I fixed the link, I guess coding doesn’t work here…he’s using them on WDTV Live i guess, check moviesheets+
Yeah, I know what your talking about. I’ve tried it on my WDTVLive a while back. But you have to be running a custom firmware on the LIve and it requires using the Moviesheeet+ plugin.
That’s not possible on the HUB though, because there is no custom firmware (nor is there likely to be) for the HUB. And even if there was a custom firmware it would have to be written to use plugins and then the guy that wrote the Moviesheet+ pluggin (or someone else), would have to write a pluggin specifically for the HUBs custom firmware.
So you see there would be a lot of hurdles to overcome to do this. But like I said this is not likely to happen.
Also, I forgot this. You said that your HUB wouldn’t be connected to the internet. I don’t know if mentioned but for the backdrops to display you have to have a network connection.
why do I need a network connection? aren’t suppose to work locally? i’m using the standard theme of the hub now and they working fine without network connection
Well, I’m not sure why, but it appears that the Photo Slideshow (which is what is used to display the backdrops) is tied into having an internet connection.
If your’s is woking without a connection then that is odd, I’ll look into it to see why that may be happening. I’ll let you know if I find something.
One thing though, do you have your media library turned on or off.
my media library is turned on.
I still don’t understand what needs an internet connection. is it the mucho standard theme or your mojo theme? the backdrops are showing nice on the mucho wihout any connection and that’s the main reason why i wanted the backdrops to be locally.
it could be also because i got the xml using the “get content info”?
the slideshow is working fine and i can choose the transition type, I got like 12 backdrops for one movie and they all worked fine! the backdrops I downloaded them manually from tmdb (1920x1080p)
No, it’s for all themes. It is probably either do to how it’s caching the xml data or due to how it iniciates the Photo Slideshow.
It doesn’t have anything to do with what theme it is though (and I think you mean the Mochi theme), because the theme has nothing to do with how the backdrops is loaded, that’s a firmware issue.
Like I said though, I’m not really sure why it’s working for you, I have already tried to see if it was because of “Get Content info”, but that resulted in the same issue. I’ll have to do some further testing to see if I can produce the same results your seeing.
so I understand from what you saying that you can’t and you’re not suppose to have a backdrops slideshow when you’re NOT connected to the network?
Sorry for a repeat post , but I thought that this may be worthwhile sharing in this thread
Well, For the benefit of others in the community, I finally figured out how to use locally stored JPG files on USB or NAS shares and display them on screen when you are browsing the folders from the UI on WDTV Live SMP running 1.03.10
Here is what you need to do
Here is an example folder structure
<2011>
folder.jpg
<Jan 2011>
folder.jpg
<Trip_to_Yosemite>
folder.jpg
Trip_Video.iso
Trip_Video.jpg
Trip_Video.xml
backdrop.jpg
backdrop1.jpg
backdrop2.jpg
backdrop3.jpg
backdrop4.jpg
Now the example XML Metadata file that Tony and I were reffering in this thread would be “Trip_Video.xml”
You will need to add these lines to the metadata “Trip_Video.xml” file in this fashion:
backdrop.jpg
backdrop1.jpg
backdrop2.jpg
backdrop3.jpg
backdrop4.jpg
backdrop5.jpg
Presto! your local files will be displayed on the screen as rotating backdrops starting with backdrop… backdrop1 etc; etc; and repeat endlessly when you select " <Trip_to_Yosemite>" folder from the user interface!
Remember: WDTV Live Series run a Linux OS, Make sure that your folder names \ *do not * contain spaces otherwise this whole process will fail. Replace all your spaces by “_” or “-” and you will see that local backdrops work in nested folders!
Note:
This feature may also be available in WDTV Live HUB but you may need the latest firmware to get that working, Beware that the latest WDTV Live HUB firmware is full of bugs and it is not worth upgrading IMHO
The moderator can delete this post if he wishes :neutral_face:
Thanks!
It’s alright about the repeat post.
However, some of your information is wrong. FIrst, your setup is using each movie in it’s own folder. This is not recommend because you can not display the metadata or backdrop for folders. As the firmware stands now, which here in the theme forum we have recommended not using the new firmware 2.08, it is recommended having multiple files in one folder (e.g. having them in Genre folders).
Vistawall wrote:
Remember: WDTV Live Series run a Linux OS, Make sure that your folder names \ *do not * contain spaces otherwise this whole process will fail. Replace all your spaces by “_” or “-” and you will see that local backdrops work in nested folders!
This is also not necessary, you do not need to replace spaces with “_”. Spaces work fine with the HUB, and all my files have spaces in them (that need them) and all work perfectly. The only thing that is problematic is that you have to make sure that your xmls are named exactly the same as your file. This means that every thing needs to be exactly the same including the case, because the HUB is case senstive.
Vistawall also wrote:
Note:
This feature may also be available in WDTV Live HUB but you may need the latest firmware to get that working, Beware that the latest WDTV Live HUB firmware is full of bugs and it is not worth upgrading IMHO
This feature was first discovered in the HUB firmware and has been available since version 2.06.
thx vistawall for posting, but I think we know that already! at least me. Posting more than 1 backdrop, yes make them display as a slideshow with the transition that you choose from the UI. What I’m trying to figure out is how to link the xml to a subfolder that holds the data.
You can’t, xml data does not work on folders (sub or not) only for files. There is no way around this until it is fixed in the firmware.
Thanks Tinwarble for your clarifications.
I was just posting my observations seen on WDTV Live SMP, The WDTV Live HUB obviously acts little different due to firmware changes.
WDTV Live SMP does work with nested subfolders with XML files in each and locally available backdrops do display as long as you do not have spaces in their directory names. But reading your comments about WDTV Live HUB it seems that WDTV Live SMP’s firmware could use some improvements to ignore spaces in directories and subdirectories and still display the locally available backdrops present in the sub directories.
Also, with respect to the need of Internet connection to display locally stored backdrops is somewhat true.
Here is what I found (At least from my experience wth WDTV Live SMP)
If you NIC interface has an IP address assigned to it, the locally available Backdrops work, as soon as the Interface looses IP address by unplugging the ETHERNET cable or WiFi, the locally available backdrops stops to work eventhough one might think – Whaaaaat? why do you need NIC interface to display locally stored backdrops???
But looks that it is by design! 
- Go figure
but the backdrops are working for me without internet connection, and this has been from last weekend, I turned off my device many times + reset + format, etc and the backdrops still working without having the ethernet cable connected
also what is the purpose of storing backdrops locally if you have to be always connected to the network?, isn’t better to just stream them online? it doesn’t make any sense to me.
I just don’t know how it’s working for me and not the same for you, I didn’t read the full manual yet to see if they have any clarification around xml and backdrops.
Maybe this has been asked before, so forgive me if it has been:
Can you store the backdrops for ALL movies in a folder of their own on the Hub’s HDD? Likewise, could the thumnails be in a seperate thumbnail folder as well?
I’m thinking the answer is NO…but asking anyway because inquiring minds want to know. 
Thumbnail, absolutely not.
Moviesheets though can be in a single folder.
You can make a folder inside the folder with your movies, then name it something like “Moviesheets” (or what ever you want.
So if you have your movies in something like Genre folders, you will have something like this:
Action (folder)
filename1.mkv
filename1.xml
filename1.jpg (cover art)
filename2.mvk
filename2.xml
filename2.jpg
etc.
Moviesheets (folder)
filename1_sheet,jpg
filename2_sheet.jpg
etc.
Then you will have to manually edit the xml (you can’t set this in TG) to:
Moviesheets/filename1_sheet.jpg
You must use a “/”.
And just so you know, if you do this you will most likely need to clear your media library before it will except the new path.
flhthemi wrote:
Maybe this has been asked before, so forgive me if it has been:
Can you store the backdrops for ALL movies in a folder of their own on the Hub’s HDD?
Well, if the movies are on the Hub’s HD, then yes, you can consolidate all the backdrops in one folder.
Likewise, if they’re on a NAS, you can consolidate them in one folder on that same “share.”
But you cannot put NAS movies’ backdrops on the Hub’s HD or vice versa.
