I have seen a few posts kinda brush on this but no definitive answers yet. What exactly is the correct way to name files and artwork for a Miniseries so that only the local art is pulled and the Zidoo is not grabbing posters or fanart online? I have no trouble with movies and regular TV shows with more than one season, but when it is a miniseries I cannot get it to recognize and use the main poster and fanart I have chosen. I can however get it to use my fanart for the individual episodes by simply adding -fanart to the end of S01E01 for example. It keeps downloading the main poster and fanart for the entire miniseries online though and putting them in the HomeTheater folder. Examples are the miniseries Chernobyl and The Last Dance. It’s matching perfect and using the individual episode fanart so I know it’s at least detecting some of it correctly. I have tried using a folder name with just the miniseries name, adding season 01 at the end, I also have poster.jpg as well as season1-poster.jpg in there and it just isn’t grabbing it at the moment. Again, no trouble when there are multiple seasons, it’s only when they are listed as miniseries.
Oh, I should also mention that in addition to the episode fanart, it is finding and using the clearlogo.png file as well! Why can’t it see the poster?!
Syntax is: EpisodeFileName-poster.jpg EpisodeFileName-fanart.jpg season#-poster.jpg poster.jpg fanart.jpg These files should be in the season folder. However there is a bug at the moment which means local posters are ignored which I came across recently and reported.
Yep this is exactly the method I’ve been following. Good to know it’s a bug and that I’m not doing something else wrong. Hopefully they fix it in the next firmware, thanks for looking into it!
Sorry, one last question regarding miniseries. Is it possible to rename a series from within the player? The web version is only letting me edit movies at the moment. I’d like to just simply remove the “season 01” from the title of the miniseries since it’s not actually a season.
Where are the movies physically located? You could always amend file names in your PC even if the discs are internal in the Zidoo. A lot easier on a PC than the Web interface. Currently TVDB is the problem as far as the web interface is concerned. So I use TMDB as the source for movies and TV's. Editing is ok .
The files are on an internal hard disk in the UHD3000. I didn’t realize TVDB had issues with editing in the web interface, I will try to change it to TMDB and see if that lets me edit it manually. Thanks for the tip!
Having an issue getting my Zidoo to find and use my local artwork for the Mission: Inpossible Collection. I removed the colon on all filenames and all of the titles matched and display correctly. However it’s still downloading and using online art for the collection, I believe because the collection name is still Mission:Impossible Collection and it’s not matching up with my “Mission Impossible Collection-poster.jpg”. Is there a way I can rename this collection poster file so that it recognizes it without the colon?
Collection names with illegal characters are a real pain. If you export artwork using the Zidoo rather than try and import yourself you'll see that the colon is replaced with Unicode character F03A So Mission Impossible Collection is named like: Mission Impossible Collection-fanart.jpg Mission Impossible Collection-poster.jpg I know the character will be shown as a square placeholder in the above, but if you copy and paste the names you'll find the Unicode copies correctly. It should look like this as a filename:
Well Mark, I spoke too soon. Unfortunately it is still not recognizing the filenames with the special character. I tried putting a space before and after it. Any other suggestions? Does yours successfully match and use your custom artwork with the filename you have used?
Yes it does. The special character literally replaces the colon so there is no space before it but there is a space after. If you copy and paste the filenames below it will work: Mission Impossible Collection-fanart.jpg Mission Impossible Collection-poster.jpg (the fanart isn't really needed - I can't think of an instance where it shows on screen) I just changed the Mission Imposssible collection art to test Don't forget, if you've already scraped the collection you need to delete that source and rescan from the start. Or you can just press <menu> and select "Change Image".
Wow, this is really bizarre. I copy and pasted your exact text onto the image filenames and loaded them onto the Zidoo and yet they still aren’t automatically recognized. I cleared the library first and re-added/re-scanned. I wonder if it’s because I’m doing this on a Mac and the characters aren’t translating properly. I do not have a PC but I did export the library Nfo and told it to replace the existing files. What is interesting is that it created images with the “:” in the file name. However if I try to copy and paste that text or even rename it, it says illegal characters are not allowed. I give up. I will manually change the artwork for now but I’m really trying to make sure my library does not need to scrape or use any online art at all. I want all images to be local and pulled directly from there and this is the only series giving me problems!
Yes, probably the Mac... I assume you have all your artwork except this collection sorted out? So if you manually change the artwork in the Zidoo GUI, make sure there are no collection images in any of the MI movie folders and then export art (HT4/Settings/Library/Export and make sure you untick "Overwrite older files" This will export just those new collection images to each MI movie folder with the correct name and leave all your other art alone. Note that this will also export NFOs if you don't already have them but won't overwrite if you do, even in the MI folders.
Good call Mark! I did as you said, manually changing the images and exporting the library. I was then able to copy and paste those files into the other Mission Impossible folders and voila, now when I rescan it detects them perfectly! My entire library seems to all match up correctly now. Thanks again for your help and sorry for all the questions. I’m a newbie, but absolutely loving my Zidoo and now I can just sit back and enjoy it in all its glory!
