Please Bring Back The Old Album Art View

[oldstuff]

I guess like a lot of people here I embeded album art into my mp3 tags so that G-Force can display the image along with its effects in WMP. The new album art view is terrible as it hides the effects and scales the album art way too big, in some cases taking up half the screen! Please bring back the old view or at least an option to select it. Maybe have an option to do some kind of movable Picture in Picture view like most Tv's have these days i.e. you could set which corner of the screen to display the Album image and title etc with another option for the picture size? I know a few people on here have mentioned this already but I thought I would add my twopenith! Note: I have the Platinum version for Windows.

[akplus]

This new version covers so much of the screen (at least 25%).
Please bring back the old version just displaying the album art and the title without any borders or frames.
Or at least give us the option for both, so anyone can choose what they like.(may be in the toolbar\options).
This new look takes away from the great looks of G-force.

But overall it is great to see a product being continuoisly upgraded for better.
Thanks for all your hard work.

[azadimo]

After using G-force platnium with WMP for the last 2 years, I've to say they finally droped the ball with this new version of the album art display That is inside a box that covers the bottom of the screen( on a 21 ' monitor with a 1600 x 1200 resolution that is almost 1/5 of the screen.
Big waste of space and also total destroys the way G- force looks . most the sprites and patterna are now cut off in half becuase the album art box covers them.
I undrestand some people might like it but from what's posted on this forum, the majority don't.
So why not get ride of it or give people the option to choose which one they want and not to force it on them.

[andy55]

This new version covers so much of the screen (at least 25%).
Please bring back the old version just displaying the album art and the title without any borders or frames.
Or at least give us the option for both, so anyone can choose what they like.(may be in the toolbar\options).
This new look takes away from the great looks of G-force.

But overall it is great to see a product being continuoisly upgraded for better.
Thanks for all your hard work.

Well, the logic was that the track text was unreadable for certain colormaps (ie, white on white).

In any case, this thread's objections are very reasonable. I've added this new feature to our bugzilla database for a future release. For the time being, you have the option of turning off track text or changing the style so that its a G-Force text sprite (settable via the GF toolbar).

Andy

[markofkane]

I know it's complicated, but feel that the track text showed fine without the black background.

I would like an option of just removing the black background, (overlay)and be able to view the album art and text. Or have the ability to change the opacity of the overlay, from 0-100%

I don't know if this is possible, but maybe set it so the text color changes depending on what the effect is.

So, white text on a dark effect, and dark text on a bright effect.

[philbury]

I have to disagree.
I think the new method is better (viewing on 36" TV)

[Hal Itosis]

How lucky are the ones who like the new method.

However, those who prefer the previous display
have my full sympathy. Every time I see it now,
it is somewhat of an annoyance. This is not what
I paid for (twice). When can we get rid of the
"dark frame" business? Why is there no choice
provided, which includes the former format?

A better tweak would be a DROP SHADOW effect,
for both the album cover and the info text. Make it
appear as if they are hovering above the background.
The shadowing would improve text legibility as well.

Also... I love the way the artwork & text fade out.
Very classy. But there's no fade _IN_. (Bummer).
That would be more aesthetic. And please, make
it all user configurable. Having options and feeling
like some control is afforded to us would be nicer
than this sensation of being "stuck."

Thanks.

-HI-

PS: it does seems like the album artwork is under-used
*within* the visual effects. Are there copyright issues
involved (i.e., photographs), which prevent manipulating
(i.e., distorting) those image pixels? Seems like having
the album artwork swirling around and blending into the
visuals would be a "natural" part of what G-Force does.

Finally, iTunes lets us attach more than one picture to
our songs. Is there a way to morph them into the effect?
Or, how about fading in pict #2 (or pict #1 if no others
exist) during the **final** 15 seconds of every song!?
Sorta like a VH1/MTV kinda thing... that would be cool.

Thanks Andy (et. al.)

[mikestk]

I just bought g-force gold. I play my music on my mediacenter (using WMP) on my 44" widescreen projection TV, and with this purchase I was looking forward to having the cover art and titles on the screen at all times. I had assumed there would be some basic tweaking options for titles in this "full version". But evidently there are none. I now have the following basic problems: 1) If I leave the titles/art on all the time the bottom 1/3 of the screen is lost to a black bar. This makes the visualizations very hard to see. and 2) With the title/art always in the same spot on the screen I will have a burn-in problem with my rear projection TV. End result is that I can't leave the titles on all the time and thus can not do the one thing I wanted to do the most with G-Force

G-Force is an excellent product and I do not regret buying it, but unfortunatly it does not do what I hoped it would.

To make it better (for me at least) I'd like to see the following things done. Mostly these suggestions have already been offered in this post, but here they are summerized from my point of view.

- Have background and text colors adjustable. With option to have no background, and option to have background and title colors randomly cycle.
- Have Location of Title and art adjustable, and have option to randomize title location from song to song. so as to prevent screen burn-in.
- Have size of text and art adjustable.
- The suggestions to have shadows, Fade-in/out, cycle multiple artwork, and incorporate the artwork into the effects are also great ideas, and I'm all for them as well.

Hopefully at least some of these features can soon be added

[cellness]

It's really pretty easy to change the size of the Album Art and the Title Text. Open up your respective preference file and look for these parameters:

ArtX
ArtY
TSze

Look up what these and other variables mean at http://www.soundspectrum.com/g-force/Do ... izing.html

Personally, on a 640x480 sized window, I use

TSze=18
ArtX=160
ArtY=160

However, if that's still too large, try:

TSze=12
ArtX=80
ArtY=80

Turning off the new transparancy feature would be nice, however. I never personally had a problem with the white overlay text.

Marcel

[cellness]

Well, the logic was that the track text was unreadable for certain colormaps (ie, white on white).

In any case, this thread's objections are very reasonable. I've added this new feature to our bugzilla database for a future release. For the time being, you have the option of turning off track text or changing the style so that its a G-Force text sprite (settable via the GF toolbar).

Andy

Add another vote to have an option to turn off the new style album art cover and go back to older style. As I mentioned, I never had a problem with the old style's readability. On my G4 the new feature works fine, but on my G3 "jukebox", the transparency isn't transparent, but rather it flickers between black and off (yes I know the G3 isn't offically supported, but it otherwise seems to work fine).

Any timeframe on this fix?

Thanks!
Marcel

[adamsp70]

Yes, another vote for making the black background optional please!

Also, agree 100% with Hal Itosis that mixing the album art into the main G-Force screen would be marvellous - either as a background image or a foreground sprite....

[joshhuggins]

I really dig the new style myself, but maybe a dropdown setting in the toolbar to select from several standards for those who are not comfortable with manual edits. Again I like it as it seems more polished IMHO.

[crl713]

It would perfect to be able to modify the size of album art. Great visualizer, particularly the ability to chose audio sources.

[buffman]

This thread is pretty old, but how can I change/limit the size of album art? Its way too big full screen in Vista Media Center on my 60" plasma

[Wombat66]

This thread is pretty old, but how can I change/limit the size of album art? Its way too big full screen in Vista Media Center on my 60" plasma

Have you tried the above solution posted by Cellness? Or maybe that doesn't work anymore? I myself have not tried recently so I don't know.

Just curious though, what resolution are you running G-Force at on you 60" monitor?