Thumbnail generation - design problem: thumbnails are almost same and not very informative. (2 Viewers)

greybox

MP Donator
  • Premium Supporter
  • January 23, 2009
    616
    127
    Home Country
    Canada Canada
    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.
     

    Attachments

    • 2007 - Shrek the Third [DreamWorks].jpg
      2007 - Shrek the Third [DreamWorks].jpg
      68.9 KB
    Last edited by a moderator:

    regeszter

    Retired Team Member
  • Premium Supporter
  • October 29, 2005
    5,335
    4,954
    Home Country
    Hungary Hungary
    The thumbnail generator uses 5 sec between frames. I can provide a patch to use custom value for you.
     

    greybox

    MP Donator
  • Premium Supporter
  • January 23, 2009
    616
    127
    Home Country
    Canada Canada
    Yes, please provide your patch. Custom value between frames is what we need.

    Thank you.
     

    kiwijunglist

    Super Moderator
  • Team MediaPortal
  • June 10, 2008
    6,746
    1,751
    New Zealand
    Home Country
    New Zealand New Zealand
    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) ???
     
    Last edited:

    regeszter

    Retired Team Member
  • Premium Supporter
  • October 29, 2005
    5,335
    4,954
    Home Country
    Hungary Hungary
    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!



    config.PNG
     

    Attachments

    • MP_1.4.0_thumb_patchV1.zip
      2.4 MB

    michael_t

    Portal Pro
    November 30, 2008
    1,258
    813
    Home Country
    Germany Germany
    @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

    Retired Team Member
  • Premium Supporter
  • October 29, 2005
    5,335
    4,954
    Home Country
    Hungary Hungary
    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

    Retired Team Member
  • Premium Supporter
  • October 29, 2005
    5,335
    4,954
    Home Country
    Hungary Hungary
    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.
     

    Attachments

    • strings_en.xml
      112.2 KB

    Users who are viewing this thread

    Top Bottom