TV Shows: Not showing backdrops (Media Library) - FW 1.05.18

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live Streaming
1

Hello

Device: WD TV Live SMP

Firmware: 1.05.18 

I just can’t find a solution. There already sems to be a similar problem reported with files on USB drives:  http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-Hub-Issue-Reporting/TV-Show-backdrops-not-displaying-with-USB-storage/idi-p/298718

My problem is, that for my TV Shows the WD TV Live SMP finds the correct metadata and background images when connected to files on my PC over ethernet (Media library). Then I see in the folder structure the .XY.backdrop folder with content in it. But these images won’t show up in the GUI. This is just the case for TV Shows, with Movies everything works fine. When i compare movie and TV show xmls for my movie files I can see, that WD live doesn’t seem to add any information to the backdrop location (neither web, nor local).

I restarted, emptied the librarby, just mounted the tv shows folder, etc. Nothing worked. 

Is this also a known issue? Can I somehow do a workaround by manuall editing the XML files?

At the moment I’m testing with Californicatin and Terra Nova, both  have auto downloaded all the backdrops, but not showing them. :frowning:

Clueless and hoping for help

xeno

2

The issue highlighted above was fixed in 1.05.18.   (I just edited that thread.)

No, that’s not a known issue.  

  When i compare movie and TV show xmls for my movie files I can see, that WD live doesn’t seem to add any information to the backdrop location (neither web, nor local).

… testing with Californicatin and Terra Nova, both  have auto downloaded all the backdrops,

What do you mean?   The XML doesn’t have any BACKDROP tags?

These two statements are contradictory.   If there’s nothing in the XML, then nothing will be downloaded.  But then you say they’ve downloaded.

3

Thanks for your reply. It may seem contradictory, but that’s the way it is. Here a summary of how I import the metadata for Californication:

Folder is named “Californication”

in there are all movie files, no other subfolders I created on my own.  

Then I go into wd Live connect the main folder location to my Media library and the library will be built on the WD Live SMP. After some seconds it says that the media information will be downloaded. After that the folder is synched with the media library and I can go into it.

There I see the main Folder Californication   → going in → all the Episodes in there.

When I go on an episode and call up the “options” it says “show background images” (or so → i use it in German) . When I click this I get into a dia show  / gallery of some Californication Images. Probably saved on the Web initally but will then be stored locally.

So the WD Live then apparently downloads all those files locally and puts into the Californication folder. There it creates a subfolder called " .californication.backdrop" . In there are all images in full resolution. So it’s not referencing to a single movie file, it references the main folder.

The XML of each movie file has no info on these backdrops or the location. 

So…maybe I mix backdrops with “background images”? Isn’t this the same thing? Looking at the size of these images and how they are downloaded locally it seems that they’d perfectly fit as backdrop when browsing through the Episodes in the folder.

Will have another deeper look this evening, I already investet about 4 hours getting a clue whats going on. Manually editing XML files for TV shows using the XML fields of the movie XML filles…but that’s doesnt work either.

The Movie Backdrop seems to be referenced on the internet, but there’s a reference to an XML in it which probably matches the information of the backdrops I already got locally and which still need to be downloaded.

Sorry, it’s all very new territory here for me - I just want to get this working with TV shows as well as it works with Movies. 

Thanks

xeno

4

Well, XML format between Movies and TV shows are different.

But I’m not understanding why your XML has NO backdrop info in it…

Movie XML should have this kind of data:

<backdrop>http://cf2.imgobject.com/t/p/w780/5RGbsnb7BfY5AjVNu15rFsPIZH7.jpg</backdrop>
<backdrop>http://cf2.imgobject.com/t/p/w780/lJPWOu02OotaNbO8ZXxrTvVn0mp.jpg</backdrop>
<backdrop>http://cf2.imgobject.com/t/p/w780/aHE8y4A4mlRCQbJ5oLbPkr5iznx.jpg</backdrop>
<backdrop>http://cf2.imgobject.com/t/p/w780/tZWJ8tDp8uk9VrFD7daNP7g5n7r.jpg</backdrop>

And TV shows would be like this:

<backdrop>http://thetvdb.com/banners/fanart/original/76290-16.jpg</backdrop>
<backdrop>http://thetvdb.com/banners/fanart/original/76290-29.jpg</backdrop>
<backdrop>http://thetvdb.com/banners/fanart/original/76290-35.jpg</backdrop>
1 Like
5

Yeaaah, I think we got a solution! Thanks for the hint. I copied exactly your 3 links to an XML of one of the episodes and the backdrops started showing. The also get downloaded locally into a subfolder “.episode.backdrop” . 

I think now I can setup the library the way I want it to.

So the “background images” over the options menu is a totally different thing.

Next test will be: fitting an XML for a folder with a backdrop link, so that the backdrop start showing when hovering on a folder. (with the “folder.avi” workaround).

—> Edit: Inserting backdrops for folders doesnt seem too work the same way as with movie files. Any idea here? N

6

How can this issue be considered SOLVED?!

I’m experiencing the exact same issues, just because you can manually edit your xml files to make it work, it doesn’t mean that the problem has been solved. I know this should probably be stated under the issue reporting section, but we might as well continue with the discussion here.

The idea of the “get content info” option is that metadata and backdrops are found automatically and that you don’t have to even know what an xml file is! As the backdrops for movies are showing just fine, it must be considered a bug that the backdrops for tvshows aren’t. 

So here’s what I’ve found so far:

If you have a movie and select options → get content info, wdtv will create a folder with backdrops stored locally (either on your usb hdd or on your nas) and create an xml file. Now this is kind of interesting, even though all the backdrop images are stored locally, the xml file still contains a bunch of links to the exact same images. 

In  the case of tvshows, it’s pretty much the same except that the xml files do not contain these links. If you select options and view backdrops, all the images are there because they are stored locally. But because of the missing links in the xml files, the backdrops won’t show when hovering on a file.

So the simple solution to this problem is to include the backdrop links in the xml files when they are generated for tvshows, just like in the case of movies. There is no reason why they’re included in the case of movies, but not in the case of tvshows. 

Lastly, I was hoping someone could answer my question as to why the backdrop links in the xml’s are even necessary when all the images are stored locally?? 

1 Like
7

Its considered solved by the original poster. You may disagree but its his thread.