Quick question about Playlists and Thumbnails. Answers much appreciated!

Hi there, I’m new to this media player malarkey and have been playing about with the live for the past couple of days to determiine what I was able to do with it. There’s a couple of things that I’m unsure of though. Firstly, I managed to create m3u playlists for some of my music videos and have gotten them to play successfully. The thing is, my OCD wants them to appear under the videos menu next to the rest of them, so far I can only get them to show up under the files menu. Is there any way to fix this?

Secondly, I’ve noticed that the thumbnail shape for videos seems to be set to a standard poster shape, is there any way to change this so that its a standard 16.9 shape instead? I had taken screengrabs I had intended to use as thumbnails and they look horrid after the device stretches them to fit the thumbnail shape.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, I understand I’m being very pernickety and what I’m looking for indeed might not be possible, but I would be grateful for any response from people more in the know than myself, thanks!

dwhite93 wrote:

…so far I can only get [m3u playlists] to show up under the files menu. Is there any way to fix this?

Nope… 

dwhite93 wrote:

Secondly, I’ve noticed that the thumbnail shape for videos seems to be set to a standard poster shape, is there any way to change this so that its a standard 16.9 shape instead?

Nope…

Oh well, that’s a shame. Thanks anyway.

Failing that, is there anyway to view the files menu in the grid view? Or any of the other views for that matter, like the other menus? Perhaps through a custom theme? I know nothing.

A custom theme might be able to do grid view in the files menu, but the stock theme has ONLY the two-column view.

All the other menus (video, music, photos) do have a grid-like view, and many of the custom themes enhance that grid view.

But the main issue with both of these answers is that the Live HD / Live Plus don’t support themes at all without custom firmware. Only the Gen3/Hub/Live PE support custom themes.

I actually have the Live SMP which allows for custom themes. I’ve already had a play about with the Alaska Light theme, which would have been ideal, it doesn’t allow me to view the files in a grid mode like I would want but its gorgeous enough that it doesn’t really bother me. However, I noticed the play button doesn’t work from the menu using this theme, so I can’t get them all to play continuously, which, as you can imagine, for a large collection of music videos, is unfortunately a bit of a deal breaker.

Are there any themes you could recommend?

dwhite93 wrote:

However, I noticed the play button doesn’t work from the menu using this theme, so I can’t get them all to play continuously,

 

Can you elaborate on that ?    step by step what you are doing please … please use the default WD “Mochi” Theme

 

when you explain your procedure. 

 

It’s not possible through “themeing” to disable a functionality button like “play”

Usually with mochi I would have my videos set up to play continuously on repeat and shuffle mode through the setup menu, if I press play on any given video instead of OK It’ll play them all continuously on shuffle. When I press play using AlaskaLight, nothing happens. So I can only watch them one at a time by pressing OK on them. I have noticed this happen on a few oustom themes, some of them allow it, some don’t.

beats me :confounded:

i don’t even have a “Video Shuffle Mode” in the options of my WDTV Live Hub  (you did refer to “Music Videos” in your previous post)

Also, i was under the understanding … that you had to press “Play” on the “Folder” containing the videos in order for the to play sequentially.

Anyways, as i said, playback functionality is controlled by Firmware and Settings … there is nothing in the user editable XML’s that can be changed to circumvent Firmware controlled features.

Well that’s strange. It’s the live SMP I have so maybe that has something to do with it. I assumed the video shuffle was a well documented feature of it, it’s the reason I bought it after all.

I just tried pressing play on the folder instead, still nothing. It’s unfortunate as it really is a lovely theme.

you could also try … go into you music video folder … press “OK” on the 1st music video … let it play

then press “option” on the remote control and select “Play Mode” press “OK” then select “Shuffle,Repeat etc” by pressing “OK” again and again

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/UM/ENG/4779-705062.pdf

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Oh, that worked! Thanks!