It’s on.
Okay, turn it off (and delete the wd folder again, then hook up your Live to the drive one more time).
Ok, Tried that and no change. There is a neat little picture for the USB folder (which I didn’t place there) but everything after that is either the folder or DVD image.
Am trying to successfully extract the 1.03 update. Will do so after dinner tonight unless you say otherwise between now and then.
Thanks for your help so far Mike, I appreciate it.
Updating never hurts (but it should do this without that, darn it).
Just out of curiousity, what file types do you have in that folder? (For your videos).
I’ve had issues at times where certain JPGs would not display no matter what I did. The solution was to download other ones, but I never tried to track down what the issue was with those errant files. The odds, though, that ALL of yours are this way is pretty remote (unless you created them yourself in a particular program – then the odds increase greatly).
The majority of them are AVI, with some MP4 and m2ts thrown in there. I’ve had a few jpgs turn out to be Bitmap images so I’ll have to redo those, even with sorting specifically for jpg. Most of them are functional in the photos page though. All the jpgs are from various sources via google search so I doubt it’s that. It seems like theres some “option” that I have off or perhaps the firmware update will solve it. We shall see.
If the firmware update doesn’t solve it, just to humor me you might try taking one of your AVIs and remuxing it with MKVMerge (but don’t use the latest version – Google version 4.0 or earlier or, if you *have* to use the latest version, make sure you turn off both video and audio header compression in the track options).
If you have an MKV file in there with the right thumbnail that doesn’t display then we are talking a very curious situation indeed.
Just for clarification, if I have a bunch of movies in one directory (local USB, not network shared), then the structure should look like (for example):
> Movies
Folder.jpg
Movie 1.ISO
Movie 1.jpg
Movie 2.m2ts
Movie 2.jpg
Movie 3.ISO
Movie 3.jpg
Is this correct? I tried it once, briefly, and some of the thumbs didn’t appear.
It sure would be nice if there was a shortcut or quicker way to launch local videos. Drilling down to the local USB drive from the main menu is annoying my wife and daughter.
Harlock
Yes, that is correct.
Some thumbs are too large to display (for safety’s sake, don’t use anything over 70K). And some, despite all odds, just won’t work. I’ve never tried to pin this down – I just download another image and it then works, but there’s something odd going on with the encoding or something on some JPGs that prevents them from working.
Sometimes to “refresh” things you’ll need to erase the WD file/directory on the root of your local drive so that the Live will rebuild the media library.
You might try looking for the cached thumb in the .wdtv directory (connect the drive to your computer or do it via network. Both things work).
Look for files with a “.thumb” suffix with the same name as your original thumb (the directory structure resembles the one you have on your disk, except for folder.jpg’s which are moved up one level and have same names as the folder). Try copy a .thumb file to your pc and rename it to .jpg - you should be able to view this file with the pc if everything went well.
If not, try to delete the .thumb file from the .wdtv directory and power-cycle the Live (with the remote). This will force a rebuild of the thumbs you deleted, and is much faster and easier than having to rebuild all your thumbs. A full rebuild caused by deleting the .wdtv folder typically make some other thumbs fail.
I’ve managed to get stable thumbs for ~150 movies this way, and all my thumbs are around 500x333, 130-140K (the cached thumbs are much smaller though, and probably the “best fit”, I just didn’t want to remake them all …) I’ve tried making sub 70K thumbs in 100x150, and they fail too occassionally until they “stabilize”.
Cocovanna
Coco - I can’t find any file that is .thumb. Do I need to create a .jpg and put it in my .wd_tv file? I’m currently back to list mode 
You don’t do ANYthing with the WD_TV file – Coco may be giving you correct technical information but it won’t help with your thumbnail issue.
You create the thumbs as we’ve said (and as you appear to be doing) and then the Live builds the WD file accordingly. Except in your case it’s not. Without physically being at your house I’m not sure what else to tell you because it’s not hard or rocket science.
The only possible explanation I can even come up with is that somehow the JPGs you are creating are all wrong in some manner – but we’re so far into this thread I can’t even remember how you’re getting them (if you’re just downloading off the internet, as most folks are, then MOST of them should work just fine. About 1 in 100 of my downloads don’t work for some odd reason, and I assume it’s due to the creating application but haven’t got the time or inclination to try and track it down). If you were to tell me that you make all your thumbs in Photoshop, for example, then we’d have something more to look at, but if you used 100 images from the net, all under 70K, all JPG, and followed the naming conventions and placements like we’ve outlined as well as the procedures (like deleting that WD file/folder and resetting the Live) as we’ve said, there’s no way for it NOT to work.
The only other thing you might try is unplugging the Live overnight (don’t just turn it off, unplug it overnight). It’s a WAY long shot, but what have you got to lose?
Well I’m currently porting some movies/shows over to my HDD, so as soon as that’s done I’ll complete the firmware update and we’ll see if that has any effect.
I do have jpg’s from google searching, all of them are 120 x 180 and under 70K size. They are named and placed correctly. I am hoping it’s just a firmware issue, but if that doesnt correct it I’ll try the unplug overnight. If that fails, I guess I might try actually calling WD. Is that at all worth the time/effort?
Oh wow. It was the firmware update that was needed. I now see all my images as wanted. YESSS!! Thanks Mike for all of your help. Couldn’t have done it without ya.
I also have some jpg’s that do not show, and I will have to redo. For the majority all is well 
Glad you got it working – funny about the firmware, since my thumbs have worked from the beginning (many months and many firmware revisions ago) but that’s not the important thing.
