Editing a Moveisheet with Thumbgen Designer

[Bodders]

Apologies if this is not the right place for this question, but I figured that there are people round here who may have the experience to answer it.

I'm considering creating or editing a WD TV SMP theme of my own - probably by tweaking an existing moviesheet at first. So I've downloaded and installed Thumbgen Designer and can now see how the movie sheets are assembled and how the XML works. I've also been able to copy components from one theme to another using Thumbgen Designer :-).

The problem I'm having is that I can't seem to work out how to create a new 'XML component' directly in the Designer other than by copying an existing instance or opening up the raw XML, find something that is similar, duplicate it and then edit the source item it refers to - which seem to defeat the objective of the GUI editor.

So for instance a film's Release date is represented through a text field and in the Template.XML I changed the date from 'DD-MM-YYYY' format to just the YYYY. I also edited the 'fixed text' that prceedes the movie's year. I was hoping that fields could be edited through some kind of 'Left-click select, right-click properties' action to reveal the underlying code that could then be amended.

Any pointers or clues?

Bodders

[JoeySmyth · Accepted solution]

I'm "Old School" and still use TiVixe to Design Moviesheets .... (Tried "Thumbgen Designer" Once .. didnt like it)

http://www.tvixie.com/

[Bodders]

Joey,

    thanks for the advice. I've downloaded a copy and will have a look in the next few days

Bodders

[Medic · Accepted solution]

In designer %RELEASEDATE% is used for the actual date of releasing the movie, duh ... If you only want the year of the release use %YEAR% instead ...

Use the Text button ( find it in the toolbar ) to insert a text field. On the right fill in the Text line which now shows "Your Text Here".

e.g.

Replacing the "Your Text Here" line with %Year% gives you this:

When the Text line is filled in with:

Release Year: %YEAR% the two extra words are also used on the Moviesheet.

[Bodders]

Medic,

    thanks for your reply. I'd been clicking on the Properties tab to see what it offered, but to no effect. I've just gone back to it and , taking a leaf out of 'tabbed' browsers, found that I could 'tear' it off into its own floating panel.

I was then able to make the changes that you describe.