new theme (kinda): retroTape

[vash]

I'd really appreciate, if u write same stuff for replacing counter with a clock, so I could change it in my wps. Big tnx.

That's actually a very easy change  , you'd just have to change the current track time tag for the clock time tags in the retroTape.wps file, find the comment "Song Time" there. For more information about the tags you might want to use see http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/CustomWPS

I tried once to do that change before posting, but that gave me nothing :[ I suppose I shoud've been using some other font or so. Ok. Will try again and if'll become in any troubles with that issue let u know.

Song time is problematic for viewing content in hh:mm:ss format  (cued albs, radio podcast, huge audio books etc) - there is no enough space for additional 2 hour digitis.

Tnx anyway!

ps UPDATE --> Taking 2 minutes to do all that stuff. Working like a charm!

Here's the code, in case someone need it

# Song Time replaced with time
%V|268|13|36|13|2|FFFFFF|000000|
%ar%ck:%cM

Pretty much like that stuff -->

%cI    hour (01..12) - (that's a c and an uppercase i)
%cl    hour (1..12) - (and this is a c and a lowercase L)
 

[audio-i]

I was hoping to find a workaround for the bug that makes the wheels movement look really bad since some time ago on recent builds (bug is FS#11629, %t not working well when used as argument inside %?mp), so instead of using %t according to the playing status in %?mp, in a viewport for each wheel, I defined 4 viewports for each wheel (1 for each playing status except stop), each containing the correspondent image displaying order and timing, and made %?mp display the according viewport.

Code for 320x240 was

Code: [Select]

# Left Wheel
%xl(W,wheel.bmp,0,0,3)
%V(65,64,28,28,-)
%?mp<|%t(0.2)%xd(Wa)|%t(0.1)%xd(Wc)|%t(0.1)%xd(Wa)|%t(0.1)%xd(Wc)>;
%?mp<|%t(0.2)%xd(Wb)|%t(0.1)%xd(Wc)|%t(0.1)%xd(Wb)|%t(0.1)%xd(Wb)>;
%?mp<|%t(0.2)%xd(Wc)|%t(0.1)%xd(Wc)|%t(0.1)%xd(Wc)|%t(0.1)%xd(Wa)>

changed it to

Code: [Select]

# Left Wheel
%xl(W,wheel.bmp,0,0,3)
%?mp<|%Vd(p)|%Vd(pause)|%Vd(f)|%Vd(r)>
%Vl(p,65,64,28,28,-)
%t(0.2)%xd(Wa);%t(0.2)%xd(Wb);%t(0.2)%xd(Wc)
%Vl(pause,65,64,28,28,-)
%xd(Wb)
%Vl(f,65,64,28,28,-)
%t(0.1)%xd(Wa);%t(0.1)%xd(Wb);%t(0.1)%xd(Wc)
%Vl(r,65,64,28,28,-)
%t(0.1)%xd(Wc);%t(0.1)%xd(Wb);%t(0.1)%xd(Wa)

Strange thing is, it did work fine for the left wheel, but it didn't work for the right wheel, which is shown static, unless REW is pressed, and from then on it stays in the REW viewport %Vd(r) regardless of the playing status. As if it couldn't handle two %?mp that have to display images using %t in the same wps.

Any ideas?

EDIT
It seems the wps parser was being a little bit temperamental, but after changing a couple things, it seems to like the workaround for now, so both wheels seem to be working. Below is the 320x240 version for those interested, please let me know if any problems come up.
(retrotape-sbs.txt has to be renamed to retroTape.sbs)

[JdGordon]

%t issues are hopefully all fixed now... let me know if there is any more wierdness

[audio-i]

%t issues are hopefully all fixed now... let me know if there is any more wierdness

Seems to be working great! 

Interesting the info you provided about the FPS in SBS and WPS (http://svn.rockbox.org/viewvc.cgi?view=rev;revision=28226). If I'm getting it right, in a WPS with peakmeters enabled (by the way, which would be the FPS without peakmeters?), the screen updates every 0.04 seconds, but as far as I know the %t() tag allows only a minimum of 0.1 sec, and 0.1 sec steps... in this theme, if FFW and REW would "look faster", with say %t(0.04) instead of %t(0.1), it would be great... just in case this can be considered in the future.

[JdGordon]

without peakmeters I think its 5 or 10 FPS. I've thought about adding either some clever logic to work out the required update speed, or add a tag to specify the speed, but (obviously) that hasnt happened yet

[JdGordon]

I'm not sure I understand the last part of your message... the number in the %t() is the seconds between each frame/change, it isnt a multiple of the screen refresh rate. So so if the screen is refreshing every 0.04s that subline with %t(0.1) will only change every ~3rd screen refresh.

If you are asking for faster subline timeouts, I dont tinhk it will ever happen. If oyu really have a reason to want a timeout faster than 10FPS something is wrong. (no offense )

[audio-i]

Reasoning is this: if the WPS is capable of refreshing the screen every 0.04 seconds (or 25 FPS), why not allow %t() to be set accordingly, since now it's limited to 0.1 seconds minimum, and then 0.1 seconds increments.
Now, 0.04 sounds pretty damn fast I just would like the FFW and REW effect to go faster on this theme (being already using the current minimum of 0.1 sec), but I feel I'm missing something here. The spinning effect speed it's not so different currently to that of the play speed (0.2 sec), but maybe that's related to something else (?)

[soap]

Is there an expected CPU consumption hit in increasing the update speed?

[JdGordon]

well yes and no.
I did a battery bench on my mini2g playing the same album in the menu (or file browser) and in the wps and there was no noticable difference (i tihnk a few minutes at most, out of 18h), But now I tihnk about it, i dont tinhk the peakmeter was on so the refresh was about the same.

Anyway, any cpu time drawing the skins is less time decompressing the audio. Also there is a minor technical reason to not allow finer than 0.1s timeouts.

[audio-i]

I've been using for a while a new version of the retroTape theme that I'd like to upload. The WPS has a few minor changes (see below), but the menus have a rather big change (honestly, the idea came a while ago when I made an iPod Classic theme mock up, and thought the menus would be perfect for retroTape) I'm happy with it, basically I really enjoy the huge album art section shown in the menus But since of course if I upload the new version, the old one wouldn't be available anymore, I thought I'd better ask for some feedback first. In my opinion, most of the changes are positive, but there are also some things that would be gone.

WPS changes:

• Next track artist is only shown if different from the current one
• Playlist name is only shown if it's not the dynamic playlist
• It seems at some point the battery-left tag had a change and it uses the last image exclusively for 100% battery, so I made a little adjustment

SBS (menus) now has:

• Huge album art, that makes the menus still look like an inlay cassette card, and aims to let album art details be seen (and mostly, it's supposed to look nice  ), since the WPS only shows a thumbnail sized image
• Date and time (they're small, but they're there
• More menus vertical space (lines)
• Absolute point touch areas for menu browsing: on the album art area, the top makes menu up, the center short press makes select, center long press makes cancel, and the bottom makes menu down; the left top inlay area makes "main menu".

SBS doesn't have anymore:

• Current track info
• Has less menus horizontal space

 

Additionally, this version seems to take a little longer to upload, and everything(*) seems to be a little bit less responsive, in my opinion not really that much, but I'd like to know other people's opinions. So here is the new version for a few days if someone wants to give it a whirl: http://www.datafilehost.com/download-baca2ab1.html

Another "minor" issue: if the theme is displaying the menus, the track changes, and the menus are not being browsed, the menus get slightly clipped when the new album art is displayed; that is because, in order to show the center of the album art, the AA viewport x coordinate starts at 120, and then 40 pixels (horizontally) of it get covered by the menus viewport; but when the track changes, it seems (?) the latter is not updated (until the menus are browsed again).

Finally, my intention was to display album art alternating three views over the same area (3 seconds each or something like that): first the left part, then the center part, and finally the right part. I tried the few options I could think of, but I couldn't achieve this, so if someone knows how to...
That's why I chose showing two thirds of a 240x240 album art, leaving one sixth out on the left, and the same on the right (image shown is 160x240).  That works fine in my opinion, though.


(*) Edit: Actually, really only when going from the WPS to any menu, or back to the WPS

Edit 2: Also, I want to include an FM screen following JdGordon's suggestion:

Also any chance you could modify the wps for a fms also? just about all walkmans had a radio back in the day  

What I have in mind is very simple though, like those "radio cassettes" that some cassette recorders used ( did the wheels move when the "radio tape" was playing?)

[Yotto]

Before downloading this, I was concerned that many, if not most of, the square album art images I had would look odd half-clipped like that.

I. Was. Wrong. Wow that looks good. I've seen maybe 2 or 3 out of dozens that I thought were clipped weird, but other than that they all looked great.

One thing I'd do is (and it's hard because you've already eaten up so much horizontal space) make a better divider. I think 1 or 2 vertical lines (of white or black, not sure what would look better) that are not in the menu viewscreen would add greatly to the look.

It does seem a bit nonresponsive on my iPod. When I hit Menu (while in the WPS) it takes over a second to switch. It made me think maybe the button didn't take. Likewise, if I'm in the menus/files and I hit Play to get back to the WPS after a song change, that can also take well over a second. I doubt there's much if anything you could do to fix it, it may just be that the theme is a bit too beefy for my poor little DAP.

I have no opinion on if you should make this "official" or "mark 2." I see good reasons for both. One reason to do two: There are already themes out there with multiple versions where the only difference is the color of the backdrop. If they're okay, 2 retroTapes should be fine too.

[audio-i]

I uploaded the final 320x240 new version, that includes most of the mentioned changes (thanks again Yotto and Peaceful1 for the feedback and ideas). The best part is that when I changed the menus font from 14-Nimbus to 18-Adobe-Helvetica-Bold, the "unresponsiveness" was gone (I admit I have no idea why).

I wasn't able to include a radio screen, I had a few nice ideas for it, but the theme is too short in skin RAM left, so no way for now.

     

[cereal_killer]

Hello audio-i,

big up for your theme, one of the most amazing I tried so far. I tried it on my iPod, but though it says works with release 3.7 I can't get the album art shown in the menus. So I assume I have to use a current build, right?

I personally like the black background more the the blue one in the "inlay", but I think I just use the backdrop from your beta release and change the colour of the bar manually.

Again thank you for your great work.

Greetings,

c_k

[audio-i]

I tried it on my iPod, but though it says works with release 3.7 I can't get the album art shown in the menus. So I assume I have to use a current build, right?

Well, it should work with the latest release, I tried it myself with 3.7.1 on my iPod and it works fine, the current build should not be different. What exactly is it that you see on the menus, instead of the album art? Have you tried after turning the device off, and on again (having selected retroTape before turning it off)?

[Yotto]

And, just to make sure because you didn't mention it, does the album art show up in on the tape (in the WPS), or in other album-art enabled WPSes?