New: Picture and Video thumbnail rework in MP2 (1 Viewer)

[morpheus_xx]

Hi all,

while I was trying to bring more graphics to MP2 skins, I had to find out that video thumbs are not working at all.

So I did some investigation and found that Microsoft provides some shell interfaces to query it's thumbnail cache. The shell APIs got improved in Win7, so I decided to use the Windows® API Code Pack for Microsoft® .NET Framework - Home library to access them.

Features:

• Get thumbnails from pictures and videos
• Get different resolution thumnbail (32,96,256,1024 width/height max)
• Use the same cache as the Windows Explorer.

This means, all media items (picture and video) can be shown in MP2 gui in 4 different resolutions and are based on Win7 standard libraries/API.

I already modifed "NewSkin" to use thumbs in Local Media Navigation, see attached pictures.

Comments and ideas are welcome, code you can find in branch 20110417-Thumbnail_Rework

Morpheus

 

[jameson_uk]

does / can Windows create thumbs for TS files?

 

[disaster123]

AW: New: Picture and Video thumbnail rework in MP2

Yes it can - works fine here (MP1 recorded tv shows have thumbs in win7 explorer)

 

[tourettes]

Are those thumbnails generated at the media import time (in background) or just when they are needed? In MP1 it is giving quite bad user experience when we generate those only when they are needed for the 1st time.

 

[morpheus_xx]

AW: New: Picture and Video thumbnail rework in MP2

My current version does load the thumnbnails synchronous on usage from skin (slow on first time), but I already implemented the asynch way.

There is only a small issue I have to solve, when the Image has a Source (thumb) and a FallbackSource (default image). In Asynch loading there is a "refresh" missing to tell the image that the Source is ready and the FallbackSource should not be used any longer.

The thumbnail cache is in Vista+ no longer stored inside the media folder, but in User\ProgramData\Microsoft\Explorer (or sth. like this) on the client PC.

The API does offer some flags, to decide if only cached images should be returned, or also to create new ones.

I think about the server implementation, and if we should pass the thumbs from "Server->Server ThumbCache->Client" or if the "Client->Client ThumbCache->Dokan mounted Server file" is the better way.

 

[Albert]

AW: New: Picture and Video thumbnail rework in MP2

Morph, do you know MP2's AsyncThumbnailGenerator? That would be the right place to query the MS API for thumbnails. IIRC, the Image classes in the SkinEngine already query AsyncThumbnailGenerator and know how to handle the asynchronous callbacks/refresh.

 

[morpheus_xx]

AW: New: Picture and Video thumbnail rework in MP2

I used exactly this interface and implementation, but replaced the ThumbnailBuilder, which i.e. used the MediaPlayer for videos, that doesn't work.

My issue with asynch loading is, that the FallbackSource "wins" here, maybe also because of the recent bugfix (set source=null if not allocated). This is maybe the only problem...

What do you think about the preferred storage and acessibility of thumbs?

"Server->Server ThumbCache->Client"
"Client->Client ThumbCache->Dokan mounted Server file" (currently I do this, only using local folders now)

 

[morpheus_xx]

AW: New: Picture and Video thumbnail rework in MP2

Update:
My asynchronous implementation did work correctly, but the Image allocation was broken for this case by the recent bugfix (which I suggested ).
So loading is now smooth, thumbs are shown as soon as they are available.

Now I want to reach the following:

• A proper fix of FallbackSource handling considering 2nd point
• The Image should show the "FallbackSource" as long as the thumbnail ("Source") is created asynchronously. Once it is finished, the "Source" should be shown.

I think this was intended in some way, but current situation isn't working this way.

 

[morpheus_xx]

AW: New: Picture and Video thumbnail rework in MP2

I have added some new screenshots! They show to use of different thumbnail/icon resolutions and the new feature to switch between the layouts

 

[Bleazle]

Are those thumbnails generated at the media import time (in background) or just when they are needed? In MP1 it is giving quite bad user experience when we generate those only when they are needed for the 1st time.

+1 - I agree, it is a very bad user experience. It would be much better if there was an option to generate thumbs for Pictures from MPConfig rather than having to wait for them to be generated in MP. Maybe this could be developed as a plugin?