mediaplayer skins - how to question

[Putz]

Can anybody kick start me in how to do the custom skins ? You have the load file, but how do you use it ? where is it called ?

thanks in advance for any help

[blanius]

Look at my commented skin in the koolexchange.

You create your graphics and create a directory under /bin/mediaplayer and put the graphics there. Then you create a LOAD.AS, NAME.TXT, INFO.TXT files

Look in C:\Program Files\KoolMoves\Examples\Components\Flash 8\API\mediaPlayer API.txt for info on what goes into LOAD.AS

In Info.txt you have that set parameters for the skin like Minimum Width and Maximum Width

minw
195
maxw
195
minh
325
maxh
325
cshadow
1
audvid
2
fd
1
pl
1
colors
0
drag
0
argb
1


And Name.txt is just the name displayed in the GUI

[Putz]

thanks Bret, I just want to rave about the support I recieve from this site.
Seems like everybody is willing to help. And many thanks to w. brants for all of his help.

[blanius]

I need to get my tutorial done for this... I keep putting it off, as well as many other little projects.

[Putz]

Yeah, the tutorials would be great.

I did my first skin last night, basically, I just copied the liquid blue and then modified it from there. It was a 250 x 100, the underlay was a gif. It was alright, but I wanted it a little bit smaller.

So, I layed everything out and came up with a 160 x 68. I produced the gif, and it looks fine viewing it with a picture viewer, but when you look at it in the gui, it doesn't show up ? (the underlay) it just a simple black background with some white lines to section it up. I hadn't figured out why it doesn't show in the gui ?

[blanius]

Most likely has to do with the naming.

setUnderlayImage(0,0,'underlay');

setFD(30,55,5,30,2,0x2d8ddc);
setInfoScroll(0,'_sans',11,0x3d9dec,true,1,33,10,70,14);

setTimelineSlider(156,25,'',0,0,1,'',0,0,70,'drag');
setVolumeSlider(258,25,'',0,0,1,'',0,0,36,'drag');

up = new flash.display.BitmapData(29,28,true,0);
setPlayButton(143,41,up,'down','over');
setPauseButton(175,41,up,'down','over');
setStopButton(208,41,up,'down','over');

setPrevButton(241,41,up,'down','over');
setNextButton(274,41,up,'down','over');

make sure your image is called underlay.gif and that there isn't another underlay.* image in the folder.

[Putz]

I just started looking at it again, it went back to the editor (paint) and resaved with the "save as" and made sure it was a gif, it works now.

I'm just gonna have to play with it a while to get the hang of it.
thanks for your help !

[blanius]

I really like RealDraw for this work. It's a very easy to use Vector program.... All my skins are done with it.

[Putz]

I will check it out.

What format are you saving them in ? Are any formats better than the others ?

I use paints because a.) I have it , and b.) because I can expand up too 800% which lets you see the pixels, then you just put the cursor over the pixel and it will display its coordinates - make it much easier to line things up.

[blanius]

I save as PNG which allows for transparency that you need. Realdraw has rulers you can drag out, I do find I have to tweek my placement in LOAD.AS most of the time to get things just right.

[w.brants]

I really like RealDraw for this work. It's a very easy to use Vector program.... All my skins are done with it.

About half of the skins that come with KM (including Liquid Blue) were also done with RealDraw. It's a very good choise. If you don't want to pay anything, Paint.NET is also a good choise.

The documented skin Bret did is probably the best way to learn how to create your own skin. There are a few documents that might help you.
C:\Program Files\KoolMoves\Examples\Components\Flash 8\Media Player\Skin structure.txt
C:\Program Files\KoolMoves\Examples\Components\Flash 8\API\mediaPlayer API.txt

[Putz]

cool, not doing anything exotic here !

how do you parameterize the colors ? is this covered in the docs wilbert referrred to ?

attached is my skin. like I said, just trying to keep it simple and clean.

almost the look I want.

[w.brants]

how do you parameterize the colors ?

The colors you specify when you set up the mediaplayer using the gui are always passed as an array c[] to the code in the load.as file. If you write code that uses them, you can alter the look of the skin based on the colors you set.
If you look at the code in the TinyVid skin, you'll see what I mean.

Your first skin looks clean. Nice work