Anyone get consistent results for populating poster art with TV Shows

Never, since I have started using Mezzmo years ago, have I been able to get consistent automatic population of the poster art for TV Shows especially as it applies to Playlists. I cannot seem to find any rhyme or reason as to what Mezzmo picks to display. For instance, here is the screenshot of the folder contents for Better Call Saul:
Attachment 996

Which file do you think Mezzmo picked for the top level folder in the Active Playlist for TV shows? Poster.jpg? Folder.jpg? Nope, it took the first screenshot/fanart from the first episode in the Season 1 folder called <Better Call Saul S01E01 Uno.jpg>.

How about this one:
Attachment 997

The answer is none! It didn't populate the top level folder with any art at all. All I get is the default folder logo. I cannot find any consistency at all. I have my Media Library Settings to only <Get Artwork from External Files> and <Get text metadata and artwork from XBMC (.nfo/.tbn) files>. Nothing else is selected. Could there be something in my .nfo files that are screwing this up?

Hi,
please go to the Metadata Retrieval Settings and check on the 'Playlists/folders' tab to see which boxes are checked. The 'Get artwork from external files (<filename>.jpg, folder.jpg, albumart*.jpg)' needs to be checked so that Mezzmo will use these files for the folder artwork, otherwise Mezzmo tries to get the artwork from the first media file in the folder which could be a photo or a video.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Peter

Hi,
please go to the Metadata Retrieval Settings and check on the 'Playlists/folders' tab to see which boxes are checked. The 'Get artwork from external files (<filename>.jpg, folder.jpg, albumart*.jpg)' needs to be checked so that Mezzmo will use these files for the folder artwork, otherwise Mezzmo tries to get the artwork from the first media file in the folder which could be a photo or a video.

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No go.

I deleted the current art in a couple of folders in this Active Playlist, set up the metadata retrieval and then ran an update. Didn't change anything. So, I ran the update to overwrite all attributes and still not getting any changes.

OK, so I shut down Mezzmo server and closed Mezzmo. Then I went into the folder:

\Users\admin\AppData\Local\Conceiva\Mezzmo\Artwork

and deleted all of the artwork in there.

\Users\admin\AppData\Local\Conceiva\Mezzmo\Tempora ry Thumbnail Files

and deleted all of the artwork in there.

I copied the rest of \Users\admin\AppData\Local\Conceiva\Mezzmo\ to the desktop and completely uninstalled Mezzmo. I went in and deleted any remaining instances of Conceiva and Mezzmo that I could find and then reinstalled v5.1.1.0. I then copied \Users\admin\AppData\Local\Conceiva\Mezzmo\ back over to the real User folder and reran the Maintain library with Metadata Retrieval set to get atwork from external files. It is still hit and miss but consistent; the same folders that refused to pick up the poster art previously are still refusing to pick up the poster art.

I ran through some of the folders and it seems that Mezzmo is consistently choosing the file "poster.jpg" over "folder.jpg" when both are available. However, there are still plenty of Playlists that still do not get the poster at all despite the presence of either or both.

I'm stumped.

poster.jpg will always have priority over folder.jpg. Playlists get posters differently to files, folders will use folder.jpg if it is found but active playlists will try to get the poster from the Internet if the settings to get metadata from the internet is enabled, if it is not then the poster will come from the first file if it has a poster. When creating the library the files may not have the poster assigned yet when an active playlist is created so in this case the poster will be set when you browse the playlist.

Good to know. Since everything in my library is based on playlists I will go in and make sure that there is a folder.jpg and poster.jpg in each folder.


I am still having issues though. For example:

http://i.imgur.com/tcCZSFm.jpg

'TV Series' is a Mezzmo Active Playlist. You can see that the Series "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" will not grab the poster.jpg or folder.jpg file that I have in the folder. Maybe you can identify what I am doing wrong from the screen shot.



Here is another from the same Active Playlist:

http://i.imgur.com/vX1XAbY.jpg

Not only did it skip over poster.jpg and folder.jpg, but the art that it chose to use for the series is the first episode thumbnail inside the Season 1 folder:

http://i.imgur.com/pz19Q1c.jpg

.......scratching chin...... hmmmmmmm

Yes this is correct behaviour for active playlists, the artwork from the first file is used. We can try updating this so that the poster.jpg from the first file is used instead. Active playlists can group files from many different folders so Mezzmo does not currently look at the folder for the poster.jpg when creating artwork for the playlist.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Peter

Yes this is correct behaviour for active playlists, the artwork from the first file is used. We can try updating this so that the poster.jpg from the first file is used instead. Active playlists can group files from many different folders so Mezzmo does not currently look at the folder for the poster.jpg when creating artwork for the playlist.

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So, if I were to put the poster file into each season 1 folder with the name "a", then it would populate the way I like? Or do I need to name it after the first episode?

This would not work for a video playlist because Mezzmo uses the thumbnail from the first file and ignores images that are not associated with the file. We can add some code to check for the season jpg and use this instead, we will send you a patch to try when this is ready.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Peter

This would not work for a video playlist because Mezzmo uses the thumbnail from the first file and ignores images that are not associated with the file. We can add some code to check for the season jpg and use this instead, we will send you a patch to try when this is ready.

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Cool. Thanks Peter

We have sent you a patch to try, please let us know if it gets the correct posters.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Peter

This would not work for a video playlist because Mezzmo uses the thumbnail from the first file and ignores images that are not associated with the file. We can add some code to check for the season jpg and use this instead, we will send you a patch to try when this is ready.

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Just curious how I should name the desired art and where I should put it.

The patch should work with your existing folder structure, it will check the parent folder of a file for the poster.jpg and will use this for the series playlist.

Peter, with v5.1.2 installed, how should my folder structure be set up so that I get the correct poster art and how should the files be named?

I should have poster.jpg in the <Series> folder and then a relative poster.jpg in each subsequent season folder, right?

It seems to work for library additions but it doesn't always transfer to the active playlists. I have the active playlist Album/Series---->Season/Disc.

It still seems to be kind of a crapshoot so I want to build a few test folders and run them through the paces.

Mezzmo checks the parent folder name to see if it matches the playlist name and if it does then the poster.jpg is used for the artwork, so a video in a folder called Season 1 will use the poster.jpg from the Season 1 folder for the playlist Season 1. So the struct should be Series Name\Season 1\episode.mp4

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Peter

Mezzmo checks the parent folder name to see if it matches the playlist name and if it does then the poster.jpg is used for the artwork, so a video in a folder called Season 1 will use the poster.jpg from the Season 1 folder for the playlist Season 1. So the struct should be Series Name\Season 1\episode.mp4

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Whoa!!!!! It can't be that simple!!!! All this time I have been running the video files through TinyMediaManager and creating .nfo files that Mezzmo read. Often, the Series Name ends up being different in the .nfo file than the name on the parent folder. For example, I have a folder titled <BBC-Nature's Great Events> and inside that folder is poster.jpg. When I ran it through TMM, the .nfo file shortened the Series name to just <Nature's Great Events> so the Series Title wouldn't match any parent folder. I will see this on other problem titles like Shameless and The Office where I (being from the U.S.A.) simply titled the folders "Shameless" and "The Office" but TinyMediaManager (via thetvdb.com) renamed the series "Shameless (US)" and "The Office (US)"

I cannot wait to try this out tonight.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by smitbret

Whoa!!!!! It can't be that simple!!!! All this time I have been running the video files through TinyMediaManager and creating .nfo files that Mezzmo read. Often, the Series Name ends up being different in the .nfo file than the name on the parent folder. For example, I have a folder titled <BBC-Nature's Great Events> and inside that folder is poster.jpg. When I ran it through TMM, the .nfo file shortened the Series name to just <Nature's Great Events> so the Series Title wouldn't match any parent folder. I will see this on other problem titles like Shameless and The Office where I (being from the U.S.A.) simply titled the folders "Shameless" and "The Office" but TinyMediaManager (via thetvdb.com) renamed the series "Shameless (US)" and "The Office (US)"

I cannot wait to try this out tonight.

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Well, played with it for a few days and the posters don't populate any better than they did with previous versions. Poster art is very consistent in the library folders but anything in the active playlists is just wild. It is pulling posters from incorrect series, screen captures or nothing at all. I cleared the artwork cache and updated the library with no better results.

Thanks for the feedback, can you please send us the folder structure with the posters for some of the problem series where the posters are not populated or are from the wrong series so we can try to reproduce this here?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Peter

Thanks for the feedback, can you please send us the folder structure with the posters for some of the problem series where the posters are not populated or are from the wrong series so we can try to reproduce this here?

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I can do that, but I seem to have solved the problem, at least on this end.

I ran another test before the main update last night. I inserted a poster file named "folder" (instead of "poster") into a parent folder(s) for the series and seasons. I ran <Maintain Playlist> on the Active Playlist for TV Series and it didn't seem to make a difference but this morning when I checked after the scheduled, nightly update the correct artwork is now showing in the test playlist.

I have repeated this three more times now. I am copying "poster.jpg" and renaming to "folder.jpg" and running 'Maintain Playlist' and it is making the changes.

The only ones that won't populate properly (so far) are Series that have a ":" in the title because there is no way to replicate that in the folder structure. For example, I have a 13 episode series called "WWII: The Complete History". The parent folder is titled "WWII-The Complete History" so there is no match and the series poster must be manually updated, the seasons are fine. These are few and far between so no big deal.

In general, with the poster files re-named as "folder" and with the file folders titles and the series titles properly mated everything is working the way I would like. Nice work on v5.1.2.