Movie Thumbnail Support Not Offered on MyCloud?!?!?

I run WD TV live streaming and just got a Mycloud to store my large movie collection on, and discovered that my display in WD TV with all the movie covers and screenshots is not supported (metedata). So now looking at my WD TV live GUI is a nightmare. Is there a work around? is there a firmware update for MyCloud that does thumbnail support for movie files? This lack of thumbnail support on movie files on the MyCloud is really making this 4TB drive completly useless, I cant understand why it wouldnt support thumbs for movies. any help would be appreciated.

Movie-Munky wrote:

I run WD TV live streaming and just got a Mycloud to store my large movie collection on, and discovered that my display in WD TV with all the movie covers and screenshots is not supported (metedata).

That’s not true… WD TV Live metadata works fine as it always has.

What problem are you having?   I can tell you it’s not an issue with the Cloud, as the Cloud is simply a NAS server… it doesn’t care what it’s serving.  

But in addition to that, even the built-in Twonky Media Server in the Cloud ALSO supports thumbnails just fine… either embedded, or it will make its own.

Let me elaborate, I had a WD TV Live Streaming with a WD passport 2TB external hardrive set up with all my movies and metadata. Everything was looking good in my WD TV GUI/Menu. Then I bought a WD MyCloud and simply connected this to my home network which is very easy to do. I can manage mycloud from my computer and stream to any device in my home seamlessly, also i can remote in with my iphone and android devices over the internet easily. Supper great set-up and easy to use. the problem arrises when i transfered my Movie collection to myCloud. I didnt change any of the files,metadata, or anything just transfered files across drives. but now when i use WD TV Live there is no cover art, it is defaulting to a random screenshot from the movie and not any metadata ones just random so my cover art/thumbnail may be a picture of a corner of a room, not identifiable, which to me makes this form of data storage useless.  Also I am not here to argue, so if you can show me then show me. Thanks for any help.

As I said, this has nothing to do with the My Cloud, it’s more a question about the WD TV.

You need to add your Cloud’s share to the WDTVs a media library instead of using the media server.

But if you want to use the media server, it will still work with thumbs as long as you embed them in the media file.

Folder Thumbnails

Music:

  1. Name the .jpg picture that is to be displayed on the folder to  folder.jpg  or the thumbnail will not display. If the image is a .bmp, .tif, or any other format, it will not work.
  2. If no  folder.jpg  file is found, it will display the first album art image that it finds (This can also include an .mp3 with embedded JPG image).
  3. If no album art is available, the WD TV will display the first .jpg in the folder

Photo:

  1. Name the .jpg picture that is to be displayed on the folder to  folder.jpg  or the thumbnail will not display. If the image is a .bmp, .tif, or any other format, it will not work.
  2. If no  folder.jpg  file is found, the WD TV will display the first supported photo in the folder.

Video:

  1. Name the .jpg picture that is to be displayed on the folder to  folder.jpg  or the thumbnail will not display. If the image is a .bmp, .tif, or any other format, it will not work.
  2. If no  folder.jpg  file is found, display the first cover art ( This can also include a .MP4 with an embedded .jpg image).
  3. If no cover art is available, the WD TV will display the first supported photo in the folder.

File Thumbnails

Music:

  1. The WD TV will display album art if there is a supported embedded image (This would be an .mp3 file with an embedded .jpg image)
  2. If no album art is available, the WD TV will display the image file with the same name as the audio file. (for example,  Song.wav  will be associated with  Song.jpg )

Photo:

  1. The WD TV will display a thumbnail of the image if the image can be rendered.

Video:

  1. The WD TV will display .mp4 files with an embedded .jpg image, if the embedded image exists or is supported.
  2. If an embedded image cannot be found, WD TV will display an image file with the same name as the movie (for example  Video.mkv  will be associated with  Video.jpg ).

so the problem I have still exists.

re is what is upsetting me. I had no thumbs associated with my movies before i got my WD TV. I attached my portable hard drive to the WD TV and it auto searched for metadata to associate with my movie files, that was awesome it made everything look organized. and when looking at a file the background was a slide show of screenshots and a synopsis of the movie. but wd mycloud wont share that same data. now i have to imbed this info? what a pain in the @$$. so whats the solution, rerip my whole library. and will this imbedded jpeg file solve the whole metadata issue?

ok i get you. so now i am redirecting my video media files through a network share instead of accessing the drive directly through the network. the network share is a direct login to the NAS so the device WD TV has more control. and now my wd tv is downloading all the metadata and associating it with my movies, so viola I have thumbs and screenshots again. what a pain. now to configure all my other devices, uggg

Tony Thanks for your patience with this guy :robotsurprised:

im installing Twonky Beam on my iphone to see if it helps

yup. no thumbnail support on My cloud, you gotta tweak all your other devices to make it work.

Movie-Munky wrote:

yup. no thumbnail support on My cloud, you gotta tweak all your other devices to make it work.

I’m not sure what you’re expecting, then…

As I’ve said now three times:   If you’re expecting the MEDIA SERVER portion of the My Cloud to do thumbnails, the thumbnails need to be imbedded in the files, as shown below.

There may be other ways of doing thumbnails, but all I’m saying is that the Cloud supports thumbnails via the media server just fine.

Not sure what you want it to do…

To confirm, I have a WDTV SMP and MyCoud (+a MyBook Essentials plugged in) and I see thumbnails as required. The required images are displayed irrespective of how I connect to MyCloud e.g.

WDTV SMP connect as a ‘share’ = OK

WDTV SMP connects to Twonky  = OK

All my video files have an associated JPG file i.e. ‘Toy Story 3.mkv’ has ‘Toy Story 3.jpg’ alongside it. BTW I use Thumbgen to produce the images

This is stupid, i dont want to spend weeks making embedded rips of all my files or go buy software to embed the existing files. I already have a portable hard drive with all my movies on it with .metadata files with all the info I want to display on my interface. A picture of the dvd cover when i look at the folder and when i look at the file it shows the cover, rotating screenshots in the background and a snyopsis of the movie. Thats what I want. Changing the extension of my metadata files to .jpg makes the dvd cover show, But eliminates the screenshots and synopsis, dumbing down these files considerably. When I connect wdtv as a share then my wd tv collects all this metadata again and displays them the way they should be displayed. So which device actually is doing the thumbnail metadata support, wdtv right? when i use the cloud desktop programs there is no thumbnails. when i use my cloud iphone app there are randonly generated thumbs from the movies. So if i want mycloud to be compatible across platforms I need to embed a thumb, have a .jpg and .metadata? This cant be serious. the reason i chose western digitals products was for the file format support. but if i have to convert all my files  anyway then whats the point. and i still havent tried to use this so called itunes features so im figuring it will take some more tweaking to get those thumbs going too.

Dude, I have no idea what you’re doing… But changing a metathumb file to a jpg file has absolutely no bearing on the synopsis or screenshots… And the WDTV will display the file as a DVD cover either way.

I think your expectations are a bit off if you expect apps that are not related at all to the WDTV to act like a WDTV… They’re not supposed to. The apps are not media players. Yeah, they play media files, but they are not WDTV’s…

what I want is a consumer device to be consumer friendly. i dont need to spend a ton of time on something that if supported properly could save humans a ton of time. one computer programer could write some programs for this, and then all the consumers wouldnt have to do it.

Movie-Munky wrote:

 i dont need to spend a ton of time on something that if supported properly could save humans a ton of time.

Ok, I think you’re still hugely confused on what’s supposed to do what.

What do you want the My Cloud NAS to do that, in your opinion, constitutes “supported ‘properly’”?

Dude, I don’t want to argue, I just want to know why there is no thumbnail support and if there is an easy workaround. A solution that hopefully won’t require me to change every file individually.

Open mycloud app, select mycloud help and the third topic is “which devices and cloud storage services support thumbnails” and it clearly shows no movie thumbnails on mycloud. Movie thumbnails are only supported on Dropbox and skydrive.

Movie-Munky wrote:
Dude, I don’t want to argue, I just want to know why there is no thumbnail support.

I don’t want to argue either…  and I can’t help you any more because you’re all over the place.  I have no idea what you’re talking about anymore.

Thumbnails are fully supported with all current WD TV Live media players via network shares by using .metathumb or .jpg files.

Thumbnails are fully supported with all DLNA media clients by using the embedded thumbnails or separate .jpg files.  I’ve tested it with VLC, Twonky Beam, BubbleUPnP, Windows Media Player, all current WD TV devices – they all work and they all show the thumbnails.

Movie-Munky wrote:
Open mycloud app, select mycloud help and the third topic is “which devices and cloud storage services support thumbnails” and it clearly shows no movie thumbnails on mycloud. Movie thumbnails are only supported on Dropbox and skydrive.

I have no idea what you’re talking about here.

I don’t even see this “My Cloud Help” anywhere in the desktop app.  Which of the apps are you talking about?

Earlier, you said:

Movie-Munky wrote:   when i use the cloud desktop programs there is no thumbnails. when i use my cloud iphone app there are randonly generated thumbs from the movies

That’s not correct:

All of my movies and TV shows have auto-generated scene thumbnails.

They’re not random; they’re a screen-grab taken at exactly one minute into the video.

Music shows Cover-Art:

And photos show thumbnails:

The exact same thumbnails or covers are shown on Desktop app, iPhone app, iPad app, and Android apps that I’ve tried.

All I’m saying is that you keep repeating:  “there is no thumbnail support”

That’s just wrong.  Sorry…  I’ve shown you time and time again, but you keep saying that, and you’re providing NO information, even after being asked several times, exactly what you’re doing where you’re not getting thumbnails?

Without answering those questions or providing more information, I’m afraid no further help can be provided.