[CLOSED] Movie folder.jpg files

[pks]

Paul,
I am continuing to work towards migrating from my Windows 7 HTPC with MyMovies, VCD, AnyDVD HD, and Total Media Theater to a Windows 10-based PC using MyMovies, VCD, AnyDVD HD and your CMC. I had to spend a few weeks improving my music collection because it consists largely of old LPs that I ripped to WAV files several years ago and they carried no metadata within each song file. But strangely they showed up looking good in the Windows Media Player and its library. But in your system the metadata was not being picked up. So I converted all of them to m4a files and added metadata to each song. Now they finally seem to work well. In the process, I found some helpful free programs that enabled me to convert all 5,800 wav files to m4a in one bulk process and a good free metadata editor. In case any readers have similar needs, I could pass on the names of these programs.
I am really writing to ask about the movie side of my collection. I have 500 movies, 25% standard definition VIDEO_TS folders, 55% Blu-ray movies stored as ISOs, and 20% ts files (movies recorded off of television that I told you about previously). A number of issues have arisen.
First, I know your system requires a Folder.jpg in each movie folder which is an image of the movie cover. Only about 5% of my collection has such files. Almost all of them have, as an example, Cleopratra.jpg or AffairToRemember.jpg. MyMovies has added mymovies-front.jpg and mymovies-back.jpg and fanart.jpg to most of my folders but not to all of them. So I went into the My Movies Collection, Tools>Settings>Metadata and set Store Front Cover as folder. Jpg, then cleaned all of my metadata as your How-To suggests, and then I updated all my metadata. For much of my collection this populated mymovies-front.jpg and mymovies-back.jpg and fanart.jpg to most folders but not to all. Those folders that did not have a folder.jpg file still do not have one. I had guessed that during the update, MyMovies would have generated a new folder.jpg but it didn’t.
So I began to research how to possibly create a DOS batch file process that would recursively cycle through each movie folder within a drive and copy the existing mymovies-front.jpg file to folder.jpg. I haven’t figured out how to do that yet. Some websites suggest using Windows File Explorer, highlighting the drive, then searching for ,mymovies-front.jpg. This will bring up a list of all of them in each folder. Then highlighting them all using ctrl-A, then renaming one of them folder.jpg. I thought if if I did this, I could then go back to collection Management and update meta-data again to get new mymovies-front.jpg re-established. But the result of the file Explorer renaming process did not create folder.jpg files, it created folder (1).jpg files in each folder. There was no way to make it rename the files as folder.jpg. So this lead me to suspect that the Windows operating system was not seeing me as having exclusive rights to the files and some other system process was running. At any rate, I now think I’m facing having to manually go into each of my 500 movie folders and copy the mymovie-front.jpg files to folder.jpg files so it will be recognized by your system. It does work when I do each folder manually. I just didn’t want to have to do this separately on 500 folders.
Any suggestions would be appreciated. By the way, how many CMC users do you now have?
Pete

[Pauven]

But strangely they showed up looking good in the Windows Media Player and its library. But in your system the metadata was not being picked up.

When I first started working on implementing the Music Library in CMC, I wanted to use the WMP meta-data, which is all stored in a local database file. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the technical specifications for how to read this database, so I wasn't able to extract the meta-data. Because the meta-data lives in the DB and not in the music file, CMC had no meta-data to read. Thanks Microsoft.

I converted all of them to m4a files and added metadata to each song. Now they finally seem to work well. In the process, I found some helpful free programs that enabled me to convert all 5,800 wav files to m4a in one bulk process and a good free metadata editor. In case any readers have similar needs, I could pass on the names of these programs.

Yes, please feel free to share tips and advice on what tools and methods worked for you, as many of us face the same problems.

First, I know your system requires a Folder.jpg in each movie folder which is an image of the movie cover. Only about 5% of my collection has such files. Almost all of them have, as an example, Cleopratra.jpg or AffairToRemember.jpg. MyMovies has added mymovies-front.jpg and mymovies-back.jpg and fanart.jpg to most of my folders but not to all of them. So I went into the My Movies Collection, Tools>Settings>Metadata and set Store Front Cover as folder. Jpg

This is all correct, and should have worked.

then I updated all my metadata. For much of my collection this populated mymovies-front.jpg and mymovies-back.jpg and fanart.jpg to most folders but not to all. Those folders that did not have a folder.jpg file still do not have one. I had guessed that during the update, MyMovies would have generated a new folder.jpg but it didn’t.

That's very odd. This is the first time I've heard of My Movies not generating this data.

So I began to research how to possibly create a DOS batch file process that would recursively cycle through each movie folder within a drive and copy the existing mymovies-front.jpg file to folder.jpg.

While I applaud your resourcefulness, I think you are trying too hard here. My Movies should be doing this for you, and if it isn't then you time is better spent on fixing the My Movies issue, and not creating a new script. I certainly understand you just want it to work, and you're probably frustrated that it doesn't 'just work'.

Also, I do not recommend that you copy mymovies-front.jpg to folder.jpg - they are not the same!!! The mymovies-front.jpg is a large, high resolution image, suitable for full screen viewing. The folder.jpg is a small, almost thumbnail sized image that is perfect for display in the cover rows, and loads super fast. If you use the mymovies-front.jpg file, CMC will have to load a large file (slow, wastes memory), then scale it down to the cover row size (slow, causes aliasing artifacts). If you did this for one or two movies, that's no big deal, but for 95% of your movies that would cause performance issues for CMC.

It's probably worth it to post the folder.jpg issue on the My Movies forum for support. But there are a few troubleshooting steps you can take first:

• When you select a title in My Movies Collection Management (MMCM), you can click a button on the top toolbar for 'Save Meta-data', and it will force MMCM to immediately write all the meta-data and artwork for that title. Have you tried this on a title that isn't generating the folder.jpg?

• Have you tried rebooting? There do seem to be some memory related issues with MMCM that are best fixed by an occasional reboot. Perhaps the setting to "Store front cover as folder.jpg" isn't taking effect without a reboot.

• Have you double-checked that "Store front cover as folder.jpg" is still checked?

• For the titles that are still missing a folder.jpg, have you double-checked that they are configured as either 'Online Folder' or 'Online File'?

• Have you enabled debug logging in MMCM? The logs are hard to read, but they might give a clue as to why the folder.jpg files are not being written.

Let us know how it goes.

Paul

[pks]

Thanks Paul. Lots of good ideas to try. I'll give you some feedback in a while.
Pete

[pks]

Paul,
As you suggested that I pass along for any other readers interested:

To help me convert all of my WAV audio files to m4a files in a single batch process, I found that the Microsoft Store offered "Batch Music Converter" as a free app.

To help me build and edit my m4a metadata, I downloaded another free program at
https://www.luminescence-software.org/e ... ogger.html
called Metatogger.
Worked quite well.

Pete

[pks]

Paul,
Regarding my missing folder.jpg problem, I opened MMCM and verified that "Store front cover as folder.jpg" was checked.

screenshot_1.jpg (272.94 KiB) Viewed 9545 times

Then I hit "Save Meta-Data".

When looking at my movie folder afterwards using File Explorer, folder.jpg was still not there.

Any thoughts?
Pete

[Pauven]

Hey Pete, 2001_SPACE_ODYSSEY.jpg is the folder.jpg file. You can tell because of the small file size. This must be a title configured as an 'Online File', for which the folder.jpg is actually named for the ISO, i.e. <ISOName>.jpg. Only Online Folders will be named folder.jpg.

CMC has logic to use the <ISOName>.jpg file if found, so these should work just fine.

Are you having problems with these not displaying in CMC?

Paul

[Jamie]

Hi Pete,

Are you looking at the CMC logs to see whether CMC is logging any issues. You need to turn on debugging in CMC first. I would first try to fix all the errors in the CMC logs first. After fixing all the log errors you can pursue working on non logged errors. You will have to do this a number of times
until the log file is empty. You may have some corrupted files that need to be replaced which the logs will inform you about.

[Jamie]

Hi Pete,

One last thing. Have you cleaned all your metadata before updating the metadata first? You should do this at least once, before even starting to clean up your metadata. Do it for all your network devices or mymovie drives where you store your movies. It might seem scary for you to do this, but I have done it a number of times since I started using MMBrowser and CMC. After the old metadata is cleaned out using the mymovie clean function, the mymovie update may work better for you. See attachment. The clean button is on the lower right highlighted in baby blue.

metadata_Clean.jpg (619.15 KiB) Viewed 9537 times

[pks]

Paul,
Regarding your reply:
__________________________________________
by Pauven » Tue Dec 11, 2018 11:48 am

Hey Pete, 2001_SPACE_ODYSSEY.jpg is the folder.jpg file. You can tell because of the small file size. This must be a title configured as an 'Online File', for which the folder.jpg is actually named for the ISO, i.e. <ISOName>.jpg. Only Online Folders will be named folder.jpg.

CMC has logic to use the <ISOName>.jpg file if found, so these should work just fine.
__________________________________________

This does work just fine. I just didn't realize it. So I must do a Gilda Radner "Nevermind".

So far - for testing - I had only copied 4 movies to my test Windows 10 PC. They each had a folder.jpg. I picked them because I thought they would only show up in CMC if they had a folder.jpg. (I had previously been working on my music collection where a folder.jpg definitely must exist in each folder.)

So I must have missed somewhere in your documentation that said online files will have a <ISOName>.jpg that CMC will read as a folder.jpg. I have just copied my 2001 SPACE ODYSSEY folder into my test PC. And as it contains a 2001_SPACE_ODYSSEY.jpg it works fine. Sorry to have bothered you.

I am very happy to know that I will not have to make copies and create new folder.jpg's.

Thanks for our help.
Pete

[Pauven]

So I must have missed somewhere in your documentation that said online files will have a <ISOName>.jpg that CMC will read as a folder.jpg. I have just copied my 2001 SPACE ODYSSEY folder into my test PC. And as it contains a 2001_SPACE_ODYSSEY.jpg it works fine. Sorry to have bothered you.

No, you didn't miss it. I just never thought to document it. My oversight, sorry.

Glad it is working for you.

Paul