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Q: If i choose to save the poster in their respective movie folder, will that some how slow down my browsing movies with JRiver?
This is the default JRiver behavior - next to each movie file, you'll see the corresponding poster as a JPG file. So if you use this option in MCRatings it will just keep doing what JRiver does. For setups like mine where I have all the movies in a NAS, what this causes is a delay of 10-15 seconds when I start using JRiver to browse movies, because it's waiting for the NAS to wakeup and spin up the disks. This is just for the first movie/tooltip but it's still annoying sometimes as JRiver just freezes waiting for the NAS response. Also, sometimes I don't even want to play anything so I'm waking up the NAS for nothing.
The alternative provided by MCRatings - saving all posters to a defined folder - avoids this. Personally I still like to have a copy of the poster next to the movie too, so I select both the "save posters to folder xxxx" and the "also save to the movie folder". This keeps 2 copies of the poster, but the "official" one for JRiver is the Common folder one.
Q: Where would be the best place to store the posters, will my NAS not spin up if I save the posters on a folder on my NAS or should I choose a folder on a separate HDD?
Some considerations for selecting a folder location:
- obviously, not on the NAS - it would still have to wake up.
- I have my HTPC connected to my TV - it's always on, has an SSD, and it runs the JRiver server. This is the best place for me
- Keep in mind that the path you use needs to be accessible by JRiver. I have the JRiver server, but I also use JRiver clients on other laptops/machines. If I set the folder to "C:\Posters" on the HTPC, this will work on that machine but not on the others as "C:\Posters" won't exist there. So the proper way to do it is to share the c:\posters folder on the HTPC and then use something like "\\HTPC\Posters" as the poster folder. Make sure share/folder permissions allow the share to be accessed by other machines on your LAN, and written to by MCRatings.
Q: Can someone point me to the correct thread, this will for sure involve some expression skills that I surely do not have.
Err, well, I was thinking of
this thread where you're also active. Moe and Lepa seem to be the experts
Q: Where would be the best place to store actor/crew thumbnails, on my NAS or on a different HDD
The same considerations apply as above - if you're using JRiver server+clients, you'll need to use a shared folder.
Other considerations:
- the easiest folder to use if you have a single JRiver install (no clients) is the Tooltip folder. I suggest this path:
C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center 26\Data\Tooltip\Actors(or the "Program Files (x86)" variant if you use JRiver 32bit)
- the path above can be easily referenced in JRiver Expressions. If you have a picture there called "Keanu Reeves.png", you can reference it with:
<img src="tooltip:Actors\Keanu Reeves" width="100">
Note the "png" extension is gone.
- you'll need to create an expression that translates the movie's "Actors" field content into a list of the corresponding <img> tags. I think the other thread referenced above has examples on how to do that, and Lepa/Moe can help further.
- to allow MCRatings to write to that folder, you'll have to reset its permissions (right-click, properties, security, add "everyone/full access" to the folder permissions)
If you have multiple JRiver clients though... it gets trickier. For the same reason I explained above for the posters, the Actors folder needs to be a shared folder. In this case:
- create and share a folder somewhere on your LAN - let's say \\HTPC\Actors
- give R/W access to all users
- enter it in MCRatings as the download folder for Thumbnails
- on JRiver, the Expression to reference a given Actor profile becomes:
<img src="\\HTPC\Actors\Keanu Reeves" width="100">
Of course, this expression needs to be more complicated as you don't want Keanu Reeves to be in all your movies, no matter how popular he is.
I hope this helps. I'm sure we'll go back and forth a few times, refining the solution until it works as desired!
Zybex