Kodi Community Forum

Hi all

Just a quick question as I amy busy upgrading to kodi from xbmc 12 and I am in the process of changing all my artwork to a higher 4k versions for future proofing and would like some info on the thumbs part.

when I get the info for a tv show it uses TVDV to get the tv show thumbs, but to be honest the tv show screen captures are sometimes low quality and are from poor sources. I would like to know is there a way to bypass the thumb downloads only and let kodi get the better image from the source files I have but still get the info it needs for the tv show as I always export everything ?

and if there is what sort of time spot does kodi capture from

thanks for any help

Hi meridius,

Wow, you have hung on for a fair while. Hopefully the new version will be full of surprises for you.

Be aware that Kodi will not cache at 4K, regardless of what advancedsettings.xml entries are made. Maximum cache resolution is 1920x1080.

Have a read through the recently updated Artwork pages... http://kodi.wiki/view/Artwork Click on links for Movie and TV Show specific artworks.

If you have local episode thumbs saved, Kodi will scrape those first. Kodi always defaults to local artwork. If no local artwork is available, it will download from the internet.

Does that answer you question?

Hi there thanks for the help

yes I waited for some time as xbmc 12 just worked but now finding I have a few issues with some formats playing back and liked a new skin so decided to upgrade

yep I know kodi resizes the posters to 1080p but in the future they might start using 2160p and I am already covered as I don't want to change the art work again, lol

I deleted the local thumb artwork as there low quality, also I read that link before I posted and it says that Episode Thumbnail is recommended at 1920x1080 but the tvdb website there just 400x225 this is where the low quality is and not only that some thumbs have network tv show logos on them which I don't like.

I thought kodi could capture a thumb from the source getting added to the library ? as this would give you full res and also better quality and then I could export this image.

so is there a way of getting better quality thumbs

thanks

Don't use theTVDB, the episode images are very low resolution and quality. Instead use theMoveDB scraper, they have multiple image per episode to choose from ranging in resolution from 1080p up to 4k.

Is that a legal addon? Where can I find theMoveDB scraper for tv shows?

Yep it's perfectly legal, it's in the Kodi repo.

When you select the scraper for your TV shows simply press "Get more..." and install it from the Kodi repo.

I've already installed it in this picture, you'll probably only have Local information and The TVDB.

(2017-08-05, 16:04)roidy Wrote: [ -> ]Don't use theTVDB, the episode images are very low resolution and quality. Instead use theMoveDB scraper, they have multiple image per episode to choose from ranging in resolution from 1080p up to 4k.

Hi just had a look on there web site can not find any thumbs for each episode just backdrops ? or am I missing something

On the site goto a TV Show, then select the Season you want then click on each episode in the Season to see all the Episode thumbs, for instance Game of Thrones Season 7 Episode 1 has 22 episode thumbs ranging from 1080p up to 4k:-

thanks, the only thing is that themoviedb will it get all the same info as tvdb site ? like rating, channel, director and so on

is the nfo file it creates just the same as tvdb or does it have better info ? as I have always used TVDB for that

but did find the thumbs and there still a lot that are low quality. they are better ill give you that but kodi must be able to generate its own thumbs from source ? and what time stamp does it take it from and will it leave the black borders on

also when you export the images are they kept as 1920x1080 or are they resized and then exported ?

been looking and theres been 5 shows that don't even have any thumbs on the site. theres got to be something better

thanks

anyone I need to get this kodi update started and would like to get full res thumbs, the site above does work to a point but there is still a lot of low quality snapshots on there and a lot are missing for others.

Hi all, since I can not get much help on how to get better thumbnails using kodi without accessing websites and getting kodi to generating them I have came up with a batch file that can create them since websites like TVDB don't support high res images.

Roidy posted a site above (TMDB) which does support high res images on alot of shows but not all shows have them and still use low res images but are better than TVDB. Thanks for that by the way

The shows that don't have high res images or have some low images for some episodes you can create your own using the batch file to create them and you could post them on (TMDB) if you wish to support them and others.

You have to create a file called (Thumbnail Generator (00_00_14.435).bat and within that file you have
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

@echo off
set "ffmpeg_bin=D:\thumbs\ffmpeg.exe"
set "out_path=D:\thumbs"
cd /D "D:\thumbs"

for %%f in (*.mkv) do (%ffmpeg_bin% -ss 00:00:14.435 -i "%%~f" -qscale:v 2 -qmin 1 -qmax 1 -vframes 1 "%out_path%\%%~nf-thumb.jpg")

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

now I have a few of these bat files as I changed the time stamp and called my 2nd one for eg. (Thumbnail Generator (00_00_28.435).bat so it gets images form a different time stamp 00:00:28.435 to see which turns out best.

You will also notice the path in the batch file is my path on my machine so you will need to make sure that the folder name and location matches the batch file to make it work on your machine. Also it is set for .mkv extension as I use it on MKV files but if you want a different format just change that to what ever extension you want eg. .avi to get thumbs from avi files.

You will also need ffmpeg.exe in the same folder as the batch file and you can get that from the net.

run it and it will generate thumbs from the file or files within that folder at full re so have the video file in there,

you have two options copy the files into the folder with the batch file and ffmpeg to get the thumbs or copy the batch file and ffmpeg file into the same folder as your video files and alter the batch file location folder to match yours before you run it.

I also used this on movies but with movies you get the black bars and I have to put them in photoshop or gimp to remove them, you can create a recording of you removing the black bars which is a step by step recording so you don't have to keep doing it and save It. once you done that every time you do this its a one click process and its all automated. the first time took about 5 min but from now on it takes 2 sec to do each thumbnail to remove the bars and save them.

I have timed myself and I can rip 24 episode thumbs and remove the bars and are already named correctly within 2min and that's not bad at all for full res thumbs.

Kodi will generate a thumbnail from your actual episode file if there isn't an image already set in its library for "thumb". Thumbnail images are generally set by the scraper, so you may not see it often.

They can be removed by hand with Kodi's built-in "Choose Art" dialog, as well as JSON-RPC, which tools like Texture Cache Maintenance utility (a CLI utility) and Artwork Beef (a Kodi program and service add-on) can use to change and remove artwork.

You've also given me an idea for a new feature of Artwork Beef: an option to do that automatically, so Kodi generates its own thumb for all episodes. I much prefer to set the larger episode stills from TheMovieDB to episode fanart alongside a smaller thumb, and this will be a nice replacement for the thumb from TheTVDB.

Hi there I will take a look at that program. the thing is kodi does not generate a thumb if it finds it on TVDB and downloads it because it just fetches that one, the only way I can see kodi generating its own is if say TVDB does not have a image stored on there site and then kodi generates it.

the thing is I am not sure if kodi even exports the full 1920x1080p image as a thumb ? as I am just upgrading from xbmc 12 to kodi 17 and I have a lot of work to do to make sure all my artwork is high quality because 4k is just around the corner. but even 1080p thumbs should be good enough for a 4k display as you never really display them at full screen.

the problem with my script is somtitmes the image it gets is not good and I have to do it a couple of times.

I will look at your program artwork beef as I have always used AD

cheers

Hi all

I have been checking the TMDB and still there is a lot of low quality and missing thumbs so just wanted to know will artwork beef randomly capture some frames at different places of the show and let you pick the best one and let you export it at a full 1080x1920p res ?

cheers

Nope. Kodi will generate just a single thumbnail from X time in the video, with no option of choosing the time, and Artwork Beef doesn't have an alternative.

There is a way for add-ons to take a snapshot of a video, but it only works while a video is playing. I've considered trying to use that in Artwork Beef, but I don't see any way to make that not feel goofy and cumbersome. I've also been contemplating a new feature in Kodi core that would allow thumbnails to be generated from a specified time rather than whatever default time it chooses, but it's a lower priority than most of my contributions to core, so I'm not sure when I'll get to that.