Part 2 in my PS3 Media Server series, icons for movies and folders. This is should be covered extensively in the FAQ, and it may or may not be, I’m not going to bother checking. Primarily this a resource on where to find movie art and icon templates.

The naming convention for assigning icons is %filename% (including extension).cover.png(or .jpg). E.g. Man On Fire 1080p BluRay DTS.m2ts.cover.png. Folders: create your folder and drop in a folder.png(or .jpg). Image dimensions are 320×240.

[ Finding Artwork ]
• themoviedb.org
  Site is mainly for XBMC / Plex style media center apps but it’s a good resource for good quality artwork. Look in the lower right corner for the movie poster.
• GetVideoArtwork (Beta)
  New one I just found a couple of weeks ago, geared toward iTunes artwork and sometimes slim pickings but really high quality.

[ Creating Icons ]
PSD Templates: I did not create these templates, I found them in a forum thread about PS3MS thumbnails. I believe it was this thread on avsforum. Click on the image to download the PSD.
• FullHD Template
  1080p text, blue case and disc with blu-ray logo. I turn off the blue glow layer. Create a new layer in the CoverArt Container group and paste in your artwork. Use free transform with <shift> to size the artwork in the mask; save for web as png24 and name accordingly.
• Normal Template
  HD text, blue case and disc with blu-ray logo. Same instructions as the FullHD template above. At one time I came across a version of this template with 720p text, which would be useful since I don’t have the font that was used. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find it again.
• Standard Definition
  SD text, silver box and disc with DVD and Widescreen logo.
• Blu-ray box
  Standard blu-ray box with a bit of alpha on the blue case. Resize to 240×240 for use with PS3MS (haven’t tried throwing the original 512×512 at it to see what it’d do).
• TV Show
  Samsung HDTV for TV shows; great to use as a folder image. I hide the light_retouch and shadow layer.
Applications:
• Thumbnail Generator
  Search Amazon or upload your own image, scale it and then apply it to different templates. Amazing home grown webapp, but I don’t really like the available templates.
• SlipCover (Mac only).
  This is what I’m currently using; they’re larger than the other templates that include the disc, and the case is sharper than the PSD template case. Two big draw backs, Mac only and its output is .icns which requires a couple of extra steps to get to .png.

Scrolling through 320×240 icons on a 1080p display is a little rough. Picking out details in the icons is next to impossible, but it is nice to have them in addition to the standard filename text. Also, it can take awhile for the PS3 to show the icons; supposedly this can be sped up by using the Media Library option, but I haven’t had a lot of luck with it. Regardless, it’s still a lot better than the default PS3MS icon.

Part 3: Changing the PS3MS default icon.