Thumbnails

Quality Settings

• Quality settings - Default: 50% - Default: 3 120+150
  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 of the thumbnails created. The recommendation on the left gives a general idea what the setting can be used for: LCD televisions ("flat screens") generally need higher quality thumbnails than CRT (classic) televisions because they generally produce a sharper image. 

Note: When you change the Quality settings you must clear the cache/delete the thumbs and re-create them. 

Tip:  Many Skins now  use larger images, and HD resolutions.  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

• Autocreate thumbs
  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.
• Clear TV/Videos thumbs
  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 folder(s) 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. 
  As of v 1.3.0 you can Edit your Video folders to disable Creating Thumbs per share/folder.
  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

Clear Blacklisted thumbs

When MediaPortal's video thumb creator (mtn.exe) fails to create a thumb image for a certain video (e.g., the file could be corrupted, or the codec is not supported by the thumbnail generator), it is blacklisted. Its file name is stored in the video database which will prevent further attempts to create a thumb for that particular video file.

As of v 1.3.0, you may select Clear Blacklisted thumbs to reset the blacklisted files list. The next time a video or recorded TV folder is opened in MediaPortal, a new video thumb will be generated for video files with missing thumbs. The video file will be added to the blacklist if the thumb creation fails once again. 

Note: When you install a new version, MediaPortal will clear the blacklist and attempt to generate a thumbnail for videos that are without one.

Changes in the upcoming release

Change	Date	Release
Thumbnails	2013/04/07	1.4.0
all