I am pulling BLACK MAMBA

DeVicious,

Firsty I would like to thank you for creating such a beautiful theme and being so generous in sharing it with us. Your constant updating and improving is truly amazing. A quick question which I hope you can answer. I have been creating some extra genre cover art and used your “! MASTER 4 PHOTOSHOP.psd” file. Afterwards I saved them in jpeg format using the maximum quality setting, On my PC they look great, however, when I see them displayed  through the WDTV they look very pixellated. The file size and resolution are the same as yours and I even tried saving them as .png which were almost 3 times the filesize and they still look pixelated and course. Is there a special way of saving them or a setting I need to use? Thanks again for everything.

ninja168 wrote:

DeVicious,

 

Firsty I would like to thank you for creating such a beautiful theme and being so generous in sharing it with us. Your constant updating and improving is truly amazing. A quick question which I hope you can answer. I have been creating some extra genre cover art and used your “! MASTER 4 PHOTOSHOP.psd” file. Afterwards I saved them in jpeg format using the maximum quality setting, On my PC they look great, however, when I see them displayed  through the WDTV they look very pixellated. The file size and resolution are the same as yours and I even tried saving them as .png which were almost 3 times the filesize and they still look pixelated and course. Is there a special way of saving them or a setting I need to use? Thanks again for everything.

Hello Ninja, firts of all thanx for the kind words :smiley:

Regarding the genre thumbs I wouldn’t know why they look pixelated.

If you are saving them lossless in png and they still look pixelated the only thing i could think of is that they come out in the wrong dimensions or that something went wrong in the conversion from my graphics program into psd.

Could you please upload me one of your covers so i can inspect it, it is very hard to judge base on assumptions

Thanks for the reply Devicious. Don’t know how to upload the file to you so I have used the mediafire service that I see you use. Here are 3 of the covers:

http://www.mediafire.com/?t129o9zir82j507,234i04e1glv0br1,lbek5jkdxsdxlcs

I eagerly await to hear  what I have done wrong. Thanks!!

ninja168 wrote:

Thanks for the reply Devicious. Don’t know how to upload the file to you so I have used the mediafire service that I see you use. Here are 3 of the covers:

 

http://www.mediafire.com/?t129o9zir82j507,234i04e1glv0br1,lbek5jkdxsdxlcs

 

I eagerly await to hear  what I have done wrong. Thanks!!

Got it :smiley:

it is poor quality of the source images you added to the thumbnails, the parts from my file seem normal on my TV.

Try to find pictures with higher resolution (at least 800x600) and resize them within the tumbnail graphic accordingly (gets rid of artefacts) and if you want them to look like mine use an OVERLAY blending effect and they will look the same

Thanks for checking out for me. The curious thing is even your bits look pixellated on my TV and very distinct next to your creations. The pictures I used are high res. Is there a setting I need to choose when saving into jpg? I choose the Maximum quality setting (12) and the bit below, I keep it on Progressive Scan 3. Is that the same as you? 

The difference I find is in windows, when i right click and choose properties then under details, the only difference is my covers have Resolution unit as 2 and Colour Representation is Uncalibrated while yours are blank.   

DeVicious wrote:


doudidou wrote:


Did you see the thing that i report lat day? On your home picture, the black woman on left is sometime more transperent than others… in music and home cinema she is more dark than in other menus


I saw it and answered,

The black head is 20% transparent, it changes with the background image

OK… so the bakground image is almost the same for each categorie except music/movie (more dark)… not very important :slight_smile:

Good night from France :wink:

my son hit something in ThumbGen & now i noticed I am getting a .tgmd file when I am running thumbgen. What is this file, is it needed & if not needed, how do I make thumbgen stop generating them? Thanks :slight_smile:

dudeman316 wrote:

my son hit something in ThumbGen & now i noticed I am getting a .tgmd file when I am running thumbgen. What is this file, is it needed & if not needed, how do I make thumbgen stop generating them? Thanks :slight_smile:

its actually quite a useful file as it means TG can just use the info in the file instead of downloading the info again… very handy if you want to quickly try a different sheet.

anyway, in options → General → Generate… untick → Main / Etra moviesheet metadata

i have it in Options → Input/output Naming → Main / Etra Metadata  = $M..\tgmd$N$E

now all those .tdmd files are create in the directory above my movies… so not to mess up my movie files. 

@ Dudeman…

what Kazgor said you can uncheck them in the general options, they are useful indeed if you want to recreate moviesheets again, for me personally the waste of HDD space doesn’t measure up with the time it takes to create a new sheet. Both has it’s advantages.

ninja168 wrote:

Thanks for checking out for me. The curious thing is even your bits look pixellated on my TV and very distinct next to your creations. The pictures I used are high res. Is there a setting I need to choose when saving into jpg? I choose the Maximum quality setting (12) and the bit below, I keep it on Progressive Scan 3. Is that the same as you? 

 

The difference I find is in windows, when i right click and choose properties then under details, the only difference is my covers have Resolution unit as 2 and Colour Representation is Uncalibrated while yours are blank.   

you might be overthinking the process. You can’t do much wrong with JPG in 100% quality if optimised, or progressive the artifacts start showing when your go below 100%

I made a comparison show of 3 regions of the Drama Thumbnail. Notice you took my Drama JPG as a source file for that and the quality remains almost the same. The Black Mamba head has the exact same artefact pattern which means it is NOT your compression, then there is a selection of your image and mine, minde is still smooth at 800% inflation while yours has black and white pixelation (noise) It almost looks as your image has been sharpened too much or it is a bad quality source image.

(process for this result, i upscaled both images by 400% and stitched them together in one graphic, then i inflated it to 200%, FLicker will reduce the size again which makes you show the artefact effects better)

TV THUMBNAIL BUG FIX & NEW TV SHEET

alrighty :smiley:

some might wonder what the bugfix is supposed to change…

frankly I made a mistake and Bigroo’s post made me aware of it, the thumbnail was too larg at the bottom by 6 pixel (pitch black) Nobody noticed coz it could be intended this way, however with the bugfix it looks a lot better with the reflections…

Simply make a thumbgen profile that only generates the extra sheet for TV Shows (uncheck anything else) it takes 45 minutes to generate 1700 thumbnails in automatic mode (just did)

Compare it with yours you will notice the difference on the bottom, I will make theme adjustments in V1.4 to fit the new height.

TV Episode Sheet Reloaded

 I liked my TV sheets but there was one thing that was bothering me which I will change with the movie sheets as well, it is the white border surrounding the information box, my theme has no white broders and this is an inconsitency, what also bothered me was the lack of visual information, I made the background image more visible and added a new one into the information box, now both images beld through the information box and while it looks a bit too much on the computer it looks stellar on the TV… I also made minor changes to the thumbnail area, it now maches the theme better. similar changes will be made to the movie sheets.

If anyone wants this alternative version I will upload it here before the 1.4 update.

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Ok I am going absolutely crazy! First off I am new to the Hub but I’m pretty tech savvy. I have Black Mamba Theme running on my hub and I have followed every instruction in the thumbgen readme to a T … 3 times. Yet my moviesheets do not show up when I load them onto my hub. My folder structure includes the movie, moviesheet, thumbnail and an xml file. I am using the most current version of thumbgen and the most current firmware update on my hub. Please note that the demo sheets that come with the download pack DO WORK. Although mine that I have generated do not. Any assistance with this would be greatly appreciated as I have been researching a resolution for the past few days to avoid asking a *stupid* question.

Wow, I really appreciate your in-depth analysis of my problem. It is only when the covers are displayed on the TV that the pixellation occurs but look fine on my PC even when blown up. I do not know how to screen grab my Tv to show you.  I know it is a big ask but I have uploaded the covers in psd format and wondered if you could save them into jpg for me. Also, I am a complete novice using Photoshop so have no idea what you meant by the blending process to make them look like your covers so I just reduced the “fill” opacity so a bit of your scaly background shows up. I fully understand if you can’t do it for me. Your efforts in improving the theme is far more important. :smiley:1

My PSD files:

http://www.mediafire.com/?cbh8onj0l22jawd,7o9dmkluascexox,ko1oy491ex14bns,s8eyperdkyr8zzj,ax2odk2yb7zzz7h,sy97m3a3jcymysx,9gdizcrj8eepmgx

and this one I cannot get the text to look like yours

http://www.mediafire.com/i/?t5g77y9kasmouav

Thanks in advance!!

moobies wrote:

Ok I am going absolutely crazy! First off I am new to the Hub but I’m pretty tech savvy. I have Black Mamba Theme running on my hub and I have followed every instruction in the thumbgen readme to a T … 3 times. Yet my moviesheets do not show up when I load them onto my hub. My folder structure includes the movie, moviesheet, thumbnail and an xml file. I am using the most current version of thumbgen and the most current firmware update on my hub. Please note that the demo sheets that come with the download pack DO WORK. Although mine that I have generated do not. Any assistance with this would be greatly appreciated as I have been researching a resolution for the past few days to avoid asking a *stupid* question.

Hello Moobies welcome to the board and i am glad that your name doesn’t start with a “B” coz Bmoobies would be a funny name :laughing:

Since there are not stupid questions, just stupid answers you should of asked right away…

if I had to put my money on it i would bet you have missed this…

If that doesn’t fix it please post the filenames of each of your 4 files (movie, jpg and xml) and on top of that I want you to open the xml file in notepad in order to copy and paste it’s entire content here. After that I should be able to tell you what is wrong, however I think the screenshot above should fix it.

ninja168 wrote:

Wow, I really appreciate your in-depth analysis of my problem. It is only when the covers are displayed on the TV that the pixellation occurs but look fine on my PC even when blown up. I do not know how to screen grab my Tv to show you.  I know it is a big ask but I have uploaded the covers in psd format and wondered if you could save them into jpg for me. Also, I am a complete novice using Photoshop so have no idea what you meant by the blending process to make them look like your covers so I just reduced the “fill” opacity so a bit of your scaly background shows up. I fully understand if you can’t do it for me. Your efforts in improving the theme is far more important. :smiley:1

 

My PSD files:

http://www.mediafire.com/?cbh8onj0l22jawd,7o9dmkluascexox,ko1oy491ex14bns,s8eyperdkyr8zzj,ax2odk2yb7zzz7h,sy97m3a3jcymysx,9gdizcrj8eepmgx

 

and this one I cannot get the text to look like yours

 

http://www.mediafire.com/i/?t5g77y9kasmouav

 

Thanks in advance!!

Hi Ninja,

I am not doing this for 2 reasons…

  1. it wouldn’t make a difference and you are obsessing over something that is not part of the problem (as i tried to explain before)

  2. it would open a can of worms i can’t close with others… analysis and support “YAY” exclusive work “NAY” :laughing:

However I know what your problem is, all your graphics do have the same artefact pattern which lack smoothness, this kind of hard edges only show if you a) over sharpen it or b) have no Anti Aliasing…

Look no further it is b) you have no anti aliasing activated which smoothes out artefacts upon scaling or downsizing images.

I can’t tell you exactly how to turn it on again since I don’t know your version but you should find that in a jiffy by using the help window or google. If you downsize the dragon picture again afterwards it will be fine…

Thank you for the reply but the setting you have shown in the screenshot was correct on my end. I will start posting the information you have requested.

movie = HalfBaked-720p.avi

sheet = HalfBaked-720p.avi_sheet.jpg

thumb = HalfBaked-720p.jpg

xml below


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>   false   Half Baked   Half Baked   1998   Thurgood and his friends Brian and Scarface are forced into selling medical marijuana stolen from the lab where Thurgood works as a "custodian" (janitor) in order to bail their friend Kenny out of jail, after he accidentally killed a diabetic police horse by feeding it junk food.   HalfBaked-720p.avi   They'll do anything to save their best bud.   [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jArRkXmGZJo](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jArRkXmGZJo)   6.4           tt0120693   16.01.1998   Rated R for pervasive drug content, language, nudity and sexual material       Dave Chappelle     Tommy Chong     Harland Williams     Guillermo Díaz     Jim Breuer     Rachel True     Snoop Dogg     Clarence Williams III     Laura Silverman         Comedy     Crime         Tamra Davis     82   R       Universal Pictures         United States of America           HalfBaked-720p.avi\_sheet.jpg     HalfBaked-720p.jpg               Resolution\_720p         720P           Format\_Mpeg         mpeg4                           Unknown         Unknown     23.976     1.86:1     1280x688     XviD     3 Mbps     AC-3     6     448 Kbps     4925     82     1h 22m     1877153018     1.75 GB     AVI     English     en     English     en      

Please let me know if you see anything wrong. :slight_smile:

Hey again

been doing nothing else than updating, organising my library just because of your theme, and am down to one last little thing i hope you can help with! os there any way to not have it show smaller resolutions on the thumb? I have tryed deleteing them from settings in designer but they just auto restore. i just want for HD resolution 720 and 1080 ?

moobies wrote:

Thank you for the reply but the setting you have shown in the screenshot was correct on my end. I will start posting the information you have requested.

movie = HalfBaked-720p.avi

sheet = HalfBaked-720p.avi_sheet.jpg

thumb = HalfBaked-720p.jpg

xml below


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>   false   Half Baked   Half Baked   1998   Thurgood and his friends Brian and Scarface are forced into selling medical marijuana stolen from the lab where Thurgood works as a "custodian" (janitor) in order to bail their friend Kenny out of jail, after he accidentally killed a diabetic police horse by feeding it junk food.   HalfBaked-720p.avi   They'll do anything to save their best bud.   [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jArRkXmGZJo](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jArRkXmGZJo)   6.4           tt0120693   16.01.1998   Rated R for pervasive drug content, language, nudity and sexual material       Dave Chappelle     Tommy Chong     Harland Williams     Guillermo Díaz     Jim Breuer     Rachel True     Snoop Dogg     Clarence Williams III     Laura Silverman         Comedy     Crime         Tamra Davis     82   R       Universal Pictures         United States of America           HalfBaked-720p.avi\_sheet.jpg     HalfBaked-720p.jpg               Resolution\_720p         720P           Format\_Mpeg         mpeg4                           Unknown         Unknown     23.976     1.86:1     1280x688     XviD     3 Mbps     AC-3     6     448 Kbps     4925     82     1h 22m     1877153018     1.75 GB     AVI     English     en     English     en      

 

Please let me know if you see anything wrong. :slight_smile:

Wrong xml file.

Ignore the rest of the settings as its not setup for this theme. just wanted to get a screenshot. see the green box only… needs to be set for the hub.

2 Likes

That was it! Thank you a ton!

thanx a lot Drizzt :smiley:

I highly appreciate your help as well

1 Like