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[maid]

How can i get cover art for Episodes.
It appears at the moment there is only a screen grab that does not display anything recognizable.

[Hendrik]

Thats all episodes ever get. There is no database of full covers for individual episodes.

[maid]

I was downloading my own but then when deleting the last episode the folder does not delete because there is an image left.

[RoderickGI]

Thats all episodes ever get. There is no database of full covers for individual episodes.

Ummm, maybe a bit of a misunderstanding here. TheTVDB has "Cover Art", as in images, for each Episode in a TV Series. That image is downloaded and saved by MC as part of the "Get Movie & TV Info" function.

Sure, the source of some of those images is just a screen grab by the look of it, but they are generally better than the automatic screen grab MC will use if the "Get Movie & TV Info" function hasn't been run on an Episode. Most are actual PR images for the program, with no TV channel logo visible on them.

I run the "Get Movie & TV Info" function with Auto Import, and sometimes (rarely) MC won't get data from TheTVDB at import time, probably due to site availability, so in that case there is no external image file and a screengrab is used. I currently have that issue with new episodes of Doctor Who, as the EIT EPG data is so bad MC can't determine which episode has been recorded, so can't gather metadata.

Example in your original thread Maid: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,117390.msg817644.html#msg817644

[maid]

My TV is not recorded TV (just for clarification).
I run the get movie and TV function, the series picture is great but the episode one from TVDB is woeful but like I said we cant put our own in as it will not be deleted by jriver.

I do now understand how it works and its limitations

[Hendrik]

Ummm, maybe a bit of a misunderstanding here. TheTVDB has "Cover Art", as in images, for each Episode in a TV Series. That image is downloaded and saved by MC as part of the "Get Movie & TV Info" function.

Sure, the source of some of those images is just a screen grab by the look of it, but they are generally better than the automatic screen grab MC will use if the "Get Movie & TV Info" function hasn't been run on an Episode. Most are actual PR images for the program, with no TV channel logo visible on them.

Sure, they are cleaner then manual screen grabs, but 100% of all images I have in my library from TheTVDB are still "just" a shot of a scene from the episode itself, and not comparable with Series or Season artwork.
These images may look pretty, but are otherwise not guaranteed to be in any way recognizable of the episode itself.

[ErikN]

At the risk of driving this thread off the rails, I am curious about the use case.
There seem to be 3 scenarios:
1) Episode thumbnail extracted from the local video (recording, rip, etc.)
2) Episode thumbnail downloaded from internet (e.g. TVDB) -- An aside, TVDB requires that these be frames from the episode, proper aspect ratio, no title, etc. They have detailed rules about this.
3) Hand-crafted episode thumbnail ?

I've never heard of anyone doing #3 and cannot imagine going through the effort to hand craft episode thumbnails only to regularly delete the episode along with that thumbnail. Or is there some alternate source for great episode thumbnails?

[RoderickGI]

I understand Maid was doing #3, but found the Season sub-directory and her image weren't being deleted when the last episode was deleted, because she had placed in the image into the sub-directory herself instead of having MC place it there. Hence this, and her other recent thread.

The episode images are screenshots, but they are often very select screenshots, often picked from scenes specifically crafted to produce such PR style images. Take a look at Doctor Who S11E01. Pure promo shot, but a screenshot so meets TheTVDB requirements. A lot of the Marvel TV series images are similarly selected.

While the images aren't usually recognisable as belonging to a specific episode, they are usually recognisable as belonging to a Series, and often a Season. As long as they remind me of a Series, and not some news item or ad that played just before the show, I'm happy.

[maid]

Hi again, what do nu use if there is no episode picture

[RoderickGI]

Hi again, what do nu use if there is no episode picture

I just let MC grab a screenshot.

For programs I'm not going to keep a while, I don't care that much about the episode image. Maybe if I was having people come around to watch stuff I would, but I don't do that often enough to worry.

For programs I am going to keep a while, and for my favourite programs, TheTVDB pretty much always has an image. If not, and if the screenshot is really bad or inappropriate, I just find an image online somewhere or grab a better screenshot and use the "add from file" function mentioned above.

I do make sure I have good Series and Season Cover Art images, since they are actually functional in using Theatre View.

Life is too short to be worrying about the issue, or particularly spending lots of time managing episode images. 

[maid]

lol ok

[alb]

I have never even heard of "official" or "fan art" episode art.  Is the OP suggesting that he used to have this functionality in a prior media organizer?  I mean, someone has to make them and I don't think anyone is going to run through 10 seasons with 24 episodes per, 240 individual episodes to make "cover art" that in some way depicts the topic of the episode.  That would be quite insane, in my opinion.  I think JRiver does a superb job of gathering a main poster for the Series Art and corresponding Season covers for each TV Show I have...and taking a screen grab of each episode is a nice flourish too, I believe.  JRiver has also made it very convenient to change Series Cover Art or Seasonal Cover Art, if available, to allow some personal customization of your library.  If someone is trying to determine context for the episode isn't that what the field Description is for?

[amandalishus]

It doesn't look like anyone has mentioned this (unless I missed it), but you can pause the video at any point while you're watching it (technically you don't even have to pause), right-click the screen and select "Window->Save Screen Grab To File" on the context menu. You can then use "Cover Art->Add From File" to use that file as cover art. Sometimes when I'm feeling ambitious, I also upload the screen grab to the TheTVDB as their cover art... because y'know, somebody has to be the one to upload those for everyone else to use

[RoderickGI]

No, it wasn't specifically mentioned. I just said "or grab a better screenshot", and the method you described is the easiest, particularly when you can use the Shift+Right-Arrow method to step through video frames to pick the best. The "Add from file" function was mentioned a lot. 

Unfortunately, all my recordings have a TV logo onscreen, and as ErikN mentioned, that is not allowed by TheTVDB.

[amandalishus]

...particularly when you can use the Shift+Right-Arrow method to step through video frames...

I hereby aware +5 Bonus Points for teaching me a new hotkey... Thx

[amandalishus]

Sorry for double-posting, but upon further thought I had a question... Does the "Use Screen Grab For Thumbnail" function on the Window submenu (from the context menu on a playing video) work for anyone else? It never seems to do it for me... Sometimes, however, it seems to delete the thumbnail I already have. I wondered if I'm doing it wrong...

[maid]

Using the screen grab is just as much work as getting your own episode picture from wherever.
I now allow jriver to do its stuff and when there is no episode picture , which is quite often, I just fix that one.

[RoderickGI]

I hereby aware +5 Bonus Points for teaching me a new hotkey... Thx

    

The "Use Screen Grab For Thumbnail" works for me on a standalone installation of MC on my Workstation. Actually that is easier and quicker than using the "Window->Save Screen Grab To File" and "Cover Art->Add From File", and it still puts a copy of the image next to the video file in the same way. It's been so rare that I use that, I had forgotten about it and didn't take notice yesterday.

It won't work on a MC Client connected to a MC Server, as it involves changing Cover Art, and you can't do that from a Client. I thought it might change the local Client thumbnail, so tried it, but it neither changed or removed the thumbnail from my test episode. As you say it only sometimes removes the thumbnail, perhaps I was just lucky in this instance. When I tried it the screen did go black for a while, and then returned to the paused video scene.

Basically, everything to do with Cover Art and Thumbnails should be done on the server. The only exception I know is when Thumbnails on the Client get mucked up, and need to be fixed there.

[RoderickGI]

I now allow jriver to do its stuff and when there is no episode picture , which is quite often, I just fix that one.

What Series, Season, and Episodes are not getting images Maid? Provide a few examples please.

Either they are obscure programs, or something else is going on, if you often don't get an image.

[maid]

episodes of 800 words early episodes and madame secretary.
I just discovered if i use rebuild thumbnail I get an image

[RoderickGI]

I just discovered if i use rebuild thumbnail I get an image

Which means that there were images next to the video files for Epsiodes all along, and that the Thumbnail files may have been corrupted at some stage.

From memory you connect to your Library from two different PCs, at different times. i.e. From your Workstation for maintenance and from your HTPC for playback. Thumbnail files are stored on and used by the PC which connects to a library, which means that your Workstation and HTPC have two separate sets of thumbnail files. I think I have mentioned previously that this may cause an issue. After every time you do maintenance on your shared library using your Workstation, you probably need to run the "Tools > Advanced Tools > Build missing thumbnails" function to ensure the thumbnail files on the HTPC are updated. Or maybe run the "Tools > Cover Art > Rebuild thumbnail" function on any programs that you think have the wrong or missing thumbnail.

So basically I think the topic of this thread is a consequence of the way you share one library and access it directly from two PCs, assuming that is still the way you do maintenance. (Yes, I understand why you do it that way. I wish all maintenance could be done from a Client myself.)


Having said that, of your two examples;

Australian programs like 800 Words tend to get less love on TheTVDB than US programs. It only has Episode images for Season 2 and a few episodes of Season 3 on TheTVDB. See https://www.thetvdb.com/series/800-words/seasons/all

Madam Secretary, on the other hand, has Episode images for all but episodes 2 to 18 in Season 2. See https://www.thetvdb.com/series/madam-secretary/seasons/all

You can always check TheTVDB directly, as I did using the above links, to see which episodes are missing Cover Art. Maybe you could pick some good images and upload them for the episodes that don't have them? You just need to meet the requirements of TheTVDB, which can be found somewhere in their forum I think. Or ask in the forum if unsure how to proceed. Or perhaps ErikN can point you to the location of the rules, and the procedure for uploading images?

[maid]

All good, funny thing is I just retested survivor for you to peruse see image

[RoderickGI]

Yeah, a lot of the Survivor Specials, Seasons 31 and 32, and recent Season 37 episodes don't have images, as shown by the red icons. https://www.thetvdb.com/series/survivor/seasons/all

The real question here is: What are you doing watching Survivor?!   

[maid]

Just one more point to mention, There is no coverart series or otherwise on my local machine.

We love Survivor 

[RoderickGI]

Just one more point to mention, There is no coverart series or otherwise on my local machine.

I'm sure. I hope all Cover Art is on a mapped drive that both your HTPC and Workstation can see, using the same path, so that it is correctly used when you do maintenance using the Workstation.

But there is a set of Thumbnail files on each PC. The files are located in the "C:\Users\[User ID]\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 24\Thumbnails" sub-directory on each PC. Take a look. You can't map the User directory from one PC to the other and use the one set of Thumbnail files for MC. Windows doesn't allow that, since user directories are fundamental to the way it works.

Basically, Cover Art and Thumbnails are two completely different things, even though Thumbnails are sourced from Cover Art.

We love Survivor 

I only hope that you can recover from that horrendous mental disability at some time in the future. Be strong! 

[maid]

mmm maybe I can copy the cache