Just curious

[hsbrown2]

The release notes for Mezzmo 6 seem rather spartan. Are there other updates that can be shared? It seems as though the db has been improved in some way, either through the creation of indexes, or some engine improvement. Content loads faster, and thumbnails populate faster.

Also, streaming playback to Roku devices appears smoother and less choppy over wireless. Was ffmpeg updated?

[Peter]

There have been many small optimizations whether in the database or in the device profiles so these can contribute to the speed increase. ffmpeg has not been updated so it could be a result of changes to the device profile that has improved the streaming.

[smitbret]

There have been many small optimizations whether in the database or in the device profiles so these can contribute to the speed increase. ffmpeg has not been updated so it could be a result of changes to the device profile that has improved the streaming.

Are there some directions as to how to get the actor thumbnails and option for trailer playback in the info screens? I have actor thumbnails in the folder for most of my films and have added the trailers for several but even after running <Maintain Library>, I am still not getting these to appear. Is there a naming convention that I need to be aware of?

[Peter]

The actor thumbnails come from the actor active playlist, if you do not have the actor active playlist then the thumbnails will not appear for actors. Trailers are only populated when updating the information for a movie so if you do not specify to update all information for a movie this will not get updated.

[smitbret]

For clarification, Mezzmo will not grab existing thumbnails for actors. I will need to have Mezzmo scrape my libraryvia the internet, correct?

[Peter]

Mezzmo will use existing thumbnails for actors, you will not need to scrape your library via the Internet. If you have deleted the actors playlist that was part of the default Mezzmo playlists then actors images will not exist and will not be shown.

[smitbret]

Mezzmo will use existing thumbnails for actors, you will not need to scrape your library via the Internet. If you have deleted the actors playlist that was part of the default Mezzmo playlists then actors images will not exist and will not be shown.

Thanks Peter. That's what I figured. I had actor thumbnails stored in each individual movie folder that I was hoping could be used but this should be more efficient. Where are the actors' thumbnails stored by Mezzmo?

[Peter]

The actor thumbnails are stored in the Mezzmo database folder under Artwork\Poster. The file name is cva_srch-lastname--firstname.jpg, for example cva_srch-mccartney--paul.jpg. Can you please give us an example of the actor thumbnail naming you are using and we may be able to add support for this.

[smitbret]

I ams just storing an folder labelled ".actors" in each <movie>/<tv show> folder:
1230
1231

No biggie, I can adapt to this if I can find a way to populate the actor thumbnails without having Mezzmo overwrite the metadata from my existing .nfo data.

[Peter]

Can you please show us what the contents of the .actors folder looks like so we can see the naming style of the images as to whether it is last name first or if the names have a - as a delimiter?

[smitbret]

1232

Here ya go.

[Peter]

Thanks, we will look into how we can use this in Mezzmo.

[Stu57]

While on the subject of populating the actors thumbnails,is there a Wiki or a simple how to for Dummies ie Me.
Stu

[Peter]

There is no Wiki entry or how to currently as the actor thumbnails are populated using the same thumbnails from the actor active playlist so it should just automatically work if this playlist exists.

[hsbrown2]

It would be great if there were a way to use actor thumbnails from Tiny Media Manager. I don't use the native scraper, I use .nfo and folder/file-based artwork/metadata. This helps in the event of catastrophe, I can restore my backup and just scan the local content rather than go the internet route. I back up my Mezzmo DB, but it's still worth the extra steps for me to put it all in the media folders.

Question: I lock all my media once I'm satisfied with the results. If I enable intenet scraping, I know it wouldn't overwrite the locked movies, but will Mezzmo 6 download the actor thumbs anyway for those which do not exist? Further, if I back up Artwork\Poster would this preserve the artwork in the event of catastrophe?

On a separate note on the original topic, the little tweaks here and there seem to have made a significant difference!

[Peter]

Looks like the .actor folder is an option in Tiny Media Manager but the paths in the nfo file remain as the URL. We would probably need to import the actor images into the Mezzmo poster folder when the file is added or maintained so that the images are available when the request for an actor image is received. Currently when an actor image is requested we don't have the information about the path to the movie file so we cannot lookup the actor image from the movie folder.