Mac/PC App to get metadata (posters, backdrops, actors...) for Movies and TV series

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live Hub Discussions
21

Interesting,

The trouble is that the program should be able to make a decision based on predetermined rule.

If the rule says “'any time you find 3 digits, please consider that the first is the season number and the 2 last the episode number”, then that’s fine.

But that implies that “301” is Season 3 and Episode 1… and that nobody would use “0301” to identify the same episode, or even “31”. The obvious limitation is for the shows where more than 9 seasons exist (The Bold and the Beautiful comes to mind).

Another limitation is the case of titles including 3 digits, such as " 100 per cent"; the program would consider it as Season 1, Episode 0.

Some developers have moved the problem towards the end-user, who have to pre-specify the rule to use in a list of pre-specified formats. That is what I’d like to avoid, as this would make the software more difficult to use and more intimidating.

Last, if the rule says the same as the one mentioned above but add another condition : the 3 digits must be within 2 “_” , then I can do it. Let me know what you think.

Chris,

22

Tobogan wrote:

Interesting,

The trouble is that the program should be able to make a decision based on predetermined rule.

If the rule says “'any time you find 3 digits, please consider that the first is the season number and the 2 last the episode number”, then that’s fine.

But that implies that “301” is Season 3 and Episode 1… and that nobody would use “0301” to identify the same episode, or even “31”. The obvious limitation is for the shows where more than 9 seasons exist (The Bold and the Beautiful comes to mind).

Another limitation is the case of titles including 3 digits, such as " 100 per cent"; the program would consider it as Season 1, Episode 0.

Some developers have moved the problem towards the end-user, who have to pre-specify the rule to use in a list of pre-specified formats. That is what I’d like to avoid, as this would make the software more difficult to use and more intimidating.

Last, if the rule says the same as the one mentioned above but add another condition : the 3 digits must be within 2 “_” , then I can do it. Let me know what you think.

 

Chris,

I see your point. That would probably just cause more bugs trying to get it right. It is in no way a big deal IMO, so better stick to what works ! 

I do have another question, more general to other WDFLOW users as well. When using the WDFLOW to get tv-series-images, most episode-images are in wide-format (landscape), as opposed to movie images which are in poster-format (portraet). This causes either weird stretching of the images on the hub, a crop which leaves more than 50% of the image out, or a really small image, which has a different aspect ratio than the “frame” that your control … all in all, either way it doesn’t look all that great.

I have been trying to change the Ohagi theme to make this look a little better, but since you cannot have different views for either TV or MOVIES, I haven’t really figured anything nice out yet that works for both movies and tv-shows…

I would really like to know how other users display your TV-images??

23

Hi zBallz,

Thanks for your quality feedback.

I just implemented a third naming rule " _XYY_" , where X is the season number (1 to 9) and YY the episode name. By doing so, I discovered a bug that stopped the batch process whenever WDFlow encountered a filename that didn’t comply with any of the pre-defined rules. So  that’s corrected now, and the code becomes more and more reliable.  Version 1.0.6 is online:

http://tobogan.nozonenet.com/WDFlow/

Regarding your last comment: once again you’re right.

Whenever there’s no image for a given episode, WDFlow falls back to using the fanart, which happens to be a wide-format image. A pre-release version used the poster of the series, but the WDTV Live Hub didn’t like that, as the navigation became sluggish. The size of the image (approx. 100k) made the WDTV navigation very slow, so i decided to use a fanart image (20k) to keep the normal navigation speed.

I will add this issue to the list of things to be improved in the next release - probably WDFlow would have to do an image compression on the fly- the difficult part would be to keep its reactivity.

Chris,

24

Just one more idea for a future update :slight_smile:

A common way to sort series is organising by series-title, then by season in subfolders. For example DEXTER → which then contains 5 subfolders named, season1, season2 etc… season 5.

This would require you to get wdflow-info 5 times for the dexter series, once per each season-folder… 

Would it be possible to allow you to select multiple-folders, when you click the “save” button, thus you could scrape for the whole series, all seasons, in one go?

25

Hi,

Version 1.0.7 is online.

http://tobogan.nozonenet.com/WDFlow/

This is a major release.

The last suggestion of zBallz is added. One click for all seasons subfolders, no need to select all the folders, WDFlow looks for any sub-folder and assumes that the episodes belong to the same series. Easier and completely transparent for the end-user.

The MovieDB was down for 2 days and I received emails as the previous versions didn’t check if the servers were down. This is corrected now.

Also, series folders have an image now, making the WDTV even easier to use.

In summary:

  • Added: Folder image for each series. The image is displaying the series poster rather than the image of the first episode within the folder
  • Added: WDFlow analyses the TV series folder recursively, which means that all subfolders are parsed and treated in one shot. No need to start over the process for each subfolder.
  • Corrected: new poster image for missing episodes images (in portrait format).
  • Corrected: diagnosis of TheMovieDatabase connection status. Needed since their servers are apparently not very reliable

Chris,

26

You’re pretty fast on the updates :slight_smile: This app is really going somewhere!

There seems to be a bug (at least for me) in the “include subfolders”-feature. Whenever I save in a folder with subfolders I get stuck on “Analysing Folder…” and nothing happens. Tried with a few different series, lastly on twin peaks, which is only two seasons - it was stuck on the “analysing folder…” for several hours until I force quit…

27

Hi,

Analyzing folders should take less than 2 seconds, and you should be able to quit without having to use" force quit".

The only way I could reproduce this bug was to indicate to WDFlow a folder containing subfolders without any identifiable movie (i.e. no filename using one of the 3 naming rules).  Actually WDFlow analyzed the folders and didn’t discover any thing that it could work on; I just forgot to update the log text:dizzy_face: - easy to correct. Could you try again, making sure that the filenames are formatted with a “x” between season and episode; with S…E… , or _…_" ?

Thanks,

Chris.

P.S: Did reproduce it with correct filenames. Next version will address this.

28

I’ve located the bug, or whatever it is.

If happens only if I have checked the “all”-checkbox next to save. Then it hangs on “analysing folder…” forever. Leaving the checkbox off though, and everything works like a charm - great job!!

Tobogan wrote:

Hi,

Analyzing folders should take less than 2 seconds, and you should be able to quit without having to use" force quit".

The only way I could reproduce this bug was to indicate to WDFlow a folder containing subfolders without any identifiable movie (i.e. no filename using one of the 3 naming rules).  Actually WDFlow analyzed the folders and didn’t discover any thing that it could work on; I just forgot to update the log text:dizzy_face: - easy to correct. Could you try again, making sure that the filenames are formatted with a “x” between season and episode; with S…E… , or _…_" ?

Thanks,

Chris.

P.S: Did reproduce it with correct filenames. Next version will address this.

29

Hi,

Version 1.0.7 had a bug related to the structure of folders  (didn’t like empty root folders) - thanks to zBallz for the feedback.

Version 1.0.8 - aka Easter release - should behave better.

http://tobogan.nozonenet.com/WDFlow/

Best,

Chris,

30

Great, I’ll try the new version right away…

A couple more things :slight_smile:

  • the images that WDFLOW creates for each season-subfolder; would it be possible to make it the actual season cover? I always get the same image for all season folders - which makes it a little difficult to distinguish the folders visually. For example all 7 seasons of my “curb your enthusiasm”-subfolders now has the same cover-image. Or is this is a scrape-issue? Would be cool if possible…

  • The new _SEE_ (_seasonepisode_) works great! I’ve now come across another, little less common, way of naming, which is -102- (-SEE-). Could be nice to have this method integrated as well, would be pretty complete then…

I am currently working on a way to make the wide-episode-images from the  WDFLOW display in a fairly tolerable manner in the Ohagi-theme. So far the best option I’ve come across is to add a code in the images which centers the image and enlarges it to fit the ‘portraet’-frame. There is no stretching this way, but some of the sides are obviously cut out. But in 9 of 10 cases, it looks good, and shows what is relevant of the image. Also, this causes no bugs to movie-posters (which uses the same xml)

happy easter,

zballz.

31

Hi,
I’m tesing version 1.0.9, and it’s t rue that season specific folder images are great. If WDFlow detects subfolders, it will assume that they are season folders and use the season that matches the rank of the folder. The issue is that if you have 3  seasons (1,2,4), WDFlow will use season 3 image (third folder) for season 4. Trying to think about a nice way to solve this.
The new naming rule is implemented in the 1.0.9 version.
For the size of images, we could apply a “zoom” to allow a better fit with the template, but I’m not sure it’s desirable as the WDTV is already doing this in the upper left image, with good results.
Chris,

32

Great!

Perhaps some sort of naming rule for season subfolders as well? Looking forward to it :slight_smile:

concerning the image-zoom-thing, I didn’t mean it for your app. I meant I have modified the XML in the themes of the HUB. By default it will display the top-left part of the wide image - I have changed this, so it will display the center-part of the image instead, making a much better result…

33

Hi,

Version 1.0.9 is online:

http://tobogan.nozonenet.com/WDFlow

  • WDFlow is now using the season specific folder image regardless of the folder name, by “reading” the content of each folder
  • The reactivty of the Save button has been greatly enhanced (code optimization)
  • The TV Series is now the default option, as this corresponds to the actual use of the app
  • A new naming rule for filenames is added: -XYY- where X is Season number and YY episode number.

Chris.

1 Like
34

I’m new to both the WD TV Live Hub and the WDFlow app; my hub having arrived this afternoon. So far, I’m loving both.

I have a question though: In your screen shots, you have a large background image, that is representative of the movie highlighted. All I’m getting is a small thumbnail of the move poster. How do I add these background images? Am I missing something obvious?

BTW: I’m now using v1.09 on my iMac.

Thanks

35

Hi Mike,

These images are called " Backdrops" and are not stored on the Hub hard drive but are retrieved from internet.

Make sure you are connected to the net, and the Hub will look for them by reading the xml file created by WDFlow.

You’ll have to wait about 30 seconds, and then the Hub will display them as a slideshow.

Hope it helps.

Chris,

1 Like
36

Ah. I’ve not yet connected it to my network - I’m doing everything over USB drives at the moment.

Thanks for the clarification!

37

Hi,

A bug appeared in version 1.0.9: in case of no season specific banner, WDFlow would in some cases give up the whole process. This is a little extreme :wink: and is corrected now in release 1.0.9.1 online.

http://tobogan.nozonenet.com/WDFlow/

Let me know if there’s some other inconsistencies, I’ll give priority to code debugging rather than new features… for the moment.

Thanks

Chris,

38

Chris, -

I’ve been testing the app for the last couple of days - I must say that this app has turned into something pretty **bleep** good!!

I’ve spent hours and hours sometime back to get my series to look good with folder-images and everything, but wasn’t even close to finished - now, with the WDFLOW, everything was done in a few click!!

Kudos!!

zballz

39

Hi zballz,

Thank you very much, feedback from you and others helped in achieving this.  10 versions in 2 weeks tells a lot about what it takes to make a software really useful.

Release 1.10 a.k.a Clever is there. Numerous little enhancements, but the main one is that from now on WDFlow is able to detect that a new version has been released. In this case, it will recommend to go the WDFlow homepage to download it.

Also, I corrected a bug where WDFlow would download the wrong season banner if some (rare) conditions were met.

http://tobogan.nozonenet.com/WDFlow

Thanks again.

Chris,

40

Hi

thanks for the wonderfull app.

i noticed somthing, when i downloaded the metadata using WDFlow, its working great, when i enter the folder i got the data appear and the information but when i press back button, the backdrops still reviewing in the background!

did i miss something or its a bug?

thanks again, keep it up.