Kudos V4.1 Beta 03 (Moviesheet SMP) ~ WEEKLY BUILD ADDED

Not as far as I know…that’s the way it has always been for me.

ukmark wrote:

Using Kudos V6 theme on the SMP, but this is a general question. I have tried searching for previous entries relating to this but could not find anything.

 

When loading moviesheets, it takes about 3 seconds to load the image (does not appear to make much difference when media library is on or off). Is there any way to speed up the loading of moviesheets?

 

Any ideas?

Linksheets    (Instantly display)

Quick Guide / Info:

This is how Moviesheets and Linksheets work…

(For Linksheets, the SMP has a 30MB storage limitation … unless you use Beta Homebrew. WDTV Live Hub users do not require Homebrew. And have the Internal HDD for storage 500gb,1tb,2tb)

 

Moviesheets (3 second delay, only works in Gallery View)

Your Movie xml contains a tag to display an image.

eg. The Dark Knight Rises_sheet.jpg

 

 

Linksheets  (which work with every view, no delay)

**SHEETS FOR FILES:  Rename the Moviesheet with a File Extension that matches your Movie File.
eg.
If you have… Watchmen.mkv  then Rename your Moviesheet to Watchmen.mkv  then cut and paste it into your Theme Folder.

SHEETS FOR FOLDERS:  Rename the Moviesheet with NO File Extension
eg.
If you have… MYMOVIES folder  then Rename your Moviesheet to MYMOVIES  then cut and paste it into your Theme Folder.

The File Path to Place Moviesheets is the Root of your Theme folder (ie. where all the XML files are)
  .wd_tv\theme\My Theme\ [Place Movie/LinkSheets here]   *

Finally the “Theme” designer includes these lines of XML code into their Theme which makes the “Linksheets” appear
For Gallery View: <image image=“@@browse_text” x=“0” y=“0” w="1280"h=“720” scale=“100” bg=“1”/>
For All Other Views: **

 

* For SMP users, once you’ve placed the linksheets in the root of your theme folder … rezip at root level and upload it to your SMP

1 Like

Many thanks for the info Joey.

I have reduced the size of my moviesheets to around 200-250k each. I don’t want to reduce any more. I have over 400 movie files (and growing), so I will comfortably blow the 30Mb limit. (I previously had a gen 2 box and ran linksheets on that - took about 3-4 minutes to cache the sheets, but once done, they were instant as you say).

I’ll have to look into the homebrew beta for SMP. I believe this is the link:- http://forum.wdlxtv.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=7663

(NB. I’ve taken a quick look and it would appear that you run the homebrew firmware on a permanently attached USB stick. I think I’ll look into this as I love the Kudos V6 moviesheets that LB designed …)

Cheers again!

Hi Joey,

I’ve loaded the homebrew firmware (verified in the ‘about’ on the wd box and also using b-rad’s batch files to verify). I have removed all the movie .xml files from my hdd that were previously generated to load backdrop moviesheets with the Kudos theme.

I have placed the black mamba theme (unzipped along with a few moviesheets - named movie.mkv etc) in

a folder called ".wd_tv\theme", but the theme does not run - I also notice wifi is not working but that’s not important for me. This theme is in the same place as the palace firmware on the USB - which appears to load fine.

Any ideas? It would be great to get the moviesheets to appear instantly.

I managed to fix it.

There was a section in the homebrew palace forum about using telnet to the wdtvlive device via ethernet (as wifi is not working) and using the “df -k” command to get the name of the disk you are using to store the theme.

I did this and all is now working!

Thanks again Joey for pointing me in the right direction

This was the page I used:- http://forum.wdlxtv.com/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=7665&start=10

PS. I am running the custom firmware/theme direct from my 2TB HDD with all my films (no extra USB needed). All I did was allocate 4GB of the drive, format it as FAT32 and make it primary. Then conver the remaining part of the drive from primary to logical. I used the free Eeaseus partition manager for this and it only took a couple of minutes. Now I have 2 partitions on my HDD - a 4GB FAT32 partition holding the custom firmware, moviesheets and theme and the logical partition holding all the movies. 4GB may be overkill on the partition but what the heck.

Hi I just started using this theme for my SMP today, everything worked gr8

but when on Folder view, the _sheet.jpeg is displayed as folder thumb instead of movie cover for some movies

any help please…thanks in advance

This has happened to me before as well. The folder thumb needs to be named exactly the same as the movie but with a .jpg file extension.  Make sure there aren’t any extra spaces in the filename as well.  If the SMP does not find this .jpg file with the exact same name, then it will use the first other .jpg or .metathumb file that it finds as the folder picture.

Make sure you enable file extensions (if they are disabled) so you can also check the file extension is .jpg

This is a fantastic build, very smooth and fast.

Just one minor issue, when I view the movie folder the image is cycling between the sheet and the folder.  I would like to only see the sheet jpg once in the folder, the folder jpg should only display when cycling through choices.

Cheers,

Matthew

PS : I apologize if this was covered earlier, I waded through several pages of responses and didn’t find anything specific to this issue.

Also, I run a media server in my house with multiple drives, it would be nice to have some generic folder images just labled

movie drive 1

movie drive 2

movie drive 3

movie drive 4

tv drive 1

tv drive 2

tv drive 3

tv drive 4

I could probbaly try and figure out how to make them myself but I have not touched a image program in over 10 years.

Cheers,

Matthew

Not sure if anybody is interested but…

The only reason I used the homebrew firmware was to get linksheets working. And now (with Joey’s help), they are working perfectly - showing up instantly as I browse through my library.

However, one of the bugs with homebrew v1.12.14 was that it disabled wi-fi access on the gen3 (not a biggie for me, but for some it might be). The other issue (with the stock WD firmware v1.12.14 that homebrew is based on, is that when stopping playing an MKV file, the unit was slow to stop (you could hear the audio playing on for a few seconds after you had stopped the movie, and the unit was slow to respond to the stop request). This WD bug was fixed by v1.16.13 and was very annoying for myself as all my 500+ files are MKVs.

On this forum ( http://forum.wdlxtv.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=7663),,) on pages 30 and 31, somebody had found (by accident) that he had flashed WD’s newer  v1.16.13 official firmware while he was using homebrew v.1.12.14. This ‘fixed’ his wi-fi problem and I can also report that the issue of stopping MKV’s is also fixed - they now stop playing instantly.  The look of your theme may have changed slightly (background on mine has changed a little), but the more important issues for me of MKV stopping issues and, less so, Wi-Fi being broken, are now resolved. Finally, all the linksheets are still working perfectly.

Just something to consider…

Cheers.

Hi ronmaz i checked for .jpg extension & file name, everything is fine :wink:

Just found, .avi_sheet.jpg is diplayed as movie thumb (folder view) only for .avi format,

For.mkv format i have no problem

Any help please :slight_smile: Thx

 

Hmmm thats strange I haven’t seen before, although all my movies are in mkv format but the format should be irrelevant as long as the jpg is named identically (including uppercase and lowercase) then it should display as the folder image.

Do you have each movie in its own folder or all movies lumped in together in one folder?  Post a screenshot of the folder in Windows Explorer using Details Display, with extensions enabled.

If your movies are in their own individual folder per movie, then just create another thumbnail of the folder image you want and call it folder.jpg or 0.metathumb.  Those names take priority over others when determining which image to display.

Just a follow up to see if anyone else has experienced the problem of the folder jpg and the sheet image cycling in gallery view, I’m ready to thumb gen my 800 or so movies and want to make sure everything is good.

Cheers,

Matthew

To Stop the “Cycling” and have it only display the sheet image … The “Photo Settings” control the Gallery View Sheets

On your  WD LIVE SMP / WDTV LIVE HUB

Setup > Photo Settings > Slideshow Sequence > Normal

 

Setup > Photo Settings > Slideshow Interval Time > 5 Minutes

 

optional …

Setup > Photo Settings > Slideshow Transition > Fade

 

 

P.S. Before you jump in and process 800 Movies … try doing 8 or 80 movies 1st to test and try things out.

 and whatever you do with Thumbgen … create .tgmd files (so if you mess it up, you won’t have to re-scrape movie info)

2 Likes

Excellent, ty. I’ll track down the. Tgmd setting location when I get home, I used to use media Centre master, so I’m new to thumbgen.

Cheers,

Matthew

it’s in … Optiions > General > Main/Extra Moviesheet Metadata  (tick the box ✓)

this option creates a .tgmd file (which is basically a ZIP file which contains all scraped info/posters/fanart etc etc)

if you need to regenerate moviesheets at any time (with different templates/settings)  without having to “re-scrape” the movies …

select … Process files/folders > Create from Metadata

 

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JoeySmyth wrote:

…and whatever you do with Thumbgen … create .tgmd files (so if you mess it up, you won’t have to re-scrape movie info)

+1000!!! That is some of the greatest advice one can get when starting to work with themes

Having .tgmd files for my movies has made my WD media experience sooooo much better it is unbelievable. Besides for when you mess up, it is flawless when you want to move from one theme to another. The first time I changed from one theme to another I did not have these files, and it took me an entire day to make all the new XMLs / Linksheets I needed. After learning about .tgmd files and making them for all my video media, changing themes is an automatic process that requires almost no interaction from me. Just tell Thumbgen to make the sheets and walk away. Come back a while later (depending on how much video you have), and it’s all done. Great advice JoeySmyth.

-P

Alright, things are going along swimmingly, I got those settings changed. I did get a weird error about name length, I guess when it processes the file it looks at the full path, and it caps out at 260 characters, so I had to edit a file name to get below the cap.

First drive should be done when I get home from work.

Cheers

Download / unzip / and run Thumbgen onto your C:&nbsp; drive

if you you put Thumbgen app/folder onto your Desktop … Then yep,  you’re gonna run into name/file path length problems

I put it in the program files folder, but I’ll move it over to the root, thanks.

Cheers,

Matthew