Thread: Movies for background?

shouldnt be too hard if animated gifs worked...

The thing with animated background images.

In theory, it sounds like a simple idea. But in actuality, it is a nightmare. Here are the opposing arguments.

You cannot use the paint method with a gif, thereby removing the "stretch" effect to fit the image on all resolutions.

Animated gif support is not a standard feature of visual basic, thus requireing me to code something. My previous work with animated gifs created major flicker.

The size of the screen would create a major processor speed drain, plus on top of that, trying to paint it to the whole screen, plus scan IR/Keyboard events, plus update the database in the background.

I hope this explains why I have considered and decided not to try to implement animated gifs.


-Background as a movie-

You cannot do this either because and movie events (mpg avi divx) display on top of all other controls. I could put them in a frame, but then again you would not see the movie. Think about how the control bars display "on top" of the movie screen in the movie player part.

The pioneer units had a short (5 second) looping video in the background... even so, it still looked (unit got nicked ) pretty kewl.

Also, the video game menus have moving 'bits' in the background, i`m not entirely sure of any examples tho...

What about some sort of macromedia flash - for parts of the background maybe?

Yea... That is the first thing that i was bummed about. It would look so sweet to have an animated background or an AVI looping in the background.

The only thing that you would need to make it look good is transparacies with the buttons and use GIFS. If this isn't done with Media Engine maybe it could be done with another software

Even though Media Engine Rocks

I've done it with Flash on my desktop and it works fine.
I'm not sure how Media Engine works, not having used it. Maybe someone else could answer that?

- Jeff

You could run BSPlayer in Desktop Mode, maybe run macro to get it to open and play when you start your comp?

Oops, this is in the mediaengine forum. gifs perhaps?

can be done, creat an html document that uses an animated GIF. The use that as your windows back ground. Switch all icons to large ones, walla animated background, with touchscreen size buttons(icons) should work.

Can't you use overlays? Create an image thats all green or some rarely used color then use some video player to play a video in overlay mode onto that color?

Originally Posted by AJ Quick

Can't you use overlays? Create an image thats all green or some rarely used color then use some video player to play a video in overlay mode onto that color?

You know, you gave me an idea - for the desktop, that is...
I have the ATI AIW card which allows for tv playback on the desktop - with the icons still visable and everything still functioning. It works like the green screen used in news casts where the weather maps appear to be behind the weatherman (or woman). I'll have to try it when I get home, but I believe their file player works in much the same way. You could create a video or a snippet from a video and loop it in the file player.

I'll try it when I get home.

- Jeff