How to NOT show generic thumbnails when browsing videos?

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smtips
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Oct 16, 2017 11:39 am

How to NOT show generic thumbnails when browsing videos?

Post by smtips »

I have a WD Live Streaming player.

I set up UMS and disabled everything I can see to disable any extra folders from the navigation screen on the TV. So that's all good.

However...when I am browsing files in list view or grid view on the TV, every single one of them including folders has that annoyingly-LARGE generic thumbnail popping up next to them. Such as a huge blue folder for the folders, and a generic MPG icon next to them. How do I make that stop? I like a nice clean interface. I don't need an icon popping up when I select each and every file. It's just ugly.

This also occurs on a bit older version of UMS at my friend's house.

I'm running Mountain Lion 10.8.5 here and my friend is running Yosemite 10.10.5 at her house. I doubt the OS makes a difference at all in this case.

Logs attached.

Thanks :)
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Nadahar
Posts: 1990
Joined: Tue Jun 09, 2015 5:57 pm

Re: How to NOT show generic thumbnails when browsing videos?

Post by Nadahar »

You probably can't do that. You would have to contact the those that created the renderer (WD Live Streaming player) and make them give you an option not to show thumbnails.

This is due to how the UPnP AV/DLNA standards are designed. UMS as a server serves whatever the renderer requests. If the renderer requests a thumbnail, UMS sends one. Some renderers don't use thumbnails, in which case UMS doesn't send them as they are never requested. In short, this is controlled by and is the responsibility of the renderer.

What you can turn on and off in UMS configuration is different way of generating thumbnails. In earlier versions is was probably possible to disable all thumbnails so that UMS would send "nothing" if a thumbnail was requested. That might have worked on some renderers giving the result you want, while it's likely to fail on others.

I have a hard time to see why we should implement an option to "break" the standard. The "look" of the browsing screen is entirely the responsibility of the renderer, and so is the size of the icons.
smtips
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Oct 16, 2017 11:39 am

Re: How to NOT show generic thumbnails when browsing videos?

Post by smtips »

I kind of get it but kind of not. WD's post states:

"Thumbnail support will not function on the WD TV Live HD Media player, WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player, WD TV Live Streaming Media Player, or the WD TV Live Hub Media Center when connected to a Media Server. The Media Player or Media Center will need to be connected to the device as a Network Share to see thumbnails.

"Thumbnail display is not available in list view."

https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/a ... px?ID=2742

So, I'm in list view. WD doesn't support thumbnails connected to a Media Server. My WD's don't display thumbnails at all when playing from a network share. Nor from a directly attached drive.

There are no "embedded" thumbnail files in my hundreds of avi's, mp4's, mkv's or mpg's. This only occurs when using UMS.

I don't understand how implementing an option like this would break the "standard" or why it would be their problem, if WD's rendering standard is to not even display thumbnails when connected to a media server.

Thanks for the response
Nadahar
Posts: 1990
Joined: Tue Jun 09, 2015 5:57 pm

Re: How to NOT show generic thumbnails when browsing videos?

Post by Nadahar »

The quoted text is wrong, they have mixed the two. The logical conclusion is that thumbnails are displayed when connected to a media server and not when browsing a network share. To display thumbnails when connected to a network share, the media player would have to read the source file and generate the thumbnail itself, which can be a lot of work to support for all different types of media. When using a media server on the other hand, thumbnails are available exactly because the media servers are requred to deliver thumbnails according to the standard.

If we would implement an option to deliver "empty" thumbnails to the renderer (0 bytes of data), it would probably mean that a lot of users would get problems if they enabled this option as their renderers expect to get thumbnails with actual content if they request them. That, and the fact that this isn't the responsibility of the media server at all means that I don't think it would be worth spending time on doing.
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