[mythtv-users] This is how I adjusted the transparency of the OSD images

[MartinG]

Hi list.

First, let me thank the developers - great work!

I just want to share my notes on how I adjusted the transparency of
the OSD popup in MythTV. The reason for doing this, is that I live in
a country where we never dub any programs, but use subtitles alot. And
my preferred osd theme puts the volume popup right on top of the
subtitles, which can be a bit annoying at times (especially since the
osd timeout values in setup doesn't seem to work,
mythtv-0.20.1-158.fc6). Anyhow, these are my notes on what I did to
increase transparency in osd images, so that I can read the subtitles
through eg. the volume image:

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Adjust the translucency/transparency of the OSD:
I the use blootube-osd (installation details below).

The images are located in
'/usr/share/mythtv/themes/blootube-osd'
(This is on an Fedora Core 6 box, it might be somewhere else on other distros)

Save relevant images to *.orig first:
# cd /usr/share/mythtv/themes/blootube-osd
# for f in *.png; do cp $f $f.orig; done

Then adjust the Alpha level.
This is how to do it using the 'showfoto' editor (KDE photo
management, part of digiKam I think):
Open the osd image, then from the menu, choose
"Fix", "Colors", "Level Adjust..." (or just press Ctrl-L)
Reduce the "Maximal level output" from 255 to ie. 130. Save.
(I have an old CRT TV. For a more modern TV, I guess another value
would be appropriate)
Relevant images for this theme are:
settings.png
pause.png
osd_mid.png
(and maybe others)
The volume osd is using the 'pause.png' image.

Of course, you can also use The Gimp to do this:
Open image, choose "Layer", "Colors", "Levels..." and select "Channel:
Alpha" and reduce the maximum output level from 255 to your desired
value - I've used 130 for now. Save.


You need to close and restart 'mythfrontend' to activate the changes
(the theme cache has to be rebuilt I guess)
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My installation notes on blootube:
I found it at http://www.juski.co.uk/:

# wget http://downloads.mythtvtalk.com/mythtv/themes/blootube-osd.tar.bz2
# tar xvjpf blootube-osd.tar.bz2 -C /usr/share/mythtv/themes
# wget http://downloads.mythtvtalk.com/mythtv/themes/blootube.tar.bz2
# tar xvjpf blootube.tar.bz2 -C /usr/share/mythtv/themes

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best regards,
MartinG