Moving Pictures creates strange thumbnails (1 Viewer)

[qb123]

Hi,

I've got moving pictures set to use the folder.jpg from each movie directory to use as a cover.

But for a few of my movies, it's creating some strange thumbnails that are different from the original. The full-sized covers are ok, it's just the thumbnails that are affected.

Now, I've found a way to fix this, and that's just to convert each of the affected folder.jpg's to a .png and then re-import. I can easily do a batch convert to fix all of them using photoshop.

I'm just wondering why this is happening, is it a bug with MP, or is there something wrong with my original JPEG's?


For reference, I've attached both the original folder.jpg as well as the resulting thumbnail for a few of my movies.

Thanks!

 

[RoChess]

Hi,

I've got moving pictures set to use the folder.jpg from each movie directory to use as a cover.

But for a few of my movies, it's creating some strange thumbnails that are different from the original. The full-sized covers are ok, it's just the thumbnails that are affected.

Now, I've found a way to fix this, and that's just to convert each of the affected folder.jpg's to a .png and then re-import. I can easily do a batch convert to fix all of them using photoshop.

I'm just wondering why this is happening, is it a bug with MP, or is there something wrong with my original JPEG's?


For reference, I've attached both the original folder.jpg as well as the resulting thumbnail for a few of my movies.

Thanks!

MovingPictures covers are more 'Posters' as in front cover, and the folder.jpg images you have are full DVD inlay scans, showing both front and back. MovingPictures simply resizes them to the aspect ratio that it works with. So your problem is that your original images are not the correct kind, so they will require manual crop correction to prevent aspect ratio warping.

Good = The Matrix - Poster/Cover
Bad = The Matrix - DVD Inlay

Keeping the inlays is not a problem, just use a different filename scheme for them, such as "dvd-inlay.jpg"

 

[qb123]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply, but my original folder.jpg's are already the cropped front covers only. (the last 3 attachments)

The problem is that the thumbnails created reverts to the the entire DVD cover (the first 3 attachments)

If you download one of the last 3 attachment images and import it into moving pictures, you'll probably be able to reproduce this issue as I've tried this on 2 different systems already.

 

[RoChess]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply, but my original folder.jpg's are already the cropped front covers only. (the last 3 attachments)

The problem is that the thumbnails created reverts to the the entire DVD cover (the first 3 attachments)

If you download one of the last 3 attachment images and import it into moving pictures, you'll probably be able to reproduce this issue as I've tried this on 2 different systems already.

There is no hidden layer, or other fancy options possible in the JPEG image format. So MovingPictures can't magically create an inlay DVD thumbnail when the original image doesn't contain it.

So you are looking at the wrong images on your system. ZIP up all the small files that reside in one of your movie folders, such as the Batman one, including NFO files and upload it to drop.io website.

 

[qb123]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply, but my original folder.jpg's are already the cropped front covers only. (the last 3 attachments)

The problem is that the thumbnails created reverts to the the entire DVD cover (the first 3 attachments)

If you download one of the last 3 attachment images and import it into moving pictures, you'll probably be able to reproduce this issue as I've tried this on 2 different systems already.

There is no hidden layer, or other fancy options possible in the JPEG image format. So MovingPictures can't magically create an inlay DVD thumbnail when the original image doesn't contain it.

So you are looking at the wrong images on your system. ZIP up all the small files that reside in one of your movie folders, such as the Batman one, including NFO files and upload it to drop.io website.

The thing is, that for those movies, the only files in the respective folders are the movie file and the folder.jpg.

For example the batman movie, situated in the "Batman Returns (1992)" folder are two files: "Batman Returns.avi" and "folder.jpg".

This is is why I am so perplexed by this, and why I posted here. I mean how can MP magically create something out of nothing?

As requested, I uploaded the folder.jpg directly to drop.io, the URL is drop.io cfwweg4

I also downloaded the folder.jpg from the drop.io site and added it to another movie, with the same result. So if you could please try adding it to MP, and see if you can reproduce this issue?

Thanks!

 

[RoChess]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply, but my original folder.jpg's are already the cropped front covers only. (the last 3 attachments)

The problem is that the thumbnails created reverts to the the entire DVD cover (the first 3 attachments)

If you download one of the last 3 attachment images and import it into moving pictures, you'll probably be able to reproduce this issue as I've tried this on 2 different systems already.

There is no hidden layer, or other fancy options possible in the JPEG image format. So MovingPictures can't magically create an inlay DVD thumbnail when the original image doesn't contain it.

So you are looking at the wrong images on your system. ZIP up all the small files that reside in one of your movie folders, such as the Batman one, including NFO files and upload it to drop.io website.

The thing is, that for those movies, the only files in the respective folders are the movie file and the folder.jpg.

For example the batman movie, situated in the "Batman Returns (1992)" folder are two files: "Batman Returns.avi" and "folder.jpg".

This is is why I am so perplexed by this, and why I posted here. I mean how can MP magically create something out of nothing?

As requested, I uploaded the folder.jpg directly to drop.io, the URL is drop.io cfwweg4

I also downloaded the folder.jpg from the drop.io site and added it to another movie, with the same result. So if you could please try adding it to MP, and see if you can reproduce this issue?

Thanks!

You should enable scraper-debug mode (check FAQ, 3rd item), and import *ONE* movie, as the log file is going to be extremly large otherwise. The log file will then show exactly what steps are taken to obtain the image, because it looks like other sources are used.

 

[Arador]

Hope this helps. I had the exact same problem, and I think I have found the solution.
The problem lies in a little known feature of EXIF data called EXIF thumbnails.

Like me you have probably downloaded covers from the net, then cropped them manually to come up with the Folder.jpg for your movie. What I think is happening, is that the original image was created with an app that creates this EXIF thumbnail and stores it in the JPG file. Then when you crop the image and "Save As", it's keeping this original thumbnail in the EXIF data unchanged. This is because most image editing apps don't change the EXIF thumbnail. I use FastStone and this doesn't.

It appears that when Moving Pictures reads the JPG file, and sees this EXIF thumbnail, it uses it for it's own cover thumbnail, ignoring the modified image.

What I did was download a little command line tool called Exiv2, then run the following command on the file...
exiv2 -d t <filename>
This deletes the EXIF thumbnail from the JPG. Problem fixed.
There are other apps that do the same thing in a GUI, like Exifer, but I haven't found a free one yet.

It's actually pretty rare to find a JPG with these thumbnails, but when you do it can be very annoying. Had me stumped for ages!

Cheers

 

[qb123]

Hey mate, thanks for replying to this.

I already converted all my covers to png around a year ago, but it's great to have an answer to why this was happening.

Can't believe I didn't think about the exif data, pretty shameful as I'm an amateur photographer haha.