Hey Everyone, Finishing up my small home theater, and want to purchase a media player designed to simplay movies and do it well. Currently have a NAS (supermicro chassis runing unraid) set up with emby/plex movie folder structures and using a shield for playback. Looking at the media players (zidoo, zappiti, etc) I think I want to purchase a zidoo Z1000 PRO but had some questions and wanted to ask you guys. I plan on pointing the zidoo to my movie folder with smb share. Prob won't use an internal drive on the player itself. 1. Can I leave my folder structure the same (emby/plex style) and Zidoo will pick up the main mkv movie file or do I need to dump them into one large folder of individual movie files? 2. If I can leave my folder structure the same, can I set flags to ignore trailers and extras folders by name? 3. Can I set the zidoo to automatically boot into the poster wall? 4. How does zidoo grab trailers? Is it on the web or will it search locally? 5. Can it do anything with extras or special features for the movies? 6. How well does the FF and RW function work when playing mkv movie files? I know with emby, sometimes it won't let me FF a movie and if I stop it mid-ways, it starts at the beginning again and can't FF....pretty annoying. Thanks a bunch for any input
Firstly, if you're using an SMB share and you don't need onboard storage, consider the Z9X - all players from the Z9X to the mighty Neo X have exactly the same video playback credentials and performance. 1. As long as your movies are named sensibly, yes. The ideal scenario is a root movie directory with sub directories named per movie and inside that an MKV also named the same as the movie. 2. By default the scanner is set to ignore anything with "trailer in the name but you can customise that - adding whatever strings you want. My trailers are called MovieName.trailer.mp4 or mkv so I leave as default. 3. Yes 4. Online trailers are broken at the moment due to YouTube API (waiting for a fix) but the best option is to use local trailers. 5. Yes, they can be added to the poster detail page 6. FF and RW work fine
awesome, that is all good to know. So for local trailers, is it pulling trailers from the movie folders? All of my trailers are named "trailer" and inside a trailers subfolder inside the main movie folder. But I can change that. Honestly I would prefer local trailers because a lot of mine are trailers that I ripped from the movie disc and are usually larger file size, but WAY better quality than what you get from youtube. Thanks for your quick reply
Yes, the trailer can be in a subfolder of the main movie folder, but it can't be in an orphan folder elsewhere, for example a global "trailers" folder. It's usual to have the trailer in the same folder as the movie but it sounds like your setup will work just fine but if for example yours are just named trailer.mp4 then they will need renaming to MovieName.trailer.mp4. This is an example of how my folders are laid out (I use local art and NFO too):
Ok, that's no problem on the trailers...I have media center master and I can re-scan and rename trailers to that naming scheme automatically. Thanks!
Ok one last question: I have movies with different cuts of the film, superman (1978) is one example. I have them named as the filename with a (-) appended with the verson name. Like this: Is there a way to get zidoo to distingish between the cuts and list them that way?
Yes - you would have to rename something like: Superman.(1#Special Edition).mkv Superman.(2#Theatrical 4K).mkv Superman.(3#Theatrical 2K).mkv Superman.(4#TV Cut).mkv The numbers are optional and for ordering.
Thanks! To get the home theater media labels (DTS, Blue Ray etc) to show up on the movie dashboard...do I have to have my folders and movie files named with what I want to show up? or will the way I have the folder and movie named currently suffice and the scanner picks up the details automatically? Just wanted to make sure before i go and rename everything again. Just ordered a Z9X and should be here Friday, I am excited
Media labels used to be picked up from filename suffixes but they are now derived from MediaInfo during scanning so no need to add to filenames. Be sure to update to the latest beta when you get the box: http://forum.zidoo.tv/index.php?threads/beta-version-v6-3-98-for-z9x-release.93517/
