video artwork problem..

[blastman]

hey guys,

I'm now a fully paid up member of the club

I'm running both download studio and mezzmo on my htpc and I'm loving it.

I do an issues i hope someone can help me with please.

My wife spent ages going through all 150 films in our videos playlist, openning the propities on each one and locating some internet artwork for the files.

The problem is two fold.

1 - even after we saved everything, a few hours later all the artwork had disapeared leaving nothing but the opening scene as the artwork.

2 - in a future release can we choose between searching for DVD sized covers and movie posters please??

I have a Samsung BR player and is only has the option for wide screen thumbnails causing the DVD cover style images to be stretched.

Thanks in advance

[Adric]

With the first problem I was wondering if you have a maintain library scheduled? Also are you running the latest version of our software?

We will take this suggestion on board as to choosing what thumbnail covers are being used.

[blastman]

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, I do have the latest software and yes I do also have maintain libery turn on (with all default options.)

I've now started download the wide screen posters myself and then adding them to the video files one at a time. this was working fine when i went to bed (11pm) but has now all but one gone back to the opening scene as the artwork.

The maintaince was scheduled for 3am, do u think that it's stripping the artwork out?

[blastman]

small update,

After turning off the 'update information' part of the maintaince all seems to be ok. well, the artwork I attached to files yesterday are still there.

Also, is there any chance in the next update you can allow mezzmo to auto attach artwork if a jpg file with the same name is found in the same folder as the video file??

I'll then be able to easily add the wide screen posters to each file so it looks good on my Samsung BR player.

Thanks again

[Paul]

Here's a quick explanation of external artwork files that the current version of Mezzmo understands:

1. [filename].jpg / [filename].png

If you have a video file like:

Inception.mkv

Then you just need to have an image (JPEG or PNG) in the same folder with the same name, like this:

Inception.jpg

If you add this video to your Mezzmo library, then the JPG will be used as the artwork for the video. This lets you have nice DVD artwork for your videos or CD album artwork for your music. If the video/music is already in your library, then use 'Maintain Library' to update all the properties of the media files and Mezzmo will grab the JPG as the artwork.

The above applies to both video and music files.

2. folder.jpg / folder.png

If you have a file called 'folder.jpg' or 'folder.png' in a folder on your harddisk that also has audio or video files, then this image file will be used for the artwork for the files in that folder by Mezzmo. It is a really easy way to put artwork for an entire album of music. The artwork will be grabbed by Mezzmo when you add the folder of music/video files or when you use 'Maintain Library' to update all aspects of your media. For example, a folder of music may look like:

LadyGaga-Track1.mp3
LadyGaga-Track2.mp3
LadyGaga-Track3.mp3
LadyGaga-Track4.mp3
folder.jpg

The above applies to both video and music files.

3. [filename].xml / mymovies.xml

If you are not familiar with 'mymovies.xml', I suggest you search the web for a detailed explanation. Briefly, it is an XML fie that contains title, genre, actors, directors, cover art, etc. for a movie or TV show. If you have one with the same name as your video file, then Mezzmo will read it and put all this nice information into your Mezzmo library. It really can help organize your movies. For example, a matching video and XML file would look like:

Inception.mkv
Inception.xml

The above applies to video files only.

[RMatic]

@Paul: Do you know if the [filename.xml] based artwork scheme works with .VOB video containers in a VIDEO_TS folder (like those generated by some rippers)?

I rip my DVDs to .VOB containers (which are essentially MPEG-2 encoded streams) because they are directly playable on my Sony Bravia without transcoding. (I don't think my Home Server has the CPU horsepower to do MP4 transcoding).

I'm asking this, because I have ripped my DVD into the following Library folder: Library / Video / Movies / [Movie Title] / VIDEO_TS. I have the [Movie Title].xml file in the [Movie Title] folder and Mezzmo does not appear to read it to display all the information in it. As a test, I even copied the .xml file to the VIDEO_TS sub-folder and it still doesn't display the movie information.

Something, I'm doing wrong? Any help would be appreciated.

[perovskite]

Thank you for your explanation of the video artwork retrieval method. Is there a way to force Mezzmo to generate a thumbnail from the video instead of searching for .jpg, .png, or .xml files inside of the folder? My problem is this:

I have a few folders of TV programs sorted by TV show name. Each show folder contains a folder.jpg file for use for generating a FOLDER image when using the Media Browser plugin for Windows Media Center (for playing those files on my computer or sending it to my Xbox 360). I use Mezzmo to send files to my LG BD590 Blu-ray player. It works fantastic, but it's using that folder.jpg as the thumbnail for every episode within that folder. Having the thumbnail generated from the video file itself instead of using the folder.jpg makes it easier to distinguish one episode from another. I have a 3-year-old who can't read, so when I'm scrolling through episodes, she uses the thumbnail to tell whether or not she has seen the episode or not.

I know I can manually set the thumbnail for every individual file, but I was hoping I could get Mezzmo to do this automatically.

Let me just add, like everyone else, how much I love Mezzmo. I spent over a month finally getting PS3 Mediaserver to "work" with my LG BD590 (especially getting it to transcode .MOV files properly), and I could still never get thumbnails to show up on it using PS3MS. Mezzmo worked wonderfully and simply after getting a patched .EXE file from support to get artwork sent properly to the LG.

[JamboUK]

I have had the same problem as the original poster. Look up all the art work from the internet via 'Properties' and then as soon as the 'maintain library' option is automatically run then everything is overwritten by the first scene/frame of the movie. The folder contains no external artwork as Paul describes.

It is very frustrating to find all the art work for each file off the internet and then for it to be completely wiped and put back to how it was before adding artwork. I don't believe the original question has been answered as any responses talk about external artwork.

[Paul]

@Paul: Do you know if the [filename.xml] based artwork scheme works with .VOB video containers in a VIDEO_TS folder (like those generated by some rippers)?

I rip my DVDs to .VOB containers (which are essentially MPEG-2 encoded streams) because they are directly playable on my Sony Bravia without transcoding. (I don't think my Home Server has the CPU horsepower to do MP4 transcoding).

I'm asking this, because I have ripped my DVD into the following Library folder: Library / Video / Movies / [Movie Title] / VIDEO_TS. I have the [Movie Title].xml file in the [Movie Title] folder and Mezzmo does not appear to read it to display all the information in it. As a test, I even copied the .xml file to the VIDEO_TS sub-folder and it still doesn't display the movie information.

Something, I'm doing wrong? Any help would be appreciated.

It should be in the same folder and have the same name, apart from that it doesn't matter what the video format is. Can you please send in your .xml file to support (at) conceiva (dot) com and I'll see if there's anything about it that makes Mezzmo reject it (as a possibility).

I have had the same problem as the original poster. Look up all the art work from the internet via 'Properties' and then as soon as the 'maintain library' option is automatically run then everything is overwritten by the first scene/frame of the movie. The folder contains no external artwork as Paul describes.

It is very frustrating to find all the art work for each file off the internet and then for it to be completely wiped and put back to how it was before adding artwork. I don't believe the original question has been answered as any responses talk about external artwork.

To keep your artwork during maintenance you need to set "Update only missing information", because if you set "Update all information", then it overwrites everything during maintenance.

[RMatic]

It should be in the same folder and have the same name, apart from that it doesn't matter what the video format is. Can you please send in your .xml file to support (at) conceiva (dot) com and I'll see if there's anything about it that makes Mezzmo reject it (as a possibility).

Thanks, Dennis.
I have sent one of my movie .xml file to the support e-mail address.