Meural Canvas II: Best way to find a specific file in a Meural playlist
Hello,
I have a Meural Canvas II.
We have created playlists with 50 to 60 files. The files in the playlists are organized in the order that makes sense visually. The files are not in alphabetical order.
At times we wish to locate, on the Netgear Meural portal, a photo with a particular file name. After searching the various nooks and crannies in the Netgear site I have found no easy way to easily locate a particular file on the Netgear Meural server by file name. The only method that I can see is to start with the first photo in the playlist and look at each one until I find the file that I need. If there are only a few files in the playlist that brute force technique is find, but with 50+ files in a playlist, it is cumbersome.
Can anyone give me any ideas? Have missed an obvious technique?
Is there an API available to customers that would allow us to write our own scripts, code, etc to interface with the Meural Canvas server? Or to interface directly with the Canvas II? I think the answer to this is "no" given a thread started earlier in the month by a user named "goll" but I think it is worth asking here.
I did chime in on "goll"'s thread requesting that the development team/product manager be asked to provide an API for accessing the Meural server and the Canvas II directly.
We are enjoying the Canvas II by the way. We finally have a nice way to enjoy photos that up until now have been locked away, out of site :).
Re: Meural Canvas II: Best way to find a specific file in a Meural playlist
You are way ahead of me in knowledge on coding, as well as the number of photos you have in the canvas. But then I have only had ours set up for three days 🙂 Kudos to you though.
One of the issues I have had is that new photo additions are added to the beginning of the playlist, and I, like you, sometimes have a sequential playlist that I want to stay in that order. I am doing one on our new puppy's growth over his first year and have had to several times "Organize" the file placing the new photos last.
May I ask how you have formatted your photos to meet the 16:9 format of the canvas?
Choose the shadowed person icon in the upper right corner.
In the pulldown select Playlists
You should see all of the playlists that you have defined.
Click on the playlist of interest.
You should now see all of the photos in the clicked playlist.
In the upper right there should be the word "Manage"
Click "Manage" and you should be taken to a panel that allows you to rearrange your photos.
As for getting our photos into the 16:9 format, there are a couple of approaches you can consider. We are far from experts so there are probably other better techniques.
For photos taken from smart phones, our Samsungs let us specify the aspect ratio, which is what the 16:9 is, in the camera app. We have Samsung 9 and 10.
For photos taken with regular cameras, some cameras may have a place to choose the 16:9 format. Our digital cameras do not.
Once a photo has been taken, it can be cropped, reshaped, etc. using photo editting software. Our Samsung phone's default photo managing software works for that. For photos on our Windows laptop, I would expect that most Windows photo editting s/w will have tools to do this as well.
I noticed that on the Meural phone app, at the bottom of the screen there are 5 icons, of which the middle one is a camera. When I select that I have the option of "Choose from gallery". If I do that and select a photo, in the lower right corner there is a rectangular icon with 4 dots in the middle. Selecting this allows me to format the selected photo as 16:9.
And finally, at times we have set the Canvas II display option "Fill mode" option to Stretch. This prevents the black border from showing around a non 16:9 photo, but sometimes the image is distorted, which we like to avoid.
Re: Meural Canvas II: Best way to find a specific file in a Meural playlist
Hello. I don't even know where to begin with the issues I'm having with the Meural frame. we have photos from over 30 countries with at least 300 - 500 photos from each. Adding them to SD cards and not being able to list the country names is a nightmare. We also use a Mac and that black screen between every two photos is also a pain. Any recommendations would be appreciated. Thanks
Re: Meural Canvas II: Best way to find a specific file in a Meural playlist
Hi,
At the moment we have 6 or so playlists, each with 50 to 60 photos. We created and populated the playlists on the netgear website. Because of that we were able to give the playlists names that relate to the playlist contents. We considered using the SD card approach but decided against it because there can be no more than 4 playlists on the SD card and the playlist names are meaningless.
Selecting the photos to add to the playlists via the netgear website was a labor of love.
Some of our photos are on a Samsung Android phone but most of our photos are stored on a Windows system. Selecting photos from the phone did not work well for us because it is hard to identify photo quality on the small phone screen. We ended up copying phone photos of interest to our Windows system. So over time we looked at our photos, one at a time, and uploaded the good ones to the netgear website.
With your large number of photos the SD card approach is the best way IF there was no limit to the number of playlists and IF we could name the playlists ourselves.
Otherwise it seems building playlists on the netgear website is your only option. Make a big pot of coffee or tea, grab pastries and allocate several evenings?
The other questions that come to mind regarding using the netgear website is
How many photos would you be allowed to store on the netgear website?
How many photos can be placed on the Meural Canvas? If the SD card is not used, then the photos are stored on the Canvas itself.
I know there are limits on both. I just don't know what they are at the moment.
Kevin,
I've copied you on this note hoping that you would be able to help out daivad with suggestions on how to best use the Canvas in the described scenario. Also would you please suggest to the Canvas development team to enhance the SD card interface to support
Unlimited playlists on the SD card (or at least many more than 4)
Re: Meural Canvas II: Best way to find a specific file in a Meural playlist
Vic, Thank you so much for your assistance. You know that while dealing with a netgear rep on the phone, he never mentioned that I could rename folders on their website. This frame is a $500 disappointment and so is their technical support.
Re: Meural Canvas II: Best way to find a specific file in a Meural playlist
Hi daivad,
In the spirit of my trying not to confuse anyone I should say that the netgear meural website user interface doesn't use the "folder" and "file" terms. At the website the user creates "playlists", which the user names. Into a given playlist photos are placed. Then a populated playlist is sent to your Canvas. I suppose the intent is to hide the underlying architecture of the Canvas from the web site user.
But they do advertise the SD card interface so it should be integrated smoothly into the product and it is not. I have a feeling that the Canvas product developers haven't given much thought to the SD card interface or to the needs of users who have lots of photos, like me and really like you!
I personally have had some difficulties finding documentation, online or in the Canvas box, that would guide me through the Canvas setup. Eventually I've figured out what I needed, but only after poking around on my own, help from this forum from the administrators and trading notes with netgear support.
That said, now that we have a couple of playlists loaded onto the Canvas, my wife and I are really enjoying the final results: Four playlists with about 50 photos each, from various adventures, with the photos showing all day long.
These are just my opinions, which if you add 2 dollars to, will buy you a cup of coffee :).
Re: Meural Canvas II: Best way to find a specific file in a Meural playlist
We got our Canvas II in mid -December and quickly put together a number of "Playlists" that now number 16. We have a recent vacation, our puppies first 10 months from birth until now, family photos etc. Some of these playlists are from artwork from the membership as well. We love the canvas. It certainly requires a labor a love to find and assemble the playists, and tweak them the way you want the flow to go. But throughout the holidays, people have enjoyed the art shows.
We have, through trial and error, figured out how to download our cell phone photos onto my computer, where they are tweaked on Photoshop, if needed, before sending them to the canvas. These photos are in addition to the many Nikon photos that are on my computer. There will be a slow process to go through the many photos and organize them into Playlists for the canvas.
One helpful hint: Give your playlist a name in advance of moving your photos into the playlist rather than moving them from the "Upload" file. We have added information where possible on the photos for future information through the "Edit" tab that we feel will help us moving forward and remind us, if our memory fails us. For instance the date the photo was done and, in the case of our new puppy, how old he was when the photo was taken.
There is no question that it takes time to work on the photos, upload them, add the information and get the flow of the Playlist right. But once you are there, it is wonderful and worth the effort.
I have not used the SD card. But do wonder if short videos could be added to the canvas. Any ideas on that?
Re: Meural Canvas II: Best way to find a specific file in a Meural playlist
Hi Pacific,
Thanks for sharing your Canvas experiences, for your observations and for your tips!
Your experience with the Canvas II is similar to ours. The main difference at the moment is that we do not have a membership to access the Meural art. But so far we've gotten plenty of enjoyment from our own photos.
Also we've tried out the SD card interface though our "working interface" is the web user interface.
We are amateur photographers so take more shots than we need to get that "one special photo". Regardless of how we decide to display the photo - normal frame, Canvas, stuck on the fridge - weeding through our photos to find the good one and Photoshopping it just takes time. So now that I think about it, moving that special photo to the Canvas is certainly easier and faster than sending the photo file to a print shop.
Regarding showing videos on the Canvas, I believe it is possible though we have not tried it yet. Per this link:
