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+----- Forum: Ellipsis (https://forum.kodi.tv/forumdisplay.php?fid=119)
+----- Thread: Ellipsis & Ellipsis HD for XBMC Media Center (/showthread.php?tid=55935)
- Blackbolt - 2009-09-09
bobrooney_78 Wrote:wow, looks really, really good.
One little question though:
Will it be possible to "turn off" the Rating and the "technical" information of the movie (like 480, 2.35:1..)? It takes in my opinion too much focus on it (cause the font is double as high as the movie info for example). However, the only thing in which i would be interested is a small "hd" icon if it is >480.
I am looking forward to see it in live action.
thanks a lot for your hard work!
There is still a bit of work to do yet on the library pages, we haven't started our polish stage yet, but the layout and presentation of the library information and flags will be improved greatly intime for the first release.
- speedway - 2009-09-09
Blackbolt Wrote:There is still a bit of work to do yet on the library pages, we haven't started our polish stage yet, but the layout and presentation of the library information and flags will be improved greatly intime for the first release.
Can't they be re-used from the PM 3 HD skin ? Perhaps this doesn't fit in the philosophy of the skin ?
- Blackbolt - 2009-09-09
speedway Wrote:Can't they be re-used from the PM 3 HD skin ? Perhaps this doesn't fit in the philosophy of the skin ?
We prefer to develop our own stuff rather than borrow from elsewhere, when we release, our shit will be locked down
- wigital - 2009-09-10
how many man-hours have you put in to this skin so far? i just wanna know how long time it takes to do something like this.
- Jezz_X - 2009-09-10
wigital Wrote:how many man-hours have you put in to this skin so far? i just wanna know how long time it takes to do something like this.
weeks and weeks
Working about 8 hours straight a day I managed to do a skin XML only (not graphics) in about 1 week. And that was a very basic skin with no fancy animations or views. But I did do every single window/dialog from scratch.
Taking into account I really know what I am doing and have done it lots before for a novice user you could times that by 4 average user x2 (at least).
Then when you add graphics onto it as well its a long long long time
Developing a skin from start to finish can take months if you do it properly. Even more so if you do it with other people from around the world with timezone differences
- weinerschnitzel - 2009-09-10
Kinda wish you guys released today. 9/9/09. Would have been a little ironic with the MC360 CVS 666 release. Man I remember when it crashed *****, that was awesome!
- Blackbolt - 2009-09-10
wigital Wrote:how many man-hours have you put in to this skin so far? i just wanna know how long time it takes to do something like this.
It's a very tough question to answer, but the short answer is A LOT.
When the actual work began in january 2009 for Ellipsis, we thought it would take 3 months tops to complete as it wasn't a very complicated skin visually. We were wrong! I couldn't but a total specific number of hours down but it must run into the hundreds of man hours, I wouldn't be surprised if you said I'd spent over 1000 hours working on skins.
The best idea is to plan ahead, experimenting can waste a lot of time, but can also be good for evolution. Best idea is to work in a team, you get the best of many people then and things take less time overall.
Even before Ellipsis began, I wanted to do a skin like this ever since before MC360 was released in June 2006, so I began planning it out then, called MCX back then, then MC3000, then eX, now Ellipsis
. So I had about a year and a half of planning every now and then, until I final began work with Equinox in Jan 09 and had a pretty solid idea what I wanted to do for everything. One thing to bare in mind, you probably will get sick of skinning at some point during your build, but its natural and the product you're making spur's you on itself to continue to the end. Just plan, keep track of everything, be organized and take your time, if you take your time, you wont have as many problems to fix later on.
- mathie - 2009-09-10
"Ellipsis will release with two versions, the main Ellipsis HD for usage with all HTPC setups and Ellipsis (Standard) for use on lower end machines and also the Xbox 1. No release date has been announced for Ellipsis at this time, but please do check the homepage for news updates."
Doesnt the HD skin work with XBMC on the xbox ?? Is the skins diffrent when using them on xbox/pc ??
Im asking beacuse i really wanna use the hd skin with my xbox. I have the monster component cables and im running in 1080p now ....
- joebrady - 2009-09-10
Really? Because xbox only goes upto 1080i.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox#Technical_specifications
- weinerschnitzel - 2009-09-11
mathie Wrote:"Ellipsis will release with two versions, the main Ellipsis HD for usage with all HTPC setups and Ellipsis (Standard) for use on lower end machines and also the Xbox 1. No release date has been announced for Ellipsis at this time, but please do check the homepage for news updates."From what it sounds like, no. MC360 pushed the system in 720p but worked nicely, maybe once its out someone can make some tweaks to make the HD textures run well without lag. Don't even think about 1080i though.
Doesnt the HD skin work with XBMC on the xbox ?? Is the skins diffrent when using them on xbox/pc ??
Im asking beacuse i really wanna use the hd skin with my xbox. I have the monster component cables and im running in 1080p now ....
- Blackbolt - 2009-09-11
weinerschnitzel Wrote:From what it sounds like, no. MC360 pushed the system in 720p but worked nicely, maybe once its out someone can make some tweaks to make the HD textures run well without lag. Don't even think about 1080i though.
Thats technically what we'll be doing for the standard version, once the HD Version is done, we'll be making the standard version by adjusting texture sizes and getting the most out of them. Right now you can use Ellipsis HD on your xbox, but as soon as you start a video and exit fullscreen with the video still playing, your xbox will run out of memory and cause a lot of issues to happen. This is what we will try to avoid once the skin is optimized for Standard use. The Ellipsis Standard will still run at 720p and be 720p native but what we're saying with it being a standard version is it wont have the textures at the very high HD resolutions they where created at.
- TheRightStoph - 2009-09-12
Hey Guys,
I like what I'm seeing, finally a skin with form and function.
I was wondering with Movie libraries are you going to include cast in the main
synopsis section. I'm an Apple TV xbmc user and when the cast stuff is in the movie information sub menu it's a hassle to navigate to, especially with the little controller.
I really like the way Alaska is organized with the cast as a priority. Just wanted to see if you had similar plans. Keep up the good work, I can wait to try your masterpiece!
- Blackbolt - 2009-09-12
TheRightStoph Wrote:Hey Guys,
I like what I'm seeing, finally a skin with form and function.
I was wondering with Movie libraries are you going to include cast in the main
synopsis section. I'm an Apple TV xbmc user and when the cast stuff is in the movie information sub menu it's a hassle to navigate to, especially with the little controller.
I really like the way Alaska is organized with the cast as a priority. Just wanted to see if you had similar plans. Keep up the good work, I can wait to try your masterpiece!
Well cast info remains on the info menu, there is only so much we can fit onto the main library views and cast info is not essential. But when we do come to modify it and polish, I will bare cast info in mind for you.
- weinerschnitzel - 2009-09-12
Blackbolt Wrote:Thats technically what we'll be doing for the standard version, once the HD Version is done, we'll be making the standard version by adjusting texture sizes and getting the most out of them. Right now you can use Ellipsis HD on your xbox, but as soon as you start a video and exit fullscreen with the video still playing, your xbox will run out of memory and cause a lot of issues to happen. This is what we will try to avoid once the skin is optimized for Standard use. The Ellipsis Standard will still run at 720p and be 720p native but what we're saying with it being a standard version is it wont have the textures at the very high HD resolutions they where created at.Do you mean if the video is playing resized or in the background of the skin?
Or if the video is not shown at all but still playing?
If you mean that the skin slows when running the video resized or in the background, can we just get an option to disable this in Ellipsis HD? (That way we can experience the high quality textures if there is a big difference between the two.)
- Blackbolt - 2009-09-13
weinerschnitzel Wrote:Do you mean if the video is playing resized or in the background of the skin?
Or if the video is not shown at all but still playing?
If you mean that the skin slows when running the video resized or in the background, can we just get an option to disable this in Ellipsis HD? (That way we can experience the high quality textures if there is a big difference between the two.)
We already have the option to disable video in the background, this makes no difference however, the skin still fails to load a lot of textures and causes xbmc to go screwy. Early testing showed reducing key textures, not by 'a lot' though, they're still great at 720p, would improve performance on xbox. So you can still use Ellipsis HD on xbox, we just don't recommend it, we recommend the optimised for xbox Ellipsis standard.