Skinning XGuide

[Kevl]

Hi Fla

Further improvements.

I'll still need to do lots of minor adjustments to make the skins look really polished.

Have attached the lastest skin version.

Kev

[Kevl]

Hi Fla

Have been further tweaking skins etc.

I have done some work to also make the GBPVR built in Recordings and Search screens work at 1280 x720. Mixed success I have to say.

I also tried downloading the latest PVRX2 version. It doesn't want to work with my skins so I presume there were some big changes made between GBPVR and PVRX2. Oops.

So the answer to your earlier question about whether the new High res skins and latest XSuite dlls work with PVRX2 is a resounding no.

When I ran the PVRX2 version with its default Blue skin (which supports Xrecord etc) then it appeared that the fonts looked very much worse than in 99.12. The main menu screen looks fine (the one with the animated wizzy graphics) but the text in Xrecord looks like it has been rendered with a really blocky font. (not like Arial or Tahoma).

Not sure how you are getting on at your end but I'm running out of steam. Who would have thought that moving a bit of text and black boxes around would have been so tricky?

Kev

[fla]

Hi,

I've been using the latest (not today's new version!) PVRX2 on my dev system throughout the re-skinning effort including previewing of Meedio. I haven't tried the absolute latest Meedio skin yet but I'm sure your latest skins can work with PVRX2 too with minor tweaks.

I didn't really notice the quality of the fonts in PVRX2 but I don't have a good eye for these things.

I have started working on XRecord's main screen a little but progress is slow since the main screen is made up of one sub-screen for each button (Ready, Pending, Reoccurring, Movies, Videos, Watched, Transcoding...). Since only a few extra bits are now skinnable in each sub-screen I didn't post a version yet.

[Kevl]

Hi Fla

Maybe I broke one of the other skin files. I have been working on all of the TV related GBPVR screens (not just XSuite). I suspect the main menu skin was to blame for the crash/PVRX2 not working thing.

My main menu skin is the same format as the original 99.12 blue One - in that it just has a column of buttons (rather than the animated effect in the new PVRX2 blue skin).

Maybe PVRX2 expects to have the animated thing mentioned in the skin file. I dont want that effect - so it isn't referenced.

I wished I'd grabbed a screen-shot showing the blotchy fonts in Xrecord under PVRX2. Unfortunately I uninstalled it before grabbing a screen.

Anyway, I have attached my latest efforts. I've been doing lots of fine tweaks. Some of the screens are now indestinguishable from Meedio - in poor lighting :-)

Kev

[fla]

When I ran the PVRX2 version with its default Blue skin (which supports Xrecord etc) then it appeared that the fonts looked very much worse than in 99.12. The main menu screen looks fine (the one with the animated wizzy graphics) but the text in Xrecord looks like it has been rendered with a really blocky font. (not like Arial or Tahoma).

I got a new graphics card (see signature) and upgraded gbpvr to pvrx2 1.1.5. As soon as my wife saw the screen she said "why is the text so ugly". Even I thought it looked bad so I'm still using 1.1.5 but gbpvr instead of pvrx2. BTW for me the main menu text was ugly too but I have an NTSC TV not HD.

[Kevl]

Hi Fla

Glad to see I was not halucinating re the text quality in PVRX2 :-).

Yes the default blue skin looked really awful.

Of course my Hirez fonts look really nice - but as far as I can see the skins dont seem to want to work in PVRX2.

I dont think your graphics card hardware is implicated here. I'm using a Radeon 9600XT. It too is VRM9 compliant but I think it is less capable of doing hardware MPEG decode than your flashy new 2400. But I still get superb results in video using Cyberlink decoders and FFDShow - using overlay rendering.

Perhaps you can grab a screen shot of the said ugly fonts and seek advice from sub. He will know what to do.

I think there are possibilities that the graphics card drivers could be doing unwanted processing your images (doing antialiasing and the like). It can be tricky to get the graphics drivers working optimally.

Its a pity I did not get a screen grab when I had 1.15 installed. But the non running meedio skin and the default blue fonts issue + no overlay for video meant I still prefer 99.12.

Kev

[fla]

Getting started with skinning XRecord with an easy file (StatusBar.cs). The disk space status bar and the recording service status are now fully skinnable. Special element DriveBar now has two new attributes borderColor, borderWidth and there are two new composite images RecordingServiceStatusRunning and RecordingServiceStatusStopped.

I was getting random crashes when debugging this. Turns out there was a race condition between the background thread that monitors the disk space and recording service and the main gbpvr thread. Now fixed.

New version on the wiki.

[fla]

I suspect the main menu skin was to blame for the crash/PVRX2 not working thing.

Hi Kevl,

Have you seen this thread? Sounds like the main menu isn't all that skinnable yet in PVRX2.

[Kevl]

Hi Fla

Yes, I've been reading a lot about skins. I'll try again with 1.1.5 when the new skins etc have settled down.


Kev

[fla]

A new version is on the wiki that migrates XRecord's buttons to use XSearch's more skinnable buttons and avoid code duplication. Not much change is visible to the user other than xrecord's "Advanced" box="false" skin attribute works again. Changing the value to true makes inactive XRecord buttons have a background box (composite image NormalButtonBackground). Also the new class supports disabled/grey buttons (composite images NormalButtonImageDisabled, NormalButtonBackgroundDisabled, SelectedButtonImageDisabled). I don't know when disabled buttons are used since I had to force an "if" in the code to test this feature.