First, here is what a moviesheet generated using Thumbgen looks like for me:
There are many, many ways that different media players and media player software display this kind of movie information. Creating "moviesheets" with Thumbgen is a relatively simple way of doing this job. A "moviesheet" is simply a JPG that contains all the movie information (as the above example shows). The AMP firmware with POHD skin allows the user to display moviesheets by pressing a button on the remote while browsing through your movie collection.
How to create moviesheets
1. Download Thumbgen (thumbgen.org)
2. Change the profile to "ACRyan POHD". This is necessary so that Thumbgen names the moviesheet JPGs correctly so that the R1/R3 using AMP with POHD skin understands what they are.
3. Choose your "collector". This is the web source that the program will use to fetch the images and text data used to create the moviesheets. For English users, the best choice seems to be TheMovieDB.org. First select the checkbox next to TheMovieDB.org and then select both radio buttons as well.
4. For moviesheets to work correctly, your video files must each be in a separate folder. If your movie collection is not already in separate folders, this may be a big job for you. I'm sure there are utilities that will allow you to automate this process but I haven't used any so I can only suggest you try google to find one.
Name each movie's folder like so: "Movie Name (year)". In other words, you must have a main movie folder (i.e., "c:/Movies") and each movie must be in a separate folder within that main movie folder (i.e., "c:/Movies/MovieName1(2005)", "c:/Movies/MovieName2(1993)", and so on).
Thumbgen will create two JPGs in each movie's folder: 0001.jpg and folder.jpg.
folder.jpg is the movie's cover artwork. This will be displayed as the folder's thumbnail when browsing through your main movie folder.
0001.jpg is the moviesheet with all the movie details.
5. Now that you have a basic idea of what thumbgen does, let's create your moviesheets.
Note that there are a number of options that you can play with but you may leave them at their defaults and the program will work fine.
Click on "process files/folders" to begin.
6. Select your main movie folder. This will also select all the subfolders (i.e., individual movie folders).
7. You now have a few different ways of processing each movie folder. The first is called "manual mode". This takes the longest but gives the most accurate results because you have full control over how the moviesheet appears. This is what I recommend. You can also choose semiautomatic mode or automatic mode which require less user intervention and are faster but may not be accurate. Finally, you can choose "I'm feeling lucky" which is the fastest mode and does not allow any user intervention. The main problem that I've noticed with these faster/easier modes is that they sometimes select movie posters in foreign languages.
8. Select your desired way of processing each movie folder by clicking on one of the above buttons. Thumbgen will now search for the first movie by using it's folder name (movie name and year). Thumbgen is retrieving quite a bit of information so it may take a little bit of time. When it is done, a preview screen appears that allows you to manipulate what the moviesheet looks like (shown in the lower right-hand corner). You can change the cover artwork, backdrop, fanart, plot text, etc.
9. When your moviesheet is created as desired, click on "Generate them!" Thumbgen will now generate 0001.jpg and folder.jpg for the movie you were working on.
10. The same process as above is repeated for each movie in your collection. This may take a bit of time to accomplish if you have a large movie collection! In this case, you might try your luck at using the "I'm feeling lucky" mode and let Thumbgen work overnight for you.
11. Once you are done, start up your R1/R3 and use the file manager to browse to your main movie folder. To display each moviesheet, simply press the "slow" button on the remote while the desired movie's thumbnail is selected when browsing through your main movie folder. To exit the moviesheet and return to browsing your movie thumbnails, press "slow" again. Or, to play the movie while viewing the moviesheet, simply press play. You can also skip from one moviesheet to the next by using the up/down arrows. Note: the Asus remote control does NOT have a "slow" button! You will have to use moservice's IRFake to change one of your Asus remote buttons so that it sends the "slow" command. Read the discussion HERE to learn how to change IRFake so that your Asus remote has a "slow" button. Another option is to buy a Harmony unviversal remote control and program the POHD remote into it.
12. You may have noticed that my example moviesheet at the beginning of this post looks different from the default moviesheet that Thumbgen creates. This is because you can design your own moviesheets using the "Thumbgen designer" program. I'm using moviesheets created by user Lstar337 on another forum. You can download his templates HERE.
13. In addition to 0001.jpg and folder.jpg, Thumbgen creates a couple of other files by default: a .nfo and .tgmd. These might look like garbage to you but they can be quite useful in the future. These contain metadata for the moviesheet you have created. So, if you create moviesheets using the standard template and then later decide that you want to create moviesheets using a new template, you can use the "create from metadata" option. This allows you to create new moviesheets without having to go through the long "manual mode" process again. The new moviesheets will be created using the same cover artwork, backdrops, fanart, plot text, etc that you selected when you first created your moviesheets using the default template. This will be done without requiring any user intervention. This can save you a lot of time!
14. Thumgen has a *lot* of options and features that I have not discussed in this post. Have fun. Hopefully this post will help you get started with Thumbgen and moviesheets
