Custom Folder Icons, using on network Options

[freesafety13]

I've searched through the forums about this topic to no avail. I would like to use the custom folder icons for movies when I stream them. I currently have almost all my movies backed up on my pc and instead of wasting the money to burn each and every one to a disk, I just stream them to the xbox and was wondering if there was a way to use the custom movie icons.

this is a link to one of the topics asking this a long time ago.

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?sho...lder+icons+xbmc

I dont know if I'm wording my question properly so everyone will understand what I'm asking. I would rather use the custom icons than the ones that are default. Now that I think about it, none of my movies even have icons, just the blank folder jpeg.

[timdog82001]

well if you didn't know it, you can add a custom thumbnail to any file by putting an image file in the same folder as the file and renaming the image to filename.tbn. So, if you have the file Children of Men.avi and the picture named childrenthumbnail.jpg or something like that, you would simply rename the image to say Children of Men.tbn

However, I don't think there's anyway of creating a separate folder just for the thumbnails like the guy in the post you linked to was asking about. It has to be in with the original file.

[freesafety13]

it doesnt matter that the file is on my pc and not my xbox. I already did the wide icons for games so I know how to do it and where to get the icons from.

[timdog82001]

it doesnt matter that the file is on my pc and not my xbox. I already did the wide icons for games so I know how to do it and where to get the icons from.

i guess that was a question? No, it doesn't matter if it's on your PC. I have all my movies on my computer with thumbnails like I mentioned, and I can view everything over SMB with thumbnails perfectly.

By the way, this is totally the wrong place to be posting this. This is a forum just for blackbolt skins, probably should have posted in the regular Xbox media center forum.

This post has been edited by timdog82001: Mar 31 2007, 12:54 AM

[freesafety13]

sorry, I should have used a ? instead of a period.

I saw that the forum was titled Skin Wallpapers, Themes & Other Customization and I thought icons fell under other customization. I always have a hard time distinguishing between what the skin controls and what the dashboard controls, sorry about that.

[freesafety13]

I tried renaming the jpeg to the foldername.tbn with no results. does it matter that I've used DVD shrink so my files arent AVI. If it does, I know this has been asked before and I've searched all over both this site and the wikipedia links, what is the best program to use to convert video to avi. I cant remember what dvd shrink converts video and audio to. now thats going to bother me all day until I remember.

[timdog82001]

well it's supposed to be filename.tbn, and "filename" should be replaced by the name of the file. It doesn't matter what type of file it is, it should work for any type of video or xbe or python script or anything.

This post has been edited by timdog82001: Apr 2 2007, 09:12 PM

[freesafety13]

dvd shrink doest shrink the file into one file, it keeps the original structure of the dvd. can you suggest a program that will shrink it into one avi file. I've looked all over the backup forum for a solution but cant find one. I've also read the entire wikipedia including the links but couldnt find one.

never mind, dont worry about it. I think I'm just going to delete the backups off my hdd after I make copies of the movies my daughter will watch. I was just thinking it would be nice if I could just stream the movies she watches to her xbox while using custom folder icons so once she gets the hang of how to do it she could do it herself, instead of ruining the dvds since she has a bad habit of taking a movie out and just throwing it on her floor. I guees I'll just have to keep making backups if she keeps ruining them.

This post has been edited by freesafety13: Apr 3 2007, 12:39 PM

[timdog82001]

ah, I see. Well, you could try naming the tbn to match the IFO file, that might work. Or, just naming the image folder.jpg and putting it in the folder might work too....If you make convert the files into an image, you could just do the same thing i was talking about with the filename. Or you could convert into avi, but be forewarned, it takes a few hours to do a high quality conversion, usually somewhere between 5 and 8 hours for me. Although, if you're not downscaling the quality at all, it might be real quick. I generally downscale my dvd's down to about 2 gb AVI files, which maintains very good video and audio, while cutting the file size down to less than half of the original. If you would like to do that, take a look at this tutorial. It might take you a while to get through it your first time, but you get the hang of it pretty easily after doing it once or twice.

http://www.bobsomers.com/articles/encoding...xvid-and-ac3-1/

If you would like it to be more automated (though I believe less efficient, and probably a bit lesser quality) try out AutoGK. If you're trying to backup TV episodes from DVD, try out this walkthrough.

http://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=301015

[mikester18]

dvd shrink doest shrink the file into one file, it keeps the original structure of the dvd. can you suggest a program that will shrink it into one avi file. I've looked all over the backup forum for a solution but cant find one. I've also read the entire wikipedia including the links but couldnt find one.

never mind, dont worry about it. I think I'm just going to delete the backups off my hdd after I make copies of the movies my daughter will watch. I was just thinking it would be nice if I could just stream the movies she watches to her xbox while using custom folder icons so once she gets the hang of how to do it she could do it herself, instead of ruining the dvds since she has a bad habit of taking a movie out and just throwing it on her floor. I guees I'll just have to keep making backups if she keeps ruining them.

I use .png files and name the to .tbn and use them over smb make sure you clear the thumbnail cache on the xbox just incase it is using other icons for your movies turn the jpg into a png with a photo editor and rename to filename.png and put in same directory as the file XBMC will pick it up just fine you might want to erase the thumbnails in the Userdata folder just in case and restart the xbox.

[freesafety13]

i can get it to work if the movie is just one file, but dvd shrink doesnt convert movies into one file, it keeps the original dvd format. I've looked around and read for days about how I need to convert them to 1 avi file but every avi converter I've tried converts avi's to something else, like DivX, and I dont know what DivX is even after reading the wikipedia and the tutorials on Doom9.net, which is the site recommend in the backup forums sticky.

the main reason this is an issue with me is because my daughters xbox dvd drive is going out and she primarily uses it to watch her movies, but she cant read all that well yet (shes in kindergarten) and she doesnt understand that you have to stack the files and select the one thats over 1 gig. so i figured if i could make a movie just one file with a picture it would eleviate alot of headaches for me.

[timdog82001]

divx, like Xvid, is a type of avi, more or less. It's the type of encoding. xvid is generally considered better.

[Coeus]

If you have a separate folder for each DVD (which is what I think you are doing), then you can create a thumbnail and name it folder.jpg and it will show up as the folder icon. That is what I do.

[freesafety13]

i was able to find a dvd to avi converter so now everything is working ok