I thought I said we would see what we can do. It won't be soon, but we'll try to improve it in MC18. It would help if people can agree on what should be done.
My take on this, is, pretty simple (I think...)
With regards to "what should be done" I don't know about the default view bit.. that's not really a concern of mine, but maybe asking the user if they would like to select from a list of pre-defined views (shows an image of what the view looks like, and provides a text description) would work.
In so far as "what should be done" with regards to Artwork support.
I guess there are two options.
1): A simple Folder.jpg hierarchy. Users selecting to use this option, specifically for video would be cautioned they need to adopt the following directory structure;
X:\Path To Library Videos\Series\Season X\ (where X = the season numeric).
Within Series you can have a Folder.jpg for the series itself
Within Season X you can have a folder.jpg that represents the Season Cover, in the appropriate Theater View viewing mode.
Personally I would be OK with this option. But I know some people may like to keep their cover art elsewhere.
Option 2: A Vast simplification of the idea2): User is cautioned they must define a Cover Art home directory. i.e X:\Library Cover Art
Inside this we first have a base tree for different media types
X:\Library Cover Art\Audio
X:\Library Cover Art\Video
For (Audio) it can then proceed like this.
X:\Library Cover Art\Audio\Album Name, which can referenced as Folder.jpg
For multi-disc Albums, additional Disc Covers can be referenced as Disc 1, Disc 2, Disc 3, .jpg files (does MC support other formats? I'd love that..)
I guess a good example of this would be my 18 Disc CastleVania Album. It comes in a box (i.e Main Album/Folder.jpg) and each Disc has a unique cover that spells out by letter, DRACULA THE IMMORTAL. So it would be cool to be able to reflex that in my library without having to manually manage Album Art so carefully.
And basically it is kind of the same principle for the (Video) folder.
X:\Library Cover Art\Video\Series, with a main Folder.jpg for the Show art, and then "Season 1" "Season 2" etc JPG files for each season.
Of course there are other things to consider, but overall, I think both options could work well, if they are well-researched and implemented. Option 2 in particular can give a lot of customization options to users, if it works off a logic that references file Tags as well, perhaps even offering an "Expression" option for us to create our own Path/File setup.
What I mean by working off tags is, Media Center reads the file tag (on a rebuild cover-art/thumbnail or first importation operation) and it says, "Oh! This file is from the Album "Dookie" but the Disc # tag is empty. I will look for a "folder.jpg" file in X:\Library Art\Audio\Dookie\" or, "Oh! This file is from the Album Suchandsuch and is from Disc #3, I will look for cover-art in "X:\Library Art\Audio\Suchandsuch" for a "Disc 3.jpg" file".
Maybe my approach(es) are wrong? Maybe they are too difficult to implement? Or maybe most of this can already be done and I just don't know how?
Anyway, I thought I would put forth something, given the opportunity.
