animation will stay displayed for a bit, even if the backing focus image is of a different size. Some of them "start" at a negative position which means it's not relative to 0,0 at the upper left corner as expected. Must be the corner of the container or something.

I messed with it for about 45 minutes and managed to get one working fairly well with taller images... I'm sure the others will be faster once I figure it all out.

If I get devoted enough to modify everything I'll release a patch. It's hard to find free time at home with a 19 month old and a pregnant wife . I write software for a living, so it's difficult to come home and want to code something else as well.