Clarifying switching themes

I’ve been reading this and other boards to help me understand the whole moviesheet’s feature on my new WDTV SMP (unfortunately it now seems to me, the ‘new’ part, is a bit of a negative, with not being able to add custom FW to this version…but at least I’ve eventually joined the party!)

I’ve had a search about how’s best to switch between the various themes around, that the clever, talented & very helpful people such as Joey, Lester etc have developed for the WDTV.

Can someone in-the-know just confirm or advise a few points here please?

I’ve tried 2 themes so far; Mojo & Darklight. I used the thumbgen templates provided for each theme to scrape movie info for a couple of genre folders I have.

In ‘folder 1’ I used the mojo template to garner all the info with TG and it looks great in mojo. If I now want to view the same folder in Darklight, what is the best/quickest way to re-garner that info so it looks great in that too? (Do I have to move all of the background, cover jpegs & xml files out of that folder (and save to somewhere in-case I want to return to that theme)?

I *think* I have to load the Darklight template in TG, and then re-run TG…but alter the source from My Prefered Collector to ‘metadata info - from tgmd file’ in the options…is this correct?

Also when I was getting the movie info, some of the movie descriptions would either be too brief (one or two lines…) or a mini ‘War & Peace’…and I would find myself editing these down (or up) to a decent amount of info. If I tell TG to get the info from the tgmd file, will it retain the edits I did, or will I have to re-edit the ones I don’t like again?

Sorry for the questions that probable sound ‘daft’ to you…but I’m just a poor, thick, nOOb…  :confounded:

Willie_Hecke wrote:

 

 Can someone in-the-know just confirm or advise a few points here please?

 

 (Do I have to move all of the background, cover jpegs & xml files out of that folder (and save to somewhere in-case I want to return to that theme)?

 

 You can move them and save them for later, but I would just delete them or overwrite them. You can always re-create them automatically (without user interaction) since you have been smart enough to make TGMD files for your videos.

Willie_Hecke wrote:

 

 I *think* I have to load the Darklight template in TG, and then re-run TG…but alter the source from My Prefered Collector to ‘metadata info - from tgmd file’ in the options…is this correct?

 

You do not have to alter your source. Once you have removed the cover and sheet for the previous theme (but left the TGMD file), restart the process in Thumbgen as usual. Chose the profile for whatever theme template you would like. When you get to the first screen in which you choose the directory you would like to scan, choose the button for “Create from Metada” instead of the various “mode” options. A box of the settings will come up which should all be correct for the template you are using and you can just click on “Do It”

That’s it. From there TG will process the directory tree you have chosen, without stopping to show you the sheets since you have already chosen the picture and verbage that is in the TGMD file.

Willie_Hecke wrote:

 

Also when I was getting the movie info, some of the movie descriptions would either be too brief (one or two lines…) or a mini ‘War & Peace’…and I would find myself editing these down (or up) to a decent amount of info. If I tell TG to get the info from the tgmd file, will it retain the edits I did, or will I have to re-edit the ones I don’t like again?

 

Yes, any changes you have made are saved in the TGMD file and then will be applied when you re-run against those files. You will not have to make those changes again as long as you have the metadata files.

Good Luck

-P

1 Like

Hi pearl…sorry for the delay in replying to your very helpful post.

Thanks for clearing up those points for me…I really appreciate it.

cheers

WH

Glad to help Willie

-P