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Many studio logos are already out there as vectors so it is a mix of creating and collecting these files. Increasing the size of the pngs would mean re-creating all the images anyway since you can't just scale them up and they look good. In the long-term vector images could easily be batch-rendered to a specific size. This would also be nice for the skins since they won't get bloated by lots of png files that are larger than they have to. Another thing I noticed when I created the codec images for Alaska was that images really loose details when they are scaled down to an odd ratio. Vector files could be rendered to the exact size the skin needs or a nice multiple of it (e.g. 2x size) and they would look really good and sharp in XBMC.
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I just use Inkscape for all my vector stuff and am very happy with it. I've added a few/handful vector images to the github repository. It also does tracing of bitmaps which is very useful and does export to SVG which should be the format for all logos.
The best way is probably to just get a list of all studios in my db sorted by the number of movies that use them. Then create logos for the more common studios first. All the 1-movie studios can be done after that. Of course my library is different than other peoples but it is a good way to prioritize I think.
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Jeroen
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2009-12-13, 19:58
(This post was last modified: 2009-12-13, 20:22 by Jeroen.)
Travis has said on the tmdb forum he would like to add it to the next version of tmdb in january. So that's good news.
I would like everyone to give their thoughts on things like dimensions and such. The current possible ways of implementing studio flags are hacky and time consuming to say the least, a proper way is much needed. Maybe we could come to some sort of consensus in advance.
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I think batch converted versions from the old pngs can be a start but since some pngs already lost a lot of information this might not work very well for more complex logos. We would still have to go through all the logos and recreate those that lost detail or just look odd. If you've converted all of them could you upload them to e.g. mediafire?
The filesize does get smaller for simpler logos but can increase for more complex logos (compared to the 161x109 images) but compared to the larger images they should all be very small.
I would make all the studio logos to match the actual logo size without any margin. When the actual specs of the images for tmdb is finalized all images can then be converted to pngs. If there is no such tool out there writing one for exactly that task shouldn't be a problem.
Maybe we don't even have to do that if XBMC does add support for SVGs. Keep in mind that 9.11 is almost out the door and then it is another ~6 months until the next stable. This feature wouldn't make it into XBMC before then anyway.
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VectorMagic's batch processing feature seems a tad buggy...as in it likes to crash after processing 15-20 images. However, I'll keep plunking away at em and archive them. I realize that there is going to be some image degradation in the more complex ones, but like CCmatrix says, it'll be a nice start as a large majority of them will be viable. There will still have to be a proofing process where we check them all for quality and replace the bad ones...but we can at least have scalable images which can be quickly exported to w/e dimensions we prefer.
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rcoops
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The main problem I see with vector images is that there will be less people that are easily able to create/correct/improve them, PNG image can be created by pretty much any graphics program where vector images are a little more specialized which could reduce the number of volunteer artist quite a bit.
The conversion of the existing collection of logo's to their vector equivalents will take some doing and quite a bit of manual work as auto conversions have a tendency to automatically look less nice then manual conversions. But on the other hand this is a one off pain. Once converted the scalability and versatility of the vector images will quickly push the PNG logo's out of the picture.
With TVDB and MOVIEDB supporting these logo's and thus an ability for the scrapers to pick them up automatically there should be no reason not to choose for the superior quality offered by vector images.
XBMC support is not unlikely to happen if there is enough pressure on the development team and looking at the number of skins that support studio and other logo's that pressure will be quite large in deed.
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Fernferret's site isn't up, so is there a repository for studio flags elsewhere?