This blog is not updated anymore.
Visit http://thumbgen.codeplex.com for news and details about ThumbGen

05 January 2010

Pending tasks and requests for future releases

This post will inform you about the current pending tasks and their status. Please post your comments/feedback/suggestions here (the bugs or the issues strictly related to some version can be posted in the version's own post). The items that are strikethrough are fixed and will be available in the version displayed in brackets.


I started  to organize my issues/tasks a bit better

Pending:
  • Add user-defined profiles (ie. Movies-profile, TVShows-profile, Xtreamer-profile, etc)
  • Redesign mainpage and implement a Startup wizard 
  • Offer a simple default template in Templates subfolder
  • Multilanguage support for ThumbGen GUI (really needed?) (later)
  • Refactoring and code optimization (v1.0)
  • Create documentation/help for ThumbGen (later)

Known bugs:
  • Encoding issues for MoviePosterDB.com
Music files support will NOT be implemented (there are tools to embed artwork inside mp3 and I am not using the WDTV to listen to music anyway).

79 comments:

  1. Looking good! Interested to see the next release!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Looks promissing. Is it possible to automatically grab the 1st frame from the movie & use that as the thumbnail, in fully automatic mode?

    ReplyDelete
  3. It will be possible but not in the next release. I plan to have a special release (0.11) when I will work mainly to improve automatic mode.

    ReplyDelete
  4. very good job! I like your application!
    could we have an option to choose the name of the moviesheet : wdtv.jpg (what it is actualy) or same name as the movie (moviename.jpg (because all my movies are in one directory!))
    and the last request : allocine.fr for the french guys like me!

    ReplyDelete
  5. 2 x Yes :)

    The destination moviesheet filename will be user-defined and I will include also allocine.fr (as I do not have a French movieinfo provider yet).

    ReplyDelete
  6. Not sure if this is in the works (or if it's already an option i have yet to find), but being able to select and deselect countries/languages for the images would be great to have.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi

    No, it is not possible and not doable, as only one or two images providers have the language information. Currently most you can do is to select/unselect provider based on you main language. Dedicated French and German providers will be added soon. I will check also if it is possible to filter countries/languages for images but I do not have big hopes... That would help me a lot during automatic processing; let's see what I can do ;)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Amazing! The program I was searching!

    But only for Windows!! Could be possible to have a OSX version ;-) ... or ... if possible I'll give you a help to port to OSX / Java!

    Thanks a lot!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Sorry, but I am not interested in porting it to OSX/Java. It is done using .NET 3.5 and will stay a Win app. Anyway as I know there are several ways of running Windows apps on OSX.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hello,
    You have made a wonderful job with Thumbgen!

    I am using a lot the option to add episode numbers to a thumbnail. I would find very useful the following features:
    * Auto detect the chapter/season from the filename: it's very easy to parse the usual file formats. In you have a look to this class
    http://tinyurl.com/ycjqwk7 you can see the regular expresions necesasry to parse it.
    * Generation of all the thumbnails for a season, although there are episodes missing. Although this can sound weird, it's a very common scenario: I have the first 10 episodes of the current season, and I know that in the following weeks new episodes will be downloaded, so it would be easier to generate all the season at a time.


    Thank you and best regards.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Regarding the first issue I already extract the season/episode if they match the common patterns (I think I can detect even combinations that the class u've sent does not cover). I will anyway add support for all formats supported by that class. What TG cannot do (yet) is to put custom format for Season/Episode as CustomText. Currently TG can put only the Episode number as custom text (if u deselect the checkbox in the "Choose it for all" dialog.

    Regarding the second thing...how would you know the future episode files will have the same name as the today-generated thumbnail? This leads to some confusion...but I'll think about something in the near future.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Check here http://wdtvforum.com/main/index.php?topic=3345.msg35564#msg35564 for a quick guide how to put episode number automatically over the thumbnail.

    ReplyDelete
  13. How do you enable movie sheets? I have double-checked and re-downloaded most the current version. Thanks and sorry if I missed this instruction on this page or the post on the WDTVForums.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Just upgrade to v0.11.3 and that's it ;) There's no need anymore to "enable" it.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Thanks for your great work!
    the french site Cine-Passion is welcome!
    A bug ? :
    for the cast : when there is a lot of actors, the names exceeding the line are not on the moviesheet ! they just stop after the last name we can see on the line "cast :"

    ReplyDelete
  16. That depends on the template you have used. Most of them limit the displayed actors number to 3 or 5.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Even if I have a lot of place for the actors and allow multiline on the template, it happens !

    ReplyDelete
  18. Check the Template/Settings/Actors/@MaximumValues attribute inside the template.xml file. There is the limit.

    ReplyDelete
  19. ok I found it in the xml (number of actors), thanks !

    ReplyDelete
  20. Hi there,
    I've tried the last three versions of ThumbGen, but none of them are working on my Win XP SP3 system.
    I receive an unexpected error.
    System.NullReferenceException: Der Objektverweis wurde nicht auf eine Objektinstanz festgelegt.
    bei System.Windows.SplashScreen.DestroyResources ()
    bei System.Windows.SplashScreen.CreateLayeredWindowFromImgBuffer(...)
    bei System.Windows.SplashScreen.Show(Boolean autoClose)
    bei ThumbGen.App.OnStartup)StartupEventArgs e)
    bei System.Windows.Application.<.ctor>b__0(Object unused)
    bei System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.InternalReal(...)
    bei System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.TryCatchWhen(...)

    Any idea what that means?
    Best regards
    Georg

    ReplyDelete
  21. :( I am sorry. It is the stupid splash screen. I will take it off completely as it was causing only problems. Funny is that on my WinXP SP3 it is working without problems. Try not to change focus with the mouse during ThumbGen's startup. Maybe this helps... in the next days I will make a new build and the splash screen will be out.

    ReplyDelete
  22. I've tried not to change the focus, even with starting ThumGen via command prompt but unfortunately without success.
    I'll appreciate it a lot if you'd remove the splash screen then.
    Thanx a lot.
    Regards
    Georg

    ReplyDelete
  23. I assume you have .NET 3.5 SP1 installed.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Of course!
    I also reinstalled it, just to make sure that there's no problem with it.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Ok, thx. I will remove the Splash ASAP (next days)

    ReplyDelete
  26. Hi there,
    it's still not running on my PC, the error message is even bigger. I don't want to type everything.
    I've been looking for the log.txt (the error message is saying that I should send the log.txt to the author) but I couldn't find it.
    I'll try it on another PC later.
    Just wondering about the huge error message.
    Thanks for your support.
    Cheers
    Georg

    ReplyDelete
  27. The log.txt file is located near the ThumbGen.exe and should contain the full debug message of the exception.

    ReplyDelete
  28. It's definitely not there...
    It' all very strange. I don't have any other problems with my PC.

    ReplyDelete
  29. I'm not sure if it is somehow connected to a complete re-installation of the dot-net stuff but it's running perfectly fine now.
    Thank so much, it is really a great tool!
    Cheers

    ReplyDelete
  30. first, thaks a lot,

    sorry for my bad english,

    please, study www.filmaffinity.com for the spanish people.

    Now only one page in spanish (alpacine)

    thaks a lot again

    ReplyDelete
  31. Sorry but not a high priority the filmaffinity.com website. There is already a Spanish provider... other languages are waiting in the queue...

    ReplyDelete
  32. ThumbGen as always thanks for the tool. It has been an absolute pleasure to have worked with the tool in all of it's development stages from the early days (like it has been so long!). Look how active your thread is over at WDTVForum. Congrats! Its are on being able to have wondered though what your thoughts are on being able to add/change the media info beyond what you have now. Is this something that cn be done? I noticed for example that the Video Codec isn't the value that I would want to use in the template. Is it even possible to allow free editing of the media info fields from within Thumbgen so that the values are updated on the Template? Thanks again for all of your efforts

    ReplyDelete
  33. Yes, I plan to extend the MediaInfo Editor soon.

    ReplyDelete
  34. First of all many thanks for this great tool.
    I wonder if it could be implemented to have several tokens for the different audio tracks. I use to have always the Origial Version track plus the Spanish one. The audio is not even always encoded in the same format.
    I mean having %AUDIO_1_CODECTEXT% ,%AUDIO_2_CODECTEXT% , etc. Also new %AUDIO_x_LANGUAGE% tokens will be great

    ReplyDelete
  35. When I will work on extending the MediaInfo editor I will think about adding support for multiple audio streams (and languages if available). For video streams I think it doesn't make sense.

    I do not want to extend so much that I do a GUI for MediaInfo library :) :)

    ReplyDelete
  36. You could include collectors in Spanish as filmaffinity and alpacine?

    Can make backdrops taking snapshots from the film?

    Thanks! :)

    ReplyDelete
  37. I would say alpacine is included since more than 2 months :) Filmaffinity will come (maybe) a bit later.

    Making backdrops from snapshots is an interesting idea, I will put it on my TODO list.

    ReplyDelete
  38. You're right, mine was a mistake ...
    That may include Filmaffinity? :))

    ReplyDelete
  39. As I already support a Spanish provider the Filmaffinity will have very low priority. I would rather support a different language...

    ReplyDelete
  40. Has anyone been successful running Thumbgen using mono / wine on Linux?

    ReplyDelete
  41. i tried to run it using wine, but no success, even if i install the windows version of mono, so i had to install a virtual xp, which is an extreme slowdown :(
    if anybody succeeds running it on OSX/Linux, i would be very interested...

    error message (may help):

    fixme:actctx:parse_manifest_buffer root element is L"asmv1:assembly", not
    fixme:actctx:parse_manifest_buffer root element is L"asmv1:assembly", not

    ** (G:\tmp\ThumbGen 0.12.23\ThumbGen.exe:25): WARNING **: The following assembly referenced from G:\tmp\ThumbGen 0.12.23\ThumbGen.exe could not be loaded:
    Assembly: PresentationFramework (assemblyref_index=3)
    Version: 3.0.0.0
    Public Key: 31bf3856ad364e35
    The assembly was not found in the Global Assembly Cache, a path listed in the MONO_PATH environment variable, or in the location of the executing assembly (G:\tmp\ThumbGen 0.12.23\).


    ** (G:\tmp\ThumbGen 0.12.23\ThumbGen.exe:25): WARNING **: Could not load file or assembly 'PresentationFramework, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' or one of its dependencies.
    The entry point method could not be loaded

    i want to try something now, i will post a message if it works :)

    ReplyDelete
  42. ThumbGen requires .NET 3.5 SP1 (incl.WPF) so it is NOT supported by Mono.

    ReplyDelete
  43. i didn't know mono doesn't support .net 3.5
    and in fact, i was never interested in a so called 'platform independent' framework which runs ONYL on winows :)
    i'm trying to install .net via wine, but it seems the last working version is 3.0 :(

    ReplyDelete
  44. Nobody said .NET is a "platform independent framework" you probably understood it wrong.

    Mono does not support WPF that is the problem.

    For Linux platform you must use some other apps. Sorry.

    ReplyDelete
  45. btw, i tried tvixie, movie gui builder and thumbgen, and thumbgen is FAR the superior ;)
    i only miss two features: one is port.hu and hungarian imdb support, the other is the way tvixie works: first it downloads all move info, and after that it asks for each of them
    this way i can leave it alone for one-two hours, and when i'm back, i only have to choose which plot/thumbnail/etc to use

    i didn't find this behaviour in thumbgen (maybe i simply missed it...), but this way the time i need to spend before the computer would be much shorter

    ReplyDelete
  46. i don't want to use other app, thumbgen is too good to drop it :D
    so i will keep my virtual xp...

    ReplyDelete
  47. Port.hu will be added in a later version (already in my list).

    TG has several ways of getting info: imdb, preferred collector,nfo file (xbmc, mymovies) and you can define priorities (if one source is missing info then the next one is used). If one source is missing only some items they are filled up with data from imdb. That's the way TG works. Don't forget to autogenerate metadata; after 2 months when u want to switch to some nicer template, you just do it by pressing a button.

    ReplyDelete
  48. yes, autogenerating metadata is a very useful tool, after port.hu is support is included, i will generate the .nfo files to speed up

    btw, if you need help for port.hu support (translation, anything), you have a volunteer ;)

    ReplyDelete
  49. Actually if you store metadata you can forget about .nfo files. The movie-info is stored also inside metadata and used later to identify movie, to rebuild sheet, etc. Really no need to generate .nfo files anymore. They are mainly used to import infos from xbmc/mymovies.

    Thanks but I already have everything I need for port.hu, I just need to find 1-2 hours to verify and implement. You'll have it most probably in the next release.

    ReplyDelete
  50. ah, so the metadata is the compressed file, for some reason i was mixing it with the .nfo... thanks for enlightening :)

    ReplyDelete
  51. Yes, the metadata (.tgmd) contains all things (.nfo/cover/background/fanarts) required to be able to regenerate a sheet later using a different template. Check FileBrowser's button "Create sheets from metadata"; you can recreate thumbnails, sheets and use latest rating from imdb.

    ReplyDelete
  52. the new (.24) version doesn't create the config.xml file, i had to download and run the prev. version (.23) after that the new one runs

    ReplyDelete
  53. Oh! Thanks for reporting!

    ReplyDelete
  54. v0.12.26 should fix the (critical) issue. Thanks again!

    ReplyDelete
  55. and one more: the keywords are created based on the file/folder name, by removing dots. but if there's only one letter before the dot, it isn't removed

    for example, a.funny.movie generates the keywords a.funny movie

    this can be quite frustrating for languages where there are valid words with only one letter (like 'a' or 'i' in english)

    ReplyDelete
  56. Good to know :) I didn't notice. Added to my list for next version.

    ReplyDelete
  57. I could translate the GUI strings to german if wanted.

    ReplyDelete
  58. Thanks a lot for the offer but for the moment I don't plan to localize ThumbGen. I plan to add some more features and just when I have a stable "release" version (that has a version number bigger than 0.x.x.x) then I will think about localization.

    ReplyDelete
  59. Okay. If the time has come, contact me. ps: I'm scorp84 in the wdtvforum.com. We had allready contact :)

    ReplyDelete
  60. sometimes it freezes at the 'preparing results' screen, usually with the same movies
    for example at 'final destination' it always freezes. i tried to select different collectors, but it's still the same :( is there any log where i could find the reason of the problem?

    ReplyDelete
  61. log.txt is generated right near the thumbgen.exe

    I just tried with a dummy "final destination.avi" file and TheMovieDB.org and works well. I would say the mediainfo is hanging maybe. What kind of file is your movie?

    ReplyDelete
  62. log.txt is not created (i have to kill the app with the task manager)

    the movie is this release:

    -rwxr-xr-x 1 doc users 1468966912 2010-01-08 04:33 Vegso.allomas.1.2000.iNT.DVDrip.XviD.Dual.AC3.5.1-RH.avi
    -rwxr-xr-x 1 doc users 3298 2010-01-08 04:32 Vegso.allomas.1.2000.iNT.DVDrip.XviD.Dual.AC3.5.1-RH.nfo

    tried with the latest, .27 version of thumbgen, by enabling only TheMoveDB.org, and the result is the same
    the strange is, that all the other parts of that move (2-4) work, with the same directory/file name, the only difference is the number in the name

    hm, i found something: while thumbgen is frozen, the movie file is open by the samba daemon, so TG opens the file, but doesn't close it, maybe it's stuck in a loop, or simply wants to read too much

    PS: YEAH! i created a new directory with a 0 byte file with the same name, and now it works...

    ReplyDelete
  63. I feel it is a mediainfo problem. Can you please try to open that file inside the mediainfo application? I _never_ open a movie file, mediainfo does that job.

    ReplyDelete
  64. what's that medainfo application?

    ReplyDelete
  65. Visit http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en/Download

    I use mediainfo library internally to extract media info.

    Visit also http://forum.wdlxtv.com ... a lot of nice things there

    ReplyDelete
  66. i installed the most recent (.30) version, and started to create moviesheets for my series, using port.hu and tvdb
    the problem is that the title, genre, etc. are gathered correctly, but the plot is always in english (i checked the port.hu website, and the hungarian plot text is there). i tried series like Dexter, Day break, Farscape, and it's always the same. Is it a bug in thumbgen, or am I doing sth wrong?

    ReplyDelete
  67. Normally u can't automatically combine info from port.hu and tvdb (or generally between two collectors). You have to combine info manually using the movieinfo editor.

    I recommend always to process movies separately from TVShows. If you click on the port.hu returned movie and then in MovieInfo combobox source you go to "Selected collector" you will see the Hungarian plot.

    The English plot comes probably from tvdb that is selected as preferred collector.

    ReplyDelete
  68. no, my preferred is port.hu, and even if i select port.hu and 'selected collector', i still see the english language plot (with the hungarian title)

    i will play with it a little, maybe i find a good solution

    but if not, that's not a catastrophe, i can copy/paste the plots for the few series

    btw, is there any up to date howto about series moviesheet generation? especially about episode plots (english is also OK, i guess there are no hungarian plots for the episodes), it's always empty for me :(

    ReplyDelete
  69. ToniNegri posted some nice templates and HowTo on http://wdtvlive.net

    Also try to search on youtube.com for moviesheets and ThumbGen. Some user posted a lot of nice comprehensive movies with ThumbGen's usage.

    ReplyDelete
  70. hm, this looks good: http://www.wdtvlive.net/showthread.php?33-Cylent-s-Original-Showcase-Templates-TVShow-and-Movie-Pack

    ReplyDelete
  71. oh, and one more: the overscan options is excellent for CRT TVs, kthx!

    ReplyDelete
  72. Good it helped! ;) (it is used also by a lot of LCD TV users as well)

    ReplyDelete
  73. :-o
    i tried FlashForward, selected TheTVDB.com and 'current collector' instead of preferred (which is port.hu), and even the episode plot is in hungarian :-o
    and what's strange is: if i leave the combobox on 'preferred', fields like episode list, or episode plot are missing, and they are the same as for movies...

    ReplyDelete
  74. I would _always_ use thetvdb.com as Preferred when processing TVShows. Use a different profile for tvshows and process them separately from movies. Choose also Hungarian as language for TVShows in Options (but I don't think there is Hungarian movie info on tvdb.com)

    ReplyDelete
  75. yes, i use different profiles, but i forgot to set tvdb as preferred, i will try it that way
    wow, the hungarian episode plots are there on thetvdb.com :D

    ReplyDelete
  76. Hi, i have a film with two audio streams, i´m trying to put info of my languaje and i can edit all except something, i can´t change DTS for AC3 couse though i put DD51, DTS steel is in moviesheet... could somebody let me know if it´s possible to do it?

    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  77. Anonymous said...

    Well, i answer my question, editing .nfo file on tag audiocodec you can change it; then, with quicksheet --> use custom data can generate a new datasheet... would be good in next revisions to change it on Media Info Tab editing media info.

    Greetings from Spain

    ReplyDelete
  78. Thanks for posting back and for your suggestion!

    ReplyDelete