Bruji

After spending a few days maniacally clicking on each Title to download the covers from the Doghouse, I woke up this morning to no artwork.

I did the "Export to Pocketpedia" thing but it created a 3 gig file. I assume this is the same result as selecting "Large Covers" in Pocketpedia Preferences. I don't want to allot 3 gigs of space to Pocketpedia. I was assuming that the ones downloaded from the Doghouse were the 'thumbnails', as the usage statistic on my iPhone registered about 200 mb for Pocketpedia. And by 'thumbnails' I mean, like it downloads the 'covers_thumb/dvd/image', like this:

http://doghouse.bruji.com/covers_thumb/ ... 102155.jpg


... which is plenty big for the iPhone.

I also removed Pocketpedia and re-installed it and did a fresh sync (not knowing that "Large Covers" was ON by default) but no images went over to iPhone (thank gosh!).

So what are the options? Allotting 3 gigs of space, or having no images?

To get your covers (small or large) over from DVDpedia do a 'clean' sync. Hold down the Option key on the keyboard and tap the Sync button in Pocketpedia.

The 'Export to Pocketpedia' file always uses the large cover images for the export. But Pocketpedia will not import the large covers if you have that preference turned off; it'll simply discard the info during the import. The created file is a bundle so you can already delete the large covers before dragging it to iTunes if you'd like to save synching time and useful if you don't have the 3GB of space during import. Just ctrl-click the file and select 'Show packages contents' from the contextual menu to find the Large Covers folder.

After you downloaded the images in Pocketpedia they obviously should have stayed, not sure why they disappeared on you like that. But if it should happen again after you do the clean sync do let us know.

The "clean sync" seems to have worked, with this curiosity:

In order to sync PP, I have to "Create a Network" (OS X 10.8.2, btw) and sync that way. I read in the forums here that someone else had trouble with their router routing locally or something like that. I noticed, if I log into my router and look at the DHCP client list, I have to keep refreshing it and the iPhone only pops up every 30 seconds or so and then disappears again. So I assume I have that routing problem as well. No problems accessing the Internet, but I guess local routing is not good. Kind of a hassle to have to "Create a Network" in order to sync PP but I can live with it.

Anyway, so I did the clean sync, and while still connected to my Laptop created network, I clicked a movie, "The 40 Year Old Virgin", and then on its cover button. The familiar gear starting turning, and it loaded a different cover than the thumbnail and the one I have in my DVDpedia. I assume it got it over 4G, but I could have sworn I had some preference set that would only allow Doghouse covers over WiFi.

My other question is: so without loading Large Covers during a sync, PP still must still get the covers from the Doghouse. (I just answered that by clicking a Title that doesn't have a dogtag and it didn't load an image).

I guess I'm back to my original question about a middle ground between 3 gigs and no images. A sync without Large Covers only adds the tiny thumbnail to a Collection's list view but nothing if you click to see the artwork.

What image does PP get from the Doghouse? The thumbnail or the large image? And does it store it on the iPhone? I ask because if it gets the large one and stores it on the iPhone, then I might as well load my own Large Covers, as I've spent a lot of time getting good ones that I like that are often different than those at the Doghouse.

I wish there was a way when requesting a cover image that it get it from DVDpedia rather than the doghouse. I wouldn't mind selectively transferring some Large Covers over, but ...

btw - It could have been an iOS update that knocked out my images? I did that in the last couple days.

A bad local network can cause issues with the sync. The sync is robust once it gets going, DVDpedia and Pocketpedia will both try to recover a broken connection. But finding each other is a more fragile matter, that relies on Bonjour. It's a technology that allows the sync to work without the user having to enter information about the IP address on the iPhone or the Mac. Bonjour is given low priority and takes a little while to appear on the network. So an iPhone that is popping in and out of the network would make it hard for Bonjour to do it's magic and DVDpedia to locate the iPhone to start the sync. You would likely get stuck in "Requesting Collection..." message while Pocketpedia waits for DVDpedia to find it.

When clicking to see a large cover and not the thumbnail Pocketpedia does attempt to retrieve the cover from Doghouse to show to the user. It also does save it to disk, but that was an oversight. You are correct that if "Large Covers" preference is off it should just display the image and not save it to disk. I have updated that for the next version of Pocketpedia.

You could sync the first time over iTunes by using the "Export for Pocketpedia..." file. This would give you the opportunity to change the images in the "LargeCovers" folder to a medium size to fit your preferences. With a batch processor such as Automator, you could sample them all down all to 400 height for example. Pocketpedia not going to check on the resolution of the cover and will copy them and you will have your own covers for the large image but at a small size. Following syncs of new movies via WiFi will come into Pocketpedia regular size, but it should not be much of an issue for storage unless you add tons of new movies in which case you can repeat the above.

It could have been an iOS update that knocked out my images? I did that in the last couple days.

For the reason of size covers are not included in the backup done to iTunes or iCloud. If you did a restore after the iOS update it would have restored your data but not the covers. It also means that Pocketpedia is unaware of the missing covers and does not ask for them again, hence why you have to explicitly tell it to with the option key.

It's not easy to balance the requirements of a high resolution screen that the iOS device now have with storage space. I will have to rethink the Large Covers preference and maybe include a smaller image, at low resolution rather than none at all. Maybe a three button preference: none, medium, full resolution.

I must be missing a step somewhere. I've tried the "Export to Pocketpedia" but I still get Doghouse Large Images, or no image if there is no Dogtag.

I Exported
Replaced all the LargeCovers with smaller versions (from the Application Support Folder, so they were jpegs. Oops?)
Dragged the .pocketpd file onto File Sharing in iTunes
"Copying items to iPhone" (takes a long time, but doesn't change the usage bar in iTunes very much -- red flag?)
Synced the iPhone
Created a Local Network
Launched Pocketpedia. made it to the "Clock" progress icon
Pocketpedia began counting over my nearly 6,000 images
Thumbnails all present but ...
Doghouse Large Images, and no image if there is no Dogtag

I figured it was because I loaded jpegs. So I did that all again with pngs. It counted over the images, but still no joy. I did it all again after restarting and such, in case something was cached, along with an option-key clean sync, but alas.

I'm sure it (tried) copied the pngs because they are larger than the jpegs. About 1.2gb vresus 400mb.

What step am I missing? And is it possible to use jpegs?

Seventh time's the charm, I guess. Everything appears to be working as expected, although I think I'm going to punt on the LargeCovers.

I don't like the look of the scaled down png images. Only way to bring the file in under a gig was to scale them to 300 pixels. My "Covers" Folder in the DVDpedia Application Support Folder scaled to 400pixels came to about 400mb. I don't know how good they look on the iPhone but that's a ballpark size I could live with.

No need to mess about with this. I'm an outlier with a gigantic database full of high resolution artwork. It's nice on my computer but doesn't translate well to my jam-packed little iPhone. Que Sera, Sera

Is it possible to use jpegs?

It would have been nice in terms of size, but iOS is built for PNGs. It's able to process them and display them quickly. But this was likely a concern a long time before the A6 chip when the first iPhone came out, now it could probably be JPEG without issue, but Pocketpedia does not look for JPEGs.