Thumbnail generation - design problem: thumbnails are almost same and not very informative. (1 Viewer)

[greybox]

MediaPortal Version: 1.4.0

Description
This is probably by design in 1.4.0 - thumbnails are generated quickly, but they are kind of useless. In current design the thumbs are generated from the beginning of the movie where the frames are not very dynamic and most of time are almost the same. And with current design when the thumbs are generated only with a few seconds apart, 99% of the time it is same studio logo. The thumbs should be taken with more time difference apart from each other, beginning, middle, otherwise they are not informative at all. The easiest would be to give users a control of the time difference or % of the movie between the frames used for the thumb generation.

Steps to Reproduce:
Select thumbs appearance 2x2 or higher in configuration, go to the movie folder and discover your thumbnails are almost same and not very informative.

 

[regeszter]

The thumbnail generator uses 5 sec between frames. I can provide a patch to use custom value for you.

 

[greybox]

Yes, please provide your patch. Custom value between frames is what we need.

Thank you.

 

[kiwijunglist]

Grabbing every 5 seconds sounds a bit naff.
I think frame times should be calculated using a formula.
eg. Screen grab every X frames where X = Total_#_Frames / (#_Images+1)
So if we have 100 frame movie, and need 2 screen grabs, we grab at 33rd + 66th frame.
or if you want to front load to reduce spoilers then use something like
Total_#_Frames * 0.2 / (#_Images+1) ???

 

[regeszter]

Hi,

here is a patch for video thumb generation. There are two new value. The 1st skip X mins for start of the video, the 2nd the time frame between the pictures in seconds.

FOR TESTING ONLY!!!

Make a copy before overwrite the files!

 

[sir_thomas]

I had the same problem. Your patch worked for me. Thank you!

 

[Holzi]

@michael_t any opinion on this?

 

[michael_t]

@michael_t any opinion on this?

I see no problems with these options. We could add them both to video thumbs and to recorded tv thumbs generation.
I would only like to modify the labelling (for me "Pre record interval" could be mixed up with the pre-record time for tv and "Time between frames" should possibly be "Time interval between thumbs") - maybe someone has a better idea for the labels...
I could open a mantis JiRA entry for it.

Michael

 

[regeszter]

The pre-record interval came from my tv tumbs patch. I created because of the original generator does not handle the pre-record time and the thumbs generated before the shows was started. (sorry for my bad english)

 

[regeszter]

I just see this build contains my another modification. I have to separate they but you can test it.

Overwrite the strings_en.xml

1. Go to a video file
2. Press F9 or use the remote
3. Select refresh video thumbnail
4. The MP will generate a random number from 10 to 300 sec and increase it with pre-record value.
5. If still you don't like it repeate from 1.