Over at the WDTV Forum, I notice a lot of questions about getting thumbnails into your WDTV. Mostly for video, sometimes for audio. Here’s a quick run down on how it goes for Windows users.
Getting the pictures…
For movie posters, I mostly use IMP Awards. If that fails me (mostly on obscure movies from half a century ago –I’m looking at you, Promises! Promises!) I just use Google Image Search. The WDTV thumbnails for videos are 120×180, or a 2:3 aspect ratio. I tend to keep my images as large as possible while maintaining that aspect ratio (and simple math): 200×300, 400×600, 800×1200, etc. If you don’t already have an image editing tool, Paint.net is a good, free, and simple Windows option. There’s also the Photoshop-esque Gimp for all platforms. Be aware that the WDTV doesn’t like progressive scan JPEGs, save the files as either baseline or baseline optimized profiles.
TV shows can be a bit of a problem. While you can just use a movie poster to represent a movie, what represent a TV show? I use DVD covers or promo posters trawled from Google or IMP Awards for my directories, but individual thumbs for each episode take a little more work.
Fortunately, I found this handy guide for XBMC users. With a little tweaking, it’s great for WDTV users too. Step one is to get ffmpeg, and insert it in your system PATH somehow. The lazy man (read: me) can just put the executable in C:\Windows\System32\. The smart man would edit the system PATH variable itself. Once that’s done, open up your friendly neighbourhood Command Prompt and navigate to your video files. Once you’ve gotten there, use this command string:
for %i in (*.avi) do ffmpeg -i "%i" -f mjpeg -t 0.001 -ss 180 -y "%~ni.jpg"
That command will create a JPEG of the frame 3 minutes (180 seconds) into each file in the directory, and give it the same name as the original video file. You can replace .avi with .mkv or whatever other format your videos are in. If you feel up to it, you can resize and crop the resulting images down to the 2:3 aspect ratio the WDTV prefers, or just leave them as is and have some blank space in your thumbnails.
Setting up the thumbnails
So now you’ve got all your pictures, what do you do with them? Well, the TV episode thumbs are already in the right place, and properly named. That was easy.
Movie posters and TV covers take a touch more work. Copy your movie poster into the same directory as the movie, and give it the same name as the movie. Mallrats.jpg goes with Mallrats.mkv. Voila!
What if you have a whole bunch of movies in one directory, and one some kind of overall picture for the folder, like a general “Movies” picture? That’s also simple. Drop the JPEG in the directory and call it folder.jpg. Note: That is the word folder, not the name of the folder.
MP3s (also: MP4s)
MP3 files can have their embedded artwork read by the WDTV. Pretty much any decent media player can embed artwork in the metadata of an MP3. There are also some specialized tools, like Mp3tag, that exist only for MP3 (and MP4) tagging. make sure you embed JPEGs!
Questions? Leave a comment and I’ll try to answer them.
HELP!
ffmpeg installed. Tick.
“and navigate to your video files.”
How do I do this.
Say a file is in D drive under video then in folder The Matrix.
How do I navigate to there using the DOS way?
Then do I have to type the instruction for each video file in the video folder or can I go back one step and insert if for all?
Thanks.
Michael
By: Michael on October 3, 2009
at 6:30 pm
I was looking for a guide like this over un hour and now i finally found it! =)
great guide! thanx!
By: teo on October 11, 2009
at 4:53 am
I have the wdtv Live and when I place a jpg and an avi by the same name in a folder i get the avi with the thumbnail but I also get a jpg in the same folder. so if i have 4 movies in a folder I also have 4 jpgs for a total of eight files. It seems that others are experiencing this also.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
By: Matt Geffel on October 17, 2009
at 7:39 pm
@Michael: Yes, navigate the DOS way. The “cd” command, cd Videos\Movies\Matrix, or whatever your actual file path is.
@Matt Geffel: Yes, you’re putting a JPG in the folder. That’s what the WDTV uses as the thumbnail. It doesn’t get added into the video or a database or anything, the WDTV just reads the file and shows it as a thumbnail for the video with the same name. It’s expected behavior.
By: Scoops on October 19, 2009
at 3:50 pm
I have placed jpegs with the exact nave as avi’s in the same directory on my wdtv and it doesn’t show the thumnail on the wdtv . . . . any thoughts?
By: Joe on October 24, 2009
at 3:32 am
Might the JPEGs be using progressive compression? That’s the first thing that I used to run in to.
By: Scoops on October 27, 2009
at 12:46 pm
@ Scoops: The thumbnail issue is a widely reported bug with the WDTV live encountered when accessing video files over a network share. Instead of working like the WDTV mark 1, the live version (just via network share) incorrectly shows you thumbnails of both the .jpg and .avi. Pretty annoying when you’re browsing through videos. Hopefully they’ll issue a firmware fix soon.
By: John Bloggs on October 27, 2009
at 9:33 am
Thanks, I didn’t know that. I’ve only dealt with my original WDTV.
By: Scoops on October 27, 2009
at 12:47 pm
Very Useful! You can use irfanVIew to batch-crop to 200×300 dimensions.
@Matt Geffel: select all jpgs > right Click > properties > hidden
if you don’t like the clutter
By: paris on November 13, 2009
at 5:02 pm