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[ajp_anton]

My JRiver just upgraded itself from 26.0.73 to 26.0.80.

In Theatre view, all TV series cover arts are gone. Usually, each show has their own cover, and within the show, each season also has their own cover. All of these are now replaced by a screenshow of a random episode within.

Also, when opening any season of any show to get to the list of episodes, the episode names have the name of the show added in front of them.

This only happens in Theatre view. When browsing through my library in Standard view, all the relevant cover arts are displayed.

I downgraded back to 26.0.73 by finding the installation .exe from JRiver's %appdata% folders, and the issue is gone there.


edit:
I attached screenshots.

[RoderickGI]

I can see that you have lost the Season Cover Art, but your two Episode images look identical.

I'm on MC26.0.84 and all Cover Art is still working. Has been all along. Maybe you needed to refresh the View, or restart MC, for it to pick up the Season Cover Art. Or just wait a while.

Reinstall MC26.0.80 and do the above. If the Season Cover Art doesn't show up still, check what images are offered in when you select the files in Standard View and run the function "Cover Art > Get from Internet". It should show the correct Season Cover Art as in "Your Library". If so, no need to update. It sounds like you thumbnails need to be rebuilt. Though that shouldn't be required for an update to .80. Maybe there is a problem with your thumbnails database... but you say Cover Art works in Standard View.

[wer]

Also, Season Art in Theater View is specifically tied to using the [Season] field as a category.  If you use an expression at the season level in Theater View, you lose season art.

[RoderickGI]

Hmmm, the Season level in the default Shows View in Theatre View is an expression. Specifically, TVInfo(SeasonDisplay). It isn't a field Category at all, even in the default Views.

I think you might mean if there is a more complex expression. But maybe if the "Expression to Display" was set to TVInfo(SeasonDisplay) it would work anyway.

More information required all around I think.

[wer]

No, I just forgot tvinfo(seasondisplay) is also a magic value.

If you change it to something more complicated, like an if(), even if it evaluates to [Season] you lose the season art.  So say you wanted to append the year.  The expression [Season] [Year] would lose the art.  This is an old issue, been there for years.  Here's a post: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,81867.msg558437.html#msg558437

There was also some black magic (you might be able to find it if you searched the forums for a while) about certain things regarding season art being fixed, but you had to reset your theater views to take advantage.

Since I had invested a huge amount of time in customizing theater views, as that is my primary interface, and since JRiver provides no way to backup/restore/copy Theater Views, I did not avail myself of the reset views option.

[RoderickGI]

Indeed, TVInfo(SeasonDisplay) is magic, and it must be left alone as the Category level for Season Cover Art to work.

However, if you just want to append the [Year] for display underneath the Season thumbnail, you can just add an expression in the "Expression to Display" field and that will all work fine. I just added the expression:

Season [Season] [Year]

Which gave me the result:

Season 1 2011

But if you change the "Expression to group by" to, for example, "TVInfo(SeasonDisplay) [Year]", then you immediately lose the Season Cover Art.


But maybe we are a bit off-topic, unless ajp_anton has edited his View definitions as well as updated MC, and reversed those changes (Restored a Library Backup) when switching back to MC26.0.73?

[ajp_anton]

I can see that you have lost the Season Cover Art, but your two Episode images look identical.

Did you read the description of the problem? In the episode view, the episode names have the name of the show added to the beginning, and that's what I'm trying to show with the screenshots.

I'm on MC26.0.84 and all Cover Art is still working. Has been all along. Maybe you needed to refresh the View, or restart MC, for it to pick up the Season Cover Art. Or just wait a while.

Reinstall MC26.0.80 and do the above. If the Season Cover Art doesn't show up still, check what images are offered in when you select the files in Standard View and run the function "Cover Art > Get from Internet". It should show the correct Season Cover Art as in "Your Library". If so, no need to update. It sounds like you thumbnails need to be rebuilt. Though that shouldn't be required for an update to .80. Maybe there is a problem with your thumbnails database... but you say Cover Art works in Standard View.

I did go back to .80 again, same problem. And back to .73, everything works. And then I went back and forth another time for the screenshots. Already waited for two hours, no change. I could get everything again from the internet I guess, but it's going to take a loooong time to do for everything. Because I remember it wasn't very smooth, required lots of manual work, especially for shows where I didn't like the first image it picked. Also, .73 still works fine when downgrading, so the databases and images are obviously still working fine.

[ajp_anton]

Also, Season Art in Theater View is specifically tied to using the [Season] field as a category.  If you use an expression at the season level in Theater View, you lose season art.

Hmmm, the Season level in the default Shows View in Theatre View is an expression. Specifically, TVInfo(SeasonDisplay). It isn't a field Category at all, even in the default Views.

I think you might mean if there is a more complex expression. But maybe if the "Expression to Display" was set to TVInfo(SeasonDisplay) it would work anyway.

More information required all around I think.

I haven't changed any expressions related to cover arts. Also, it wouldn't explain why it stops working in .80, but still works when going back to .73.

[ajp_anton]

But maybe we are a bit off-topic, unless ajp_anton has edited his View definitions as well as updated MC, and reversed those changes (Restored a Library Backup) when switching back to MC26.0.73?

I didn't reverse anything, I just installed .73 from the exe and everything worked. Going back and forth between .73 and .80 without any other changes triggers this issue only with .80.

[Hendrik]

The behavior looks like it forgot which show it belongs to, hence why it puts it into the name and doesn't know which cover art to use.
Does the series cover art one level up from the seasons still work?

Can you show how that view is built, so that we can try to reproduce?

[RoderickGI]

Did you read the description of the problem?

Oops. My bad. I did read it, but I was looking at Cover Art and on the right.

Also, when opening any season of any show to get to the list of episodes, the episode names have the name of the show added in front of them.

I read the second "show" as meaning Episode name, not Series name, and as the Episode name is there I didn't look further.

What you have is actually a very strange situation. I suggest you answer Hendrik's questions, because he can probably get to the bottom of it.

[ajp_anton]

The behavior looks like it forgot which show it belongs to, hence why it puts it into the name and doesn't know which cover art to use.
Does the series cover art one level up from the seasons still work?

It's the same there. Instead of the cover art meant to represent the whole TV series, there's just a screenshot of one of its episodes.

Can you show how that view is built, so that we can try to reproduce?

How do I do that? "The Options \ Theater view \ Items to show" tree with all its rules?

[RoderickGI]

Yes.

Mostly the Details of both the Series and Season Categories, shown by editing them, as per the attached image.

[ajp_anton]

Here's the tree view/items list, plus the edit-windows for both Series and Season:

[wer]

I was helping someone else a few days ago, and he had a strange (and different) problem with a theater view view after upgrading to .80.

Have you tried deleting the view entirely, and recreating it from scratch?  That fixed his problem, for no apparent reason.

[Hendrik]

I've been thinking what might cause such a view to stop working, and the only thing I can come up with would be if there is a file included which isn't actually a tv show, for some reason, which would cause it to stop treating it like a TV Show view. Not sure why it would happen on 80 and not before though...

In the "Items to Show" section, can you click on "Shows" and then hit the "Set rules for file display" button? If its setup properly it should have two rules, Media Type is Video and Media Sub Type is TV Show, do you have those there?

[ajp_anton]

Sorry for slow response...

I was helping someone else a few days ago, and he had a strange (and different) problem with a theater view view after upgrading to .80.

Have you tried deleting the view entirely, and recreating it from scratch?  That fixed his problem, for no apparent reason.

I have a few (not related to TV shows) complicated rules that I don't want to lose. Where are the settings stored, so I can back them up first?

I've been thinking what might cause such a view to stop working, and the only thing I can come up with would be if there is a file included which isn't actually a tv show, for some reason, which would cause it to stop treating it like a TV Show view. Not sure why it would happen on 80 and not before though...

In the "Items to Show" section, can you click on "Shows" and then hit the "Set rules for file display" button? If its setup properly it should have two rules, Media Type is Video and Media Sub Type is TV Show, do you have those there?

There was a third rule (filename/path does not contain "Documentaries"), but deleting it made no difference.

[wer]

MC does not provide any means to save or import/export theater view definitions.  This has been requested in the past, and I think it would make an excellent feature addition, especially now that people want to sheare theater view definitions since all the work with images and iconography in the tooltips thread has yielded such significant improvements in appearance. If you want to share a specific view with someone, you have to give them a step by step description of how to recreate it. 

Perhaps Hendrik or someone will hear our plea in this regard.

In the meantime you have no alternative but to individually copy/paste your rules and expressions in a text editor manually.  It's laborious and time consuming, but manageable if you're only trying to do one view.

[RoderickGI]

I don't think Wer was suggesting you delete or Reset all Theatre View Views.

You don't need to delete the old View before creating the new View and testing if it fixed the problem. So you won't lose anything if you do it in that sequence. I don't think not deleting the old version will affect if the new version works or not. Resetting all Theatre View Views may make a difference, but I wouldn't do that unless it was an absolute last resort.

Try it.

I would also probably type the new View rules out manually, rather than copy and paste, just in case there was something funny in the code, and to be sure there were no spelling errors or anything. It isn't a complicated View to recreate. I've built it from scratch several times when testing stuff.

Oh, you could also just try editing the View to add something to it temporarily, save that, then editing it back to original. That may force a save of the View and fix any problem. A similar process worked for a DLNA issue someone had recently.

[wer]

Typing the new view in manually is fine, if you can be assured of doing it without making a mistake.  That's the trick with complicated views.  You could download my syntax highlighter to help you check for certain types of errors.  You don't want to confuse your results with an introduced error.

That being said, I don't claim this will work.  Recreating a Theater View view has never solved my problems, which were always either syntax errors on my part or bugs in MC. But others have reported it worked, so it's worth a try.

One reason I mentioned using a separate editor, or even MS Word, is that it gives you the opportunity to inspect if any funny characters have been entered into your text. That sort of thing can sometimes make MC behave in ways that are not apparent from a simple visual inspection in the built in editor.

[Hendrik]

Out of curiosity, what OS are you on? Trying on weird hunches now! Between 73 and 80 we didn't really have that big changes, except one, but that should really not do anything like this, unless...
Can you maybe also post a short log, just start MC, navigate to a problem view, and save the log?

Aaand a third question, if you go to such a view in Standard View, do these show Series/Season posters?

[ajp_anton]

Out of curiosity, what OS are you on? Trying on weird hunches now! Between 73 and 80 we didn't really have that big changes, except one, but that should really not do anything like this, unless...
Can you maybe also post a short log, just start MC, navigate to a problem view, and save the log?

Aaand a third question, if you go to such a view in Standard View, do these show Series/Season posters?

I'm on Windows 10.
Link to log file sent via PM.

So normally I load the library from a MC server via the internet, and that's where I first noticed the problem. It also happens locally though. ATM I wasn't able to access a local library with actual content, so for the log I created a few fake TV show files that I imported into a new local library. For this new library I couldn't get any cover art (which led me to the discussions about the TheTVDb API problems), so I couldn't recreate the cover art/posters problem in the log, but the episode name problem still happened. Hope that helps. Basically I opened theatre view and navigated to where I see the episode list with faulty names.

In Standard View, the posters are shown normally.

Edit:
Also sent a log file when loading a library from the server. Here I only navigated to the list of TV shows, where all the posters are missing.

[Hendrik]

Thanks for the logs, but just more puzzles. Can't really get a handle on it without seeing it. Could you share a Library Backup, with settings?
I'm reasonably certain I know where it goes wrong, I just don't get why .. yet. To select images it checks if all episodes belong to the same series and season - and it also does the same check to determine the caption format. So I'm pretty sure that fails. Just no clue why yet. It has no reason to.

[ajp_anton]

PM sent with a library backup of the same "fake TV shows" that I created for one of the log files.

[Hendrik]

Thanks, will look into it right away. Hopefully that'll reveal something now!

[ajp_anton]

Thanks, will look into it right away. Hopefully that'll reveal something now!

Hi nev! Any news on this issue? It still exists in 26.0.101. Any more info that I can provide?