what i’m trying to achieve seems fairly straight forward so i’m a little surprised it can’t be done. i have my photos and movies in specific folder structure e.g., movies sufolders by genre, photo by date. assume i only have those 2 folders shared (movies and photos). all i want to do is have the movies folder appear in the videos menu and the photos folder show in the photo menu. as it is, when i select the video or the photo menu i see both folders (kind of defetes the purpose of having seperate menus)
anyway, i really cant use media library becuase is does wacky things like include my movie backdrop and covers jpg in the photos menu. also the folder structure is there becuase it is intuative to me and i like to keep the folder structure.
this seems pretty basic and i’m surprised it can’t be done - of maybe i’m just thick and it is actually easy to do.
any thoughts? how do ppl here deal with this e.g., can you use the filters/sorting to acomplish this?
Well, the only way to do what you want is to have the media library on. And if your files are on a network share, you have to add that folder to your network share on the SMP then change the content source to “My Media Library”.
Also, as for photos, with the media library on, if you change the filter to folders you can browse just your photos folders.
Using filters is not an option for me. While it might work in theory, I want to set this up so my wife can use it. So far it is not even coming close. She now has to press the Yellow button to set a Fitler? Give me a break.
I am not annoyed at you - it is a good suggestion. I am just getting more and more annoyed that I wasted a $100 on this thing.
thanks tinwarble, i figured that was the answer as i could not find anthing that increased my optimism.
i tried to use the media server i.e., dlna (using whs 2011). thought that might be a good solution and it kind of works, but then it shows random pics for the movie thumbs rather than the folder.jpg (random screen caps i assume)
so i think the solution might be to find out how to save metadata in a format that wdtv likes and then use dlna server on whs
any thought on how to save metadata would be much appreciated (i used my movies plugin for whs and the thumbs and some tagging was correct, but i thought it was a bit bloated for my needs)
kneighbour wrote:
Using filters is not an option for me. While it might work in theory, I want to set this up so my wife can use it. So far it is not even coming close. She now has to press the Yellow button to set a Fitler? Give me a break.
I am not annoyed at you - it is a good suggestion. I am just getting more and more annoyed that I wasted a $100 on this thing.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about?
First you don’t use the yellow button to change the filter, that changes the view. You change the filter by pressing the GREEN button, then selecting Filter/Folder, do that for each media (Video/Photos/Music) and once it’s set then you don’t have to change it again, nothing for the wife to do.
Once you filter by folders then everything displays in it’s folder structure and with Media Library on then only the Video folders/files will display for Videos and only Music folders/files will display for Music. Under Photos, all folder with pics will display but then you can just navigate to your “Photos” folder and only see the file you want too.
It’s not that it doesn’t work like you want it too, the issue is that you don’t have set up in a way to optimize it the way you want to see things.
thanks again. it actually almost works in folder view.
for movies - works well except i’d like to add metadata somehow (at least on the initial setup with a couple hundred movies). i currently have all the metadata saved but not in the right format. i heard that metabrowser developer is working on a plugin to output data and images as but we’ll see if it comes to be
for pics - problem is that the folder.jpg and backdrops from my movie folders get shown. if i could get around this that would be great! any ideas much appreciated
thanks again for the help
oh, and if you know a metadata manager i can use that outputs to a format that wdtv picks up i’d appreciate any insight…
I think your confusing some things. The SMP already has a internal scraper that will get thumbs, metadata & backdrops.
Alternately though, you can also use Thumbgen to add the data.
Also as I said, for folders if you just add your photos you want to view to a “Photos” folder, select Filter/Folder in Photos, then you can just select the Photos folder and view only the pics you want to view.
Tinwarble wrote:Also as I said, for folders if you just add your photos you want to view to a “Photos” folder, select Filter/Folder in Photos, then you can just select the Photos folder and view only the pics you want to view.
You are right about the Green button (not the yellow). It does not matter anyhow - it is simply not practical to put photos and music into the Media Library, so all this discussion of filters and folder view is moot. I have almost 100,000 music tracks - the WDTV stops when I try to add that. I also have a LOT of photos - many thousands. Again, it is not practical to add. I have not even had the patience to let the system update all the library info - it simply takes too long (days, I would think). But when you go into Photos or Music (or even Video for that matter), the thing sits there with the little circle going around for ages. Many minutes. I give up every time - dunno what it looks like if it ever comes up as I don’t have the patience to sit there for ages. So I have removed the Music/Photo shares and now have only video share(s). This is just as well, as you are only allowed 8, I believe (amazing on networkable device, but there you go).
It is still very slow opening up the Video screen. Almost to the point of not being usable. Dunno - will see if it gets faster as it settles down. If it takes 5 minutes to simply find and open a show, then none of my family are going to use it - simple as that. And I do not exaggerate with the 5 minutes - it is at least a minute per screen (ie each folder level). The first screen that comes up (in Video:Folders) is one path - ‘Video’. This takes about a minute. It is basically an empty folder on the NAS with 6 other folders in it. Why it takes so long is puzzling.
Maybe if I broke the single Video share down into 7 shares it might be faster?
