Using ThumbGen

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live Streaming
1

I’m new to the whole WD TV customising thing so I’d like some info on using ThumbGen. I’m hoping it will give me more control over the look and info than WD TV’s auto setting does.

  1. Can I use ThumbGen to generate MovieSheets for use with the default WDTV Theme? If so, what settings/profile do I need to use?

  2. Is it possible to run ThumbGen on a folder and have it only update content for new titles? Will the WD TV see this updated conent automatically?

  3. Can you change the cover that ThumbGen picks for a title?

  4. Whats the best way to arrange movie files? I currently have them all in one folder but is each movie in a sperate folder better?

Many thanks!

2

Well, to answer your questions:

  1. Yes you can, but there is no specific moviesheet template for the Mochi theme, as far as I know.  So if you want a moviesheet for the Mochi theme you’ll have to design one for it or wait for someone else to design one.

  2. Yes and no.  You can select a folder in TG and you can select just the files you need in a folder, but you can not select a folder and have TG just generate just for the new files automatically.  You will have to manually select each new file in a folder.  And yes, the SMP should see the new data automaticallly as long as your data is in the correct format.

  3. To answer this, see HERE.

3

Thanks. Just to clarify, by ‘theme’ do you mean the generated movie sheet won’t match the Mochi theme?

What settings should I be using? Or will the defaults do what I need?

4

Yes, most moviesheets templates are design around user designed themes, such as my Mojo and Darklight themes and other moviesheet templates were designed for use on the older WDTV Live & Live Plus.  So, as to my knowledge, there isn’t any moviesheet templates for the Mochi theme.

You can find the settings for TG HERE.  This is for the HUB and for my Mojo theme, however the general settings are the same no matter what theme you are using.

5

Well, I gave it a test on my USB drive. It generated all the files (covers, movie sheet, XML) but on the WD TV it just shows the covers and not the movie sheets.

6

Check the meta xml to make sure it contains a line like this (in green):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
  Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides   Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides   Jack Sparrow and Barbossa embark on a quest to find the elusive fountain of youth, only to discover that Blackbeard and his daughter are after it too.   2011-05-07   Jack Sparrow and Barbossa embark on a quest to find the elusive fountain of youth, only to discover that Blackbeard and his daughter are after it too.   136     6.6   PG-13   tt1298650   PG-13   Adventure   Fantasy   Action       Johnny ■■■■         Penélope Cruz         Geoffrey Rush         Ian McShane         Kevin McNally         Sam Claflin         Astrid Bergès-Frisbey         Stephen Graham         Keith Richards         Richard Griffiths         Greg Ellis         Damian O'Hare         Óscar Jaenada         Anton Lesser         Roger Allam     Rob Marshall   Walt Disney Pictures   <backdrop>PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 4 - On Stranger Tides_sheet.jpg</backdrop>     PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 4 - On Stranger Tides.mkv   N/A

As a matter of fact, if your entire xml doesn’t look like this, then you are most likely generating it in the wrong format. 

7

Thanks for your help, managed to get it all working. The one odd thing I came accoss though is the last step of renaming the cover pngs to jpeg. When I did that, the WDTV refused to display the covers and looking at the .xml shows that its still looking for pngs of course. Also, the covers were oversized in the top left of the screen, cutting off the bottom of the image.

As the WDTV populates the movie information automatically over the background images by default, it seems there is no way to use any moviesheets that have the inormation pre-added to the background image? Can you stop the SMP doing that? My limited reseach shows not and some have mentioned about custom firmware being able to do it?

8

Png to Jpg Trick only works with “old” Firmware (On the hub it’s works up to and including FW2.07.17 …  the SMP has never supported Png’s renamed to Jpg  *Trick*)

If your are using pre-rendered moviesheets with movie info already hard-coded onto them, and you wish to stop the SMP overlaying it’s pre-scraped info…

then you need to edit the  rv_gallery_browse_page.xml

look for these lines and delete what you dont need to be displayed…

<text x=“254” y=“172” w=“970” h=“42” text=“@@browse_text” fontsize=“40” textcolor=“0xffffff” align=“left” speed=“1” delay=“2” />
<text x=“254” y=“246” w=“316” h=“20” text=“@@year” fontsize=“18” textcolor=“0xffffff” align=“left” />
<text x=“578” y=“246” w=“316” h=“20” text=“@@genre” fontsize=“18” textcolor=“0xffffff” align=“left” />
<text x=“902” y=“246” w=“322” h=“20” text=“@@totaltime” fontsize=“18” textcolor=“0xffffff” align=“left” />
<text x=“254” y=“275” w=“316” h=“20” text=“@@director” fontsize=“18” textcolor=“0xffffff” align=“left” />
<text x=“578” y=“275” w=“646” h=“20” text=“@@actor” fontsize=“18” textcolor=“0xffffff” align=“left” />
<text x=“254” y=“307” w=“970” h=“126” text=“@@overview” fontsize=“18” numlines=“5” textcolor=“0xc1c1c1” align=“left” />

P.S. There is NO Custom Firmware Available for Newer WD Devices … 

1 Like
9

Joey is correct, the SMP can’t use the .png to .jpg trick.  However, this is only necessary if you need to display coverart with transparency, such as with coverart that has rounded corners or reflections. 

Although you can’t do this with the SMP I have made a workaround for my Darklght theme that does mimic reflections and rounded corners using standard .jpg images which you can see here:

http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-Streaming-Discussions/Darklight-for-SMP-Beta/td-p/407350

Also, as Joey said, you can keep the xml metadata from being displayed by editing the gallery view xml.  Or if this is what you are wanting to do DeVicious has her Black Mamba theme that uses this method already.  It is developed for the HUB not the SMP, but it should still work.  However, with this method you should expect some delay between when you scoll to a video and when the moviesheet is displayed, so you will have to wait for the metadata to be displayed when the moviesheet is.

Also, as Joey said, there is no custom firmware for the HUB or SMP.  The custom firmware that you are speaking of is on for the older WDTV Live (Gen1) and WDTV Live Plus (Gen 2) players.  And the people who developed the custom firmware for these 2 players have said that they are not going even attempt to make custom firmware for the HUB & SMP, so there will probably never be any.