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Author Topic: Cover Art  (Read 27846 times)

MrHaugen

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Re: Cover Art
« Reply #150 on: March 20, 2012, 04:00:58 am »

I don't know why sidecar files should be hidden? If they are there I would like to see them.
Maybe I didn't read the topic about that...

The reason is that many users have a mixed environment, with users accessing file shares for playback as well. For series you would have at least 2 sidecar files for each episode. That is not great to work with. To simply hide these, many users would be satisfied. I show hidden files, and would have no problem editing it anyway... So I can only see positive things from this. It would stop a lot of noice on these forums I think. And in my experience, it should be pretty simple to implement as well.
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gappie

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Re: Cover Art
« Reply #151 on: March 20, 2012, 04:30:14 am »

to start with a part of one of the posts where i tried to explain ...
Quote
part II: the reason why i think its a big step back that video covers are not stored any more in the cover directory (as it was in mc 11 to 16 as an option)..

a: i take small videos with my foto camera. mc nicely takes them off the camera and puts them in a folder together with the images, at a place i have chosen.  when i want to make a thumb for those small videos, via use screengrab for thumbnail, mc places an extra image inside that folder and imports it... i always tried to keep those folders clean with only the images from my camera, and not without a reason. before the screenshots where nicely placed in the cover art folder, where they belonged.

and actually its worse .. mc has overwritten files that came from my camera, without  warning,.. luckily i do have backups.. btw backup software would in this case have destroyed the original ones. 8 years of personal files well organized are not well organized anymore because there are images added or overwritten.

maybe i should tell a bit about the files that get overwritten... when i take a video with my camera (panasonic, also in the past) the camera adds a jpg with the same name as the video containing important meta data about the video, like when it was taken and with which camera, something i always found very elegant. the image belongs to the video. by doing a cleaning of the cover art folder or when i take a new screenshot, these images are overwritten.
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lboregard

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Re: Cover Art
« Reply #152 on: March 20, 2012, 07:14:18 am »

Something came to mind though... Do all my hd's have to be (powered) on to see my cover art in the new way style e.g. my movies?

wow ... that's actually a key point i hadn't considered ... i keep my media in a nas (unraid), it doesnt need to spin up any drive other than the one that's accessed for playing content, but if metadata files are scattered across drives, all of them would need to be spinning  :o
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Matt

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Re: Cover Art
« Reply #153 on: March 20, 2012, 07:29:58 am »

wow ... that's actually a key point i hadn't considered ... i keep my media in a nas (unraid), it doesnt need to spin up any drive other than the one that's accessed for playing content, but if metadata files are scattered across drives, all of them would need to be spinning  :o

Once thumbnails are built, sidecars are only read if you play.  And you can't play if the drive isn't spinning, so this has no impact on whether drives spin.
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Matt Ashland, JRiver Media Center

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Re: Cover Art
« Reply #154 on: March 20, 2012, 07:47:31 am »

Once thumbnails are built, sidecars are only read if you play.  And you can't play if the drive isn't spinning, so this has no impact on whether drives spin.

Just to be sure I got you: Once I've imported my new videos and powered off my external HD I still can browse through these movies and see my cover art in MC17?
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4BYE

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Re: Cover Art
« Reply #155 on: March 20, 2012, 08:01:42 am »

Also just one thing I noticed with some experimenting: the cover art in a ripped DVD folder is always called "VIDEO_TS.jpg". Maybe it should be renamed to the name of the folder one level up.
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Matt

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Re: Cover Art
« Reply #156 on: March 20, 2012, 08:02:52 am »

Just to be sure I got you: Once I've imported my new videos and powered off my external HD I still can browse through these movies and see my cover art in MC17?


You can browse Media Center with all your media drives disconnected.

If a drive is attached but spun down, browsing will likely spin up the drive.  This is because the program checks to see if files exist when they're shown so it can display a red x.
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Matt Ashland, JRiver Media Center

MrHaugen

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Re: Cover Art
« Reply #157 on: March 20, 2012, 08:47:39 am »

And the red x will replace the cover art, yes? At least if the disk is actualy offline. Not just spun down.

This is touching the offline discussion we had a while ago? It's connected.... Everything is connected! My head hurt.
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Matt

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Re: Cover Art
« Reply #158 on: March 20, 2012, 08:59:42 am »

And the red x will replace the cover art, yes? At least if the disk is actualy offline. Not just spun down.

The red x is an overlay on the file.  It's not related to cover art.


Quote
This is touching the offline discussion we had a while ago?

Yes it is.  Miles to go before we sleep.
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Matt Ashland, JRiver Media Center

MrHaugen

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Re: Cover Art
« Reply #159 on: March 20, 2012, 09:19:21 am »

The red x is an overlay on the file.  It's not related to cover art.

I did not mean the cover art, but rather the thumbnail. But, yea. Ok. As long as the thumbnail is not replaced by the x, it's still browsable I presume. I've never had problems with this my self, except for the few times I had a share connection problem, and saw all the red X's in normal view.
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rick.ca

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Re: Cover Art
« Reply #160 on: March 20, 2012, 04:06:53 pm »

edit: maybe i should tell a bit about the files that get overwritten... when i take a video with my camera (panasonic, also in the past) the camera adds an jpg with the same name as the video containing important meta data about the video, like when it was taken and with which camera, something i always found very elegant. the image belongs to the video. by doing a cleaning of the coverart folder or when i take a new screenshot, these images are overwritten.

I'm not sure exactly how the cleaning function works, but I assume its purpose is to clean-up the cover art folders so they would include only the images not maintained beside the media under the new system. If that had been done at the time of the change, and covers were previously saved in the separate folder, then there would be nothing to overwrite. I'm not sure if the function has any purpose beyond that one-time use. If it does, however, then there would be no images in the video folder that could overwrite covers saved beside the media.

Why would you Use Screen Grab for Thumbnail when you know that's going to overwrite an existing cover you want to keep? There is a Screen Grab to File... command for saving the image with a different file name. If you do this often, it would probably be easier to routinely copy the camera images to a different filename (e.g., {video filename} [camera data].jpg) so they're preserved.
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gappie

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Re: Cover Art
« Reply #161 on: March 20, 2012, 05:21:53 pm »

sure rick, if you want an explanation about this function please start a new thread.
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rick.ca

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Re: Cover Art
« Reply #162 on: March 21, 2012, 12:32:12 am »

Quote
sure rick, if you want an explanation about this function please start a new thread.

No thanks. I'm quite sure my understanding of the function is sufficient to support my comment. Neither of the things you mention have any bearing on whether the cover art system needs to be changed or improved. If you want further advice on how to use these functions correctly, please start a new thread.
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gappie

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Re: Cover Art
« Reply #163 on: March 21, 2012, 02:35:08 am »

A couple proposals we discussed:

1) An option to hide sidecars
2) A tool to make a copy of cover art for backup (Cover Art > Back Up Cover Art...)

Adding an option to always store video sidecars (tags, commercial skips, subtitles, cover art, etc.) apart from the video is not on the table for v17.

im not sure if this is possible, but some check to prevent mc to overwrite a file that is not made by mc with cover art.

 :)
gab

(actually in my case, the files from the panasonic camera, something that would save the tags from those files in the new ones would do it)
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gappie

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Re: Cover Art
« Reply #164 on: March 21, 2012, 06:08:07 am »

i actually just had a very stupid idea... why not save the files in there own format.. mcjpg. something like that. its coverart for in mc only..

 :)
gab
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4BYE

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Re: Cover Art
« Reply #165 on: March 21, 2012, 07:21:01 am »

Hello Gappie,

That would work for you maybe but not for me and a lot of other users/customers I'm afraid. If I would want to use them in another program I would first have to copy them and then somehow have to rename them to their normal jpg extension.

I think a tool for getting them into a certain folder would do it for (almost  ;D) everybody.

@ Matt: have you thoughts about my question about the way every image is called VIDEO_TS.jpg? I'm asking because I want to switch to your way of handling cover art soon and if things will be changed I'll wait for that. If not I'll be replacing my cover art into each movie's folder.
(counting on the fact their will be a tool someday).
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Matt

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Re: Cover Art
« Reply #166 on: March 21, 2012, 07:51:00 am »

@ Matt: have you thoughts about my question about the way every image is called VIDEO_TS.jpg?

All sidecars follow the name of the video.

DVD rips use VIDEO_TS.* for the video files.

This has never bothered me, but I suppose you could remux your DVD files to MKV if you wanted the video files to have better names.
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Matt Ashland, JRiver Media Center

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Re: Cover Art
« Reply #167 on: March 21, 2012, 08:14:45 am »

Remux more than 2000 DVD's? No thanks!  :o

I was asking because of the future tool to save them into a folder. In that case they have to be renamed anyway. It would be cruel to find out that newer versions of MC17 will be renaming them after I changed everything to VIDEO_TS...  ;D

So I guess I can make a start then.
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