Thumbnails

Overview

This section describes all the settings you can use to improve and manage your thumbnail images (thumbs) in MediaPortal.

Thumbnails

For an overview of the various graphics and thumbs in MediaPortal, and the location of the various files, see Reference > Graphics

• Quality settings - Default: 50%
  Select the quality of thumbnails that are generated by MediaPortal. The parameters to the right (Resolution), Compositing, (Interpolation) and (Smoothing) give some general information about the quality on the thumbnails, the recommendation on the left give a general idea what the setting can be used for.TFT televisions ("flatscreens") generally need higher quality thumbnails than CRT (classic) televisions because they generally produce a sharper image.

Tip:  Many Skins now  use larger images, as well as display thumbnail images as backdrops in some cases.  You may wish to increase your thumbnail resolution to the highest quality to get best results with these skins.

Music thumbs

Usually the image shown when listening to a music album is shown using a folder.jpg. This image is put in the folder of the music album. The size of this image can be very large and can slow MediaPortal down a lot when browsing through your music collection.

• Create folder cache on demand
  If "Create folder cache on demand" is selected, MediaPortal will create small thumbnails of every cover art (folder.jpg or images embedded in ID3 tags, depending on your settings in Music > Database). This is done while you are browsing through your music collection (On Demand). This option will speed-up browsing through your music collection a lot because the files that are created are very small.
• Delete all music thumbs
  You can delete all the small thumbs by clicking the clear folder cache button

Picture thumbs

• Auto-create only small thumbs
  When browsing through your pictures, you can see small preview images.. If this option is enabled, MediaPortal creates small images of your pictures to speed up browsing (see Music thumbs).
  This option will speed-up browsing through your picture collection a lot, because the files that are created are very small.
• Clear picture cache
  You can delete all the small thumbs by clicking the clear folder cache button

TV/Videos thumbs

• Create TV/Videos cache on demand
  When browsing through your TV-recordings/Videos, you can see small preview images when browsing though them. If this option is enabled, Mediaportal creates small images of your TV-recordings/Videos to speed up browsing (see Music thumbs)
  Because the files that are created are very small this option will speed-up browsing through your picture collection a lot.
• Clear TV/Videos cache
  You can delete all the small thumbs by clicking the clear folder cache button - required if you change the preview appearance.
• Leave a thumb in recording/video folder
  Select this option to save the thumb (.jpg) to the recording folder you chose in Configuration > TV-Server > Recording or in Configuration>Videos>Video Folders
  Note:  If you chose this option, thumbs will not be deleted when you Clear TV/Videos cache, you must remove the existing ones manually, then new thumbs will regenerate based on the settings you select here. 
• the files will be named  "program title.jpg" i.e. "Lie To Me.jpg" or like video filename"MyVideo.jpg"  ie. "Die hard.jpg" for videos.
• Preview Appearance
  • number of columns - Default = 1
  • number of rows - Default = 1

Changes in the latest release

The following table shows the changes that affect the user interface in the latest version of MediaPortal (final or test release), either within MediaPortal or in the Configuration tool(s). Select the links to view details of the changes. These changes are incorporated into this wiki page once the final stable version is released.

You may sort the table by any of the columns. Note: the Date column displays the date the UI Rellated Change wiki page was created.

 

Change	Date	Release
Thumbnail Display	2012/01/06	beta
all