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[RhinoBanga]

Hi,

Is there any way to switch off skinning in MJ?

I have download this version and the whole app is now blue instead of sticking with the standard windows colours (as it used to).
It may sound minor but I run MJ maximized at 1280x1024 on a 19" monitor so as you can imagine that's a lot of blue.

*I* have choosen my Windows theme in the control panel (I am using Windows XP and have the Olive Green XP style set) and it really bugs me when applications think they know better and ignore this.



Rhino.

[zevele1]

I have the same problem.I do not see remove mega-me skins in settings
Back to 7.2.I will never use a program in blue color

[Trelane]

This is a skinning test. I'm sure of it. JimH already stated that the next few MJ8 builds will look radically different. Change is to be expected when beta testing software.

Mike

[ZRocker]

I too was hoping that you could turn off Mega-Me skinning (like you could in pre-8.0 releases).  Some of us may have been happy with the speed and stability of Mega-Me w/o skins and were not wanting Mega-Me skinning to return (LOL)...unless it was optional, of course.

[JimH]

Skinning is still changing.  We will soon provide skins that look like the Windows standard.

There is a slight cost in speed, but should be none in stability -- the skinning technology is ours.

Listening to: '03 - B Sharp Blues' by 'Duke Ellington' on Media Jukebox

[RhinoBanga]

Jim,

Will there definately be an option to switch off skinning in the production v8 release?



Rhino.

[JimH]

Maybe.

[ZRocker]

Constructive Comment:
Disabling might be a good option to have...it may take months to get all the bugs out of Mega-Me skinning and there will probably be a few 'strange' things that will always be there.  It's taken months to tweak Mini-Me (Metamorphis) and it still has/does 'strange' things.  (IMHO)

[Gatobrit]

JimH - I would really appreciate being able to disable mega-me skinning. I would like MJ to be lean and mean when I want it to be and use my CPU cycles when and where I want.

Just my tuppence-worth.

[JimH]

Can you detect a speed difference?

[ZRocker]

I notice odd flickers already and weird drawing (or excessive drawing).  Maybe a bug...or maybe a feature of Mega-Me skinning.

[harry The Hipster]

Like being a guest at a baby shower for male triplets. Izotope has been submerged in an indigo sea.

Listening to Sam Noto - 'Round Midnight

Next up:

All Blues - Miles
Basically Blue - Ike Quebec
Berkshire Blues - Booker Ervin

HTH

[LCtheDJ]

I've noticed when I switch from Playing Now to Media Library, or any other change in display, a delay of 1 to 2 seconds while the content view panel redraws.  I've also had some pauses in the music play that I didn't get with the previous build.  The slow reaction is just annoying, the break in playback is totally unacceptable.

What can we do to change your 'maybe' into a 'definitely', about being able to disable skinning in Mega-Me?

[Ilmar]

Hi

Love the new skin in Mega-ME! As an XP user, I was stuck with glaring white, blinding me like some detergent commercial.

Blue at least doesn't make my eyes bleed. Appreciated that this is just the first step of many to create a user definable skin set, GO FOR IT!!

Ilmar

Listening to: 'flowers of the forest' from 'Oldfield: Voyager' by 'Mike Oldfield' on Media Jukebox

[Gatobrit]

JinH - I figure around 3/5% additional CPU load (i.e. MJ used to run a 10% it now runs around 13 - 15%). This is not a very scientific study, just watching Task Managler doing it's stuff.

I do have a very CPU-intensive task running in the background (at a lower priority) and this runs a little slower now (since I upgraded to 245 this morning).

This is not a huge difference but when I don't "see" the benefit of skinning because I don't use or want it I'd prefer the option to turn it off - especially when you give the "Maybe" answer above.

Either way, not a huge deal but I've at least given my opinion. I know others love the skinning stuff and I'm not dogmatic enough on this issue to worry overly about it.

MJ8 generally consumes more CPU cycles than MJ7 because it's difficult to turn off visualizations / track info etc. Previously this was possible but I haven't found a way of doing this in recent times since the Playing Now window changed.


Media Jukebox PLUS 8.0.245

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 1539 MHz MMX
Memory: Total - 261 MB, Free - 83 MB
OS: Microsoft Windows 2000 5.0 Service Pack 2 (Build 2195)

Internet Explorer: 5.50.4807.2300
ComCtl32.dll: 5.50.4807.2300
Shlwapi.dll: 5.50.4807.2300
Shell32.dll: 5.00.3502.4718
wnaspi32.dll: N/A

[Mavrick]

I use WindowBlinds to skin windows as a whole and would really like the ability to disable Mega-me skinning to keep my overall look consistent. In fact that was one thing that led me to buy MJ8 as the competion did not allow skin disabling.

[JimH]

Gatobrit,
CPU cycles should not change if MJ is minimized.

Try the little triangles on the playing now window's separator bar to hide visualizations or change to a TrackInfo page.

Listening to: 'I Ain't Superstitious' from 'His Best' by 'Howlin' Wolf' on Media Jukebox

[Gatobrit]

JimH - I downloaded 247 this morning and that has fixed the mega-me issues. Thanks!

Anyway, back to CPU cycles...

MJ is currently consuming around 25/35% of my CPU cycles. It is running in mega-me with a vis playing "Can't buy me love" by The Fab Four. Obviously it is not the focus as I type this.

If I make it the focus then it's CPU usage increases to 98%.

If I drag the vis / track info window all the way to the top so that the vis is not visible the cpu drops to 1/2%.

If I select the lower left mini-me with the same vis running it runs at around 5/10% sometimes peaking at 15%. (I find this acceptable - it uses a small area of my screen and I can see the album cover.)

If I run the same lower left mini-me and de-select the vis then the CPU drops to around 4%. I'm assuming that the difference between 1/2% and 4% is the Metamorphis engine running?



So. I know it is early days with mega-me skinning but it does seem to consume considerably more CPU than MJ8 without it. Also, if I had been able to disable mega-me skinning yesterday then 246 wouldn't have been such a problem.

Listening to "Stand" R.E.M.

[JimH]

Gatobrit,
Did you find the little triangles?

Also Track Info?  One without visualizations?

[Gatobrit]

JimH - yeah. If I had the vis in mega-me then the CPU cycles drops a lot - down to less than 10%.

If I select a track info template (boxed) the CPU usage is also much lower even when MJ is the focus in mega-me.

OK. So it's the vis but it only seems to be an issue in mega-me since the vis running in mini-me doesn't seem to impact the CPU as much.

Maybe this helps you?

Listening to "Cars and Girls" Prefab Sprout.

[JimH]

The number of pixels to be manipulated drops fast as the size of the window decreases.  A window 1/2 the height has 1/4 the pixels.  That's why small viz's take little power.

[Gatobrit]

JimH - more info. I'm using the "CoverArt" vis provided by Doof and it scales the cover art to the size of window available.

If I make the window much smaller then the vis consumes considerably less CPU. I'm assuming that this because of the work it needs to do to scale the vis. This would explain why it doesn't impact mini-me as much.

[jimmy]

please do add an option to turn off skinning in the future. I'd like to keep my system consistant in appearance. Thanks.

[DocLotus]

I saw in one of your replys about MEGA-ME skinning a couple of images of the new blue skin with off white backgrounds & menu bar.  The comment was "That's better".  How was the off white done?  I want to do the same as the all blue is to much of a good thing.