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[akira54]

Hi,

I have successfully managed to add a menu option to the TheaterView of Shows so that I can view just the shows in one specific directory on the NAS. This works beautifully but unfortunately the actual view has changed dramatically. Instead of offering me the normal cover art it has suddenly switched to something quite different and I cannot figure out how to change it back to normal.
Here are two screenshots that illustrate what I mean.

[glynor]

Theater View has two different "styles" of thumbnails it uses for media.  The "normal" style is less "tall" and the "spot" the thumbnails fit into is square.  This works well for album covers that are usually square, and is really the best you can hope for when you have a variety of image sizes and shapes:


Click to embiggen.


Click to embiggen.

It also has "tall" style thumbnails, which match the box art typically used for movies.  This looks like:


Click to embiggen.

I'm not sure of the exact logic MC uses to decide which style of Thumbnails to use, but I think it depends on the view you've constructed, and actual file list that results from the search.  You can't pick manually, it happens automatically depending on how you designed the search for your View.  It seems to me that the rule is either:

1. If all the files resulting are one single [Media Sub Type] (and perhaps only when that single sub type is either Movie or TV Show, but I'm not sure about this), then it uses the Tall Style.

-or-

2. If some percentage of the files in the resulting list (most, but it doesn't seem to have to be all of them, if this is the logic used) seem to have "tall style" cover art assigned.

Or something like that?  I'm not sure.  It would be nice to hear, actually, if someone knows what this logic uses to decide.

But, if you look at my two "normal style" screenshots above, the top one is a music view, showing just album covers, and it comes out "square".  The second one down is my Documentaries view.  But, I don't know which of my two possible logic choices described above made it decide to use the square style ones here.  My Documentaries view intentionally includes both TV Shows and Movies (the View is filtered to show any video matching [Genre] = Documentary of either Media Sub Type), so it is a "mixed" view.  But, it also happens that my Documentaries don't uniformly have all (or mostly) "tall-style" cover art, so perhaps it is just this percentage that causes it?

The third screenshot down shows my regular "TV Shows" view, by Series.  In this case, it shows only files where [Media Sub Type] = TV Show, so it would be a "uniform view" from that perspective, and most (but not quite all) of them have the tall style Series Artwork from TVDB.  So, I'm not sure which it is, but it decides automatically, and it depends on the results of your View's search.

[akira54]

Interesting, but I don't think that can apply to my case since my "documentaries"  are only a subset of the "TV series" set. Yet with the "TV series" set I get the upright cover art and with the subset a completely different set of widescreen images are chosen.

[glynor]

Yeah, yours seem to be all actually "widescreen", and not even square.

I think it has to do with the average size and shape of the cover art in the files in the resulting list.  If more of them are "landscape" (wider than they are tall), then it makes them widescreen like yours.  I didn't know about this, but I don't have any widescreen Series artwork like you do there.  Mine are all the ones MC gets automatically from TVDB, and they're all "movie box" style.  It looks like you applied yours manually.

By the way, you can get these by selecting one of the files from a particular show, and choosing Right Click > Cover Art > Get From Internet.  It will automatically search and display a list and you can pick one.  You only need to do this on one file per [Series] though because it is automatically used for all shows of a particular series.



If more of them are 4:3 or square, then it makes them square like my Audio and Documentaries screenshots.

And, lastly, if more of them are "portrait" (taller than they are wide) then it displays them like my Series view screenshot (in "movie box mode" I'm going to call it).

[akira54]

May be but why should it display ALL TV Shows in the upright format and only a small subset of these in a different format? Moreover, the format it went for here are the so-called banners used (formerly) in XBMC and still on the disk instead of the "season-all-poster" which it does pick in the complete TV Shows view?

[akira54]

It is a shame that no further replies have been forthcoming so far. Does anyone know HOW MC19 decides what cover art to use and how we can influence this?

[MrC]

Without seeing how your views are defined for each of the theater view areas in question, and seeing the Media Sub Type's of the various files, its hard to speculate more.

Media Sub Type primary drives the cover art work shown.

There is also separate Series, Artists, and Seasons artwork, which is separate from individual media file cover art.

[glynor]

I'm pretty sure this is because your Series Artwork for the files that show up in that particular view are mostly-widescreen.

Change some or all of them to be the "tall style" (I explained above how to update these from within MC and download artwork from TVDB), and I bet if you do more than 50% of them, it'll switch the layout style.