Topic: Theatre View (Read 2405 times)

Chrispy58 · « **on:** May 17, 2012, 09:28:48 am »

I say you chaps... After listening to many audio files last night on MC17 in Theatre view, from my on line PC via a 15M HDMI cable into my lounge and viewing on a large flatscreen telly, I feel compelled to commend you for producing such a marvelous piece of software. I've used many, many media players / mp3 jukeboxes over recent years, and this one is head and shoulders above the rest - Canine gonads as they say around here.

A few points for improvement or clarification:

1. Exiting MC from playing now in theatre view - back,back,exit,exit theatre view,close MC (phew!). Am I missing something? cant we have a red X in the top right corner to close MC17?
2. The downloaded images are sometimes way off - The Jackson 5 featuring Michael when he was black, was seen many times and not a single Jacksons song exists in my audio library. A T Rex song played and dinosaurs came on, hypodermic needles for 10cc etc: some fine tuning needed here methinks.
3. the Aspect ratio of the downloaded images should be restricted to the same ratio of the screen - I kept seeing just the top of peoples heads on my 16:9 TV
4. Are these downloaded images stored anywhere or are they just discarded after a session?

Well done and thanks anyhow lads,
Chris.

xplain · « **Reply #1 on:** May 17, 2012, 09:39:09 am »

Press esc two times, exits theater view.

Or press escape and choose close media center from the menu.

JimH · « **Reply #2 on:** May 17, 2012, 09:48:54 am »

F11 exits also.

Or from the Theater View Exit option, you can shut down MC or the PC.

tls62dk · « **Reply #3 on:** May 17, 2012, 09:53:12 am »

2) You can select the search engines used under Options\Theater View\Themes\Online Media Show. I find that although often producing hq images, Google often gets it wrong. Deselect Google and you should get more accurate results.

Chrispy58 · « **Reply #4 on:** May 17, 2012, 10:21:35 am »

The suggestions for exiting MC using the PC keyboard would be perfect, but the PC is in the next room. I'm using a RF gyromouse as a controller.

JimH · « **Reply #5 on:** May 17, 2012, 10:35:32 am »

Left to Exit, Enter, Down, Enter.

A Media Center Remote is a nice way to control MC. An Android or iOS device also work.

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Remotes

FastKayak · « **Reply #6 on:** May 17, 2012, 11:32:33 am »

Images that are cut off (OP point #3) happens to me too. Any way to make MC smarter so portrait shots fit the display better? Same problem occurs if I am displaying my images or using MC to fetch from the Internet.

FastKayak / Larry

rick.ca · « **Reply #7 on:** May 17, 2012, 04:30:53 pm »

Quote

Any way to make MC smarter so portrait shots fit the display better?

I believe it already crops the bottom and not the top—as a reasonable guess for getting a usable image from a portrait image. Judging from my cache, however, that's still only works for fewer than half the images with an aspect ratio less than 1. Maybe it would help to simply reject images with aspects outside a range likely to work (e.g., 1 - 2).

pcstockton · « **Reply #8 on:** May 17, 2012, 04:37:55 pm »

i love the wrong pics! For some reason it cracks me up.

A buddy and I were trying to find the band that brought up the most incorrect pictures.

We found the combination of an obscure band with a generic name really gets interesting results.

Tortoise and Pole come to mind.

Seriously though.... I do think Google is the problem here. MC doesn't know that Google doesn't know what kind of "Tortoise" pic i want.

No problem on my end though.

One little hijack question.... what exactly do the "subtle, normal, strong" mix amounts really mean? It is a little unclear. Does "strong" mean lots of pictures?

thanks!
Patrick

Scolex · « **Reply #9 on:** May 17, 2012, 05:07:28 pm »

To improve the images that are retrieved you can customize C:\Program Files (x86)\J River\Media Center 17\Data\Default Resources\ArtistSearch.txt and enter additional keywords to prevent unrelated items.
note: if not using a x64 version of Windows remove the *space*(x86)

Example: Scorpions come up with a bunch of images of the Arthropod version so I entered:
Scorpions
Scorpions rock band

pcstockton the subtle/normal/strong is a opacity/vibrancy setting.

rick.ca · « **Reply #10 on:** May 17, 2012, 05:12:34 pm »

Quote

One little hijack question.... what exactly do the "subtle, normal, strong" mix amounts really mean? It is a little unclear. Does "strong" mean lots of pictures?

That's what I thought for a long while. I set to 'strong', which happened to work with my monitor settings, and forgot about it. I said something about it recently, and was corrected. It refers to what I would call 'opacity', although I suppose that's not be the correct term when referring to the visibility of a background. In any case, what it does is clear if you try the different settings. Although I now understand the meaning of 'mix', maybe 'visibility' would avoid the confusion.

FastKayak · « **Reply #11 on:** May 17, 2012, 11:32:09 pm »

If the image display setting of "shrink large images to fill display" is ticked (and I have it ticked) I would expect a large portrait image to be sized to fit. That is, not only large images left-right (landscape) or large in all dimensions but those large in up-down (portrait) would be detected and sized to the display correctly.

FastKayak / Larry

Scolex · « **Reply #12 on:** May 17, 2012, 11:47:36 pm »

FastKayak,

That is probably what is is happening. Example screen of 1920 x 1080 (16x9) image of 480 x 854 (9x16) after MC matches the width the pic has grown to 1920 x 3416 so your vertical resolution only shows ~1/3 of the image. The same will happen with a large image to check just add a 0 to the previous numbers.
The feature uses zoom in/out but maintains aspect ratio so not much can be done other than create some sort of aspect ratio filter for the search query.

FastKayak · « **Reply #13 on:** May 17, 2012, 11:54:55 pm »

With all due respect, sized to fit should mean sized to fit. Sure some math needs to happen so a panoramic get displayed properly (eg back bars above and below), a portrait is displayed properly (eg black bars left and right) and everything else is stuffed in. I'm sure that last category means an occasional fun-house look...stretched or shrunk a bit too much in which ever dimension (YMMV). That is probably why is this is a optional feature and not the default. The current behavior is that sized to fit doesn't properly handle portrait pictures ( which can be an advantage when listening to Keith Richards......that is probably why I never bought his solo album.

)

FastKayak / Larry

Scolex · « **Reply #14 on:** May 18, 2012, 12:12:56 am »

So you are saying you would like an option for disregard aspect ratio and just stretch it in what ever way makes it match the screen.
While I can't say I would use it I think it could be comical after a few cocktails.

Beyonce wouldn't have made the cover of People Magazine's most beautiful edition looking like below.

FastKayak · « **Reply #15 on:** May 18, 2012, 12:35:58 am »

No, not that far. When I say "black bars" I am referring to something similar to letter boxing a movie. I chose to use panoramic as an example because it would look comical (or ugly) if not letter boxed. Portrait I would think would always require vertical letter boxing. What happens now is a bad hatch-it job, folks getting cut off at the eyebrows and the like. This isn't anything close to "sized to fit". If this was the desired behavior it would be called cut-off to fit.

Your Beyonce shot is "stretched to fit" that isn't anything like "sized to fit". Stretched to fit means some pictures will look weird. Since I have no idea who Beyonce is I wouldn't know the difference. But with folks I do know I continue to wonder what the heck happened to their forehead. Why is it always cut off. I think MC can do better than that.

FastKayak / Larry

Scolex · « **Reply #16 on:** May 18, 2012, 12:44:05 am »

I knew what you meant but when I first read your post I misread so I responded based on my first thought just for kicks.
I knew what I first read couldn't be right so I reread. In my current lack of sleep, cocktail enhanced state I should probably read everything twice.
I was temporarily colored blind and didn't see the black bars.

PS: *Hi-Jack mode disabled* sorry OP

glynor · « **Reply #17 on:** May 18, 2012, 12:46:20 am »

It makes me laugh when the people get cut off at the eyeballs, and visitors always comment (why does it do that?)...

Yes, I agree, generally.

MC needs to handle landscape photos differently from portrait ones. When a portrait-oriented (9x16 rather than 16x9) picture is being displayed, I actually like how MC makes the reasonable guess and crops the bottom of the image, but it is way too "aggressive". It always tries to fill the screen.

Don't try to fill the screen. Scale them and pillarbox them so that they fill a reasonable width of a 16x9 screen, and then crop the bottom if still needed.

glynor · « **Reply #18 on:** May 18, 2012, 12:48:18 am »

Quote from: Scolex on May 17, 2012, 05:07:28 pm

To improve the images that are retrieved you can customize C:\Program Files (x86)\J River\Media Center 17\Data\Default Resources\ArtistSearch.txt and enter additional keywords to prevent unrelated items.
note: if not using a x64 version of Windows remove the *space*(x86)

Example: Scorpions come up with a bunch of images of the Arthropod version so I entered:
Scorpions
Scorpions rock band

This is a great tip. I didn't know that.

Thanks.

Scolex · « **Reply #19 on:** May 18, 2012, 12:58:19 am »

Quote from: glynor on May 18, 2012, 12:48:18 am

This is a great tip. I didn't know that.

Thanks.

Your welcome, glad I was able to help, god knows I have learned a ton from reading your posts.

INTERACT FORUM

Author Topic: Theatre View (Read 2405 times)