WDTV Gen 3 Moviesheets

I recently bought a WD TV Live Streamer (Gen 3) and trying to set it up.
I have an external USB hard drive with a few hundred movies and TV shows on it. Mostly mkv, but there are avi and flv files as well.
Each movie/ TV show is in separate folder.

Questions:

  1. The SMP gets and shows the info (director, actors, artwork…) for the files but not folders.
    Is there a way to see the info when browsing the folders without getting into them? I do not wanna put all the movies in one folder.

  2. Is it possible to get all that info (artwork, posters, metadata…) manually, on a computer, so the SMP understands it and reads it correctly?

  3. I would really like to generate Moviesheets. But don’t know how. I tried to play with ThumbGen but it has so many settings and variables my head spins.

  4. Will Moviesheets work with default theme? Or I need to load Mojo for example?

I know, there are tons of posts scattered all over the place, but it is very hard to find the info that you need.

Thanks.

  1.  No.  The WDTV works best when everything is in the same folder.

  2.  Sure.  There’s lots of third-party apps that generate all that’s needed.   

  3.  There’s several guides on how to do that.   Suggest you look in the Hub’s THEME Forum for more info.

  4.  No; themes and movie-sheets are tailored to work with each other.

  1.  Sure.  There’s lots of third-party apps that generate all that’s needed.

Exactly, but which one to choose? WDTVHubGen, Media Centre Master… Which one works best with default settings?

  1.  No; themes and movie-sheets are tailored to work with each other.

Most of the themes are from 2011-2012. Will they work with SMP with the latest firmware (2.01.86)?

You’d have to check with the authors.

As to which tool to use:   I don’t use anything except for TV Shows.   I let the WDTV do Movies itself.   For TV Shows, I use my own tool:  The XML Fetcher.

I think the most discussed program around here is thumbgen

but it’s not the most user friendly,

So in order to use ThumbGen generated moviesheets I have to load “moviesheet” friendly theme first?

And I have to move all the movies from their folders to HD root? Otherwise I won’t see moviesheets?

I read somewhere if you change the folder name from “MovieName” to “MovieName .mkv” it will work. But does it work with current FW?

nope, not at all

theme capatibility

yes the theme must support moviesheets, but nearly all theme’s support moviesheets

you don’t need to move your files anywhere or rename anything

the whole renaming thing, sounds like you’re confusing this with linksheets (linksheets is 1 specific way of displaying a moviesheet), which really is not supported for the SMP

it’s possible, but not without a bunch of work, it’s really only suported on the HUB

Lots of good info from Tony and KAD, Ill just add a thought on file stuctucture. Although you can keep your movies in individual folders, as Tony noted, it will be easier if you build some type of structure that is easy to navigate. Putting them all in one folder can be a bit overwhelming if you are trying to find something and have to scroll through 100s of 1000s of movies. Many of here break them down into Genres Folders, such as Action, Comedy, Westerns etc. By doing so, you wil be able to see the data for those movies when you enter the genre folder, yet not have to go through all of them, just the ones for that genre.

A standard setup might look something like this

SMP ROOT

-----> Movies

---------------> Comedy

--------------------------------> Comedy Movie 1

--------------------------------> Comedy Movie 2

--------------------------------> Comedy Movie 3

---------------> Action

--------------------------------> Action Movie 1

--------------------------------> Action Movie 2

--------------------------------> Action Movie 3

---------------> SyFy

--------------------------------> SyFY Movie 1

--------------------------------> SyFY Movie 2

--------------------------------> SyFY Movie 3

SMP ROOT

---------------> TV Series

--------------------------------> TV Show 1

------------------------------------------> Epidode 1

------------------------------------------> Episode 2

------------------------------------------> Episode 3

--------------------------------> TV Show 2

------------------------------------------> Epidode 1

------------------------------------------> Episode 2

------------------------------------------> Episode 3

--------------------------------> TV Show 3

------------------------------------------> Epidode 1

------------------------------------------> Episode 2

------------------------------------------> Episode 3

You can stucture in anyway you like, but if you do some reading on these boards, I think you will find that the majority of people will use something similar to this with Genres Folders for Movies, and TV Show Folders for series. It will make finding movies and TV episodes a lot easier then either individual folders for each video, or all in one big folder.

Good Luck

-P

I thought about Genres, but the thing is most movies fall under different genres. For example Avatar is listed as Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Sci-Fi. It will make finding the desired movie even harder.

If I could have all the movies in on folder and have “shortcuts” in different folders… That way I could have the same movie accesible from different locatons. Is that even possible?

isagreg wrote:

I thought about Genres, but the thing is most movies fall under different genres. For example Avatar is listed as Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Sci-Fi. It will make finding the desired movie even harder.

If I could have all the movies in on folder and have “shortcuts” in different folders… That way I could have the same movie accesible from different locatons. Is that even possible?

yeah, it’s possible but …

a lot depends on how you use your player

if you use media library

you just add additional xml entries for the “genre” that you want

you can even make up your own genre’s

besides that, playlist work

also symlinks, but windows does not support symlink

and links would need to be relative path’s

I’ve given some thought on this myself. I have collected all of the trailers for my movies too and I think one way this might work is by creating playlists. I’ve haven’t tried this yet, but I read that playlists will appear like folders and all of your videos/movies would appear in that folder/playlist. So, in theory, I think you could put your movies into folders you think represents them best and then maybe create multiple playlists where the same movie could be listed in different playlists. Each playlist would represent a genre, like ACTION or DRAMA.

I’ve not tried this yet, but I’m planning on putting all of my trailers into several playlists so I can get to them one of two ways.

I’ve actually tried playlist, and it does work

used m3u format

with relative paths

and yeah, the WD treats it like a folder

it will show the file extension

but click ok, and it moves inside just like a folder for normal browsing

if you click play on the playlist

it plays all items in the list

again just like a folder

1 Like

Hi, 

I’m new with Gen3 also, and find tou much information, and some doesn’t work with new firmwares.Found HubFlow app ( http://www.hubflowapp.com/) and it works with stock themes.

The app sometimes gives some errors but it worked for me.

You should have all movies in same folder, since for wdtv smp every folder is …a folder. Other players ignore the folder structure as they only use the video files info when they show the movies.

For Series,  structure should be:

  • folder with Name Of Series

  • inside that, create folder named “Season XX”

  • Inside season folder, name the file as  "name of series S01E05 episode name if wanted.avi/mkv/… (the scrapper will find the episode name also)

Hope it helps

Remember

Hope it helps