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[fitbrit]

I recently downloaded hundreds of high resolution DVD cover art files and assigned them to my media files in MC12.
I figured that zooming in to maximum on a single DVD cover would allow me to read the text on the covers.

With alarming frequency, I'm observing the following weird behaviour:
Zooming into maximum magnification works perfectly for a split second, but then the wrong cover art is displayed. Sometimes it's thumbnail from another cover in the same playlist. Other times it's completely different. Zooming out reverts the cover art to what it should be.
If there's any ambiguity here, I'll take some screenshots tonight and put them up in this thread. Thanks for any tests anyone can do. Just a confirmation of my sanity will be acceptable.

[fitbrit]

Okay, here are some screencaps. Note in the first image the selected thumbnail and its name.




When I zoom in on the same thumbnail (note the file name), the thumbnail changes to that of another file, which you can see from the the first pic. Now if I select different files in this zoomed view using the arrow keys, all of them will have the same wrong thumbnail. The coprrect one may appear for a split second and then seems to be 'overwritten'. When I zoom out, the thumbnails are correct again.


Any ideas?

[fitbrit]

Bump to keep it on the first page over the Memorial Day weekend.

[fitbrit]

bump

[JONCAT]

Must have something to do with the new focus Mc implemenets on thumbs. More importantly, where did you get all those covers for Season 4 "What?.....what?.....what!?"

I can only find some here: http://www.enduring-image.co.uk/index.html

DC 

[Alex B]

The displayed image changes from the more or less temporary thumbnail cache to a "direct image display" mode at a certain point when the thumbnails are zoomed in.

Obviously the thumbnail cache contents are out of sync for some reason.

fitbrit,

Please check the "Image File" library field contents. The displayed filename (and the path if the image is in a separate folder) is the link to the actual source image file.

The linked image is (should be) the same image that is displayed in the biggest size -- if this is what you have then we can try to find out why a wrong image is linked and why the cached thumbnail is not synced with this wrong image.

[fitbrit]

Must have something to do with the new focus Mc implemenets on thumbs. More importantly, where did you get all those covers for Season 4 "What?.....what?.....what!?"

I can only find some here: http://www.enduring-image.co.uk/index.html

DC 

I got them from: http://www.cdcovers.cc/, where I download most of my cover art. The ones displayed are custom uploaded by some guy, with a different cover for each episode! Once the official DVDs are released I may replace these covers with those of the DVDs themselves. However, I kind of like having a unique cover for each episode.

[fitbrit]

The displayed image changes from the more or less temporary thumbnail cache to a "direct image display" mode at a certain point when the thumbnails are zoomed in.

Obviously the thumbnail cache contents are out of sync for some reason.

fitbrit,

Please check the "Image File" library field contents. The displayed filename (and the path if the image is in a separate folder) is the link to the actual source image file.

The linked image is (should be) the same image that is displayed in the biggest size -- if this is what you have then we can try to find out why a wrong image is linked and why the cached thumbnail is not synced with this wrong image.

Thanks, Alex. I think something is definitely screwing up somewhere, as I've had thumbnail issues for a long time. I've changed my default cover art directory to a network server. This was done so that I'd have easy access to the cover atr from my desktop PC running MC too.
I'll check the [Image File] entry. It should be the right one as all the covers in the zoomed out pic above were attached via "add from file". I do know that I can fix this issue by repeating the add from file command and reassociating the same cover art file that I did originally. I'm hoping that I don't have t do that again for all of my video library. I'll get back to you overnight. Thanks for the help so far.

[fitbrit]

Okay, so I looked at the image filenames and they are, indeed, the wrong ones. I mean, they're wrong in that they're not the ones I chose for the file, and they're not the ones shown in the thumbnail cache view. Any idea why this is?
Also, they're not named the same as the original file I assigned, but rather with something like '-04-05-2007.jpg', which looks very like a date. Some of the filenames have a time appended to them after the date.

[Alex B]

The odd looking filename is based on the selected cover art location/name option - i.e. [Artist] - [Album].jpg. Apparently at some point cover art has been relinked/recreated and the automatic name was applied. At that point the video file(s) didn't have the Artist field value at all and the Album field had the default date based value.

I can't say why that happened without getting more information and I really don't know why the thumbnail was not updated when the link change happened.

I guess Auto-importer and its cover art and housekeeping options have something to do with this.

Personally, I have Auto-importer disabled and I have never encountered a problem like this. Once I have created a cover art link it stays indefinitely unless I change it manually.

I have suggested that the video files could have separate default name and location options for cover art. The current options are suitable for audio, but may not be good for video. For example, options like [Filename (name)].jpg and [Series].jpg could be more usable. Also, the folder location option should be independent from the chosen audio cover art location.


EDIT

Maybe you had several video files with the same date based album field value and you allowed MC to rename & copy cover art according to the selected cover art option (I never let it do that when I link video cover art manually).

Possibly MC then replaced an already existing cover art file with a new identically named file. (The automatic cover art naming system does not warn about an existing file with the same filename.)

Naturally, this replaced cover art file is incorrect for the previous video file. However, since MC has not done any changes to the previous video file's library data it has no reason to recreate the thumbnail and the old thumbnail remains in the thumbnail cache.

[fitbrit]

Thanks very much for taking the time to explain all this to me, Alex. I can't say that I fully understand everything you said without being at home to look at the menu options and follow along. [name]

• [y][z].jpg or [filename].jpg would be great for video files, I agree.

It looks like some of my cover art files have actually been deleted too, because I couldn't find them yesterday. I don't have auto import on at all, but I may have played with some cover art options back in the day when I was mistaken that MC12 could download video (DVD) cover art too.
Looks like I'll be staying up tonight to get my install of MC12 cleaned up. I suspect some of my other problems may be related to something like this.

[JONCAT]

This is a big problem when trying to tag many files that should be in the same folder with different cover art (without having to manually edit filenames and tag Add From File). Using filename would be great for cover art, or let the user decide.

[JONCAT]

But actually, there is a bug. I have all files in folder using unique cover art files. When the slider reachers a certain point (size), all thumbs for multiple files are shown incorrectly  as the same thumb.

http://picasaweb.google.com/Catuccio/MC12/photo#5206751447327205794

DC

[fitbrit]

But actually, there is a bug. I have all files in folder using unique cover art files. When the slider reachers a certain point (size), all thumbs for multiple files are shown incorrectly  as the same thumb.

http://picasaweb.google.com/Catuccio/MC12/photo#5206751447327205794

DC

Yup, that's what I see too, except it's not necessarily all the files with the same thumb, but rather several thumbs that are repeated many times for a playlist/folder that should have unique thumbs per file.

Nice Doctor Who Cover Art for season 2 - where'd ya get it?

[JONCAT]

Fibrit - you have PM

DC

[fitbrit]

Fibrit - you have PM

DC

Thanks! Hopefully, someone will look into this problem. Hey, maybe it's just us Doctor Who fans who suffer from this, and it was deliberately coded into MC12 to punish nerds?

[Alex B]

You have not verified if the following is correct. Have you tried to reproduce the problem with a couple of test files?

Maybe you had several video files with the same date based album field value and you allowed MC to rename & copy cover art according to the selected cover art option (I never let it do that when I link video cover art manually).

Possibly MC then replaced an already existing cover art file with a new identically named file. (The automatic cover art naming system does not warn about an existing file with the same filename.)

Naturally, this replaced cover art file is incorrect for the previous video file. However, since MC has not done any changes to the previous video file's library data it has no reason to recreate the thumbnail and the old thumbnail remains in the thumbnail cache.

[JONCAT]

So even if we use unique files with unique filenames as images for cover art, the option to save cover art as Artist - Album.jpg will still "confuse" MC. The cover art is all displayed correctly until you increase the thumb slider to a certain point; I fail to see how this relates to tagging, file name scheme, etc. However, IIRC my settings at home are to store in a specific location and store as Artist -Album.jpg ....so if that file is in the folder, MC is deciding to use that file as a defualt when the image thumb is increased to a certain point? Still strange behavior if that's what occurring.

DC

[Alex B]

The thumbnail cache is separate from the actual cover art files. For small thumbnails the faster thumbnail cache is used. When the size is increased over a certain size the display changes to show the actual source file directly.

I explained in my previous post how it is possible to make the automatic naming system fail and why it may not be suitable for video files.

Currently you should store the image file in the preferred location before linking it and answer no to this question:
 


... unless you know exactly what you are doing. If you have previously ticked the "Don't show this message again"  option before pressing "Yes" you need to reset that in Options > General > Advanced > Reset all confirmation messages...

Personally I have found that the easiest way to manually add cover art to video files is to have a Windows Explorer window and MC side by side and drag the cover art file from Explorer to AW > Tag > Image when the video file is (or files are) selected.

[JONCAT]

Okay, this makes sense, and it would nice to see filename used for the image file naming.


thanks
DC

[fitbrit]

I was letting MC copy the cover art to a specified folder because I thought that would make it easier to retrieve the cover art/thumbnails at a later date. However, I never saw the option to rename or prevent renaming of the files too.


Here's a possible workaround for future protection, which I haven't tested yet:
I'm assuming that find/replace etc. library tools will work on the Image File field like they do everywhere else.

My filenaming scheme for videos is as follows:
[name][resolution][source]-[vid codec][audio codec][audio channels]

From those fields I could create/rename an artist field, which is currently empty, and do the same for an [album] field, which is currently the date.

So I could for example, make [artist] = [name][resolution][source],
and [album] = [vid codec][audio codec][audio channels]

So now if I did ever have the option for MC to copy (and rename) the video files, the video filename and the image filename should match. All I'd have to do is to rename the Image filename field at the same time as I do my usual 'rename files from properties' operation.

[JONCAT]

That's a good idea Fibrit, but I like to use Artist & Album for  'title of show' & 'series # e.g. S4' so it would be nice to have the option to set the image filenaming scheme to user defined fields; resetting the copy file message is all I can do for now...thanks for figuring that out AlexB.

DC

[fitbrit]

That's a good idea Fibrit, but I like to use Artist & Album for  'title of show' & 'series # e.g. S4' so it would be nice to have the option to set the image filenaming scheme to user defined fields; resetting the copy file message is all I can do for now...thanks for figuring that out AlexB.

DC

Yes, I agree completely that it would be better for us to be able to have user defined fields.
Btw, you are aware that there are [season] and [episode] fields pre-defined, right? I don't use them myself, rather incorprating that info in the [name] field, but I may do so one day.

[JONCAT]

Yeah, I use custom fields for audio, which I'm much more anal about and have multiple view schemes for.

For Video, I want it real simple, so I use all default fields; it's not real organized this way as one view scheme and the default fields apply across many genres like Film, TV, Science, Politics, etc. So for Film, often the artist and album field (title of movie) are the same because I'm too lazy to put in the Director/Writer in Artist.

The thing to do is to have different view schemes so that many custom fields unique to TV, Film, Documentary, etc. can be used for one specific genre. I could see a videophile wanting to use Director, Producer, Screenplay, FX tags for Film but maybe not their collection of TV shows. Like I said, I want it simple for the family so Genre, Artist, Album reflect: Genre, TV show or film name (or sometimes director), and album is Series or film name.

PS - Sunday for next DRWho (maybe even Sat. night)!

DC

[Alex B]

Here is an example of my workflow. I hope this can clarify some of the points I have explained earlier in this thread.

1.



The default system is to create a thumbnail from the actual video content. This thumbnail is stored in the more or less temporary thumbnail cache which provides very fast access and display.

As you can see the automatically created image may not be very useful.

Also, because these images are stored only in the cache system they would need to be created from the scratch in case the cache is resetted.

In the screenshot the mouse cursor is placed over the small thumbnail placeholder in AW > Tag. Clicking on it opens the expanded Image window.


2.



In this screenshot I am creating a screen grab. I have paused the video playback (notice that the Playing Now tab is active instead of a library view). The right-click menu provides two screen grab options. I am going to use the "Screen Grab to File" option because I want to control where the image file is saved and possibly define a better filename.

If you already have a cover art file from some other source you can skip this step. Give the image file an appropriate name and place it in your preferred location.


3.



I created a new folder for the screen grab and used the filename that was suggested by MC, which was [the video file's name].jpg. Here the grabbed image file is in a Windows Explorer window.

In MC I have selected the video file (you can select more than one file if you want to use the same cover art file with several video files) and I am dragging the image file from Windows Explorer to the expanded Image window in AW.

Alternatively the "Add From File..." cover art command can be used, but I in my experience dragging from Explorer is faster.


4.



Here you can see the cover art link in the "Image File" field. The complete path is included because I used a separate folder. Alternatively I could have used the video file's folder. In that case only the filename would be visible in the Image File field (without any path information) and MC would assume that the linked cover art file is always available in the video file's location.

[fitbrit]

Thanks for the tutorial, Alex. I already understood how you did things; that guide should be posted elsewhere too for those not seeing this thread since it has a lot of useful info.
I also totally understand now why the thumbnails are wrong. I reset my dialog boxes yesterday and re-added the thumbnails for my movies playlist. It took a hour or so to get through the ~350 files and check their thumbnails. About 1/3 had the wrong full size thumbnail. 
The ideal situation would be that if you add a thumbnail/cover art from a file, whether by drag'n'drop like you do or through the rightclick menu, the copy/rename format should be the same as when you save a thumbnail to file, as long as [mediatype] = video. I hope some solution resembling this can be implemented. It was rather embarrassing with friends around when I zoomed in on the Pan's Labyrinth HD-DVD cover only to see it turn into a Battlestar Galactica screen grab! 

[JONCAT]

Nice tutorial Alex, thanks.

And to clarify (for myself), many people seem to ignore Album field for video and use Series. In that case they might end in the same boat as I because, as you said, the album field is often propagated with the same date filed if the files are all tagged at the same time, created, etc.

Since shows from one season all sit in the same folder, and according to my "lazy" artist (show name) and album (season) tagging, even if I add unique covert art files (with unique filenames) to uniquely named video files, MC will start to point all those files to one image file named Artist - Album unless I say "No" do not copy the image file to the location specified.

Would this simplify things? When a user tags from a specific image file, MC could copy that cover art file to multiple locations if wanted (I use both a cover art folder & the folder of the file), but use it's unique filename instead of Artist - Album (or give us the option to choose fields).

there are multiple ways to fix the problem on both sides, but forcing the user to say "no don't copy" means that the user has to then put the cover art where they want it to sit permanently. what happen for example, if you choose Copy Link Location from the web to tag, and say "no don't copy", the image just get loaded to the cache? Does it make this quick web tag unusable? We have to download the image to the final location, and then drag it into MC, and then answer "no don't copy"......seems like a fix on the Mc side would improve workflow.

DC

[fitbrit]

PS - Sunday for next DRWho (maybe even Sat. night)!
DC

Yup, you didn't lie when you said it was a good one last week. Intrigued about that woman who knows him in the future!

On another note, I've noticed that my recent video imports are not building thumbnails properly. The system becomes unresponsive for a few minutes like it always ahas done when thumbnails are being built, but nothing results from it. I'd like the option to be able to turn off thumbnail building altogether for the current view, since I use custom/unique art per file anyway. Right now, I give all newly imported video the same random thumbnail as quickly as possible, just so that I can get my MC's responsiveness back with minimum time wasted while MC tries and fails to build thumbnails.

[plastic]

On another note, I've noticed that my recent video imports are not building thumbnails properly. The system becomes unresponsive for a few minutes like it always ahas done when thumbnails are being built, but nothing results from it. I'd like the option to be able to turn off thumbnail building altogether for the current view, since I use custom/unique art per file anyway. Right now, I give all newly imported video the same random thumbnail as quickly as possible, just so that I can get my MC's responsiveness back with minimum time wasted while MC tries and fails to build thumbnails.

I know, that you know, that it's not just your recent imports...
Because I know this issue has been going on since 11.0 something.
Try reinstalling MC and then doing an auto import on a folder with 1TB of ripped DVD's. I double dare ya JimH. Unless you got some sort of Sun mainframe there.

[Alex B]

There was a discussion about similar video cover art problems in another recent thread. I think it would be good to give JRiver actually useful opinions and suggestions.

Here's a suggestion:

- Create a new set of cover art naming options for video files:

1. [the video file's name].jpg in a single folder. By default create a new common folder that is separate from the audio file's cover art folder. Allow the user to define a different folder.
However, this naming option would have a potentional problem if the user has identically named video files in separate folders. Maybe MC could check for an existing file and offer to overwrite the old file or rename the new file (e.g. by adding a sequence number).

2. A tag based cover art naming scheme like [Artist] - [Album].jpg (which we already have) either in a common folder or in the video file's folder. For video files we have other useful tags like [Series], [Season], [Episode], etc. I wonder if it could be possible to allow any user defined string.

Perhaps the option to use the file's video folder instead of a common folder should be completely separate from the naming option - i.e. it could be just a tickbox. Then the user could write e.g. folder.jpg in the "naming rule box" and enable this option.

[Matt]

There was a discussion about similar video cover art problems in another recent thread. I think it would be good to give JRiver actually useful opinions and suggestions.

Here's a suggestion:

- Create a new set of cover art naming options for video files:

1. [the video file's name].jpg in a single folder. By default create a new common folder that is separate from the audio file's cover art folder. Allow the user to define a different folder.
However, this naming option would have a potentional problem if the user has identically named video files in separate folders. Maybe MC could check for an existing file and offer to overwrite the old file or rename the new file (e.g. by adding a sequence number).

2. A tag based cover art naming scheme like [Artist] - [Album].jpg (which we already have) either in a common folder or in the video file's folder. For video files we have other useful tags like [Series], [Season], [Episode], etc. I wonder if it could be possible to allow any user defined string.

Perhaps the option to use the file's video folder instead of a common folder should be completely separate from the naming option - i.e. it could be just a tickbox. Then the user could write e.g. folder.jpg in the naming rule and enable this option.

Thanks Alex.  These are good ideas.

I'm sure you know that external cover art for videos is something we sort of side-stepped into.  We don't have a good feel for how many people use it, but I would guess it's not too many.

Using [Name].jpg instead of [Artist] - [Album].jpg for external art might be a good first step.

[Alex B]

I have found external cover art files extremely useful for three reasons:

1. The automatically generated thumbnail may not always be visually satisfying and easily identifiable as I explained in my older post in this thread:

     

      vs.

     

     If we had separate naming options for video cover art you could extend the same naming system to automatically name and link the "Use Screen Grab for Thumbnail" files. Then the user could identify, backup and relink the grabbed image files easier. The more tedious "Screen Grab To File / Add From Disk" procedure would not be needed for giving the cover art files descriptive names and saving them to the desired location.

2. With ripped DVD videos I want to use the actual cover art from the retail package.

3. It saves a lot of time and processor cycles when the thumbnails need to be recreated.


In addition, as requested before, please make possible to use cover art with document files too. Especially those who use ISO images of DVD video discs (which are seen as documents inside the library) need this option. Personally, I would like to use it for ebooks too (I have a lot manuals and similar stuff in pdf, doc, etc formats).

Possibly documents could share the same cover art naming options with video files, but I would be happy if I simply could manually link existing image files as cover art. It is already possible if the media type is temporally changed to "video", cover art is linked and the media type is changed back to "document", but that is a tedious workaround.

[fitbrit]

Thanks, Alex for some great suggestions.

Matt, I think a lot of people who are serious about using MC for video organisation will want this to work. Many people are used to other front ends and I think they expect a certain behaviour when using external cover art. I for one, thought it was great that I could automatically back up my cover art to a specified location; I didn't realise that the file name would be re-written too. One of Alex's suggestions covers (no pun intended) that problem. Ideally though, MC would allow customisation the name of the cover art file as suggested.
I'd rather not have cover art files in the same folder as my video files, because a lot of my videos have been converted to solitary mkv files, which are in one big folder together. I would prefer to have the different media types separate in that case.
I'm really looking forward to any changes JRiver can implement. Thanks again for organising the suggestions, Alex, and thanks for listening, Matt.

[plastic]

I agree with Alex. We need to be able to specify
1. Where video cover art is saved...ie seperate to audio
2. How cover art is named with [tag] - [tag] type options. ie name - series - episode with allowances for [series] or [episode] to be null
3. What default behaviour is...i.e. turn off auto build thumbs from FFDshow, and turn off autogenerating [album] from the last modified date...drives me nuts!

Hoping this can get implemented in the not too distant future...it has been a major PITA for a few years now.

[neon]

Hello All,

I am a new user -- my specific interest is playing .AVIs that I have created from my DVDs.

Following this thread is very enlightening.
I can tell that MC's roots are in the music/cd world.

I agree with the other posters that I would like to have a way to pick the movie to watch by selectng from a
list or screen full of DVD covers (externally added), not a capture of some frame in the movie file.

I'll note that the only Media Center I have seen that does this is the "My Movies 2" plugin for MCE 2005.

It would be a real nice addition for MC and make it perfect for my needs.

Rich