Theme: GoodBye Black Mamba (LinkSheet) Updated Dec 14th

PLEASE READ FIRST - IT’S VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU DO

Alrighty here we go,

due to the many requests and the recent find by Forum User KAD79

I went ahead and tried to make LinkSheets work for myself and since it worked so perfectly I thought about the thousands of hours you guys spent with my themes so I thought to myself…

“Why not releasing the newest Black Mamba as a farewell present?”

well it is me leaving so i should get a present from you but what can i do? lol :laughing:

As most of you know I eventually got paid for my work and helped developing the User Interface for a new device, some parts of this development went into the new version of Black Mamba which is now a bit slimmer and not so graphical bombastic anymore. So many people asked me who I am working for… this is WD Soil and their platform, common courtesy forbids me to advertise another product here. I won’t reveal it in PM either. Fact is the new device is ready on Monday which means I am sharing this theme but I won’t be able to support it. Please solve problems with community effort. If I have a minute and I can help I will jump in but don’t count on it and please don’t request things, as I will no longer work on this theme as of today.

This theme will work as usual with the old movie sheets and linksheet, I recommend to use FW 3XXXX

The Theme Pack contains a manual for Linksheet, new updated Moviesheet Bundles as well as the V4 Movie sheets.

Simply install the bundles in ThumbGen and go, you need no skills to create movie sheets with this theme.

Anyone approaching the LinkSheet Method needs some skills but really not, lol it is easy just follow the manual.

SMP Users… you are a bit screwed with LinkSheet because of the storage limitation, if you want to use the theme you gotta zip it up yourself, other than that It will work fine for you :slight_smile:

Turn off the Media Library when using Linksheet, it is pain in the behind due to update issues and also redundant since this version no longer needs XML files which means no library entries are created.

Here it is the last version of Black Mamba, thanx for all your compliments and ideas, i hope you have fun with it.


XOX Marketa

goobye Black Mamba (Theme Pack)

  • LINKSHEET FOR GALLERY VIEW
  • NEW HOME MENU
  • LINK SHEET DEMO (MOVIE & TV)
  • NEW MOVIE SHEET BUNDLES
  • SHEETS FOR TV / MOVIES / FOLDERS
  • USER INTERFACE CHANGES
  • BASIC MANUAL FOR N00BS
  • LINKSHEET MANUAL

UPDATE DECEMBER 5

PSD FILES DOWNLOAD

As promisesd the PSD files, don’t expect too much, i am an obsessive “combiner” that means many flating elements are combined with others, i put in the file what I have left, i am not sure if it is enough to create a whole new theme but most can be easily edited such as the main menu and the basic pages. Do with it whatever you wanna do, hereby I am granting an unlimited license for the files I own and created myself, whatever you do with it is fine by me. A Handful genre images are included (i don’t use much myself) and of course the template for genres is included, Flthemi has done a whole bunch of genre images, the link is shared on page 6 of this thread.

All files been created in Corel Photo Paint and converted to PSD which means font dynamics will be lost but you are not going to use the dynamic fonts (usually Mamba Logo) anyways in your own work, so you should be fine.


Have Fun

NEW HOME MENU

01 - HOME SCREEN

NEW MOVIE SHEET (LINKSHEET)

02 - VIDEO - GALLERY VIEW MOVIE

NEW TV EPISODE SHEET with episode Snapshot (LINKSHEET)

03 - VIDEO - GALLERY VIEW TV

PREVIEW MODE

06 - VIDEO - VIDEO PREVIEW

Small Video Browse

07 - VIDEO - VIDEO BROWSE

LARGE VIDEO BROWSE

08 - VIDEO - LARGE VIDEO

LIST VIEW

09 - VIDEO - LIST VIEW

NEW FOLDER SHEETS

10 - VIDEO - GALLERY VIEW FOLDER

NEW FOLDER SHEETS

10b - VIDEO - GALLERY VIEW FOLDER2

Black Mamba Juke Box

11 - MUSIC - JUKE BOX

Black Mamba Audio Player

12 - MUSIC - MUSIC PLAYER

Works Best With

13 - SYSTEM - FIRMWARE INFO

GENRE FOLDER SHEETS (updated 12/14/12)

alrighty people, here is a very easy to use genre folder sheet going with the theme and intentionally avoiding graphical overkill, they can also be used as folder sheets for movie franchises. I didn’t bundle this one since it doesn’t require much installation…

1) Download the template here

2) open your movie sheet profile in Thumbgen

3) save this profile as “Black Mamba Genre Folder”

4) unpack the rar file and copy the entire folder into ThumbGen/ Templates

5) in thumbgen options General Tab deactivate “Extra Movie Sheet”

6) in thumbgen options moviesheet tab select BlackMamba_GenreFolder (upper drop down boy on the right)

7) save the profile…

Processing the Sheet

1) pick a movie you think represents this genre best

2) process in manual or semi automatic

3) select an image for Fanart 1

4) change the title and apply it (green check symbol)

5) Generate…

it’s gonna look like this, the color will always be the same

Genre Sheets

UPDATE DECEMBER 7th

Age Restriction and Release Date Template


I didnt use the age symbols for the same reasons i never used them before,

besides them looking differently in several countries I am not a fan of them and they wouldn’t fit into the design (for my eyes) So I made a compromise and put them into some unused space without losing original information. My ideal solution for kids would have been to make the black boxes turn red when the movie is not age appropriate for your kids. (could setup the age limit) so you could simply tell your kids “don’t watch the red movie” which they will do first thing when you leave the house :laughing: (J/K)

So here is a compromise solution due to not having enough time right now, hope it works if not keep ideas flowing and I will see what i can do when I have time.

DOWNLOAD HERE

replace the existing “TEMPLATE.XML” file in your folder located at:

…\Templates\Black Mamba Final\Black Mamba Final Movie Sheets by DeVicious\Black Mamba Final Movie Sheets by DeVicious

Watchmen.Ultimate.Cut

Tinker.Tailor.Soldier.Spy.2011.720p.BluRay

6 Likes

Thanks Marketa or Dev as we known you by over the months.

I hope people who download this great  work of yours, respect your wishes, it has been great using “Black Mamba” as we knew it. Loking forward to “GoodBye Black Mamba” :smileyvery-happy:

Downloading now, once again, many thanks for sharing it with us all.

Dave.

Dev… this looks lovely and has the same finesse as all the other version.

many thanks again…

Kaz.

thanx you guys…l :smiley:

btw if you like the old movie sheets better and still want to use linksheet just select a different template in the ThumbGen Settings, they both will do fine, having said that the Movie Sheets are 10x better as the older ones, with the TV shows it might be a matter of taste, the new episode sheets have a couple of information i couldn’t fit into the old ones, such as the episode writer and the air date etc… they look better on the big screen as in small…

Dev. the biggest improvement you made in the TV Sheet is that that you don’t display the backdrop image again inside the info box… now it fully transparent (as the movie sheet) they feel more in keeping with each other.

Wow Dev, thanks for such an excellent parting gift. I have been loving BM 1.9 since you released it, and now and excited about the new linksheet version! The pix look great.

Thanks for your hard work and your generosity. Your themes are one of the things that make the HUB truly a great device. Good luck in your future ventures and I am looking forward to keeping up with your work on whatever platfoms you continue to code for.

All the Best

-P

Okay, now that I have downloaded the theme and read the manual…

@DEV   - Huge thanks for recommending that I make TMGD files for my movies last time I went through the process of upgrading. This will make a huge difference in the time it takes to do this upgrade, especially for older movies that I had to manually edit all the information for. Thanks a ton.

@Everyone Else   - Since I know Dev will not be supporting this release, perhaps others here may have some helpful insight for me.

I have read through the manual, and of course am super excited about moving over to the new theme. I have realized though that I may have an issue I need to figure out before I start regarding turning off the media library.

As Dev put in the manual, “If you cannot stop using the library you have an obsessive compulsion disorder and need help :-)” Perhaps I do need help then :slight_smile: This would mean that essentially you need to have all of your video media on one singular drive, or else need to switch back and forth between each USB connected drive, and all the remote shares manually every time I want to access something different. Due to a lack of a single drive large enough to house all my Movies and TV series, I have them split between various drives on servers on my home network and use the Media Library for Network Shares to aggregate them and see them all at once. By turning off the media library I will have to go through the process of manually connecting to the local or remote drive each time I want to access it. Example: If I want to change from watching a movie on a connected USB drive that has some of my movies, to a TV Series that resides on a share on a server, I would go through the process of connecting to that network share manually each time. Is this a correct assumption? Not so terrible but something I need to think through if true as I do move back and forth between shares on various machines often as at the moment I do not have any drives large enough to hold all of the video media (Movies and TV series) that I have.

Thus, this really works best when you have all or at least the majority of the media you are using on one drive. I wish I had a huge NAS that could hold all of my stuff, but for the moment unfortunately I do not and I have video media on four different drives. For that reason alone, is why I use the media library. Simply so I see all of the network shares in one place as opposed to having to connect to them each time.

Please note that I am certainly not complaining, and also not trying to start a discussion about the merits or lack thereof in using the media library. I am just trying to make sure I understand all the ramifications of changing over to the new BM prior to spending the time making all the linksheets.

Thanks for any help or insight you can give me on this as I prepare for the upgrade. I am jacked up for this. The new sheets look great and anything that speeds up the display is simply an awesome advacement.

-P

from what was written above, this does support the old style of moviesheets with xml’s

linksheets can work with xml’s etc

linksheets actually ignors the xml’s and allows the system will still use them in the background

but the sacrifice is speed

using both linksheets and .xml’s the system navigation can become rather slow

because of multiple processess going on

2 Likes

@ Pearl

you are probably overthinking this

i have media on 2 external devices + the internal device…

Long story short… hit the red button and select your source and use it… it will save you time overall

…and lets not forget that you are not clicking around like a maniac, a movie is 90 minutes long, how many on different sources will you be watching per day?

Sorting you media however makes a lot of sense…

i am using my internal storage for Movies , a 2TB USB for running TV Shows and 1.5 TB for TV Archive for cancelled shows. I use my network share for music and the hub remembers that all the time so it is really not a problem

As a bonus for turning of the library the whole thing runs at least 20% faster

When you reboot your device the thoroughly  dumb library will not read everything again you device restarts within 60 seconds compared to 4 minutes. You will no longer have to worry about naming TV episodes and WD can do whatever they want it will not mess with the functionality of the theme. Devices are recognized better without the library… be honest how many times did you have reboot your external device because it wasn’t adding the content properly?

Let’s just say that I rather get herpes than using the library… it is an epic fail.

edit: I was using the library for the last 6 months since ThumbGen came up with plenty of workarounds for the TV Sorting issues… not that it is off I have determined the library as the root of all evil. Everything that was affected by firmware upgrades all of a sudden worked again.

KAD79 wrote:

using both linksheets and .xml’s the system navigation can become rather slow

because of multiple processess going on

thank you KAD79 (we should call you “finder of the holy grail”)

the navigation becomes extremely slow with xml files, I decided to sacrifice the YouTube links in order to get a better performance.

you’re welcome :smiley:

again, just happy it’s going to good use

@Dev, of course I am overthinking it, that’s half the fun :-).  At the moment I have all video media on remote network drives, (so I can use the USB ports for other things, keyboard etc) so changing to them does require multiple steps, finding the correct machine, and then the correct share point etc… There is a certain ease to hitting the video button and having all the directories I use sitting there. Not really a big deal, but I am rethinking how  I have it all set up so I can make it easier and my GF can use the HUB easily without having to know which server\share has the stuff she wants to watch. Plus, If I wasn’t rewiring, upgrading, reconfiguring some computer or media device at all times, Im not sure what I would do with my spare time :smileyvery-happy:

One option I have come up with is a tool to aggregate multiple drives under a single windows sharepoint , similar to sybolic links in Linux. WIndows has some native capabilities for this with libraries (that dont seem to work that well) and there are some third party options as also. Then I could keep the HUB pointed towards that one share, and still see all the video drives. I have several for movies, one for TV, one for recorded sporting events, one for Concert Videos, and one for Home VIdeo. This would list them similar to the media library, just seeing all the directories at once. Not sure if this would work well or not but worth a test for now. Ultimately I will get a large enough NAS to hold everything, but for now I am using 4 x 2-3TB external HDs connected to two Win7 Servers, and 2 x 2TB drives connected to a WD LIVEPLUS in another room. Working well for a “rubberband and chewing gum” rigged setup holding 13+ TB of video. I realize as I write this what a hoarder I have become. At least it’s digital now instead of having bookshelves of DVDs and CDs all over the house.

Thanks for the response, and of course I will be doing the upgrade and making the new linksheets no matter what. As above, 1.9 has been amazing and blows away my friends when they come over and see it, so I can’t wait to find a bit of time to remake the sheets and get to (sob…) Good Bye.

Thanks for all your work and the decision to give us this awesome parting gift.

-P

sounds like this might be a good read

http://wiki.wdlxtv.com/How_to_setup_NFS_share_using_FreeNFS

while you may not be interested in NFS

but steps 3 - 5 discuss how to mount drives in windows as subfolders to a shared drive

I’d think this might be a better option, compared to windows libraries

Thanks KAD79, Ill take a look and give it a try. I am not against running NFS at all, and as stated, Windows Libraries never seem to work well, least of all with other devices that cannot join their homegroup.

Thanks

-P

maybe just a clarification

I’m suggestion, no need to use NFS or windows libraries

you could use the drive mounting trick discussed there and then use standard windows(aka samba) shares

you should only need to share the top drive that everything is mounted on

certainly don’t use windows libraries for that

create one network folder for videos and one for music

share the corresponding content as a sub folder in these network folders, if you do that you will probably never have to swap content sources since the hub remembers the last one

Hello/ Goodbye DeVicious

Glad to see you back (again) to say Good Bye!! :wink:

DeVicious wrote- 

As most of you know I eventually got paid for my work and helped developing the User Interface for a new device, some parts of this development went into the new version of Black Mamba which is now a bit slimmer and not so graphical bombastic anymore. So many people asked me who I am working for… this is WD Soil and their platform, common courtesy forbids me to advertise another product here. I won’t reveal it in PM either.

Please can you expand on your project which unfortunately I do not know anything about. I realise you do not wish to reveal too much, but since a certain aspect of your work seems to be common knowledge, I am slightly intrigued??? :dizzy_face:

Regards

Nosey Parker

 

Hey,

I only own a SMP and have one Problem to install the theme.

I zip the Folder Goodbye Black Mamba Theme with all the .xml und jpeg files. It has 15MB and want to upload it. I Always get an error: Invalid File, Please Correct File.

Could someone upload a right SMP .zip file? Would be awesome…

Thanks in advance!

Linksheets isn’t pratical for the SMP because your sheets have to be in the theme zip & you are limted to 30MB for a theme on the SMP.

So unless you only have a few movies (like under 20) then this theme isn’t going to work for you on the SMP.

Issue with sheets for ISO files:

I have started the process of moving over to linksheets and have come across an issue I am wondering if someone knows a work around for.

I have several hundred movies that I ripped as ISO files. For some reason those sheets do not seem to be called up when highlighting those movies. The sheets look correct, and are in the root directory of the theme just like the rest of the ones for MKV, AVI etc. I  have tested without using an extension but to no avail. Anyone here with a thought on how to a make this work? The speed of calling up the local sheets is incredible so no matter what I am going in this direction, I would just dread having to convert all of those ISO files to MKV etc to make it work.

Any and all suggestions welcome.

Smaller Issue with Bulk Rename and multiple file types:

Another problem I am having that I can solve by just manualy going through the rename process is having folders/directories with media of mixed formats, avi, mkv, mp4 etc. I cannot really use he bulk renamer (I dont think) as I have to match the sheet JPG with the movie name’s extension, so I cannot just change all the JPGs to MKV extension or somethign similar,  I have to do each one manualy to match the file type. Any one know of a work around so I can use the bulkl renamer? Would save me innumerable hours or renaming.

@DEV, this theme really looks great and the speed blows me away. I was content when it was taking 4-5 seconds to get a movie sheet with 1.9, so this is really  a huge upgrade. Thanks again for the wonderful theme. Really amazing.

-P