I am not sure if this is supposed to work or not. I am playing around with the Local Content beta option. I pointed it at my movies directory on my NAS and it imported the MP4 movies fine. I also have a bunch that are DVD images, and those did not import. I supposed I'd need to convert them to MP4 if I wanted to make them available and not sure its worth the effort since most are older. I then added the folder that has a bunch of converted home camcorder movies. They are all mp4. They play fine, but have no cover art. The files have a thumbnail image on them that shows in other media players, but not showing in Channels. Is there anything I can do to the files to get them to show? The cover art shows fine for commercial movies, just not the home movies.
Which client device/app are you referring to?
I tried AppleTV and also iPhone and both just give a black rectangle.
Thanks. This is something we plan to improve as the beta feature progresses. I think the Android side shows some thumbnails but Apple platforms currently do not.
OK, I'll try the Android TV app... we have Sony TVs.
We’re the dvd images ISOs?
Regular videos aren’t something we support right now. We’re only importing feature films as we hav no way for you to add metadata on your own.
Makes sense, but if the video file already has a thumbnail in the metadata, why not display it? I have removed them and probably won't try to use Channels for home videos... will use Infuse, but seems that if its there it should be displayed instead of nothing. Not a big priority though.
What kind of thumbnail and metadata format is it using?
I'm not sure how I would figure that out. I believe I used EyeTV to transfer from tape, and it grabbed a frame from the video and made it the thumbnail. Is there a tool I can use to evaluate metadata?
If the thumbnail is embedded in the video file, you could try MediaInfo
If it's a separate media file, like .jpg/png/etc I don't think it will be picked up like Plex does it.
I'll take a look at that. It is embedded in the file.
OP, I'm assuming you are a Mac guy from some of your comments. If so, there is a free app called MetaZ: https://metaz.io It is usually used for rips of discs to put cover art and descriptions on them but it will work just as well with file compatible home movies (.m4v) viewable on AppleTV. It's not the only such app that does this but I use it often and it works great.
Tip: If you don't have any good photos taken at the same time as the home movies, open them up in Quicktime and find a good frame to grab to make into your "cover art" image for that video.
While at it, punch in a nice short description for each home movie, put in whatever details you can (such as best guess at date), title of the home movie ("1996 Christmas, 2004 Jim's Birthday, etc. tip: if you put in a date first, you are basically sorting them by year) and then MetaZ "write" all that descriptive metadata + your still image thumbnail into the file. By this method, you can dress up home movies with metadata exactly like blockbuster films on disc or from the iTunes store or similar.
If you are NOT a Mac guy, I'm sure there are probably dozens of metadata-appending apps on the Windows side too. Just search for them.
Whether or not this will work within the Channels app Movies feature, I don't know. But it will definitely work at displaying a home movie collection with "cover art" in the regular AppleTV interface. If you get creative about naming your home movies, you can even get them to display in order by year. For example, the date theme of XXYYZZ where XX is year video was shot, YY is month and ZZ is day as the first entry in "title" can get multiple videos shot in the same year in date order.
OR, you might do as I do and tag them as "TV Shows" so that you can use the "Seasons" tag with a year (they were shot) and an YYZZ code for "Episode ID" to get them to display in the order they were shot in the TV Show menu of AppleTV. That will let you name them whatever you want but they will sort by Episode ID order within each year ("Season"). I have MANY home movies and chose to go this way to keep them from mixing with my regular movie collection list. But that's just an option if you might not want to split them out from your own "Movies" list like I did.
Wow, thanks for the tips. I do have a Mac, and downloaded the app. A little help from Youtube to figure out how it works, and I think this will help. This week is crazy, but when I get a chance I'll experiment with my home movies and see if I can get them to show up in Channels cleanly. I love the idea of making them a TV show with seasons and episodes.
If you haven't tried MediaInfo yet, you can use something built-in Channels DVR.
If you have the movie imported in Channels DVR, find its file id# then go to
http://1.2.3.4:8089/dvr/files/2400/mediainfo.json
where 1.2.3.4 is the ip address of your Channels DVR computer and 2400 is the file id#