Black Mamba Theme [ Edited ]

[DeVicious]

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MaKin wrote:

I dont know why but it doesnt work for me with the FW 3.xx Firmware.  

I followed your manual stept by step and went through it again and again but the movie sheets are not shown. 

The Demo Moviesheets seem to work though.

Any idea what could be the reason?

Another question, are those sheets in 720p resolution? Is it possible to somehow "render" them in 1080p?

Thanks in advance.

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The firmware got nothing to do with it, and sheets come in 1280x720 as the entire theme does.

Reading from your other thread you are using a Mac which means you can't use ThumbGen and you cannot reproduce instructions from my manual which makes me a bit confused since you said you went over it again and again.

Please provide some more information, right now your house is missing a roof and you are calling the construction company and saying it is cold in your house.

Are you using Thumbgen?

What files is it generating

How many files is it generating

What does the content of the xml file look like?

Check the manual on page 9 graphic #3 and check page 10 graphic #2

that does it 99% of the times....

[flhthemi]

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DeVicious wrote:

always find it astonishing to read all these firmware problems that never occured to myself. On a positive note my theme doesn't have an arrow. 

As for the weird navigation behavior, this is the fastest I ever managed to get it to work and I was testing aproximately 20 hours with different versions and eventually decided for a code that does not even make too much sense which I used as a desperate long shot, however for some reasons the lag was gone.

I have no idea if the old firmware is trying to make sense of it or not, frankly I can't make it 100% right for everyone and if the old firmware can't handle it fast enough then this is sad but I can't help it except going back to 7 thumbnails which I don't consider an option right now. I always use the newest firmware and I never had a problem with ANY of my files and 10 seconds for a movie sheet is outrageous, the longest it ever took on my hub was 6 seconds and that was when I tested a folder with 200 movie dummies and the hub started to lag after loading a a bunch of sheets.

My hub crashed 5 times on me because of corrupt files in an entire year, i would have never thought of rolling back my firmware I was replacing the file with an uncorrupted version or fixed it, I have to programs called DivFiXPP and Project Meteorite for MKV files, in the meantime I don't have Avi files anymore due to lack of quality but I have sucessfull fixed recent mkv files with Meteorite. Maybe an option for you in order to get a faster hub to fix your corrupt files.

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I'm sure that the SAOD is cuased by bad video files. What the problem is the hub USED to know how to handle it, after about FW V3.xx it doesn't know what to do and just refuses to play video or audio files after being returned to the menu from the spinning arrow.

I'm am going to up the FW to 3.03.16 as I have never given that one a shot. I will do a factory reset prior to the update and then again after. I will also delete the microcrawler and the thum caches again after the "upgrade".

The problem I have described only happens while viewing movie sheets (is that gallery mode??). I'll see how it does on FW 3.03.16 but I'm certain I'll be busting it back to 2.07.17. But NOTHING is going to keep me from using Black Mamba!! It's waaaayyyy too cool!

[DeVicious]

FLH

you can help me with this one, if you do a factory reset wouldn't that delete all your files? This is what the name implies to me....

I don't think this would be necessary at all, a simple update after deleting all the thumbs and cache and .wd_tv folders (except of the theme folder) has always worked for me.

[DeVicious]

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flhthemi wrote:

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The problem I have described only happens while viewing movie sheets (is that gallery mode??). I'll see how it does on FW 3.03.16 but I'm certain I'll be busting it back to 2.07.17. But NOTHING is going to keep me from using Black Mamba!! It's waaaayyyy too cool!

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Thank You :-)

technically anyone should have the same conditions, whenever the topic came up that something was not working as intended there was something else influencing it. An external HDD with a bad cable, or a very old external HDD, a questionable USB sticl from Thailand and what not. Once people realized i am more stubborn in my believes as they could ever be.... the private messages come popping in with the resolution... (complaints are always open, admitting they were wrong not) lol I am more than willing to accept minor differences but major differences simply can't happen.

In your case I have reviewed the 3rd to 4th thumbnail step, this is the first step when the row starts moving hence releoading the first thumbnail that appears from the right hand side. This is what is causing a small delay but this is not a lag, this is a natural loading sequence a lag would be when your navigation becomes slower in speed or even stall. This is what happend in Version 1.4 to me sometimes, it didn't seem right, it didn't feel natural and I am sure this is what you are experiencing with your firmware right now, the update will most definately fix it.

[racl69]

I'm starting to create my TV sheets using the TV3 template and I noticed that the fanart I select as a background image appears twice. The first one takes up the entire sheet which is sweet. But the second one appears in the upper part of the sheet and it is small. I don't have this problem with the moviesheets. Only for the TV sheets. I only assume this is a problem with the TV template.

Cheers!!!

[Kazgor]

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racl69 wrote:

I'm starting to create my TV sheets using the TV3 template and I noticed that the fanart I select as a background image appears twice. The first one takes up the entire sheet which is sweet. But the second one appears in the upper part of the sheet and it is small. I don't have this problem with the moviesheets. Only for the TV sheets. I only assume this is a problem with the TV template.

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thats is a design of the TV Sheet... if you dont like that you could always use TG Designer and remove it....

[racl69]

Ok great....thx for the reply.

[flhthemi]

Well "upgrading" to the latest and greatest FW DID get rid of the "lag" that you don't call lag. It also gave me back, what would be, the SAOD. In your theme its a pic of the hub with a flashing red/green check mark. It just sits there indefinately until *I* take action and hit the back button. Sheets don't load any quicker and SOME of them still take longer than others. Dunno why, all things being equal such as parts used in assembly etc EVERY unit should work the same. I know, I know, some components get by like a resistor here and there that isn't quite up to tolerence or a ic that isn't quite EXACTLY the same...but it should be at least close. So it makes me wonder WHAT is wrong with my Hub and do I have a legit reason to return it or not.....if I do I probably will get another that may even be worse. So i'll just keep what I have and trudge on like it is. I'm pretty sure I'll have to roll back to 2.07 I can't spend my whole viewiing time powering down and booting back up to avert the problem.

Still NONE of this a big enough problem to NOT use Black Mamba!

Thank you for a wonderful theme!

[wdtvhub]

I think its all down to how or what we perceive as lag, I also experienced it, but its been with all themes, Joeys etc.. but I think it boils down to using pictures and the Hub can't handle it. I have stripped down the theme to nothing and I get lag when a random backdrop pops up from an unedited XML that I have missed.

I also blame the peice of **bleep** remote, I would use my Samsung Galaxy S2 all the time if I could, its a lot more responsive, it really is a peice of **bleep**.

The theme itself is very nice, but it may also boil down to how films are stored, I have all my Movies either in the root or all in one folder, the Hub struggles to display a certain amount of thumbnails at a time, so the lag does not surprise me, and is another reason I tried and have always tried great works like this, but can't stand the pausing after the initial wow factor.

I also think thats why WD have kept out of the way, they know that anything other than what they have done is always going to compromise things, but on that note the backdrops are a disaster, it makes me cry when a backdrop from another film still shows up against another film, only briefly, but its still rubbish.

Maybe lag is a bad word, underpowered Hub is a better explanation I think.

[Frank_B]

Dear DeVicious,

got the V1.5 running seamlessly on my WDTV SMP and am now happily thumgen'ing away - superb work, as well as world class guidance and user documentation included (didnt find anything comparable anywhere else with respect to the WDTV SMP, and i've been googling quite a lot on themes and WDTV lately....).

Still havent figured out though yet how to use the "genre thumbs" the best way (for me :-)). I'm using the media library feature on my WDTV, and intended to use the "genre filter" functionality on the "Movies Home Screen", and not to take the "folder view".

I believe the genre thumbs are intended to be copied into a "genre oriented folder structure" as "folder.jpg". Such a "genre oriented folder structure" however would come with some severe drawbacks for me (amongst others: typically movies are associated with more than one genre (e.g. Action, Drama), TV series need to be structured differently (Series/Episode), ....).

Hence my question: would the Black Mamba theme itself be able to display those genre thumbs (movies not structured into genre folders, genre information stored into movie metadata and compiled herefrom into media lib, read from WDTV and then thumbs 'rendered' from Black Mamba theme accordingly)? If so, what would i need to do (as this isnt happening as of today - the thumb of the first movie (i believe) associated with a genre as per metadata is being displayed)? If not, what (where) would need to look into the Black Mamba theme files to customize accordingly?

Thanks a lot in advance, and best regards,
Frank