What are the benefits of creating Music thumbnails ? (1 Viewer)

[Taipan]

MediaPortal Version: 0.2.2.0 + SVN 14683 (21.05.2007 / 19:01 CET)
MediaPortal Skin: BlueTwo wide
Windows Version: Windows XP Prof. SP2


In MediaPortal Setup -> Music -> Music Database there is an option "Use folder.jpg to create thumbnails" and in MediaPortal Setup -> General -> Thumbnails there is the option to select the quality of the thumbnails.

I have noticed that if I have the option "Use folder.jpg to create thumbnails" selected and the quality set to “highest”, then:-

a) Two thumbnails (192x192 & 768x768) are created for every album that is of a single artist, and two thumbnails for every track of an album that is of "various artists", in the Thumbs\Music\Albums folder. For my collection of 405 albums, this amounts to 3,192 thumbnails - a total of 86 MB.

b) Also, two more thumbnails (192x192 & 200x200) are created of each album cover in the Thumbs\Music\Folder folder - in my case another 810 thumbnails - a total of 14 MB.

I haven't been able to figure out where these thumbnails are used and what benefit they provide? Can anyone tell me:-

1. Where are the 768x768 thumbnails used?
2. Why is a separate thumbnail of the same album cover created for each artist in a “various artists” album?
3. Why are there 2 thumbnails created in the Thumbs\Music\Folder for each album, that are almost identical size (192x192 & 200x200) ?
4. Where are the thumbnails in the Thumbs\Music\Folder used?
5. What is the benefit of having these thumbnails in addition to the existing “folder.jpg”s?


Also, I have noticed that if I don't select the option "Use folder.jpg to create thumbnails", so that no thumbnails exist in the Thumbs\Music folders, then the cover art does not appear in the "Now Playing" or the "My Lyrics" windows, but the cover art does still appear in the small overlay on the bottom left of the screens. This seems like a bug, in that the "Now Playing" code only looks for cover art in the Thumbs\Music\Albums folder and ignores the presence of the original "folder.jpg" in the folder where the album tracks are?

 

[Taipan]

Wow, 82 views and not a single comment - I guess that means there are at least 82 other users who are puzzled by these "music thumbs", too ?

Anyway, I do have an answer to query #5 "What is the benefit of having these thumbnails in addition to the existing “folder.jpg”s?"

Apparently, these thumbnails are created for those users who have their music files (and thus their cover art files) on a remote disk, like a networked disk. Having the cover art cached in the "Thumbs" folder on the same disk as MediaPortal should speed up the display of the cover art in the various Music screens.

However, for those of us who have all our music files on the same disk as MediaPortal, there is no benefit. In fact, if like me, you regularly install the latest SVN release and do a backup at the same time you will find that the backups take ages because another 4,000+ thumbnail files are backed up, too.

I am still curious to know the answers to queries 1, 2 3, & 4 - so if anyone can enlighten me, I will be very grateful ...

In an attempt to find out where these thumbnails are used, I deleted all the files in the Thumbs\Music\Folder and I have not noticed any detrimental effect. I also deleted all the 768x768 thumbnails in the Thumbs\Music\Albums folder and again, I have not noticed any detrimental effect. So I have to conclude that these thumbnails are not used at all within MediaPortal ...

 

[tomtom21000]

1. now playing, filmstrip view
2. probably to find them
3. didn´t know that, i deleted all accidentally created folder.jpgs because with my soring structure it lead allways to wrong associated thumbs (i use /artist/track not artist/album/track)
4. everywhere in my music?
5. performance. mp doesn´t have to browse 405 folders in your case to build a list view. That also improves shares that aren´t on network drives

rtv could answer this better, but basically I think this is correct.
The backup really takes long for svn. That´s the reason I doe it only every now and then. It is my risk and I can allways go back in svn´s if something terribly fails (which wasn´t the case for a year at least)

tomtom