Since there were a few requests on a HOW-TO using ThumbGen to get info for TV Shows I made this tutorial that you can download HERE. (UPDATED 1/26/11)
The tutorial is in PDF form wo you will need Adobe reader to see it.
Also, the turtorial may seem like a lot to do, but once you have everything set up & get fimiliar with how to operate Thumbgen it is really quite fast. I can usually do a whole TV show season and make all the changes in about 15 min.
UPDATE: I have just updated the turtorial to include corrections and things that were left out of the orginal. This tutorial also now contains info on how to add backdrops & how to resize the thumbnails to the correct size using GIMP.
Again if anyone finds mistakes or things do not work as described, please let me know and I will try to make corrections.
Just a note: something that I forgot, but will put in the tutorial when I update.
In the portion about naming files, the name of the TV show file can also be:
Name of show - S01E01.extension or Name of Show - 1x01.extension
For DVD structure it can be:
Name of Show - S1D1.extension or Name of Show - S01.d1.extension
For the list of how you can name the Files you can go to Options, then select TV shows/series/anime to see which way to name seasons & episodes. Any any event, the file has to be named “Name of Show” with the season & episode.
Thanks for this Tinwarble much appreciated.
Your welcome. Another thing that I didn’t know until now, the thumbnails that are generated are too big for the larger Cover art in Gallery View. They show up fine in the scroll area, but the larger one’s are cut off. To fix this you’ll need to edit them to be 185X268, this is the largest that I could get them and show up well.
If you don’t have a photo editor, you can download GIMP (a free Photoshop type editor) to edit them. I will try to describe how to do this in a later version of the tutorial for those that aren’t fimiliar with GIMP.
I believe that there may be a more permenant solution to this by editing the case sheets templates, which will keep any one from having to resize them, but I don’t have the time to do the edits right now. If I get some time I’ll fix them and post the new templates download.
Thank you this is much appreciated.
The ABSOLUTE best and simplest Photo resizing program, and all around photo viewing program available online today is called:
Irfanview – If you are still using Windows Photo Viewer, shoot youself in the head because this app will blow your mind.
It’s VERY VERY simple, small, compact yet extremely versitile and productive. I have been using it for years, and every day i thank god that i never have to use windows photo viewer again. If you haven’t downloaded Irfanview yet, DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND GET IT NOW… RIGHT NOW, and you will thank me for years to come =). It is an absolute necessity to anybody who view’s even a single graphic a day. It allows for extremely clear and simple resizing, cropping and quick copy/pasting of basically any photo type or extension.
Just google it, you’ll find the download.
and Thanks tinwarble, i spent a very very long time messing with thumbgen before i finally get the hang of it… Once you figure it out, it’s simple as pie, but starting out the app can be truly frustrating. So this should be benefical to dozens of members here… and hopefully they will share their XML’s and save me the time from having to copy/paste all the episode overviews to the main overview, and replace all the plots to overview. so time consuming and boring… but thanks again haha sorry for my ramble.
Thanks for the mention of my mega pack and thumbnails templates…
I will add a post later explain how to use to create the custom coverbox templates…
Meanwhile i have spoken to The author of Thumbgen to see if he can improve the program specifically for the Hub.
I too have e-mailed ThumbGen to ask him about making it more HUB compliant, his response was that he was going to look into it. But it may be a while before he gets around to it.
I would urge everyone to contact him and let him know their interest in having HUB support with ThumbGen. I would also suggest Donating to him since he has put a lot of time in developing ThumbGen.
extremedigital wrote:
Thanks for the mention of my mega pack and thumbnails templates…
I will add a post later explain how to use to create the custom coverbox templates…
Meanwhile i have spoken to The author of Thumbgen to see if he can improve the program specifically for the Hub.
Your welcome, I use your pack for my WDTV Live and it works great. So thanks for the Pack.
If there is any way that you could create DVD/BD Case templates that are 185 X 268 it would be great. I did try to do some modifications to them using ThumbGen Designer, but I was having trouble getting them to resize correctly.
Bump for Update. See first post.
I have pointed Thumbgen at the thread. However it is great that you figured how to use it to create your xml files…
BIG UPDATED HOWEVER, i finally cracked how you can use your premade moviesheet with the Hub.
It can be built into any theme and i reckon it will ready to publish in the next day or so, once i can get PychoTHC to help me clean up my nasty code.
The great news is that it doesn’t mask the current xml info etc basically the moviesheet will overlay your screen if present. otherwise you will still see your current metadat info.
That’s great. Let me know when you have things worked out, I may have to update my HOW-TO to include using Moviesheets.
A new version of Thumbgen has now been released which now has HUB support (although it doesn’t have support for outputting background images yet).
Get Thumbgen 1.2.4.0
Tinwarble wrote:
… it doesn’t have support for outputting background images yet).
Don’t know if ya’ll have seen it, but my tool for TV Shows does…
http://www.tonysown.net/XMLFetcher/XMLFetcher.html
Also, the new Thumbgen has support for
Anodized Customised Moviesheet THEME
Which adds Moviesheet support to the HUB.
