Hi!

When I tested some of the configuration files in the download area, I found one with a very interesting feature and wanted to implement it into my own configuration:

Animations with panels sliding into existing backgrounds and out again. That looks great!! (btw: it's the config file of Mike James called "Contest Entry #17: Theater Style
")

But....

I have some problems doing these effects in my configuration and with my RU980 (which should be the same as the TS7000).

I created a panel that is intended to slide in and out after pressing a certain button of a source screen. The sliding panel doesn't contain any functions or buttons but only help messages and symbols. I set up 5 different status of sliding in (and out again) for this panel, put the jump commands for the whole sequence of sliding panels into one button of the source screen and, at the end, a jump back to the source screen. Between each of the sliding panels, I entered a minimum delay of 0.1 sec (also tested with 0.15 sec and 0.2 sec).
The result looked pretty well on my desktop PS's simulator and so I downloaded the file into the remote. Unfortunately, on the remote, sliding doesn't work very well. It's not a smooth sliding in and out, but each single panel shows up very slowly and remains on the screen for about half a second or a second before jumping to the next sliding panel. This way, the whole action doesn't look like an animation at all!
I even tested the same thing on a configuration file which I reduced to a minimum size but it didn't look better. It seems that any tested delay times between the single panels are ignored on the remote and, maybe, the processor of the remote is too slow to show such sliding animations.

Is there a way of making movements faster/smoother?

Has anyone tried the same effects? Same problems?

Thanks for your help!

I am presuming at this point in your Settings on the remote that you have Animation set to 'None'.

No matter how fast your PC does it, page jumps will ALWAYS be slower on the remote.

As far as the speed goes. The speed at which a page jump occurs depends on many things. Specifically, the Number of items on the page affects repaint speed and I've also found that the number of pages in the device may also have some effect.

As a recommendation, you should keep the # pages per device to <=100 and the number of items per page as small as possible.

As a test....

Ensure that each panel has a button with a delay. This used to be an issue with legacy prontos. I always put a 1x1 pixel button with tranparent image and 0.1s delay somewhere in a panel that will be used as an intermediate presentation.

One thing I might suggest to improve performance is to make your sliding window a single image such that it consumes only 1 item (a single panel). Then, make all your background items (things behind the sliding window) as one image which you can put into a panel. Then, on the page, you will have 2 panels, one for background and one for sliding window. Also include the 1x1 pixel button with delay. On these pages, you have exactly 3 items. In your page jump sequence, you can simply duplicate this page for the number of animation frames you want and reposition your sliding window accordingly.

Once you've done this test, this will be absolutely, positively the best performance you can get from the remote. However, please note that you should consider making your animations such that you jump 10-15 pixels for each frame. A 1 pixel per frame sliding window will never give you what you want as performance will be too slow.

Sorry for all the rambling as I just did a core dump on ideas in my head. Hope it makes some sense and others can get some benefit from it.

Hi!

Yes, it absolutely makes sense and I understood perfectly everything you "dumped"! Thanks so far!

Most of this, I already did. In fact, my background is already one single bitmap (png-file). The sliding panel is a grouped bitmap (with 9 png-files in it). I will try to do as you said and generate a single grafic-file.

The only thing I don't know wether I got it, is to put this 1 pixel transparent button anywhere. I'll try it even if I don't see, where this will have an influence....

Can you explain, what will be the difference, if I enable animations in the Pronto setup? Until now, I thought, that this option is something different.

Thanks a lot for all your efforts so far!

(btw: I tested your configuration file in my remote device and the sliding panels did the same thing as in my configuration: they didn't slide at all, but only jump from one position to the next)

Flattening, as the merging of multiple layers into one is called, will speed up performance. However, you should keep the size of the sliding window as small as possible. ie. larger images take longer to draw. If you are using firmware version 3.8.14, ensure that you reset your remote as there may be a memory leak in this firmware version that has, in the past, manifested itself in slower page jumps.


re animation...

If you enable animations in the remote setup, the remote will slide panels in from the top or bottom on page up/down or from the right/left on device left/right special actions. I'm not sure what effect, if any it would have but I thought I'd throw that in for good measure. My remote has 'Animation' None. However, Animation None or Mode-Only should work just fine for you. Mode-Only indicates that when you are entering tools/setup on the remote that the current status icon should slide to the top-center of the screen.

Lyndel

Would the repaint speed be any quicker if I had my background on the system page rather than on each page of every device? Or does the remote redraw system page items also during page jumps?

Probably the latter. I suspect that the remote first draws the system page, then items on an individual device page.