Theme: GoodBye Black Mamba (LinkSheet) Updated Dec 14th

I went and followed tinwarble’s (sp?) guide for setting up thumbgen. Worked beautifully.

i am not sure why this was in this thread, if you are using a different theme with different setups open a new topic. this will do nothing but confuse people who simply want their linksheet bundles going.

it’s here, because he’s using this theme, which the original post says works with both linksheets and xml style moviesheets

but the bundle included does on set up thumbgen correctly for xml style moviesheets

incidentally at least how I do my linksheets the bundle does not set up correctly either

on other news, recent email from thumbgen acknowledge the idea of being able to select what gets put inside the xml’s, which means using linksheets with xmls for media library will become much easier and will not require manually editing the xml’s

Gotcha… however he is using an edited theme based on BM1.9 unless he swaped it.

Changing the output path should probably not involve many problems and clicking the movie info check box neither.

The obsession with this library and why people want to have this destructive feature that is at best at alpha status is beyond me. It forces you to rename TV episodes to a wrong format, it does require playlists for music and once you start sorting by actor or genre you wish that your parents never gave birth to you… The theme was designed to be used without the library and yet we are having 20 pages revolving around it. It’s like trying to play Tennis with a Basketball. When you consider the fact that you have to hand edit each xml and the fact that people have 1000s of xml’s you really got to questions people’s sanity in this matter.

All of this will change with the follow up theme, a befriended pro developer pointed out some unnoticed features to me which will most likely drop some jaws and bring some cheers. I am waiting with the release for ThumbGen 2 and will make it very simple and restricted but bound to TG2 and it’s features. Everything that goes beyond that efficient design will have to be used in an edited theme. The whole point for me of developing a theme is to give the mainstream user something they can deal with without needing advanced computer skills. A theme is supposed to make a hub owners life nicer and not more complicated. The fact that people work actively against development reveals their character and their overall success in life. All kind of things I have developed professionally in order to get food on the table worked best when people are given only a few choices, the more choices you give the more support and confusion it creates. As a developer you want to create something and move on to the next project and don’t answer the same questions over and over again, this is why you try to eliminate these questions by developing it right. That is why I started to understand the WD strategies a little better. You cannot do much wrong with their design as an end user. In the aftermath I believe they were right staying firm and true to their own ideas. Obviously I needed some distance to see that.

Anyways… next theme coming in summer and it will be a take it or leave it theme…

having said that… it will also come as a template version with more choices and a ton of pre designed UI features in order for others to create their own theme in no time. A friend of mine is currently working on an online theme editor where you can develop your very own theme online, you can add and delete whatever you want and make it look the way you want with tons of graphic templates. This hopefully get’s this forum going a little and we are not down to 2 themes where one of them is basically a copy of someone elses design. As mentioned above there are many different choices how someone wants to maintain their files and the idea is to make it as easy as it gets to people creat themes for every single one of them. Over 600 people downloaded the Photo Shop files of this theme… this means there is a ton of people interested in doing this but in the end of the day we don’t get to see their results because the xml is too complicated. I am positive that this will change when people don’t have to worry about that anymore.

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cool, a new theme and an online theme creator…boh!

Regards gerd

First of all thanks to everyone who works on themes and helps in forums without claiming anything in exchange from an Argentinian user :D.

I’ve found something weird about linksheets and xml files, and as I haven’t found a post about it here it goes.

SInce I have my files sorted like:

“/WDHubFolder/MoviesFolder/MovieNameFolder/MovieFile.avi”

“/WDHubFolder/MoviesFolder/MovieNameFolder/MovieFile.srt”

“/WDHubFolder/MoviesFolder/MovieNameFolder/MovieFile.xml”

I have them like this just because I like to have everything on it’s own folder instead of many files in a single folder

I refused to move the xml files when I changed to linksheets, simply because they are a lot and didn’t want to restore them one by one in case something goes wrong.

Anyway I noticed that when going into the “MovieNameFolder” some movies displayed the Mainsheet and some didn’t. What I’ve discovered is that if the “” Tag in the XML file has the same name than the folder (the mainsheet actually), the sheet is displayed as in the folders, even if the library is off.

So instead of deleting or moving the xml files I created a bash script that fills the title tag with the name “MovieFIle” name and use the MainSheet for MovieFolders as well as for MovieFiles.

Hope this info can be usefull.

PD: Sorry the poor english

alejmatias wrote:

First of all thanks to everyone who works on themes and helps in forums without claiming anything in exchange from an Argentinian user :D.

 

I’ve found something weird about linksheets and xml files, and as I haven’t found a post about it here it goes.

 

SInce I have my files sorted like:

“/WDHubFolder/MoviesFolder/MovieNameFolder/MovieFile.avi”

“/WDHubFolder/MoviesFolder/MovieNameFolder/MovieFile.srt”

“/WDHubFolder/MoviesFolder/MovieNameFolder/MovieFile.xml”

I have them like this just because I like to have everything on it’s own folder instead of many files in a single folder

 

I refused to move the xml files when I changed to linksheets, simply because they are a lot and didn’t want to restore them one by one in case something goes wrong.

 

Anyway I noticed that when going into the “MovieNameFolder” some movies displayed the Mainsheet and some didn’t. What I’ve discovered is that if the “” Tag in the XML file has the same name than the folder (the mainsheet actually), the sheet is displayed as in the folders, even if the library is off.

So instead of deleting or moving the xml files I created a bash script that fills the title tag with the name “MovieFIle” name and use the MainSheet for MovieFolders as well as for MovieFiles.

Hope this info can be usefull.

PD: Sorry the poor english

yep,

linksheets do not display if exist in the xml

also you can speed up linksheets by removing the tag

removing this 2 items from the xml’s speeds up and allows linksheets to function properly even with media library on

When I converted from normal XML driven moviesheets to Linksheets I simply added some extra characters to the filename of every XML because you no longer need the xml at all for linksheets. I used this program : Bulk Rename Utility :

http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Main_Intro.php

Which makes it easy to batch rename every XML in your library. I just added “AAA” to the end of the filename and if I ever want to go backwards I can use the same utility to take the “AAA” out of the filename in minutes.

Also, forgot to mention the same utility is great for making a copy of all of your moviesheets into a common folder in preperation for placing them into the theme root folder, AND (as if that were’t enough), after you have copied all the moviesheets to a common folder you can then strip off the “_sheet.jpg” from the moviesheet with the same utility so that the naming convention is correct for linksheets.

Also worth mentioning you can run a mix of linksheets with normal xml moviesheets. I do this becuase I have 3x SMP boxes and when I add new content I just place the old style xml moviesheets into my server and make a copy of the moviesheet in a “TO BE ADDED TO LINKSHEET” folder so when I have enough I can use the above utility to convert the new material to linksheets. I need to do this because I am running the theme from a USB drive on each SMB box and i have to place the linksheets into all three drives currently and its not worth the hassle for one small bit of content. You can mix xml with linksheets fine as long as you don’t do both at once.

@ DeVicious

Hi, I think your post went under many peoples radar-

Anyways… next theme coming in summer and it will be a take it or leave it theme…

having said that… it will also come as a template version with more choices and a ton of pre designed UI features in order for others to create their own theme in no time. A friend of mine is currently working on an online theme editor where you can develop your very own theme online, you can add and delete whatever you want and make it look the way you want with tons of graphic templates. This hopefully get’s this forum going a little. As mentioned above there are many different choices how someone wants to maintain their files and the idea is to make it as easy as it gets to people creat themes for every single one of them. Over 600 people downloaded the Photo Shop files of this theme… this means there is a ton of people interested in doing this but in the end of the day we don’t get to see their results because the xml is too complicated. I am positive that this will change when people don’t have to worry about that anymore.

I’m intrigued how your latest project is developing, sounds pretty awesome to say the least. Do you have an anticipated release date and will this online theme editor be free for all or a commercial venture?

I hope for the benefit of the WD community this will be available for all as this would certainly get the forum buzzing again!! :smileyvery-happy:

best regards

A.

Thanks for bringing this back up architectonic. I have been a huge fan of DeVicious’ work, and am really psyched to see what this is going to be like. Sounds revolutionary compared to what we have been working with. She is correct with her assumption. I am one of those who downloaded the files, and like she said, also one of those who came out of it with nothing. I realized that there was no way I was going to make a theme, or even modify one without such an enormous amount of learning that it was not worth it. I can work with graphics, and do pretty well with Network / OS stuff, but for some reason my mind simply doesn’t work in a way that makes any type of coding reasonably accessible.

I think the concept is fantastic and should be a paradigm shifter. I am one the biggest fans of Good Bye Black Mamba, and I can’t wait for the next release from Dev. I have been patient… but I am ready :wink:

-P

@ architectonic

there is no release date not even an ETA because the online editor is a project of a friend of mine. There are quite some challenges due to bad code which is the same that ThumbGen once told me who was attempting a WYSIWYG Editor as well. The basic idea is already working where you can choose from 10 layouts and replace the graphics of a template. The next mission is to create your own templates based on a wizard where you can enter how many thumbnails, how many music track etc… you want to have and that is where the limited quality of the code seems to act up. I am just the messenger here since I have no clue how that works.

Obviously this is going to be free of charge and people will be able to upload their own graphics as a selectable design option. Release will probably be late summer and we will be waiting for ThumbGen2 because I work under the impression “if you give a man a bundle he is happy” :laughing:

Before this will be released there will be a new theme of mine based on experiences of my recent projects. This however will be a very basic but organic theme with focus on the media and useability. The whole link sheet thingie brought some interesting spices to a lame tasting dish and the further we manouver towards summer the lower my work load and I got some spare time coming up to try a few things :stuck_out_tongue:

@ DeV

Thanks for the insight on your friends online theme editor and good luck with this concept.

:smiley:

Yesterday I’ve bought a Live Hub and installed the Black Mamba theme.

Wow, it’s looking good.

But i’ve a little icon problem.

Every genre map has an icon with *.jpg. But I can’t see them on the hub.

I’ve tried

folder.jpg 

action.jpg

movies.jpg

Each time the thumb of the first movie in the genre map will be displayed.

Can someone explain this?

folder should have folder.jpg. Now go to root of drive and find a folder called .wd_tv → thumb and delete all images files in the thumb folder. On your remote press setup, choose settings and then find reset player. Try this out.

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That didn’t work

I’ve done the following:

rename to folder.jpg

rename to folder.metathumb

rename to movies.jpg

rename to movies.metathumb

deleted thumbs folder and other cache folders

deleted library to compile new one

powercord off

new start with factory setings

And all the time I see the wrong folder thumbs

hello everybody!

this is my first message…

You have to do that and…

wdtv live hub uses the first image that it finds in the folder (in alphabetical order) so you can rename the selected image in the next way (for example)

0 folder.jpg  or _folder.jpg

if you try this you will solve the problem

Good luck!

The problem seems to be your sorting filter, you have to sort by folder /alphabetical. The theme was designed to work without the library, it is not good, in fact all it does is causing unwanted results. A propper file management on the device will replace the library better as the library can ever be. I have it off for almost a year now and I never have a problem anymore.

Hi guys,

I’m not to sure if this is the right place to ask this question but I have a WDTV Live Hub with 2 external hdd’s which are all pretty much full. I purchased a Readynas 314 with 4x 3TB wd red hdd’s to expand storage. Everything is working ok with it but I am trying to figure out how I can add linksheets to files that are stored on the nas. I have tried doing what I usually do and make a sheet using thumbgen and saving it to the theme folder but the sheet doesn’t show. I think it may have something to do with having to use the media server to access the files on the nas. I am using the goodbye black mamba theme which has been awesome and I have searched high and low for an answer. If someone could point me in the right direction or if they could let me know if there is a way around this that would be greatly appreciated.

I believe that you need to connect as a network share to get this work. Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but I did not get my linksheets over DLNA when I tried this many months ago while I was testing to see if DLNA would be faster than SAMBA. 

ReadyNas has an SMB file sharing protocol that would solve this. Do you have a reason that you want to run it over the Media Server (DLNA) option instead of SMB?

-P

Thanks for getting back to me mate. Na no reason that’s what came up as default. I just thought that was the only way to do it since the nas and wdtv hub is connected to the router and I want to read the files off the hdd’s rather than a folder on my pc. Unless I have my info mixed up which could be a big possibility lol