Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[tzr916]

Testing with WTV Tv show recordings. Several series that just don't have cover art online, like:
Local news broadcasts
The Kelly File (fox news)
UFC and other sports
Other misc series

Even if I manually "Add from File", as soon as I watch the show and delete it, I have to manually "Add from File" again the next time it records. I really would like it to do the "Add from File" automatically.

Is this possible?
How?

[CountryBumkin]

My understanding of the process is this...
The series you are recording (i.e. The Kelly Files) does not have a record at TheTVdb.com where MC gets its data. When a series/show is imported, MC will check to see if has the matching series data in the library or it will go on-line to look it up. If it finds the data on-line it will add the Cover Art for the series to the JRiver Cover Art folder and then use it the next time that series/show is recorded.

There is a field called "The TVDB Series ID" where stores the TVDB series data. Since there is no TVDB series ID for your show (The Kelly Files) this field is empty, I wonder if you just add a number (a fake number) to this field, if MC would then associate the cover art you manually downloaded with all future recorded shows of that series.

Did you copy the series cover art to the "Series Cover Art " folder? Can you leave one old "viewed" show in you library to see if the next "new" series recording then adds the cover art you saved.

Perhaps someone with more knowledge than I will chime in - if not perhaps you can test this yourself.

[tzr916]

I have had some success:
-save a jpg I created in the cover art folder
-setting recording rule with tags for series matching name of jpg
-when recording happens the cover art I created is showing

But it only works on the Server. The Clients do not show the cover art that I created. And yes, I did set the client cover art folder to the network server machine and verified the client can access the network folder/files. Even doing a manual Sync with Server does not bring in the cover art.

[RoderickGI]

And yes, I did set the client cover art folder to the network server machine and verified the client can access the network folder/files.

Don't do that. At best it won't do anything. At worst it will break the Cover Art functionality. Okay, there may be some merit to it, but it isn't required. See Note 3.

My Client's Cover Art location in Options points to the local hard drive, in the default location, "C:\Users\[UserID]\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 21\Cover Art\", as I don't keep any Cover Art on the Client. Cover Art works fine for my TV Series, Seasons, and Episodes art. Actually my Episode Cover Art is in the same directory as the recording, as I have MC set up that way.

Change your Client Cover Art location back to a local hard drive location, or a network location if you really want. (I wouldn't do that though.) But not the MC Server Cover Art directory.

When set up correctly the MC Server will serve Cover Art images to the Client, as required.

Take a look at the attached image. As you saved the JPG you created to the Cover Art directory yourself, rather than having MC save it, are you using the correct directory structure, as shown in my image?

All that you need is for a Series Cover Art JPG image file to be in the correct location, and the file to be named exactly the same as the Series name, in the case of Series Cover Art. That image file should be in the "\Cover Art\Series" directory. Season Cover Art should be in the "\Cover Art\Season" directory. TV Channel Logos should be in the "\Cover Art\Files" directory. Plus of course MC needs to know that the recording is from a TV Series.

-setting recording rule with tags for series matching name of jpg

I assume that the WTV files are not named so that CARNAC can identify the recording as a TV Series then, and read the Series name from the file name? Otherwise you shouldn't need to do that either. You may also need to set the [Media Type] to "Video" and the [Media Sub Type] to "TV Show" for MC to recognise the recording as a TV Show Series, and hence look for the Series Cover Art correctly.

Even though the "Get Movie & TV Info" function can't find Cover Art on TheTVDB, MC should find an existing Cover Art image when it imports the new recording. I say should though, as sometimes it can take a little while, and doesn't happen on import. Not sure why. Maybe it is the background Thumbnail process that finds the existing file. Or maybe it is just that Auto-Import hasn't run when I thought it had.

Note 1: All Cover Art maintenance must be done on the MC Server. If it is done on the Client, MC will save the Cover Art to the Client's Cover Art location, which will work on the Client, but it means that it won't be shared with the Server or other Clients.

Note 2: Sometimes Cover Art can get a bit screwed up, but usually there is a simple explanation. For example, I moved a whole bunch of video files a while back, but forgot to move their Cover Art. I didn't notice for a while, because MC was displaying Thumbnails of the Cover Art in the Theatre View views I was using. Then, progressively, Cover Art started to disappear, and were replaced by frame grabs from the video. What the??!!   Simple: User error. I moved the Cover Art to where the videos now were, and did a "Quick Find In File / Cover Art Directory" and the Cover Art was all back. So, be careful moving stuff, and don't panic if Cover Art seems to go screwy.

Note 3: Using the MC Server's Cover Art directory on the MC Client may actually allow you to do Cover Art maintenance on the MC Client. But that would rely on all changes to Cover Art done on the Client being synchronised back to the server correctly. That is sometimes just a little bit unreliable. Also, if you made some changes, then closed the Client before the synchronisation happened, all the changes would be lost, even though the Cover Art image files were in the correct location. Not a disaster, as a "Quick Find In File / Cover Art Directory" on the MC Server should find the image and use it, but not ideal.
I would certainly advise getting Cover Art working on the Client first, and then test using the MC Server's networked Cover Art location.

Note 4: As CountryBumkin suggests, I think if you didn't delete each Episode as you watched it, before the next Episode is imported, then the Cover Art would appear immediately, since it is associated with an existing Series. Yet another reason not to delete episodes immediately. 

[tzr916]

Thanks! Think I got all this squared away. Keeping Client cover art on local disk and saving my custom jpg's to the server directory with matching file name is working now on Clients. Possible that some of this issue may have been that I was running the Media Server service on the Clients.     Doh

[tzr916]

I'm still having issues with Clients getting some of the custom jpg covers but not others. Don't know why. No matter what I do on the Clients (bedroom machine and laptop), I cannot get 3 or 4 of them to have the correct cover. Meanwhile several other custom covers show up automatically from the server.

[CountryBumkin]

Are those missing Cover Arts showing on the Server?
Double check the file name of the Cover Art matches exactly the name of the Series/Shows it is for.

[tzr916]

Are those missing Cover Arts showing on the Server?
Double check the file name of the Cover Art matches exactly the name of the Series/Shows it is for.

Yes they are showing perfectly on the Server. I can even go to a client, right click the show > cover art > get from internet > select the custom jpg on the server in "your library" > click save cover art, and nothing happens at all (on the client). Doesn't help to refresh or restart MC either.

[RoderickGI]

As I said above, sometimes Cover Art can get a bit screwed up.

Just to confirm, we are still talking about viewing the Cover Art in Theatre View aren't we?

Could there be something different about the Cover Art image itself. When you are on the Server, can MC show the image correctly if you "Play" them in MC from within Windows Explorer? I assume that they are JPG files with a jpg extension. Although I think PNG files will work, JPG files seem to work much better than PNG files. I only use JPG files for Cover Art myself.

Perhaps you could share one of the Cover Art Series image files that isn't working on the Client, so we can have a look at it and see if it works for us?

BTW, even though the "Cover Art/Get from internet" works on a Client, you shouldn't do that on the Client. As I mentioned above, all Cover Art maintenance should be done on the Server. Everything just works better that way. When you did that on the Client, I'm not sure that the Art would have been saved to the server, and any change in the Client library likely wouldn't have been immediately synchronised to the Server, so the Server would have changed behaviour. You could force a synchronisation to see if that made a difference, but I wouldn't be confident that it would.

The problem is that for Series and Season Cover Art there is no obvious way to check the link from the Series or Season to the Cover Art image file. The "Cover Art/Get from internet" is about the closest thing to confirmation of the link. That is because there is no "Series" or "Season" record in the MC library. There are just files (TV programs in this case) that are grouped by views into Series and Seasons. So, unlike a TV program were you can check the "Image File" tag, there is nowhere to check the link from image to Series in MC.

The other thing to think about is whether the images you are seeing are actually Thumbnails of the Cover Art images, and the thumbnails haven't been updated. You can check if there are thumbnails still to be built using the "Help/System Info" menu or the "Service & Plug-ins/Reporter" tool. I can't recall how to force a rebuild of thumbnails at the moment, and have to go do stuff. Perhaps if you can find that function are do it for the files that have problem, your issue may be fixed. (But again, these are Series images, not program file images, so...)