So like many users here, I have a WD TV Live that I use to access movie files from my NAS. In my case, I just have a network share, my NAS doesn’t act as a media server. It was extreamly annoying to not have the artwork for the movies show up. My kids can’t read just yet, so seeing the picture of whatever movie they want to watch lets them select on thier own.
I had previously used an AppleTV for media viewing, so all my movies were listed in iTunes. Most of the kids movies had artwork associated with them. So when I started using the WD TV Live, I was perplexed that a few movies still had the artwork showing up, but not all of them. I tried doing the filename.jpg = moviename.avi and while that works for a USB drive plugged in, it was no help at all for the network shared drive. Plus that meant that I had twice as many files listed, since the WD TV Live can’t seem to filter by file type in the list view.
So eventually I had the time to sit down and actually figure out what was going on with those couple of files that showed artwork. The bottom line is that they need to be encoded as a .mp4 file. So basically what I’m doing is using Handbrake, choosing the “AppleTV” preset, bumping the video quality up a bit, making sure it’s a .mp4 export, and re-encoding the files. Sure it’s a bit of a pain, but once they’re re-encoded, you can use either MetaX to add the tags, or much easier just drag them into iTunes, add the artwork, then delete the files from the iTunes library once you’re done. The good thing is I can set up Handbrake to do a bunch of them one after another, and just take 10 minutes to do the artwork after they’re all re-encoded.
I know this won’t work for everything, but the .mp4 file type will keep the 5.1 sound, subtitles, and a decent video quality. For my HD stuff, I’ll just live with not having the artwork. At least until I have a more robust computer to change the encoding options to a higher quality.
I faced the same problem myself today… In every folder I have my .mkv movie, a subtitle file and a poster of the movie… If I have the HDD connected via USB with WDTV live, having set the navigation options to thumbnail, I was able to see the poster in every thumbnail…
That doesn’t happen while sharing the files…
Is there any way to make this work? Why does this happen ony via USB?
Encoding again something that is already encoded is not a solution for me…I just want it to work…
Good question. I’ll give it a try in the next day or so and let you know if it works. What is strange is that I had poster art embedded in the .m4v files when they were loaded into iTunes for playback on an AppleTV. Some of those image files actually showed up after I had re-encoded. So I’m not certain if it’s an issue with WD not recognizing that extra data in different kinds of file types or what. I’ll do some playing around and see if I can find some sort of pattern. I was just happy to get it working at all.
Hi! I took delivery of my WD HD Live Media box yesterday and it’s fantastic. Very pleased…apart from one thing.
It doesn’t matter what category you choose, it’s always possible to view images, music and movies in each section. Surely this is a bug?
If I select movies, I only want to see movies. I don’t want to see my cover JPG’s or MP3 file that may for some reason be in that folder. (I only have one instance of this).
Is it possible to open the video category and have it ignore the covers for my DVD’s? I’ve tried hiding the files but that doesn’t work and there doesn’t seem to be an option to show only movie file types.
For most of your video files in mkv or avi format, if you want an mp4 it is not necessary to re-encode the video. Its only necessary to remux into the new container. MeGUI can help you extract the video and audio streams from the container you have and put them into an mp4 container. MUCH faster than re-encoding. usually only a few minutes for a full length HD movie.
Yes, folder and movie art on net shares and mediinfo on netshares also. Don’t need movie.jpg any more, media info will take care of it but folder.jpg still needs to be manually loaded. TV episodes are an issue. Remake or same name movies are an issue.
With last WD TV Live firmware 1.4.22 the problem of movie artwork in separate jpg files is now solved. Simple putting a PERIOD (.) at the very beginning of the .jpg file name causes the thumbnail for the .jpg to disappear while leaving the correct thumbnail for the video file.
For example : Invictus.avi and .Invictus.jpg in the same directory
With last WD TV Live firmware 1.4.22 the problem of movie artwork in separate jpg files is now solved. Simple putting a PERIOD (.) at the very beginning of the .jpg file name causes the thumbnail for the .jpg to disappear while leaving the correct thumbnail for the video file.
For example : Invictus.avi and .Invictus.jpg in the same directory
