Hi again
More about disappearing movie and TV series images....
I'm referring to movie and TV series images seen in:
WMC -> TV -> Recorded TV -> select a recording -> Synopsis
And movie cover art images seen in:
WMC -> Movies -> Movie Library
The problem is that most of the images for the 200+ movies and
series episodes I recorded with WMC over the past 1.5 years
disappeared in the last few weeks.
Every movie and TV episode used to have a cover-art image, but
now most images are gone. The few that remain are mostly for recent
recordings.
My understanding is:
1) After WMC is launched, it re-downloads images when
they are accessed in Synopsis or Movie Library by the user.
WMC seems to only cache image links but not whole images because:
(a) there is a delay loading an image when WMC is first opened, and
(b) if internet is disabled there are no images, just blank placeholders, and
(c) if images were local or in the wtv files they wouldn't be disappearing.
No internet = no images.
2) Synopsis and Movie Library images are related. When an image
disappears from Synopsis it also disappears from Movie Library.
3) WMCs only source of image information is from the SD and TMDB links
that epg123 inserted into the mxf, such as
imageUrl="
https://json.schedulesdirect.org/...jpg
imageUrl="
http://image.tmdb.org/...jpg
4) Something changed at SD recently because image links that
worked for over 1.5 years no longer work today.
Now that epg123 will be caching images, it seems plausible that
it solves the disappearing movie and series image problem.
Hopefully, as long as the image stays cached by epg123, it won't
matter that SD will no longer serve older images.
But, if epg123 automatically deletes cached images after a time limit
that un-solves the problem.
So, here are some suggestions:
1) If would be great if epg123 did not delete cached images that
are still in use by movies and series episodes in the Recorded TV
folder, then maybe images will no longer disappear.
Alternatively:
2) Add the option to disable automatic image deletion by epg123,
and allow users to delete files manually.
The image cache could get quite large, but I for one would be OK with it
taking up an 8TB SSD.
3) Add the option to prefer TMDB images over SD images.
Maybe TMDB images will last longer than SD.
SD images that last only a few days are not very useful for
a movie library.
Thank you.