Greetings… I’m new here and new to the SMP. I’ve been doing a lot of reading here you all have addressed a lot of issues for me in advance. I know there seems to be a lot of issues over thumbnails for movies. I have added a properly named thumbnail with a movie file and it shows up fine until i do the ‘get info’ at which time it’s replaced with the one from themoviedb. A metathumb file of that image is created but removing it does not help. I’ve done enough html editing to know what I’m looking at in the xml file so my question is whether there’s a tag that can be removed to prevent that image replacement. I see a tag something like <url cache with a function=get thumb by id. Would removing that tag after the fact help at all? I’m just looking for any way to prevent loading these thumbnails or remove them afterwards
I have one other issue where themoviedb does not name movies by moving the word ‘The’ to the end of the title following a comma. Changing the title in the xml file changes the name, but the media library does not change the alphabetical sort as if it has already decided it’s starting with a ‘T’ and that’s that based on what themoviedb says
After removing or changing a file you need to Clear the Media Library:
Setup/System/Media Library/Clear Media Library
Metathumbs are not easily removed, even after deleting them and clearing the media library they can still persist. If they are on a USB attached drive. Eject the drive and plug it into your PC, navigate to that drive and delete the hidden folder “.wd_tv”.
If this doesn’t work, you may have to rename the folder then recompile the media library for the new thumb to take effect.
The best thing to do is to not use the Get Info function if you want to add your own jpp images. metathumbs and jpgs do not co-exist on the SMP very well. If you’re wanting to add your own data, then use something like Thumbgen.
I had a similar situation last week in relation to your first point.
I had 6 episodes of the BBC’s Edge of Darkness in mp4 format in a folder and did a get info from TVDB on a multiple select of the 6 episodes. This then named all episodes Edge of Darkness so there was no way to tell which episode was which.
I then edited the XML’s for each episode so that each would appear as Episode (1-6) - ‘Episode Name’ and this is where the SMP got really upset and it refused to display the correct info.
I tried deleting the XML & metathumb to no avail as each episode was stubbornly still not being shown correctly.
My file system is organised on my NAS as:
\Our Videos
\Family Movies
\A Movie folder
\Edge of Darkness (with meta data I want to change)
\A Movie folder
…
\A Movie folder
\Family Videos
\Year folder
\Year folder
…
\Year folder
etc
I moved \Edge of Darkness to another location on my NAS outside of my Media Library and then re-scanned \Family Movies by selecting \Family Movies → Options (on the remote) → Rescan
Then moved \Edge of Darkness back in to \Family Movies and re-scanned and this sorted this issue for me.
Sometimes you just got to do some slightly unorthodox things to fix the odd bug or two.
I hope this helps.
Slip
Based on some of what I’ve read here, I thought it would be a good idea to see howI things would go before loading up a huge library, so I have a clean NAS drive with just a folder named Movies and a couple of .avi files in it. I have to say the SMP set-up was very simple and my wife seems pleased with the ease of use, which was the primary objective. As for me… well i’m a bit of a nut when it comes to this sort of thing, and having things work the way they can / should
I’ve seen many posts suggesting not using the Media Library for TV shows and other things, and I’d probably be okay with that. Not hard for Mrs to navigate the Files route, but it would be nice to be able to take advantage of the features the SMP tries to provide, albeit with varying succes
I guess the next thing is to see how the SMP does with media servers. I have one on the Netgear router and I use Media Monkey on the PC. It would be nice to tie this in to the db I already use with MM, but my actual aim is to get all of this type of content copied over to the NAS and uninvolve the PC drives, especially when write capability is involved with the SMP and it’s users
Anyway, i’m totally open to ideas and suggestions here, since it’s easy enough to start over at this stage. Not looking to make a new major task for myself, but maybe i’d better have a look at Thumbgen too
Hodgeman wrote:> I’ve seen many posts suggesting not using the Media Library for TV shows and other things, and I’d probably be okay with that. Not hard for Mrs to navigate the Files route, but it would be nice to be able to take advantage of the features the SMP tries to provide, albeit with varying succes
There is no reason not to use the Media Library for TV shows or anything else. The reason those that suggest not to use the Media Library do so is because of how they are filtering their files and using the Media Library. The Media Library works fine, as long as you know how to setup your folder/file structure and filter them.
To make it work corrrectly you need to first set your folder structure in a way that works best. And that is to first have all your video files as a single file format (ie: iso, mkv, avi, etc), because metadata and backdrops/moviesheets don’t display for folders. Then, have separate Movie & TV show main folders and for movies sort your files by genre folders and for TV shows sort them by Series name and Season. So that your folder files structure looks like this:
Movies (folder)
Action (folder)
movie1.mkv
movie2.avi
movie3.iso
Animation (folder)
movie1.mkv
movie2.avi
movie3.iso
And so on, then for TV shows:
TV Shows (folder)
Series name (folder)
Season 1 (folder)
Seriesname.S01E01.mkv
Seriesname.S01E02.avi
etc.
Then, on the SMP filter your files by folder. Press the green button on your remote “Filter/Folder”. If you do this then everything will work and display just as it should.
Thanks. I have noticed how that would work well for tv series especially. It’s pretty clearly the only way to filter them. I suppose one could just leave all of the movies in one folder if they just wanted to see the whole bunch on that same filter, but it does make sense to actually file them in the folder structure you mention. It certainly saves switching the filter to genre which again would mix in all of your tv shows if they also had genres tagged. Lots to think about. Just out of curiousity, how many different genres do you use personlly? Do you keep it pretty broad to maybe a half dozen major ones, or narrow it right down?
I did sort out how to get the naming and movie thumb result that I was looking for. Oh that reminds me … As suspected metathumb files like most thumb files are just jpg with a different extension and easily edited if the need arose, should that interest anybody
I personally have about 24, the thumbs I use (although I don’t use all) can be found here:
http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-Hub-Themes/TW-Genre-Folder-Icons-Updated-6-10-12/td-p/414968
These are designed specifically for my themes, but can be altered to be used for any theme (Gimp xcf file is included).
But like I said I have about 24 different Genre folders, some people have more and some have less, but that’s up to you. I just seperate them into the folder that they most closely fit, and then for some movies that have a lot of sequels, like Star Trek or James Bond, I put them in their own folder.
And yes, a metathumb is just a jpg. But just remember, metathumbs and jpg’s don’t co-exist well. The metathumb will always override a jpg and if you use a jpg for a folder thumb but have metathumbs in that folder, the metathumb will show up for the the folder thumb instead of the jpg.
My suggestion is to always use one or the other, never both. And actually, I use all jpgs because if you have to change things, the metathumbs are extremely hard to get rid of.
Nice job on those thumbs. So it’s a folder.jpg for each folder (genre) and since I see one there for your top (movies) folder, can i assume it shows up even if it’s the only file in the folder ? Maybe that’s a dumb question 
and your Bond folder is within a genre along with single movie files or parallel as a genre of its own?
As for the metathumb files, i can’t honestly say i know how they get generated. It’s certainly not intentional. There’s only been a couple that I’ve seen throughout the course of the messing around I’ve been doing. And even thinking they’re long gone, one might show up on a particular view. Kind of strange really. I’ve cleared the drive and library a few times over. Surely a full reset before i really get set up would clear things out, once i know what the plan is to get what i’m after and avoid what i don’t want
