I use an external HDD with my wdtv and browsing get a bit slow sometimes because of the many movies I have. So I’ve decided to delete some of them. Is there a “proper” way to do it?
Each movie comes with subtitles and also the files generated from ThumbGen. Should just I delete them or are there other hidden files in other folder that should be deleted too?
As I said, I use ThumbGen. I’ve seen that sometimes (for new movies especially) when I search for a movie (I use IMDB) I get the Plot synopsis in my language (which is not english). Is this done automatically? Can I control it somehow?
The only hidden file that I can think of is the .wd_tv file, which is your Media Library database.
If you use the Media Library, you may want to rebuild it but I don’t think it’s necessary. If you do, it could be accomplished by deleting all the wd_tv files you find in your movies folder, and then setting the unit to rescan it afterwards.
Re Thumbgen. If your movie is titled in a different language, that is probably what will determine the language of your synopsis. There is also an “adjust keywords” button you could try, which is available on the top of the screen when you are actually generating your moviesheets etc… You really didn’t say what you wanted to do, so don’t really know how to answer you there.
Another thing to consider is to defragment that HDD. If it is very full of movies, and you have deleted many in the past, it may be that the movie files were not written contiguously and instead are scattered all over the drive platters. Also, external HDD’s don’t generally have the highest RPM’s, so that complicates things if the read head is constantly roaming.
Move several movies to a different location first. If your HDD is very full, this will make a “hole” big enough for this process to work properly, and then run you favorite defrag program. The bigger the hole, the easier it is for the program to work. Then migrate the files back, and they will be written contiguosly.
Regarding Thumbgen-IMDB, no the film titles are in English (or whatever language each film uses) and they are the original titles, nothing modified. However for some of these movies when I use ThumbGen I get a Plot summary which is not english but it is in my language (greek).
I don’t have a problem with it, in fact as the media player is used by others too, it’s better as they can read the plot in their native language before choosing to watch the film. What I cannot understand if this happens automatically.
Does ThumbGen check every time if there is a synopsis in greek in IMDB and automatically use it? Do I have any control over this?
Regarding the HDD I probably wasn’t clear. There are a lot of movies so browsing through them can take a lot of time. It’s not that the media player has become any slower than it was, just that going from A to Z is taking a lot more time. So I’m thinking about deleting some movies I’ve watched.
Not sure about Thumbgen, sorry. Perhaps others could chime in on that.
Regarding your HDD, an answer might be to break up your one large movie folder into genre folders for easier browsing. It has some obvious limitations, but the option is there.
There are many custom themes which offer genre folder thumbs. Darklight is one of them. Or you could make your own by placing the appropriately sized jpg into the folder and renaming it folder.jpg. Gimp (freeware) is good for this, but MSPaint will work too. Then the SMP picks it up as the cover art for that folder instead of a generic film reel pic.
You could create any genre you choose. Typical ones like action, comedy, drama, etc… or maybe just “archive” for older ones you might want to remove from the general scroll and “now playing” for ones that are more current.
