[atv2xbmcuser]

Hi all,
when I start a photo slideshow or just click a photo for display in xbmc, photos are always shown truncated at top and bottom. The photos are 2:3 format, so there is of course always a mismatch with 16:9 format of the TV, but I'd like to display the photos without truncating (with a black border/stripe at right and left side instead).

I can't find a preference for configuring how photos are displayed (truncated or with border). Is this really not configurable

I'm using xbmc for atv2, but I guess this problem is not atv2 specific.

Thx

[jingai]

Same here. Kind of annoying. If I select to display just one picture, it fits the image to the display (borders on the sides) instead of zooming it.

It's not possible to zoom out any further, btw. '0' is zoomed to fill the display area when in a slideshow.

edit: I see why it would do this for the ken burns effect, but I have that disabled, so it shouldn't zoom to fill, IMHO.

[Robotica]

In the slideshow settings, you can set effects. Those are the only GUI-options to alter slideshow behaviour. Then you also could alter behaviour with advanced settings.xml, section 3.50

Code:

<slideshow>
  <!-- Amount to pan images as a percentage of the screen -->
  <panamount>2.5</panamount>
  <!-- Amount to zoom images as a percentage of the screen -->
  <zoomamount>5.0</zoomamount>
  <!-- Amount to compensate (zoom) images to attempt to reduce black bars. -->
  <!-- Results in cropping of the longer length of the image in order to reduce the black bars on the shorter length of the image.  -->
  <!-- Defaults to 20. -->
  <blackbarcompensation>20</blackbarcompensation>  
</slideshow>

I've seen related tickets (#1, #2) describing this Dharma and Eden behaviour. Frodo behaviour is also described in this PR (but should be described in this WIKI-picture-settings-pageor in the general picture WIKI.).

With the latest post-Frodo changes to unifrom the behaviour between "show single picture" and "slideshow", the logic to select and use effects in different scenario's should ideally be improved to support more use-case scenario's. I think some extra advanced settings could be a stopgap solution for a better user experience.

[jingai]

A little disheartening that both of those tickets were essentially dismissed, but.. setting blackbarcompensation to 0 in advancedsettings.xml does indeed fix the issue.

IMHO, the default should be 0 given that the user can't change the setting via the GUI. Arbitrarily cropping my photos is a naughty thing to do.

[Robotica]

edit: updated 2 post above with this info.

[jingai]

Gotcha. Thanks for the help

[Robotica]

You're right that the option pan & zoom is doing a lot of stuff without much user-control: scrolling, cropping and filling(/zoom). The last option can be controlled with the <blackbarcompensation>-tag in as.xml.

Personally, I like the fillling to match display resolution but not the scrolling (which isn't configurable) and cropping so I think it would be better to control all 3 option at least via as.xml.

[jingai]

blackbarcompensation is applied without regard to pan and zoom.

I don't take issue with any of them existing, but I don't think any sort of cropping should be on by default if there is no way to change it via the GUI is all. Most people will just assume it's a bug I think.

[Robotica]

A while ago I gave this some thoughts, see http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1199034

Stille needs more work but it's a start...

[Robotica]

Only option is to reopen this ticket ?

[jingai]

Or simply start a new one pointing to your thoughts on that other thread. The real issue isn't so much a bug report per se, but that the Pictures settings needs more than just three configurable options. At a glance, your suggestions for settings seems a great first start.

[Robotica]

At the time of that posting xbmc wasn't ready fort those changes. But since that posting the picture departement have been greatly improved. I believe the time to uniform pictures with audio and video is very close.