[jmarshall]

Hi all,

I've started on supporting banners/posters as a starting point simultaneously. More image types can be added later once we get to grips with the basics.

I've got a work in progress branch here: https://github.com/jmarshallnz/xbmc/bran...ter_banner

A win32 build is available here: http://mirrors.xbmc.org/test-builds/win3...banner.exe

I've added support for ListItem.Art(banner) and ListItem.Art(poster) alongside ListItem.Art(fanart) and ListItem.Art(thumb). They return nothing if nothing is available - no fallbacks at all - you can do that from the skin.

The tvdb.com scraper included handles specifying poster + banner for the image types, so on a scrape you'll get banner + poster types available in the database, and thus available via the above info labels.

No local art supported as yet - atm if you have local art then it'll be set as thumb, poster + banner all at once I think - don't use local thumbs for testing

At the moment, "thumb" just returns the first image returned by the scraper. This is a poster for thetvdb.com. I'm not sure how to best deal with this - in some instances, "thumb" might make sense to refer to the landscape art type for example, and makes sense for episode images as well.

Other things to think of are what to do with the Get Thumb/Get Fanart buttons. Obviously Get Thumb by itself doesn't make sense - atm I've hacked in a nasty context menu chooser when you Get Thumb to specify poster/banner/thumb so you can see the different types returned.

Obviously still quite a bit of work to do, but the main thing to sort out first and foremost is how to treat the "thumb" type. Should it be unique, or should it be reserved for the first image found (perhaps with some priority order). This obviously has implications for local art - folder.jpg and <moviename>.tbn offer no information as to their type.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[Hitcher]

All working as expected.

ListItem.Art(fanart) and ListItem.Art(thumb) -



ListItem.Art(poster) and ListItem.Art(banner) -

[phil65]

this is great! thx in advance, will make a lot of things easier for us.
i think that some kind of priority handling isn´t needed since it does not work out for most places that well. most viewtypes are designed for a specific thumb aspect ratio, so fallbacking to an image with a different AR often does not work out (esp when using stretch/scale)
me personally does not use the icon-thumb fallback at all, too. don´t know if others use it.
putting all the "download banner/poster/etc" in some context menu isn´t a too bad idea. better than the need to have 4 different buttons placed there next to each other.

EDIT: do those art properties work with IsEmpty() already?

[Hitcher]

Just a suggestion but I dropped 'Get Thumb' and 'Get Fanart' buttons in favour of a single 'Get Artwork' button for XeeBo which when lists all the different types.

[`Black]

Just a suggestion but I dropped 'Get Thumb' and 'Get Fanart' buttons in favour of a single 'Get Artwork' button for XeeBo which when lists all the different types.

I did the same for Xperience1080.

[Hitcher]

Just a suggestion but I dropped 'Get Thumb' and 'Get Fanart' buttons in favour of a single 'Get Artwork' button for XeeBo which when lists all the different types.

I did the same for Xperience1080.

Which is where I got the inspiration.

[Martijn]

I think the best would be that a skinner could choose which artworktypes there would be in such a contextmenu chooser (if more arttypes will be supported).
Not all skin will be using all the different kinds so this could prevent confusion for the user.
Maybe in the same sort of way they do now with calling the get thumb/fanart and the artwork downloader options.

[Hitcher]

They're not actually handled by the context menu they're buttons in the DialogVideoInfo so it would simply be a case of adding more buttons for banner, landscape, logo, etc and then the skinner can choose how/if they're used.

[jmarshall]

Thanks for testing. The main thing I want to figure out is what to do with Listitem.Thumb. As you've seen atm I just drop the first scraped image into "thumb" as it's an unknown. This might be the best thing to do - I dunno

As for the image chooser, yes, that was my idea as well - just supply "Get Artwork" and then the user selects which one. How to do it nicely is a different story.

For the list of appropriate images, I think the best thing is to define in advancedsettings, defaulting to a sensible list, ofcourse, where you can also specify the local files to look for in each case as well.

I don't see any point in having the skin attempt to do it necessarily - particularly as any scraped images would be using specific types. Also, it applies across skins, so would seem odd that a user can set image type A on one skin and image type B on another.

How to do the chooser prettily I don't know. Ideas most welcome!

Cheers,
Jonathan

[phil65]

i think ListItem.Thumb for container 50 in myvideonav.xml etc should be labelled deprecated then in wiki etc so that all skinners start to use the new tags.
would only lead to confusion / problems when every scraper fills that property with different types of images i think.
and also a +1 to letting xbmc handle the dialog to choose the artwork type. giving an id to the control button in dialogvideoinfo.xml should be enough.

[Hitcher]

Thanks for testing. The main thing I want to figure out is what to do with Listitem.Thumb. As you've seen atm I just drop the first scraped image into "thumb" as it's an unknown. This might be the best thing to do - I dunno

Either drop it or base it on the content (ie Movies, TV Shows, and Seasons = Poster, Episodes = Thumb)

How to do the chooser prettily I don't know. Ideas most welcome!

Add extra buttons to DialogVideoInfo and let the skinner choose how to display them.

[jmarshall]

What I meant is that if there's a "Get Artwork" button that then pops up a chooser, what should that chooser be? ATM I've hacked up a context menu chooser (badly centered) but I'm not sure what the best option is. eg. it might make some sense to popup the select dialog with the current art for each type set to each item?

[phil65]

What I meant is that if there's a "Get Artwork" button that then pops up a chooser, what should that chooser be? ATM I've hacked up a context menu chooser (badly centered) but I'm not sure what the best option is. eg. it might make some sense to popup the select dialog with the current art for each type set to each item?

using dialogselect.xml to also display the actual images makes sense. best choice imo.

[`Black]

Yes, select dialog would be best. But we should somehow be able to add extra options for logo, clearart etc.

[pecinko]

I've added support for ListItem.Art(banner) and ListItem.Art(poster) alongside ListItem.Art(fanart) and ListItem.Art(thumb). They return nothing if nothing is available - no fallbacks at all - you can do that from the skin.

The tvdb.com scraper included handles specifying poster + banner for the image types, so on a scrape you'll get banner + poster types available in the database, and thus available via the above info labels.

No local art supported as yet - atm if you have local art then it'll be set as thumb, poster + banner all at once I think - don't use local thumbs for testing

At the moment, "thumb" just returns the first image returned by the scraper. This is a poster for thetvdb.com. I'm not sure how to best deal with this - in some instances, "thumb" might make sense to refer to the landscape art type for example, and makes sense for episode images as well.

Other things to think of are what to do with the Get Thumb/Get Fanart buttons. Obviously Get Thumb by itself doesn't make sense - atm I've hacked in a nasty context menu chooser when you Get Thumb to specify poster/banner/thumb so you can see the different types returned.

Obviously still quite a bit of work to do, but the main thing to sort out first and foremost is how to treat the "thumb" type. Should it be unique, or should it be reserved for the first image found (perhaps with some priority order). This obviously has implications for local art - folder.jpg and <moviename>.tbn offer no information as to their type.

My suggestion is to keep things as they are, with a change in MyVideoNav.xml (I was not able to test changes as I'm on OS X):

-scraper should pull both poster and banner by default, with an option for posters/banners only

-movies, seasons, tvshows = defaults to posters, mapped to thumb (use folder.jpg if present on disk)
-all other stuff, as they're now.

All additional art can be treated as ListItem.Art(foo) (use foo.jpg local files, if present on disk).

Additional button in DialogVideoInfo "get more art" which would open a dialog/start artwork downloader is something that I personally would like the most as it gives possibility to skin to not use it at all.

My skins always use ListItem.Icon like Confluence does, so that fallbacks and system icons are available for stuff like "parent folders", "add more", etc.

-------------

Finally, my humble and very personal view on this:
I probably have a similar view as Martijn - additional art should be treated as extras and should not be in UI by default. Lesser problem is that it mostly look ugly and don't really fit - cropped up logo from a poster and cleared in PS (just personal opinion). Secondly, although it adds to "variability" and "colorfulness" of UI it is overwhelming for users and makes very busy UI. So it is sort of "more fun" at expense of ease of use.

I welcome banner/poster changes as I have seen a lot of problems explaining users how this works in XBMC but I'm not sure what to think about additional art support as it seems to me that new info labels break backward compatibility for the sake of supporting "more fun art" that many users will not use or will find confusing.

I see that most skinners have different opinions and I mean no disrespect for them or users that use all sort of extra stuff, this is just my personal view.