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[dtac7]

Is it possible to do the following in theater view?

1.  Have all movie thumbnails be the same size?  Without limiting all the titles text to 1 line?

2.  Have just the thumbnails without any title text under it and when you hover your mouse / remote over the thumbnail it displays the name of the movie?

[MrHaugen]

I'm afraid not.
There have been several that have asked for a way of making the thumbnail the same size, as it looks a little messy otherwise, but it's not been done anything about it as I know. How to get it to go over more than one line without it looking bad, I'm not sure. But If we could get ridd of the stack function, the leftover space could be used for two lines of text just fine I guess.

I think your second suggestion would be a little akward for most users. Might look nice, but as long as we can not assign an Artist or Series cover etc, I do not belive it would be very easy to find the right thing. If the Image with the right text had just jumped out of the screen (zoomed out for the screen like 130 - 150% or something) when hovering over it, it would sure look stunning. But I think it might have interfered with other thumbnails. And thus making it harder to navigate. Maby, maby not.

[dtac7]

Thanks for the response.

When you go to the main root screen of video in theater view it displays all your genres (all, action, drama etc.)... and all you see within each genre is same size thumbnails without any title text under them.  I wish this view could be used to select which movie you would like to play.

[benn600]

Just thumbnails is a great idea!  I have another thread going on more sizes for theater view text but no text is an amazing idea.  Then you wouldn't have wrapping text destroying the uniformity of thumbnails and I have thumbnails for virtually every video/audio/duh on pictures.  I'm in the process of adding thumbnails for home movies.

I guess for home movies I'd need thumbnails because they can get pretty detailed and the thumbnails don't really say specifically what the item is.

+1 on this!

[MrHaugen]

I agree that it could be very nice, but would have to be able to turn it on or off for each category (audio, video and images) for it to be usefull. At least for people with more than just videos. Preferrably a setting called "Turn caption off in Theater View" or something, in each view scheme.
Caption/text would have to be shown when moving over each thumbnail (and maby some sort of zoom effect) to be able to differenciate those with not so obvious thumbnails I guess.

[raym]

There have been several that have asked for a way of making the thumbnail the same size, as it looks a little messy otherwise, but it's not been done anything about it as I know.

There was some talk recently on trying to make thumbs more uniform in other areas of the program but nowhere is it needed more than in Theater View! I can understand some people's need to have multi-line captions under the thumbs but for me, I'd prefer a single line caption and thumbs as big and as uniform as possible (just like it used to be!). If I wanna see more info, well, that's what the lineup and list views are for.

Would it be too difficult to adress this by simply providing an option for the number of lines the caption is allowed to wrap in thumbnail view?  0 to 3 (which I think is the current max).

Thanks.

[jmone]

I too would like the Thumbnails to be the same size in T'View but still want the full text wrap eg - I'd prefer that whitespace is added to pad out items with short titles rather than the Thumbnail shrunk to allow for two lines of text.
Nathan

[raym]

I too would like the Thumbnails to be the same size in T'View but still want the full text wrap eg - I'd prefer that whitespace is added to pad out items with short titles rather than the Thumbnail shrunk to allow for two lines of text.
Nathan

But (unless I'm missing your point) all this is gonna do is shrink all thumbs or worse, increase the dead space around them. The point of the thumbnail view, in my opinion, should be BIG, FAT PICTURES!

I wouldn't mind if the configurable caption-wraping option I spoke about treated thumb sizes as you've described though coz I'd still be able to set it to 0 or 1 and get some uniformity back.

Thanks.

[dtac7]

For now I'm just going to abbreviate titles and keep them all to one line.

I really hope they add more options in the future.

[benn600]

I wouldn't suggest abbreviating things!  This may permanently destroy your tags.

[dtac7]

I wouldn't suggest abbreviating things!  This may permanently destroy your tags.

I can't stand different size thumbnails though
I can change the title again in the tag later if need be.  Why do you say permanent?

[benn600]

MC writes some tags to the individual files.  If you *physically* change the tags so they are shorter and fit, then you're really asking for trouble.

I'd say give them a little more time.  Once a feature requests gets on their radar, they usually add it quickly.  Although I'm not sure how aware they are of this feature request.  I would really like it.

[gappie]

I can't stand different size thumbnails though
I can change the title again in the tag later if need be.  Why do you say permanent?

you dont need to change the tag. go to options>theaterview>advanced>file caption
and change the rule there to Mid([name],0,15)
all the names underneath the thumbs will now be 15 characters long starting from the begining of the word (the zero). you can change the 15 till it fits as you like.

[dtac7]

you dont need to change the tag. go to options>theaterview>advanced>file caption
and change the rule there to Mid([name],0,15)
all the names underneath the thumbs will now be 15 characters long starting from the begining of the word (the zero). you can change the 15 till it fits as you like.

Cool! 
Can you also enter a command there to force text size?  I noticed under font it only lets you do 12pt.

benn600, thanks for the advice.  Your'e right it's better to be safe than sorry.

[gappie]

Cool! 
Can you also enter a command there to force text size?  I noticed under font it only lets you do 12pt.

nope 

 

[benn600]

Can you force a line break in the captions?  \n might work.  I could see a short [Name] portion, line break, and then some other piece of info.

[raym]

you dont need to change the tag. go to options>theaterview>advanced>file caption
and change the rule there to Mid([name],0,15)
all the names underneath the thumbs will now be 15 characters long starting from the begining of the word (the zero). you can change the 15 till it fits as you like.

This is fine for thumbs but it then truncates all captions in lists as well. Not only that, but the "Caption" setting in Theater View's options only applies to items in the file-lists ie, the last level of your view scheme hierarchy. All other caption lengths are unchanged by the above expression.

I don't think this should be so hard:

Thumbs = heavy on the pics, light on the words.
Lists = light on the pics, heavy on the words.
Lineup = a combination of both.

The last 2 are perfect. The first one used to be.

Thanks.

[gappie]

This is fine for thumbs but it then truncates all captions in lists as well. Not only that, but the "Caption" setting in Theater View's options only applies to items in the file-lists ie, the last level of your view scheme hierarchy. All other caption lengths are unchanged by the above expression.

Thanks.

of course, you are right. it could be so much easier.
but there are some options.
when someone uses always thumbs movies and lists for audio (in the last scheme) then using an if statement can change the behaviour.
for changing all the other lengths. when you make a view scheme to use with theaterview only. the mid statement can be used the same way for each step in the hierarchy. which is nice when you browse using thumbs only.

[raym]

You're right Gappie but as you say, it's fine if you browse ONLY by thumbs but I (like many others) like to browse by a combination of lists and thumbs depending on the media type. I just want those darn thumbs uniform and less wordy

I'm hoping MC13 will adress some of this stuff ... unless something can be done now

[benn600]

Remember that smaller text sizes would really help save space so more text could be shown.  Often, one line is not enough text anyway so I don't think truncating to a single line would even be very useful.  Although both features would be useful!

Not very often that we say a feature wouldn't be useful.  More options usually is great--as long as a good UI follows!