[RockerC]

animated gifs at such a scale will be HUGE and IMO a no go for skins. There is a reason why video compression has been invented for this kind of animations. It might probably be better to code those animated backgrounds up with python - so having a static background with timer triggered gif overlays (depending on type of animation ofc)

Would it not actually be better to add native support for looped video background playback for those type of backdrop videos, like leechguy's patch here

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=157585

At least for such full screen video playback as backdrop loops in skins, as then you can leave them in same original video format and quality.

That way XBMC would also support real video backdrops too, which might be better for some scenarios than animated images.


http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=157585

The MultiImage Control is meant for slideshows (e.g. looping through fanart). I don't think that it is particularly well suited for displaying approx. 25~30 different images/second. That would indeed be a bit of a resource problem.

A video on the otherhand that is decoded by the GPU is much lighter. I ripped a video from youtube as a 30 frames per second 1080p H.264 video. It uses only 3.1 MB for a movie of 12 seconds.

I recorded a little video which shows the current status:

[un1versal]

I think the problem is time http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1591198 hes left it there idk if any repo exists for his changes clearly thers some interest in this type of stuff, yet some things are hard to crack

I imaging then skinners and including xbmc sin would ship as is and use some type of extras downloader to grab these things from remote or local zips

[Ned Scott]

The big hold up was if music was also playing, since XBMC typically doesn't like using two players at the same time (video and music). There's a couple of other PRs that are also open that deal with this, and technically there is an existing hack to allow this to happen even now in v12 (via karaoke advancedsettings.xml), but it's all about making it easier to actually use. One could hack this into a skin now, if they didn't care about being able to use the video background and music at the same time.

I think being able to use gifs (and eventually Animated PNGs) in the background is partially a side effect of the larger work Ace is doing, so even if we had easy video backgrounds, this would likely still be a project. Plus, there are various potential situations where you might want to use an image instead of a video.

[da-anda]

yes, real video backgrounds would be the way to go, but this requires multiplayer support in XBMC from what I understood, but XBMC is like Highlander right now - there can only be one.

[un1versal]

theres even some addon that did video start-up splash for xbmc, idk how that works but looks like this stuff would be a major leap forward.

[Ned Scott]

The other big thing is seamless looping. I've yet to see XBMC seamlessly loop a video without a small blip.

[RockerC]

I think being able to use gifs (and eventually Animated PNGs) in the background is partially a side effect of the larger work Ace is doing, so even if we had easy video backgrounds, this would likely still be a project.

Plus, there are various potential situations where you might want to use an image instead of a video.

I fully agree that Animated GIF/PNG images are better suited for some things in skins, while true video integration into skin are better for other things.

For starters simple Animated GIFs and Animated PNGs would for example be better suited for displaying multiple smaller animated icons at the same time, and real videos are better for showing just a single full screen backdrop.

I think that in an ideal future world best would be if XBMC supported both, then skinners can pick and choose the best type for any specific use cases.

The other big thing is seamless looping. I've yet to see XBMC seamlessly loop a video without a small blip.

One way to solve or workaround that problem could be be to create a new separate dedicated player core for using videos in skins?

XBMC already have separate dedicated player cores optimized for specific tasks, like PAPlayer for seamless music playback.

So maybe create a new dedicated player core design for seamless looping and being able to run at the same time as other players?

[DoubleT]

This looks great, is this being pulled into gotham?
would love to try it out on windows

[Ned Scott]

Nope, this will be post-Gotham, maybe for v14 Helix.

[RockerC]

Any news on this? Will it make make it into Kodi v15?


FYI, FFmpeg 2.5 have now also added a APNG decoder as well as Animated WebP image decoding support

http://git.videolan.org/?p=ffmpeg.git;a=...elease/2.5

http://ffmpeg.org/download.html#release_2.5

[RockerC]

apngasm (APNG Assembler) project three weeks ago also released version 5 of their animated PNG decoder library

http://apngasm.sourceforge.net

https://github.com/apngasm/apngasm

[Wanilton]

Kodi Jarvis have full support for cinemagraph arts (gif animated) if use more recent version nightlie, thanks Ace for this great resource.



Kodi Jarvis, Skin Aeon MQ6.

[Turb3k]

This looks amazing, I'm so happy this has finally been added!

[zag]

Moved to artwork forum

It may not be a perfect system, but feel free to post your animated background in this thread now.

[ProRipp]

]Perhaps pull these BG's from here then ? Some background gifs