How to use Movie sheets

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Revision as of 08:38, 2 January 2011 by Recliq (Talk | contribs)

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B-RAD has recently announced the availability of Movie Sheets on the custom fw, here is a short demo of how it looks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNDQxnVkFEM

Introduction

Moviesheets are fullscreen, prerendered images which are displayed as background when you select a folder or media file. There are three basic modes:

  • SHEET
    In sheet mode you will see 7 thumbs or 7 list items (depending on thumb/list mode) at the bottom of the screen and the sheet displayed as background.
  • WALL
    In wall mode you will see 4x3 thumbs or 10 list items on the left of the screen and the sheet displayed as background.
  • STD
    In std mode you will see the normal thumb/list view if no sheet is found and a full screen sheet in foreground (overlaying the thumbs/list) if a sheet is found.



There are currently two different ways to get Moviesheets displaying on WDLXTV:

  • LINKSHEETS
    This is the "old" method of displaying moviesheets. It's a shell script which searches for sheets on your drives and link them in to the OSD. If you have a lot of media files this takes quite some time and this scan is repeated on each reboot.
    Linksheets works on G2, LIVE and PLUS in any newer WDLXTV version!
    • PRO:
      • Very fast display of the sheets while browsing media files. There's almost no delay when the sheets are displayed.
    • CONTRA:
      • Sheet filenames MUST be unique!
      • Scanning on boot takes a long time (depending on how many files to scan)


  • WDTVExt MovieSheet plugin
    This is a WDTVExt plugin which will search for sheet files dynamically while you are browsing your media files.
    • PRO:
      • No time consuming drive scan on boot
      • Ability to hide the movie name when a sheet is present
      • Ability to show full screen std mode sheet in wall and sheet mode
    • CONTRA:
      • Currently only works with WDLXTV versions based on 1.02.21 firmware!
      • Sheets are displayed slower. The delay before they show up depends on the location (network/usb) and the sheet's filename.



You mhave to understand that there are two different types of sheet files:

  • file sheets
    These are sheets for media files.
  • folder Sheets
    These arwe sheets for folder (or directories).


There is a thread on the forum explaining the search algorithm used to search for sheets.
WDLXTV-G2/Live/Plus-0.4.2.1+ MovieSheets Naming conventions
You should really read and understand it!
These file naming conventions are valid for both versions!


Setting it up

I'm going to explain the setup for both versions based on the telnet commands, on recent WDLXTV versions you can also configure most of these options in WEC (WebEnd Configuration) or by putting the commands used here in your S00custom-options file.

Options used for both versions

  • MSHEETMODE=[sheet|wall|std|<nop>'<nop>'] (empty string means off)

This config setting configures the sheet mode. 

config_tool -c MSHEETMODE=sheet


The following config settings define on which browser mode sheets should be used.

  • VIDMSHEET=[ON|OFF]

Use sheets for the video thumbs browse mode. 

config_tool -c VIDMSHEET=ON
  • LISTMSHEET=[ON|OFF]

Use sheets for the video list browse mode. 

config_tool -c LISTMSHEET=ON
  • GENMSHEET=[ON|OFF]

Use sheets for audio/photo thumb browse mode. 

config_tool -c GENMSHEET=ON
  • MSHEETDIR

Configure a central sheet repository. The sheets will be searched in this dir instead of the folder the media file resides in.
(In this example it's a network share mounted as sheets.) 

config_tool -c MSHEETDIR='/tmp/media/usb/sheets'


LINKSHEETS specific options

In order to get Linksheets working you have to set these two options:

  • LINKSHEETS=[ON|OFF]
config_tool -c LINKSHEETS=ON
  • SHOW_FILESIZE_SETTING
config_tool -c SHOW_FILESIZE_SETTING=0


Moviesheet plugin specific options

The Moviesheet plugin offers some extra options which are not available with linksheets.

  • MOVIESHEET_HIDE_TITLE=[ON|OFF]

If this option is set to yes the filename display below the thumbs will be hidden if a sheet is displayed. 

config_tool -c MOVIESHEET_HIDE_TITLE=ON
  • MOVIESHEET_FORCE_STD=[ON|OFF]

This will enable a special mode which makes sense if you have a folder structure where each movie is in it's own folder!
Remember there are two different sheet types (file/folder)?
If you have set your sheet mode to sheet or wall mode and enable this option, the plugin will search for std mode file sheets although we are in sheet or wall mode.So you must have a sheet file that complies with the std sheet naming convention for this to work.
The effect is the following: While browsing the folders of your movies you get the typical wall or sheet display, but when you enter a folder and select a file it will display the fullscreen std mode sheet in foreground instead of the wall or sheet mode file. 

config_tool -c MOVIESHEET_FORCE_STD=ON
  • .force_std_mode

If you create a file called .force_std_mode inside a folder,it triggers the same mode as MOVIESHEET_FORCE_STD, but for a single folder. 

touch /tmp/media/usb/movies/NiceMovie/.force_std_mode
  • MOVIESHEET_DEBUG=[0-5]

This enables the debug log. If you have problems and want to find out what is going on and why your sheets don't display, set this and have a look at /tmp/dmaosd.log. 

config_tool -c MOVIESHEET_DEBUG=5


Remember you can always call these commands automatically via the S00custom-options

Example file structure

Here are some example file structures for different modes:

  • Sheet Mode
File   Description
Movies   folder
Movies/Blade.Runner-1982   folder
Movies/Blade.Runner-1982/Blade.Runner.avi   media file
Movies/Blade.Runner-1982/Blade.Runner.avi_sheet.jpg   generic file sheet
Movies/Blade.Runner-1982/Blade.Runner.jpg   file thumb
Movies/Blade.Runner-1982/Blade.Runner-1982_sheet.jpg   generic folder sheet
Movies/Blade.Runner-1982/folder.jpg   folder thumb
  • Sheet/Wall/Std Mode combined setup (let's you switch between modes)
File   Description
Movies   folder
Movies/Blade.Runner-1982   folder
Movies/Blade.Runner-1982/Blade.Runner.avi   media file
Movies/Blade.Runner-1982/Blade.Runner.avi_sheet.sheet.jpg   sheet mode file sheet
Movies/Blade.Runner-1982/Blade.Runner.avi_sheet.std.jpg   std mode file sheet
Movies/Blade.Runner-1982/Blade.Runner.avi_sheet.wall.jpg   wall mode file sheet
Movies/Blade.Runner-1982/Blade.Runner.jpg   file thumb
Movies/Blade.Runner-1982/Blade.Runner-1982_sheet.sheet.jpg   sheet mode folder sheet
Movies/Blade.Runner-1982/Blade.Runner-1982_sheet.wall.jpg   wall mode folder sheet
Movies/Blade.Runner-1982/folder.jpg   folder thumb


  • Sheet Mode with Std Mode file sheets
File   Description
Movies   folder
Movies/Blade.Runner-1982   folder
Movies/Blade.Runner-1982/.force_std_mode   options file
Movies/Blade.Runner-1982/Blade.Runner.avi   media file
Movies/Blade.Runner-1982/Blade.Runner.avi_sheet.std.jpg   std mode file sheet
Movies/Blade.Runner-1982/Blade.Runner.jpg   file thumb
Movies/Blade.Runner-1982/Blade.Runner-1982_sheet.sheet.jpg   sheet mode folder sheet
Movies/Blade.Runner-1982/folder.jpg   folder thumb


--Recliq 16:38, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Generating the sheets

Now you need to generate the actual data for your movie collection. The easiest available way to do this is via the "ThumbGen" utility (you can get it here).

To use ThumbGen for movie sheets (and not just thumbnails) you must have some kind of template, and you can find some of these on the wdtvforums here (thanks to QuickSurfer for the great post).

(still missing step by step instructions on updating moviesheets... )

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