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[rjm]

I am contemplating going through my video and manually creating "nice" thumbnails with the Use Screen Grab for Thumbnail feature. It will be a tedious and time consuming project. I don't want to start this project until I am sure all is ok.

I did some tests and observe that thumbnails are now stored in C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\J River\Media Center 17\Data\ScreenGrabs\. I think they used to be stored in the Cover Art location specified in options\file location. Not sure when or why this change occurred.

I am worried about the long term term maintenance of thumbnails. Will a newer version automatically make of copy of MC17 application data thumbnails? If not, what happens to the data when MC17 is uninstalled?

I have requested several times in the past that the field Image File be made editable. This would permit us to move thumbnails to a new location.

Does anyone have an opinion on whether I should invest a lot of time now in creating custom thumbnails? Or wait for this feature to be improved?

<edit>
Just observed another possible problem. The default filename for thumbnails is [Name]. This make the data unmaintainable for those of us that use [Album] for the title and [Name] for the Part #. I will end up with a bunch of thumbnails named Part 1, Part 1(1), Part 1 (2), etc. and have no idea which thumbnail belongs to which video.

[Daydream]

I was in a similar situation when I wanted my own thumbs/screenshots for my clips, my tv episodes, etc. But creating them one by one, by hand, looked too much for me.

The short version is that I used a custom GUI for ffmpeg and tell it to extract 10 screencaps from all videos found on the chosen folder, that many seconds apart; screencaps being named the likes of <original_filename>_xx.jpg and so on. Then I picked something like AcdSee, line them all up 10 on a row (so one row - all screencaps from one clip), and started inspecting; picked one best for each clip, delete the rest. On the remaining files I used Bulk Rename Utility to cut the "_xx" at the end. So I got one JPG screencap with a matching filename. Still requires more patience than most people are willing to spend but, for the truly dedicated...

Note: for me this didn't have much to do with MC at the time, I did it for something else; all the caps and whatnot are stored with the video files. The fact that MC gather art in dedicated folders that's up to MC, but I don't use or rely on such a feature (the unique filename problem).

[rjm]

Thanks Daydream. Your approach was quite innovative but a bit beyond my skill set.

My method is to watch the movie and then click the mouse at the right point. Man, we could really use a hot key for this.

[Daydream]

Man, we could really use a hot key for this.

AutoHotkey can do that, but the files get saved to the last folder that MC remembers for... something, I can't recall (still manageable, just one location to pick 'em when done).

[Jaguu]

I have plenty of screengrabs of music video files downloaded from Youtube. When I migrated from MC16 to MC17 I made the following observations:

1. The screengrabs images were all migrated and OK.
2. But, the screengrabs folder was not migrated to MC17.
3. I removed the screengrabs folder in MC16, the screengrabs in MC17 were still there.
4. I searched anywhere in the MC17 folder structure, I could not find any screengrabs folder at all.

I think the following happens (but Matt would neeed to confirm that. There is no documentation at all about how screengrabs are handled in MC):

1. When you create a screengrab, an image file is created in the screengrabs folder.
2. As it takes some seconds for the new picture to appear, I suspect that MC grabs this image file caching it somewhere, probably in the thumbnails cache folders.
3. Once your thumbnails are set, you do not need the screengrabs folder any longer.
4. I also noticed that if they are missing, you can recover them by clicking "Rebuild thumbnails".
5. No thumbnail picture are stored in the cover art folder.

It is a highly automated process that works easier than I thought, but probably less flexible with very little user control. But, I also think you can override the selected thumbnails by using Cover Art > Add from File...

[rjm]

Thanks Jaguu. I did the following experiment:

1) play video and use screen grab for thumbnail
- thumbnail is saved as C:\Documents and Settings\Rob\Application Data\J River\Media Center 17\Data\ScreenGrabs\[Name]
- MC displays expected thumbnail

2) rebuild thumbnail
- thumbnail rebuilds unchanged as expected

3) delete file in ....\ScreenGrabs\... then rebuild thumbnail
- thumbnail is replaced by default thumbnail built from start of video

So I think this confirms that if the disk files are moved or deleted then when thumbnails are rebuilt all will be lost. Not a good situation given the time that might be invested in creating the screengrabs.

[Jaguu]

Yes, you are right, now I remember. Rebuild thumbnails worked only after I moved the screengrabs folder from MC16 to MC17 manually. So when migrating from M16 to MC17 one has do do the following tasks manually:

1. Move the screengrabs folder from MC16 to MC17 manually.
2. Rebuild thumbnails.

Would be nice if this would be incorporated in the migration process.

[The Mastermind]

I find it a problem that thumbnails that are built automatically rather than by right clicking disappear with an upgrade or library restore.

I like to use screen shots of title screens for my thumbnails. Given that many shows always have the title screen at the same point, I found if I set the thumbnails to be taken at, say, 30 seconds because that is the time when the title screen appears, I could save a lot of time and effort. The problem is the thumbnails disappeared when I upgraded to MC17. A change to stop this loss wouldn't be bad.

[MrHaugen]

So I think this confirms that if the disk files are moved or deleted then when thumbnails are rebuilt all will be lost. Not a good situation given the time that might be invested in creating the screengrabs.

This is, and probably always will be a problem. With the introduced Series art system, I would be surprised if nothing more is coming here soon. Perhaps JRiver will even add thumbnail download from theTVDB.org soon? They are much better than most automatic thumbnails created. I also hope all of this will be automatic sooner than later. Metadata scraping is a very, very sought of feature.