[pecinko]

Yeah it would be nice if thumbnails would be stored as folder.jpg and movie info with xml extension but for somewhat different reasons than those you were argumenting with

[Memphiz]

Btw ... find addons/skin.confluence/ -name "*.tbn" <- finds nothing ... there is not one tbn in there. Only jpg and png. So if you have skins where tbn's are used - go to that skinners and tell them. Beside that - fanart is up to the user mostly. If you export your stuff to your media folders it gets jpg extension as well imo.

I don't get that point. IIRC tbn are only used for our thumbnail cache - where no mustaches are wanted

[live4ever]

Hmmm ... for some reason maybe this Zappy might've went over a bit better in the XBMC community.

[MassIV]

For example talking about:

.tbn -> userdata\Thumbnails\Music\6
Contains music album cover art that needs to through Photoshop before i can embed them directly into my music files.
Don't generate thumbnails in explorer. Won't allow "next" button in photo viewer. So it takes forever to find the one i would want to remove some text or bar or icon from. About the not so computer literate: The extra hour it takes to figure out the file they wanted to change is not a normal jpg and will take another hour just to locate will probably discourage them.

Benefits of using tbn: Nothing another format cant do.

.jpg -> userdata\Thumbnails\6
Contains usable images of shows and characters that now all have mustaches but IIRC only contains what has been downloaded as extra.

And maybe i understand some of the confusion now. To clarify, i was not talking about actually changing stuff in the skin.
But everything else that comes on the screen.

-edit-
@live4ever Haha, love it! Saved!

[Martijn]

For example talking about:

.tbn -> userdata\Thumbnails\Music\6
Contains music album cover art that needs to through Photoshop before i can embed them directly into my music files.
Don't generate thumbnails in explorer. Won't allow "next" button in photo viewer. So it takes forever to find the one i would want to remove some text or bar or icon from. About the not so computer literate: The extra hour it takes to figure out the file they wanted to change is not a normal jpg and will take another hour just to locate will probably discourage them.

Benefits of using tbn: Nothing another format cant do.

Download all the covers you need http://fanart.tv/
Or use cdArt Manager

.jpg -> userdata\Thumbnails\6
Contains usable images of shows and characters that now all have mustaches but IIRC only contains what has been downloaded as extra.

And maybe i understand some of the confusion now. To clarify, i was not talking about actually changing stuff in the skin.
But everything else that comes on the screen.

-edit-
@live4ever Haha, love it! Saved!

same here:
http://fanart.tv/
http://www.themoviedb.org/
http://thetvdb.com/

Besides the vast majority won't even care about the contents of the thumbnails folder.
And if they are they can do a quick search on how to add *.tbn files

[Ned Scott]

My grandmother can beat up your grandmother

[Hitcher]

If I see an image I don't like I simply bring up the info screen and select 'change thumb', and if there's not one I like I'll make one myself and then select that instead.

[MassIV]

That is still not one single benefit of using tbn over an alternative.
That is like saying, keep the old audio engine because it also plays sounds, and if you need something better use an external player.

@Martijn
That's like saying if you want a picture of the band you can just drive over there and take a snapshot with your phone.
You are just telling me to get it somewhere else, like i didn't know those sites existed.

@ned Scott
If my grandmother can remember who she is fighting she would surely win.

And guys don't get me wrong. I don't think this is a very big deal..!
It is just a suggestion, it's not in the problems section!

I gave some reasons as to why i believe it might be a (small) improvement.
I saw pecinko say he had his own reasons for wanting to see that change.
And i now believe i have defended it enough.

Can anyone tell me how much effort it would take to switch? Would it be just a matter of telling XBMC to use an alternative extension from now on?
Or would you need a new video compressor or container?

[Martijn]

@Martijn
That's like saying if you want a picture of the band you can just drive over there and take a snapshot with your phone.
You are just telling me to get it somewhere else, like i didn't know those sites existed.

What?

All images are scraped from there so I totally miss your point.

And guys don't get me wrong. I don't think this is a very big deal..!
It is just a suggestion, it's not in the problems section!

I gave some reasons as to why i believe it might be a (small) improvement.
I saw pecinko say he had his own reasons for wanting to see that change.
And i now believe i have defended it enough.

Sorry but can't seem to find any valid enough reason you gave.

Can anyone tell me how much effort it would take to switch? Would it be just a matter of telling XBMC to use an alternative extension from now on?
Or would you need a new video compressor or container?

Since you probably haven't looked at latest nightly builds i suggest you start there since a lot of work has been done there

[Memphiz]

if we just "switch" all users will lose their thumbs in the ui. Yeah you could make xbmc "migrate them from tbn to jpg ... but its really not worth the mess. Just keep out of our thumbnails folder. You should consider it a black box. If you wanna change skins - then change skins - they are not in our thumbnails folder but in addons and contain png and jpg files already. If you want to change the fanart use the features of xbmc for it - but don't mess around in our fuckin thumbnail cache dir. (and only there tbn files play a role)

So you don't need to defend this - there is nothing to defend really.

[jmarshall]

There seems to be some misunderstandings here.

In current master, in Userdata/Thumbnails (not that anyone would be exploring it as you have no idea what file is what as they're hashes) there's not a single .tbn file - they're all .jpg or .png now. So if that's what you were concerned with, I graciously accept your thanks - you may pass donations to donate@xbmc.org.

If you have your movies in separate folders then you can use folder.jpg and fanart.jpg there.

I do agree that <moviename>.tbn doesn't have much point to it, and wouldn't have a problem changing to support <moviename>.jpg as well. Similarly, I'd have no problem changing <moviename>.nfo to <moviename>.xml. A patch supporting both would be welcome now that things aren't quite so braindead as they used to be so that supporting more than one is a little easier.

The point is, however, that most users don't even bother changing the art to begin with, and those that do typically just pick a different picture via GetThumb/GetFanart, so it's not a particularly high priority thing.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[digitalb0y]

Since you probably haven't looked at latest nightly builds i suggest you start there since a lot of work has been done there

Wait a second! So you're telling him his idea is being implemented in the nightlies, while simultaneously telling him his idea is without merit and he has no point? Not sure I can tell what exactly you're trying to argue about this idea. If it's a terrible one, why is it being implemented? Why not just say "that's coming, check out the nightlies," rather than pick a fight? Just a thought.

Flame on!

[spiff]

.tbn still has the same merit it had back in the xbox days. and that's what is gonna happen next once we add .jpg
then some other guy just NEED .bmp. and some chick insists on .png. and of course we need .tiff, that's what my app spits out!
and off we go. checking for all these files, even with a cache, will take time.

same with .nfo. sure, we can move to .xml. but then we kill off the opportunity to use pre-written nfo's with the url in them. so then we end up checking for both. more slowdowns.

[jmarshall]

Sure, but I think that argument is somewhat moot given that we only hit these things during scan (xml/nfo) or in the bg where we already have the directory cached most of the time, or are reading the directory in the case of folder art.

Also, we currently check a bunch of stuff for folders anyway due to not specifying an actual case-sensitive thing (folder.jpg Folder.jpg folder.JPG, Folder.JPG), and a whole bunch for fanart.

My plan was to reduce to JPG and TBN only by default.

[spiff]

sure, it might be less *relevant* due to off-threading stuff. but the reasoning is just as *valid* yet, that was my point.