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[park]

Subject says it all really.
This would be a great option for me. I have two completely sets of video content at home and at work, and even though I cant obviously play work video at home and vice versa, it would be a lifesaver to at least be able to browse the thumbnails of each of my libraries, no matter where I am.

All of my libraries are kept on a portable drive anyway, so an option to include the thumbnails in the same directory as the library would be great.

I remember Matt saying that this would be a bad idea for people who keep libraries on a network, since accessing that folder would be really slow, but my case doesnt fall into that example, and as an option turned off by default, it wouldnt hurt would it?

Thanks,
Bri

[park]

gentle bump.

I havent got the nerve to change my default thumbnails path using the registry for MC12 yet. Feel like i could be tempting fete.

In the meantime, using my portable usb drive as my main library and storage for all my files, I'm finding that MC starts drawing thumbnails for "everything" from scratch, each time i arrive home or at work. Very tedious.

[Alex B]

I have used a custom thumbnail path since Matt exposed the possibility a long time ago.

You could try how much the USB2 connection decreases speed if the thumbnails are on the external drive. In some cases a USB2 drive can actually be faster. (e.g. an internal laptop drive may be slower than an external drive, but don't even consider using USB1 for thumbnails.)

Another option would be to simply copy the latest thumbnail folder to the correct location on each PC before starting MC (you could make a batch file for this). This can work only if you use literally the same database files and the thumbnail folder location is identical on both PCs.

[Matt]

I think the registry hack will still work.  We probably won't make this much easier for users, because we don't think it's a great idea for most people.

We sort of got burned a few years back.  Some users were railing on us about how slow things were, and it turned out it was because they had there library on a network share.

The library itself isn't quite as sensitive to drive speed, but the thumbnail engine depends heavily on being able to read and seek quickly from the thumb database.

[Alex B]

You could add an option to not use the thumbnail engine at all. Some people have special setups with sluggish or low-power components like carputers or diskless LAN PCs with small touchscreens etc.

[park]

I understand what you're saying; what I'm asking for is pretty non-standard behaviour I guess.

For me, keeping everything in one library and using that library on every machine that i run MC on, is still the only thing i can think of, to make sure that my songs and library are always correctly updated.

I guess that if/when the ability to synch 2 libraries together comes along, then there'll be no need for what I'm asking for now.

'till then I'll try the hack.
Alex B, do you find that when using the hack, when you switch libraries, your second library always has to draw it's thumbnails from scratch? I was getting this with MC11.1

[Alex B]

Alex B, do you find that when using the hack, when you switch libraries, your second library always has to draw it's thumbnails from scratch? I was getting this with MC11.1

MC11.1 had a bug that it didn't use a new thumbnail subfolder when a library was cloned. I reported about this and the bug has been fixed in MC11.1. The used thumbnail path had nothing to do with this bug. For MC an edited thumbnail path is just a location that it uses. Also the default path varies according to the username.

[raym]

I think the registry hack will still work.  We probably won't make this much easier for users, because we don't think it's a great idea for most people.

We sort of got burned a few years back.  Some users were railing on us about how slow things were, and it turned out it was because they had there library on a network share.

The library itself isn't quite as sensitive to drive speed, but the thumbnail engine depends heavily on being able to read and seek quickly from the thumb database.

It seems the reg hack is broken if you point to a network share. I've been doing this since v11 and never had any performace issues. After upgrading to v12 recently I've noticed that the thumbs keep re-drawing themselves each time MC starts. It actually looks as though the Thumbnails(xxx).jmd files are being removed on exit. I have my "Thumbnail Exit Behaviour" = "leave".

I've done several manual "Build Missing Thumbnails" and once complete everything looks fine, ie, all thumbs appear to have been generated and browsing is quick. As soon as i close MC, if I check for the Thumbnails(xxx).jmd files, they are gone and MC tries re-building them all over again on startup.

I've tried the same reg hack but pointing to the local drive and the problem goes away. I know the logical conclusion will be to continue doing this. It's just that v11 never complained about storing thumbs on a network share and in a centralised media environment, this worked very well for me.

Any chance this could be a legit bug which can be fixed please?

[Alex B]

I have recommended that if the path is changed it should point to a local fast HD. Since MC12 uses thumbnails all the time (also in pane + details view) this is even more important. For example, my MC12 thumbnail folder is currently 264 MB and the three .jmd files are constantly updated.

Though, if MC12 rebuilds thumbnails from scratch after each restart you may have some other issue. What is your "Thumbnail exit behavior" setting? Do you use "Erase orphans"?

I assume that you have configured your PCs so that only one PC & library uses the same thumbnails. Otherwise they would be unsynchronized.

Personally, I regularly copy the latest library and thumbnail folder to each separate PC before starting MC even the media files are on mapped network locations. (I have not tried this after the recent thumbnail changes, but earlier it worked fine with MC12 too.)

EDIT

I tested MC12.0.68. It has no problems with using copied thumbnails that I have in a custom location on a local HD.

[raym]

Thanks Alex. Exit thumbnail behaviour is set to "Leave".

All I know is that using v11.1, pointing my thumbnails to a network share worked. This is no longer the case with v12. Yes, using the same reg hack pointing to an alternate location on the same local drive seems fine.

It's not a big deal. I can work around it (copying the thumbs to each pc as you've described). I wanted to raise it though because I suspect others who had it set up the way i did may not like that it's like this now.