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A Mac and Windows Movie Wallpaper GUI Generator for Media Players

391K views 1K replies 233 participants last post by  prebber 
#1 ·
Cross Platform, Movie GUI Builder (Formerly for TViX only)

for Windows PC and Mac OSX (Tiger & Leopard)

Guy Kuo


************************************ Recent Changes ************************************

1.407 (Nov 2011)


Temp fix to allow manual function through 2012.

Pasting synopsis and image manually works.


************************************************************ ***************************



This program is a simple to use, Mac OSX or Windows PC platform, movie wallpaper generator. It simplifies creation of wallpaper and icon files for media players which can display custom graphics such as the TViX players. Mediagate players are supported using a special "Flat Media File" mode, and experimental HTM file generation allows use with Popcorn Hour (NMT) players.


The work of obtaining, cropping artwork, rendering a wallpaper, creating an icon, and keeping track of which movies need to be processed is done by this program. The program can automatically download cover art, synopsis and other information from the web. You can also manually edit movie movie information.


In manual mode, you follow the four, numbered steps. It starts the web search for you and automatically accepts text and pictures from the clipboard when the program is brought to the front. You can also drag and drop text and images from your browser into the program.


The program can speed processing for each film to under 30 seconds including obtaining cover art and descriptive text from the web. A large library can easily given a wallpaper GUI even if you have a Mac. For Windows PC users, this program delivers an alternative to WIB-T.


Several utilties are built into the program. For instance, you can also use this program to add an icon.tivx file to activate icon view for a folder on TViX players.


You can substitute your own background graphic instead of the default one. Your background can be assigned to the current movie, the current collection, or to be the default background. To add a background, drag a graphic which is wider than 700 pixels (or wider in aspect ratio than 4:3) into the Render window. The graphic will be accepted as a new background and remembered for later use. Your graphic should be 720 x 480 or 1280 x 720. If the graphic is a near fit, it will be reshaped to fit. Otherwise, it will be positioned without rescaling.



Sample output wallpaper (original rendered at 1280 x 720)



************************************************************ ******************************

EMPTY YOUR BROWSER CACHE PRIOR TO DOWNLOADING TO ENSURE YOU GET A NEW FILE FROM THE SERVER

************************************************************ ******************************

Mac OSX Universal binary (Tiger or Leopard) can be downloaded from

Movie GUI Builder for Mac OSX


Windows PC version can be downloaded from

Movie GUI Builder for Windows PC


(Note: PC users, you can delete included files whose names start with a period. These extra .files are sometimes in the zip archive but not needed on your PC)




(Note: This message is updated when the program changes. The discussion which immediately follows this post is regarding a much earlier version of the program. Posts near the end of this thread are much more current.)
 
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#3 ·
Hi,


now I've tested it.

Very easy to use once I understood how you intended it to work.


Possible bug:

I'm using the PC version and it is impossible for me to make it render any text at all in the final Tvix.jpg.

The text is displayed fine in the window, but then it's gone in the jpg.


My wishes in the first post would be nice of course but isn't really that necessary since the tool is so simple to use. But I would really really like the ability to select backgound image



Thank's for the program!

/J
 
#4 ·
Download the app again to get version 0.31 (empty your web browser cache first)


Fixed the problem with saving out the rendered text.


Also, the program now remaps black and white levels in the graphics to for correct video black to white range (16..235) instead of computer range (0..255). This avoids clipping of shadow and hilight details when viewed on a video display.


As indicated in the about.pdf file, you CAN change the background by placing a file called background.jpg in the same folder as my app. Your background will be detected when the app launches and replace my default background.


(Ignore following if running on a PC) Added a button to remove the annoying ._files which OSX likes to sometimes generate. The function only works if the volumes are mounted directly to your Mac. It won't work over NFS network mounts.
 
#6 ·
Good. Glad it's now working for you.


Hint:


You can make the process more efficient by clicking on the Amazon DVD link at the top of the IMDB web page immediately after copying text on the IMDB site, but BEFORE switching back to my program to paste in the text. That way the Amazon page loads in the background while you take care of the text. When you flip back to the web browser, the Amazon page will probably be already for you to choose the DVD and then the cover art.


...And yes. Amazon gets a big percentage of my DVD orders.
 
#7 ·
I REALLY like this program. (I'm using .33b)


However, I don't get a background or the cover image in the tvix.jpg file or in the preview pane of the application. The folder.jpg file does contain the cover image so it is getting to your program from Amazon.


I'm using a PC with a NVidia 8800 GTS graphics card. What other information can I provide for you? Or am I SOL?
 
#8 ·
Sounds like your video driver doesn't like to do OpenGL rendering in an invisible window. Try downloading 0.34b. I've changed it to render in a visible window (causes some visual glitches in the GUI), but it might fix your problem. If that doesn't fix it, time to see if there is a better behaving OpenGL driver for your PC.
 
#9 ·
.34b Works great! Thanks.



Edit: .34b leaves a larger version of the cover image in the video_ts directory. Is it supposed to work like that? The about file doesn't mention it.
 
#10 ·
Odd. There isn't any code in the program to write out an additional file in the video_ts folder. Program doesn't even look inside or for that folder. Any chance you pasted the file into the directory when you looked inside of it? I don't see that happening here on my PC or Mac.
 
#11 ·
I don't think so but you never know. Let me try some more and let you know. I've been ripping DVDs all day so my brain is a bit like mush right now.



EDIT: The problem must have been somewhere between the keyboard and the chair. I can't make this happen again.


THANK YOU. This is a very useful tool.
 
#12 ·
One other thought since your system had problems when rendering with an invisible window. Dragging my program's window such that the preview pane is partially off screen may cause a similar problem. Some implementations of OpenGL may clip the rendering if part of it is off screen. The up side of OpenGL is that I can use hardware acceleration to get the nice rotation and reflection effect. It's a reasonable trade off for this limited applications.


(I don't use DirectX because I need the program to run cross-platform. Remember I started this to create a Mac usable tool. The PC operability is just a bonus of my often designing cross-platform)


Version 0.35b now defaults to generating folder.jpg at 88 x 136 instead of 100 x 136. The slimmer icon has the right aspect ratio to look correct on a 16:9 widescreen display. The old, 100 x 136 icon size made the icon graphics look horizontally wider than they should be.


You can still generate the 100 x 136 icons by unchecking the "Aspect correct icon for 16:9" checkbox.


If you have a large number of folder.jpg files already generated, the new "Rescale Icons in All Move Folders" button which will do a mass rescaling of the existing folder.jpg files to 88 x 136. "All" means all the movie folders within the current enclosing folder. This isn't quite as sharp as completely regenerating the slimmer icons from a big image, but produces good results with very little effort. Otherwise, you'd need to grab the graphics again from the web and redo everything. CAUTION: the rescaling is NOT reversible and is done on all movie folders within the enclosing folder. I did this on my system because I really dislike seeing images geometrically distorted.
 
#15 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Guy Kuo /forum/post/12454349


Sounds like something went awry with the download or unpacking. There isn't a 1.pdf file in the zip file.


Let's make sure you are downloading the Mac version.

Also, clear your download folder and try the download again.

Guy:


-I am downloading the Mac version

-Cleared the download list and cache

-Downloaded again

-3 items on the folder after unzipping:

about.1.pdf (opens fine with Preview)

about.pdf (won't open at all)

TViX GUI Builder.app version 0.35 8.7 MB (will try to launch but fails)


Hope this helps, regards;


Moises
 
#17 ·
Hey Guy:


I already tried your program and it is quite easy to use and the quality of the TViX.jpg file produced by the program is excellent.


I have only one problem: the size of the picture that appears on the wallpaper seems to be a little bit too large, and the name of the .iso file at the top of the screen(all my movies are iso's) and the description of the folder that appears at the bottom of the screen, they both overlap with said picture.


Does this happens to you?


hanks again and regards;


Moises
 
#18 ·
Yes, I intentionally set a larger picture. I'm using video_ts folders and don't mind a little overlap. I still know which file to activate and don't care about seeing the file path at the bottom. What was more important to me was a bigger cover art picture - otherwise it wasn't worth doing it instead of a the default text list.
 
#20 ·
If you have an image (.png, .jpg, whatever) of a cover, you just need to copy it to the clipboard before switching back to this program.


I have 3 covers of DVDs that I scanned into my PC and used them with this program without problem. I used the Windows Paint program to get them into the clipboard instead of doing the "go to Amazon.com" step.


I hope this helps.
 
#21 ·
Hi


Can someone explain to me what all these icon.tvix, folder.jpg etc files really does with the GUI?


I dont have time right now to try and figure out for myself what these files actually do, so if anyone could explain to me with words or maybe even some pictures, I would really appreciate it.


My structure is


Movies

------ Movie1

---------- Movie1.mkv

---------- Movie1.srt

------ Movie2

---------- Movie2.mkv

---------- Movie2.srt

TV

------ Series1

---------- Season01

--------------- Episode1.mkv

--------------- Episode1.srt

--------------- Episode2.mkv

--------------- Episode2.srt

------ Series2

---------- Season01

--------------- Episode1.mkv

--------------- Episode1.srt

--------------- Episode2.mkv

--------------- Episode2.srt

etc


Is this a good structure and how would it look if I used all the fancy possibilities to enhance my GUI?


I have a SH-5100


/Tobbe
 
#25 ·
If I understand you correctly, you are trying to use a custom background.jpg with my program and having difficulty.


Some general hints:


1. Make your background 720 x 480 pixels in size. The program will try to scale any other size to 720 x 480. So, other sizes should theoretically work, but that would remove one variable.


2. The jpeg format you are saving in might not be what the program is able to read. Try using other jpeg options (change compression, progressive, etc) when you save out your background.jpg file from you image editing program which was used to create your background graphic.


This all of course assumes that indeed the problem you are having is with using your own background.jpg file with my program. Does the default background of my program work (when your background.jpg is NOT present)?
 
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