Very low quality of Thumbnails on Mezzmo Kodi-plugin on Android TV Box

Hi, since today I use Mezzmo and I am very happy with it.
But I have a problem.

I am using an Android TV-Box with Kodi, and there I am using the Mezzmo plugin.
Kodi is vanilla and even the UI from Kodi I use. But sadly something is not right with my Thumbails:

All is fine, the backgrounds, the actor pictures, etc. except the Thumbnail of the media is totally blurry and in bad quality.
I already tried to change the Options > Browsing Files > Thumbnail Sizes and set it there to 600x600 but even that did not look good.

So, I want to ask if I can avoid that 600x600 limitation somehow.
It is really sad right now, because the backgrounds/fan arts looks so great in full 1920x1080, and then for no reason at all the thumbnails look so horribly out of place with that low quality..


Thank you really much.
I am nearly finished with everything, it is just that thumbnail problem and a few other small things. Other than that I am really happy with Mezzmo!


EDIT: Now not even the 600x600 show up anymore and I don't know why.. It is now clearly lower than 600x600x.. All that I want is to have my 480x720 Kodi Thumbnails :(

SOLUTION: Go to reply no.14

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Undertaker555

Hi, since today I use Mezzmo and I am very happy with it.
But I have a problem.

I am using an Android TV-Box with Kodi, and there I am using the Mezzmo plugin.
Kodi is vanilla and even the UI from Kodi I use. But sadly something is not right with my Thumbails:

All is fine, the backgrounds, the actor pictures, etc. except the Thumbnail of the media is totally blurry and in bad quality.
I already tried to change the Options > Browsing Files > Thumbnail Sizes and set it there to 600x600 but even that did not look good.

So, I want to ask if I can avoid that 600x600 limitation somehow.
It is really sad right now, because the backgrounds/fan arts looks so great in full 1920x1080, and then for no reason at all the thumbnails look so horribly out of place with that low quality..


Thank you really much.
I am nearly finished with everything, it is just that thumbnail problem and a few other small things. Other than that I am really happy with Mezzmo!


EDIT: Now not even the 600x600 show up anymore and I don't know why.. It is now clearly lower than 600x600x.. All that I want is to have my 480x720 Kodi Thumbnails :(

---

From our discussion in the Kodi forums, I believe you changed the Thumbnail setting after you imported your media or before you imported your media ? If you changed it after you imported your media then I think you'll need to regenerate the thumbnails at a higher resolution. There may also be a device level setting for thumbnails which could be limiting resolution. Peter, from Mezzmo, can help more with these two items. What device profile are you using in the Media Devices for this Android system ?

Jeff

Hi, thanks for joining the thread.

Quote:

---

From our discussion in the Kodi forums, I believe you changed the Thumbnail setting after you imported your media or before you imported your media ?

---

No, after that I removed the whole library again, because it was just to experiment a bit. Now I began from scratch while I kept the 600x600 setting from before.
Interestingly, before (in the experiment) it worked with 600x600, but now since I began from scratch it somehow doesn't.

And even if the 600x600 work.. they are not the best. There are just a few more pixel missing to make me happy. 480x720 is Kodi standard as far as I could see from the exported thumbnails.
So this is what I really would like to achieve.

Is Peter often here, or do I have to contact him somehow?

EDIT: Btw. I checked the appdata folder, and in there the posters folder. The posters (thumbnails that I mean) have all 217x320, no matter how many times I scan the files. The original poster files have 480x720. It also seems like it would simply ignore my settings from Options > Browsing Files > Thumbnail Sizes, because even if I set there a minimum value, it still uses the 320 size..
But as I said, even if it would be 600x600 it would just be a compromise. I really wonder why the 720 size is not an option.


And how will I find out what device profile I am using?
All I can say is that my Host PC with the Mezzmo Server is a Windows PC, and that the Android TV-Box is a Xiaomi MiBox (I think MiBox 4). On that I am using the Mezzmo-plugin for Kodi.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Undertaker555

Hi, since today I use Mezzmo and I am very happy with it.
But I have a problem.

I am using an Android TV-Box with Kodi, and there I am using the Mezzmo plugin.
Kodi is vanilla and even the UI from Kodi I use. But sadly something is not right with my Thumbails:

All is fine, the backgrounds, the actor pictures, etc. except the Thumbnail of the media is totally blurry and in bad quality.
I already tried to change the Options > Browsing Files > Thumbnail Sizes and set it there to 600x600 but even that did not look good.

So, I want to ask if I can avoid that 600x600 limitation somehow.
It is really sad right now, because the backgrounds/fan arts looks so great in full 1920x1080, and then for no reason at all the thumbnails look so horribly out of place with that low quality..


Thank you really much.
I am nearly finished with everything, it is just that thumbnail problem and a few other small things. Other than that I am really happy with Mezzmo!


EDIT: Now not even the 600x600 show up anymore and I don't know why.. It is now clearly lower than 600x600x.. All that I want is to have my 480x720 Kodi Thumbnails :(

---

Peter typically comes on later due to the timezone difference. You can see the device profile setting in the Media Devices option in the main GUI window.


Jeff

Generic Device NTSC.

Also, I just posted an edit to my previous post, while you replied.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Undertaker555

Generic Device NTSC.

Also, I just posted an edit to my previous post, while you replied.

---

Ok, that Device Profile needs to be changed to Kodi since you are using Kodi. Otherwise you may end up transcoding things and such. I looked at the device profile file for NTSC generic and Kodi. If I am reading them right the thumbnail size for generic is 160x160 and 320x320 for Kodi. So changing to Kodi should help. If so then we should be able to modify the device profile file and get it higher. Again Peter can help here to confirm.


Jeff

So I dug through some older forum threads to confirm my thoughts. To go with larger thumbnails higher than 320x320 with Kodi you'll need to edit the device profile (kodi.prf file located in C:\ProgramData\Conceiva\Mezzmo\DeviceProfiles) . Make a backup copy of it. Then open with Notepad. Near the bottom you will find:

<avcontainer id="jpeg" name="jpeg_tn" mimetype="image/jpeg" encode="1" baseline="1" dlnaprofile="JPEG_TN" preferredthumbnail="1" supportschunked="0">
<image>
<format id="jpeg" mimetype="image/jpeg" encode="1" codec="98" quality="2">
<maxdimensions width="320" height="320" />
<maxbits>24</maxbits>
</format>
</image>
</avcontainer>

Change the maxdimensions and save. Then stop / restart the Mezzmo server from the GUI .

Jeff

Good ok, so the Device Profile is now Kodi. I guess that is anyway better to do that.
But it didn't allow me to change to higher than 600x600.
And then, actually it is still for some reason stuck on 213x320, no matter what I scan.

Before that it worked. I really don't know what I am doing different than before.
I had 600x600 working, and suddenly after I deleted my experimental library again, it did not scan 600x600 anymore.

I will try to search that Profile File, because earlier today I found a thread somewhere talking about that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Undertaker555

Good ok, so the Device Profile is now Kodi. I guess that is anyway better to do that.
But it didn't allow me to change to higher than 600x600.
And then, actually it is still for some reason stuck on 213x320, no matter what I scan.

Before that it worked. I really don't know what I am doing different than before.
I had 600x600 working, and suddenly after I deleted my experimental library again, it did not scan 600x600 anymore.

I will try to search that Profile File, because earlier today I found a thread somewhere talking about that.

---

You will likely need to run maintenance (Maintain Playlist) and regenerate your thumbnails. I'd start with a single folder selecting only Update view preview Thumbnail , Video files and Folders / Playlists.


Jeff

I did it and it just downloaded the thumbnail once again in the same size 213x320..
What actually happened? I feel like I need to do a reinstall of the whole Server.

It does not even matter if I download the thumbnails, or if I use the thumbnails from my Kodi backup, because it just scales them down for some reason.
I even tested it with paint, I drew some lines on one of my Kodi thumbnails, and then imported it. And yes, it got scaled down to again 213x320.. always that same number.
Not one of my Thumbnail Sizes (small, medium, large) have that size. So where does that number come from?


EDIT: Good news! After changing the Poster image sizes in "Streaming" at Options, it now at least in my appdata folder saves the thumbnails as the full size 480x720 files!!!
BUT.. on my TV Box it still is blurry and not full size, instead still some kind of down scaled version. I don't understand where that is coming from.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Undertaker555

I did it and it just downloaded the thumbnail once again in the same size 213x320..
What actually happened? I feel like I need to do a reinstall of the whole Server.

It does not even matter if I download the thumbnails, or if I use the thumbnails from my Kodi backup, because it just scales them down for some reason.
I even tested it with paint, I drew some lines on one of my Kodi thumbnails, and then imported it. And yes, it got scaled down to again 213x320.. always that same number.
Not one of my Thumbnail Sizes (small, medium, large) have that size. So where does that number come from?


EDIT: Good news! After changing the Poster image sizes in "Streaming" at Options, it now at least in my appdata folder saves the thumbnails as the full size 480x720 files!!!
BUT.. on my TV Box it still is blurry and not full size, instead still some kind of down scaled version. I don't understand where that is coming from.

---

Probably the device profile for Kodi bringing them down to 360x360. Did you make the edit device profile change recommended above ? Peter will be around later and will be able to sort it out, if the profile change doesn't fix it.


Jeff

I tried it, and did everything very clean.
I edited the profile according to this post:

http://forum.conceiva.com/showthread...3851#post23851

Obviously I went into the Kodi file and not to the Samsung.
The file in my appdata is full size, all normal. In Mezzmo itself it seems like the file is also high resoultion and fine.
But then in Kodi > Mezzmo Addon it is still the 320x320 version, even though I replaced the 320x320 with 720x720.

I will be very thankful if we can solve this.

Thank you very much already.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Undertaker555

I tried it, and did everything very clean.
I edited the profile according to this post:

http://forum.conceiva.com/showthread...3851#post23851

Obviously I went into the Kodi file and not to the Samsung.
The file in my appdata is full size, all normal. In Mezzmo itself it seems like the file is also high resoultion and fine.
But then in Kodi > Mezzmo Addon it is still the 320x320 version, even though I replaced the 320x320 with 720x720.

I will be very thankful if we can solve this.

Thank you very much already.

---

Ok. I've had some time to think about this and need to remind myself you are running outside of the addon and in Kodi natively. Due to that things operate a bit differently. My ask is first go into the Mezzmo Kodi addon and browse your library and see if the thumbnails look right there since these will be real time from Mezzmo and not via Kodi and the background sync process. This will tell us if we are dealing with a thumbnail size issue or how the sync process handles thumbnail changes (or Kodi caching).

Second, can you tell me the naming convention on a thumbnail file ? I don't run thumbnails so I don't know if they have a consistent naming convention or a random naming convention that ties the movie to the file in the Mezzmo thumbnail database. Depending on the here will determine how fast the sync process would catch a change in the thumbnail resolution size.


Jeff

In Options under streaming is the size for all devices, Mezzmo will save the original posters in this size. For each device there is a poster size defined in the profile and Mezzmo will resize the posters to fit within this size. The JPEG_TN size in the Kodi profile is 320x320 so the posters will be resized to fit within this. To make the posters larger you will need to increase this size in the profile then save it and restart your Mezzmo Media Server to reload the profile. Then you will need to go to the Kodi device in Media Devices and on the Transcoding tab click the button to delete transcoded files so that the old small posters are re-transcoded to the larger size from the profile.

Hi Peter!
Thanks for the reply.

That is exactly what I did before.. BUT somehow the profile reset itself to Generic Device (NTSC) before, without me noticing it...
So I set it again to Kodi, and repeated what you said.
And now? Now it works!!! :)

Finally I can add my whole media.


EDIT: Btw. it resets itself quite often back to "Generic Device (NTSC)". I really need to be careful, and always set it back to "Kodi". Why is that?
EDIT 2: Found the solution there, too! It was because I "Reset Mezzmo Database...", and it resets the Device Profile, too! So always when resetting the Mezzmo Database, it will reset the Device Profile, too!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Undertaker555

Hi Peter!
Thanks for the reply.

That is exactly what I did before.. BUT somehow the profile reset itself to Generic Device (NTSC) before, without me noticing it...
So I set it again to Kodi, and repeated what you said.
And now? Now it works!!! :)

Finally I can add my whole media.


EDIT: Btw. it resets itself quite often back to "Generic Device (NTSC)". I really need to be careful, and always set it back to "Kodi". Why is that?
EDIT 2: Found the solution there, too! It was because I "Reset Mezzmo Database...", and it resets the Device Profile, too! So always when resetting the Mezzmo Database, it will reset the Device Profile, too!

---

Yes, this is because the Media Devices settings (device profiles) are stored in the Mezzmo database in the MGODevices table. Glad you found the answer..


Jeff