Creating an image for movies that helps identify the movie

Not sure if I’m in the right part of this Community, if not please forgive me stumbling in un-invited and kindly direct me (via link) to correct forum room.

My name is Sonja

I have, thanks to some very lovely supporters such as Mike27oct, PGRated, RichUK, Joey Smyth, and MarkJ, been able to conquer the LiveSMP in terms of downloading movies and watching them via my WD (External) Portable Hard-drive.

However, I have two question that I’m hoping any of you guys can answer.

First one is: Now that I’ve conquered the whole downloading and transferring movies to hard-drive and watching them via the SMP is there a way via WiFi that I can watch the movies with the SMP without transferring them to an external hard-drive and connecting it to the SMP?

Second question: Okay, I have been downloading movies via the 'net, onto my computer, than I transfer them to my external hard-drive, I then plug my external hard-drive (via usb) into the front usb port of my SMP.

What I would like to do next is find out if it is possible to change the image formats of the movie icon to represent the movie? For example let’s take an Ice Age movie, or a Shrek movie, is it possible for me to change the image on that file/folder so that when my son uses the SMP (via external hard-drive) he can identify the movie via an image.

The reason why I’m asking is because my son has a disability; he was diagnosed with epilepsy with Global Developmental Delays. At 11 years of age he cannot read properly, so if he recognises an image that he can identify with the movie he’ll watch it immediately vs going into the movie and forwarding until he recognises who and what it is about?

I’m still at layman’s terms s here. I’d love to hear from you and get your advice.

:womanhappy:

Sonjadt wrote:

 

First one is: Now that I’ve conquered the whole downloading and transferring movies to hard-drive and watching them via the SMP is there a way via WiFi that I can watch the movies with the SMP without transferring them to an external hard-drive and connecting it to the SMP?

 

Second question: Okay, I have been downloading movies via the 'net, onto my computer, than I transfer them to my external hard-drive, I then plug my external hard-drive (via usb) into the front usb port of my SMP.

What I would like to do next is find out if it is possible to change the image formats of the movie icon to represent the movie? For example let’s take an Ice Age movie, or a Shrek movie, is it possible for me to change the image on that file/folder so that when my son uses the SMP (via external hard-drive) he can identify the movie via an image.

 .

:womanhappy:


1) Depends on what you mean by watching without transfering them movies. You can use your SMP to connect to another computer or a NAS that has the movies on them instead of having to move them to your external drive connected to your SMP. You would hit the “Red Button” and for source, change it to either a network share on another computer, or a media server that has the file.

 

If you mean can you watch the movie as it is downloading, essentialy streaming the movie from the internet, for that you would need some type of media server which downloads the movie, and then sends it to your SMP. There are many channels you could do this with via PlayOn or Plex media servers (those are the two I have tried but I am sure there are others). These run as servers on a computer, dowload video, transcode it and send it to your SMP under the media server option. This does completely depend on how you are attaining these movies. If you are downloading torrents ( which is a risky business these days), there are ways on plex that you can start streaming the movie once the firs RAR file ( basically a zip file) comes down. The SMP on it’s own is really made to watch videos that you already have, and are either on your external drive, or on another computer on your network that you can connect to.

 

  1. Yes, of course you can change the icon that represents your movies. The icon or movie cover has the same name as the movie, but with is a jpeg and has at be in the same directory as the movie. Thus you would have something like:

 

Movies Folder
->"Ice Age.mp4
->“Ice Age.jpg.”

 

You can change the Ice Age.jpg to any picture you would like to be. Generally the cover would be 240x360 pixels. You could find the image you want in google or whatever search engine you like, and then resize it if nescessary. Once you have the picture you want, name it to "movieaname.jpg, so in this case “Ice Age.jpg.” and drop it into the same folder as the movie.

 

 

Good Luck

 

-P