Providing a —much— smarter way to set Infuse Favorite artwork (bis repetita)

[Tazintosh]

Hi folks,

In december 2016, I’ve opened a post “Providing a —much— smarter way to set Infuse Favorite artwork” on Firecore Support which is gone for some reason…: https://support.firecore.com/hc/en-us/communit…

My InFuse 5.x home screen is full of empty greyed stars (default fav icon), providing an awful user experience.
By reading recent posts and the documentation, looks like this haven’t been addressed in 3 years, including v6, while Kodi for instance, have this for years. Why should I even think of buying v6 then?

I simply don’t understand your position:
• You have access to a complete database of visuals, that you use to autoset covers for all movies, TV Shows, etc.
• Why not simply propose your customers to use such a related image to illustrate their favorites?
• You claim « The most versatile… Automagic Organization… Amazing features come standard » and yet, the only available method to illustrate a favorite is that your customers have to add themself in first place an illustration on a folder, that they’ll then have to browse, select, set, etc. etc. This is a Back In Time method “à la Windows”, seriously.
• Picking an image from the database should even be the default behavior so no one is left with this ugly greyed star image.
• I’m not asking to drop your actual feature, I’m just asking to provide ease of use and UI satisfaction to your customers, that would make Infuse deserve even more praise.

Thanks in advance for reading and considering.

Edit: BTW, this post apply also to iOS let me know if you want me to duplicate it.

[yatesfox]

I may be completely misreading your complaint here - but all you need to do is create an image for your ‘favourite’ folder(s) and save a jpeg within said folder and name it favorite-atv.jpg. Infuse will then automatically pick this up for you and display the image as default.

The same goes for the Movies, in the genres you simply save an image in jpg format and name it folder.jpg and Infuse will display this for you as default.

You only need to do this once so it’s extremely low maintenance.

I’ve attached examples of what I mean. Apologies for screenshots of screens, I know people hate that!

Is this not what you mean?

[Tazintosh]

Your favs are mainly basic “folders”
My favs are mainly TV Shows
This already make a difference.
I never asked how to set an artwork, I think I can handle it but thanks for your time…
But considering my fav’s are changing regularly (due to what they are), it —is— time consuming, while this could be automated.

[yatesfox]

Is it selections of TV Shows in types/genres or actual TV Shows that you have?

If actually TV Shows then it’s just saving a favorite-atv.jpg into that Shows main folder. I appreciate that is ever so slightly laboursome, but at least you get the artwork that you want.

[Tazintosh]

Yatesfox, I do appreciate your time to post on this topic, but I simply do not understand why you keep trying to tell me how to set an artwork to my favorites.
Seriously, with all do respect, this is not the point. I perfectly know how to do it.
I will simply not do it because I’ve more important things to do than managing my library specially in 2019 when all the technology exist already for years to do it for me. I did it years ago, and I stopped.

Your “just saving” sentence is way more than “saving” and implies a multi steps workflow.
Try to see it that way: I’m watching my shows and movies in my couch, or my iPad when I eat alone, I won’t and will never search (= browsing the Web, searching for references images or symbols etc.), check for resolution, download or create, edit & crop, save as… (= browsing my library structure = UI file system) from my Apple TV. This make —no— sense. I won’t do it either from my iPad, I and will certainly not do it when I’m back to my computer to actually work…

Would you accept to use a text stored on your TV Show folder where you would have to add the episode number you just ended to watch?
Would you accept to use another one to set the timestamp of the episode you just left?
Of course not. That why services like Scrobbler exists.
That’s why Plex, Kodi, InFuse, etc. exist. They are here to analyze for me files and folders, and by using database, provide me a great —user experience— while I’m seating in my couch. They all try to make vanish the cumbersome of manually maintaining a library.

90% of my experience with Infuse starts on my couch and stays on my couch. And it should not be any different. Guess what, this is exactly what’s the Firecore landing page first image is telling me (TV + couch), this is what they wants people to experience. Not another nerd tool where everything must be done on a computer.
They have the technology to provide a small images catalog to browse from, already curated (matching names, resolution, ratio, etc.). It’s just about deciding, years after the competition, to provide it to their customers.

Once again, I’m not asking Firecore to remove the actual feature, please continue enjoying your time by setting yourself all your fav’s images, but this is not the way I’m using/want to use it, as it’s simply not the way it should be nowadays.
I’ve gladly paid for Infuse 4 and 5 and was happy to support. But I’m done until those basics considerations are not taken.
It’s a complete contradiction to the marketing speech.

Cheers,

[yatesfox]

I get your frustration and I’m not upset in any way, although it does feel like you’re maybe a tad angry at me even though I am just trying to help

I see your point(s) and I’m not in disagreement at all but if we look at what the Infuse Team have to work with there are no ‘favourite’ style artworks that I can see available on TVDB. They only host Background art (which incidentally is the same size dimensions as the favourite art), Posters, and Banners. So it seems that the idea is not impossible, but there is nothing to pull from with what’s available on TVDB. However I guess it wouldn’t be impossible for it to just pull the Background art as Favourite art. The only downside is that you’d run the risk of having artwork without the TV Show name appearing within it. Technically the Banner is what you would ideally pull, but the dimensions are completely out to what the Infuse Favourite uses.

I can’t see a clean sensible way to do this due to the Metadata and art scrape coming from TVDB. Unless of course we could convince the TVDB to start hosting Favourite artworks.

[alex13]

@yatesfox

I may be completely misreading your complaint here - but all you need to do is create an image for your ‘favourite’ folder(s) and save a jpeg within said folder and name it favorite-atv.jpg. Infuse will then automatically pick this up for you and display the image as default.

The same goes for the Movies, in the genres you simply save an image in jpg format and name it folder.jpg and Infuse will display this for you as default.

You only need to do this once so it’s extremely low maintenance.

I’ve attached examples of what I mean. Apologies for screenshots of screens, I know people hate that!

Is this not what you mean?

i tried this just now, every favorite folder got a .jpg of my choice with the name of the folder added…nothing changed, its unreal how good the Apple TV Favorite look compared to my iPad Version

i added two pictures, one Apple TV with option to add covers to your folder and the grey and boring iPad Version, where that .jpg hint you gave did not work

[yatesfox]

@alex13

i tried this just now, every favorite folder got a .jpg of my choice with the name of the folder added…nothing changed, its unreal how good the Apple TV Favorite look compared to my iPad Version

i added two pictures, one Apple TV with option to add covers to your folder and the grey and boring iPad Version, where that .jpg hint you gave did not work

On iOS (phone, ipad) you create a different dimension of favourite artwork, much like a movie poster. The recommended size is 1000 x 1500.

So, with iOS (not appleTV) you would name the favourite artwork as favourite.jpg or favourite.png, and place each one within the genre folder.

Hope that helps.

[alex13]

@yatesfox

On iOS (phone, ipad) you create a different dimension of favourite artwork, much like a movie poster. The recommended size is 1000 x 1500.

So, with iOS (not appleTV) you would name the favourite artwork as favourite.jpg or favourite.png, and place each one within the genre folder.

Hope that helps.

just to make sure, you mean i should call the .jpg or .png “favourite”.jpg/.png favourite as really the name favourite or favourite as the name of my favourite folder ? actually i tried both now, but its still not working

still looks like this on my iPad, no Artwork Showing up

[Tazintosh]

This topic actually turns to something funny (or not).
The exact reason of me writing it, was for the points being discussed about on the lastest answers:
Recommended size (different size depending if you’re using iOS or Apple TV… seriously?) , naming convention, file extension, path to store to, etc.
But hey, still looks normal a few weeks before 2020.

Refreshing lecture for late comers (scroll above): Providing a —much— smarter way to set Infuse Favorite artwork (bis repetita) - #5 by Tazintosh

[yatesfox]

@alex13

just to make sure, you mean i should call the .jpg or .png “favourite”.jpg/.png favourite as really the name favourite or favourite as the name of my favourite folder ? actually i tried both now, but its still not working

still looks like this on my iPad, no Artwork Showing up

I see there is some confusion, probably my fault so apologies.

What you have there is not ‘Favourites’ in the same way as adding them on the Home Screen. What you have is simply Folders on your network share.

For artwork on those just save a *.jpg or *.png file into each folder and call it ‘folder.jpg’

That will work for you. The method I mentioned above is how to add a Favourite link to a TV Show or a Movie onto the Home Page of Infuse.

[yatesfox]

@Tazintosh

This topic actually turns to something funny (or not).
The exact reason of me writing it, was for the points being discussed about on the lastest answers:
Recommended size (different size depending if you’re using iOS or Apple TV… seriously?) , naming convention, file extension, path to store to, etc.
But hey, still looks normal a few weeks before 2020.

Refreshing lecture for late comers (scroll above): Providing a —much— smarter way to set Infuse Favorite artwork (bis repetita) - #5 by Tazintosh

In the meantime, I see that on my recent visit to theTVDB they now have a section for artwork named ‘Panels’. Assuming every show on there now has some type of decent Panel artwork then it’s not too much of a stretch for James and the Team to add some code that caches the highest voted one and keeps that to use as the Favourite artwork on the aTV.

The Favourites artwork recommendation for the aTV is 1920 x 1080 and the Panel artwork is exactly those dimensions,.

Hopefully James will see this and provide some feedback on that idea.

Maybe that’ll make your mood a little better, eh

[alex13]

yes, folder.jpg works for me…thanks.

e.g. the poster with the complaints, i really have no problem setting this all up, its a hobby and i have no problem investing in it, just need to know how.

is there a newbie page somewhere with some inside on the most important things to know about setting up Infuse ?