What flow for home movies

[wayner]

Any recommendations on what flow to use for home movies and/or how do I change the existing flows to use thumbnails rather than poster files? I tried the list flow but I can't figure out how to change the picture from a poster to a thummbnail.

[jusjoken]

The List Flow always uses a poster. You may want to try the Sage Flow with the Info Options set to Side Background or the Dual Flow with it set to Top Background. Those Flows are good for lists.

Fanart Flow may be the best for using the backgrounds/thumbs in other than a list format. You have control over the Layout in Options/Customize so you can select from 2x3 or 3x4 or 4x6.

The Info Options are set in the Options/Info Options then set Gemstone Info to AlwaysOn or Auto, then pick an Info Style from those offered.

k

[wayner]

Both the Fanart flow and Sage Flow look good, but how do I get them to use the Thumbnail rather than a background? Everything has Thumbnails which I can see by selecting on the file and choosing Manage Metadata - View / Edit Fan Art for this Item (I think that comes from CMT) and I see the thumb in the generated thumbnails folder.

Alternatively if there is no way to use thumbs, any idea on how to automatically copy the thumbnail file to the background or poster file? For example, the thumbnails in GeneratedThumbnails are named like this serverpathfilename.jpg (with no slashes) so for file \\carnoustie\videos\HomeVideos\file1.avi the thumbnail is carnoustievideosHomeVideosfile1avi.jpg. If this file was copied to %fanart%\Movies\file1\Backgrounds\file1background.jpg then you will have created a background file, correct?

Or using a thumbnail creator program to automatically generate Background/Poster files.

If I am going this router then should I copy the thumbnails to Backgrounds or Posters or Both?

[jusjoken]

Not much time right now to give it much thought but I believe BMT has a background generator option...never used it but I recall the feature.

k

[wayner]

I will see if Stuckless did anything for this in BMT. I checked and there was support added for Home Videos a couple of years ago which helps you to browse home movies and it doesn't try to add metadata. But I couldn't find anything about generating backgrounds or posters.

[jusjoken]

The BMT item I was thinking about is the reverse of what you were wanting...it will take fanart and make thumbnails for them which would not be valuable within Gemstone.

As for copying the thumbs to the fanart background folder... in theory that should work. The name of the file would not need changing as it does not matter.... any of the backgrounds in the folder are potential background for Gemstone to use.

To automate the copy you would need to ask elsewhere in the forums.

k