How to properly set up extra features for Movies on the Poster Wall?

Hello everyone, I just bought a Zidoo Z9X 8K, and my extras of Movies are not working properly.
I renamed them with the suffixes numbered as this example oriented by Zidoo:

Batman Returns (1#Main Movie)
Batman Returns (2#UK Trailer)
Batman Returns (3#Music Video by Siouxsie & The Banshees - Face To Face)
Batman Returns (4#The Bat, The Cat And The Penguin)

1. They appear on Zidoo as the correct names on the poster area of the movie, but they're not played in order, even though the setting on Zidoo is set to "Play in order";
2. Also, all the movies with extras don't appear anymore in the "Watching" area on the main page;
3. And on "Play in Queue", we can't see the exact title of each file; it is all named with the title of the movie and out of order.

Please, can someone help me fix these issues?
Broken playback order, missing “Watching” tracking and queue/title confusion.

P.s.: Another problem I noticed is on the remote control app for iPhone, Zidoo Controller. On every Collection created, when I click, it shows the Unmatched files folder and not the Movies added to the collections. Might be a bug, and my app is updated.

 

Just curious what happens if you incorrectly label them as 4#Main movie ie in numerical reverse order?

 

Have you tried to name the files as in this document located in this thread?

According with that document, you should change your files like this:

Batman Returns (1#Main Movie) --> Batman Returns.xxx

Batman Returns (2#UK Trailer) --> Batman Returns.trailer.1.xxx

Batman Returns (3#Music Video by Siouxsie & The Banshees - Face To Face) --> Batman Returns.trailer.2.xxx

Batman Returns (4#The Bat, The Cat And The Penguin) --> Batman Returns.trailer.3.xxx

And having named in this way you should have acces to the movie and play the rest of files as local trailers in that order.

 

I wouldn't mix up the trailer engine with extras - apart from the fact the filenames are inappropriate and thus the OSD is inelegant when applied to extras etc, the trailer engine doesn't use the full player - in order to maintain UI continuity it outputs strictly in the UI mode (HDR Mode, framerate and resolution) and does not honour the file's properties in those respects

 

So, in that case as EdMorris describe, which should be your solution for that items?

Batman Returns (1#Main Movie)
Batman Returns (2#UK Trailer)
Batman Returns (3#Music Video by Siouxsie & The Banshees - Face To Face)
Batman Returns (4#The Bat, The Cat And The Penguin)

How to name them? and how to play them?

 

Exactly as above - it works the way it's designed to work. Each option will be presented as button (named as per the tag) on the details page and you click the appropriate button to play them.

 

@nickiman, but on the thread the only difference is the dot:
Blade Runner.(1#Theatrical Version).mkv
Blade Runner.(2#Special Edition).mkv
I tested with and without a dot and the result is the same.

@Markswift2003, I don't know how the filenames are innapropriate since they're named exactly how it is on the Blu-Rays and DVDs special features of this movie. I wanted to organize the extras as this member shared here: https://forum.zidoo.tv/index.php?th...-that-go-along-with-a-movie-or-tv-show.99750/
But the link of his setup is deactivated.

I wish Zidoo could improve this area just as it is on The Criterion Channel: https://www.criterionchannel.com/81-2
In this example, we see the film on top, and all the extras below, with thumbnail and description, in a clean and elegant look.

 

I think you missed my point - I said that renaming the files to "trailers", when they are not, was inappropriate and inelegant - I couldn't live with that! Also, as I said, the trailer engine is not appropriate for content. IMHO.

You're right, the dot isn't strictly necessary, but I'm a programmer and I like delimiters. And that's the protocol.

 

@Markswift2003, Ok! I get your point now. But still, renaming them as oriented results in broken playback order, missing “Watching” tracking on the top of the main page, and queue/title confusion.

You're part of the Zidoo development team? I'd like to send this suggestion. Bonus material is really important to me, and I'm sure I'm not alone. It's pretty lame to watch them separately on the Media Center, searching the folders to avoid any issue.

Is there any chance to have this update anytime soon? This integration of Movies + Extras on the Poster Wall would make the experience perfect. The Criterion Channel platform is a great reference for it.

 

Sorry, no, I'm not part of the development team. This feature was primarily designed to allow different versions of the same movie to be added to one poster and it works as intended.

If you want to make a request, I'd suggest you contact @Zidoo Support-Kim .

 

I see your point now Mark, sorry, I´ve forgot at all that we could use the "Multipart Movies" feature (Point 2 in the document) for this case... Now I see what you mean and you´re totally right.

 

No worries - I wasn't trying to negate your comment - I'm all for workarounds - but I just wanted people to be aware of the limitations.

 

Thank you, Mark! I'll contact her.
Meanwhile, do you think a good way to work around this would be authoring the movie + extras files into an ISO file, like a Blu-Ray disc? In that way, it would be organized on the Poster Wall with cleaner access, I suppose.

 

Ok - took a bit of a dive into this.

I created a folder with four 10s video files called:

The Godfather.(1#Main Movie).mkv
The Godfather.(2#Music Video).mkv
The Godfather.(3#Another Video).mkv
The Godfather.(4#Yet Another Video).mkv

The first one is a white field, the second a red field, third a green field... you can see where this is going.. the fourth a blue field.

I did this because it's easy to remember the order - WRGB

I then scanned the folder into HT and got this as expected:



I made sure I had Settings/Playback/Play Mode set to "Play in order" and played the first file - Main Movie.
Ok, it shows all files as "The Godfather", but it played them in order - White, Red, Green then Blue and I can choose whichever I want from the screen above if I don't want to do that (I wouldn't - I always have Play Mode set to single file - I don't want the thing playing continuously).

So other than showing the actual file name or version when playing your movies, doesn't this do what you want it to do?

Looking at your earlier posts, it may be the fact you have one named with "trailer" in the title which is a default safe word to allow the trailer function to work. This may have been a source of confusion. If you don't want to use the trailer engine and want files with "trailer" in the title to be scraped, you need to remove it as a safe word in HT/Settings/Preferences/Ignore folders and file names...

 

Yes, agreed. I really like this feature. I don't want 3 versions of the same movie to have 3 separate movie pages with individual posters and backgrounds like Kodi or Jellyfin. Don't care so much for extras.
Some info about long filenames and versions of the same move using labels here.

 

Mark, I did this exact test you shared before my first thread here and got the issues reported.
Let me break it down for you with images:

a. My Play Mode settings are set to “Play in Order”;



b. I had already removed “trailer” from the Ignore folders section. That was not the problem;

c. When I scan a movie without extras, it shows in my “Watching” section on top of the main page of the
Poster Wall. I set it up like this because it’s really helpful to track everything I’m currently watching (Images 1 & 2).





When I scan any movie with extras, I lose this “Watching” tracking on the main page. Inside the movie folder, the tracking still works. 1st bug (Images 3 & 4)





d. The sufixes for naming the extras work inside the movie page, but when I play any file, it doesn’t play in order, like it’s set. I get that you leave yours to play as a single file. This would be reasonable if you have a few extras. But I have titles here with over 20 extras and some files with only 1 minute. Can you imagine pressing play on the remote control every minute?! In that case, Play in Order is the best mode and it’s not working. It’s out of order;

e. Also, during the playback of any file, we can go to quick settings on “Play Queue” to access a different file of the movie page there. But all the files have the title of the movie, no distinction. It loses track of the names shown inside the movie page. 2nd bug (Image 5).



Issues: missing “Watching” tracking on the main page of the Poster Wall, broken playback order, and queue/title confusion.

 

@Markswift2003, any solution for what I reported above?

- "Play in Queue" with all the files of the movie with the same name during playback of a video.

- And the playback is out of order, even though it is set to "Play in order".

 

Trying to get this to work but when I name the files for a 2 disc movie set as

The Hobbit - The Desolation of Smaug (2013).(1#Movie).iso
The Hobbit - The Desolation of Smaug (2013).(2#Bonus disc).iso

They show up in the poster as just "A" and "B" buttons on the selector, not the tag names "Movie" and "Bonus disc". The order is correct "A" = the movie and "B" = Bonus disc.
I'm adding the year to the movies as that was a thing in JellyFin to make automated metadata searching more accurate.

 

I don’t suppose clicking the update metadata menu item does anything?

 

Thank you for this thread, this feature never worked for me, and always displayed "A" and "B", so I leave path enabled to see the file name.
By using Markswift2003's example I was able to replicate the proper behaviour, and in my case it didn't work because I was only using the naming scheme for the bonus files and not the main movie. Since I don't want to rename the main movie files, this feature is useless for me unfortunately. Actually it always felt a bit odd to rely on the file names