Vista Media Center - Movie Management Plug-ins

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euanandrews

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#28035 15-Nov-2008 19:25

I am wanting to add some extra funtionality to my HTPC, running VMC + TV Pack 2008...

I want to install a plug-in that will download and display extra information for my movie collection, including:
- DVD cover art
- Actor info
- Can sort movies by genre, actors, date etc

I have found and tried My Movies 2, but its does not appear to be automated, so for a large movie collection like mine, the intial setup is going to be a very long, painfull process, and I don't think it actually looks that great anyway, although it is the best I have found to date.

Does anyone have any suggestions or recommendations?

[Edited to keep topic specific for better results]

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#178355 17-Nov-2008 13:24

RE: point #2

I use My Movies 2 as a back end for my movie collection as its easy to import metadata from IMDB and its good software in general. People pay good money for a lot less software than that.

You have to have every movie in it's own folder. I name the movies and the folders with the IMDB title so its easier for the software to find it. Format is:

Name (year)

Then you open the my movies collection manager and go to file/import/folder content and choose the root folder of your movie collection. It should then scan all the folders you made and import metadata and cover art. Even if you have the correct name it sometimes doesn't find the right film or it finds a crappy data set. You can see them as they download though and you get a chance to review and find a new source after scanning.

DONT select NZ as your country or you'll get jack. Select all or USA and tick the box that says "use USA/UK if no data found".

After you're happy with the data, go to file/backup database.

Then download Open Media Library to use as a front end.

http://code.google.com/p/open-media-library/

Install and open the database editor. Go to import/my movies and select the root movie folder again. The xml content generated by my movies 2 should be imported. When done go to file/save all as omlxml files and also hit the save all button too to be safe.

There should now be a new banner on your VMC start menu with open media library in it and you should be able to use it from now.

Dont bother trying to use open media library to import metadata, it's a waste of time at the moment, but there are daily build releases and I know this is on the cards.

Hope this helps, let us know if you have any questions as Ive played aorund with it a bit. It's not really setup to do tv episode but its excellent for movies and has seamless intergration with vmc. Read this thread for more info

http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/260463.aspx

Also HIGHLY recommend getting menu mender as it enables drop and drag re-arrangement and editing of the vmc home menu. You can also create new entry points for other programs like google earth, etc. It has a wrapper so when you close google earth or whatever, it re-opens vmc where you left off. Also lets you get rid of crap you never use. Dont know what I did without it :)

http://rapidshare.com/files/147069157/MC_Menu_Mender_0.4.3.msi

Open media library screens

gehenna

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#178357 17-Nov-2008 13:32

This is why I love Geekzone - I never heard of menu mender - on the DL now :) Sounds great.

FYI I hate My Movies - such an ugly app. MyTV is pretty for Video management, I wish My Movies took a leaf out of their book.

Nety

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#178366 17-Nov-2008 14:03

That is some awesome information there Amodeus...

Had played with my movies but did not like the VMC interface. Will try open media library for sure.

Also the menu mender sounds great as well.

Media centre PC - Case Silverstone LC16M with 2 X 80mm AcoustiFan DustPROOF, MOBO Gigabyte MA785GT-UD3H, CPU AMD X2 240 under volted, RAM 4 Gig DDR3 1033, HDD 120Gig System/512Gig data, Tuners 2 X Hauppauge HVR-3000, 1 X HVR-2200, Video Palit GT 220, Sound Realtek 886A HD (onboard), Optical LiteOn DH-401S Blue-ray using TotalMedia Theatre Power Corsair VX Series, 450W ATX PSU OS Windows 7 x64

Asmodeus

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#178374 17-Nov-2008 14:24

Menu mender is something that should really have come with VMC! Its really well made as well. Microsoft should take a lesson from that, but looks like they havnt...

Yeah its a shame the front end of MM2 is so ugly... Its not much better than just using vmc to monitor the folders themselves, in fact it looks worse...

OML looks really good and works a treat except for the metadata thing.

I cant get MyTV working on either of my pcs, I always get some obcure sql error message during install :(

Now Im looking for a really good TV episode manager, a really good RSS/news reader and a really good skinning/theme program. I used mediacenterFX for skinning before tv pack which was awesome, but it dont work with tv pack and I cant be bothered editing dlls to try and skin it manually. I'll wait till someone adapts mediacenterfx or similar. Also looking for the ultimate comskip software but am still reading about that stuff.

BTW, a couple of plugins might not work with TV pack, and when you go to install them, you'll get a "This software is not compatible with this version of windows" error. If so do the following:

1. Regedit, HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center
2. F3 "Ident", change from 5.1 to 5.0
3. Install app
4. Change back to 5.1

euanandrews

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#178397 17-Nov-2008 16:03

Asmodeus: You have to have every movie in it's own folder.

Hmmmm....

I now have over 900 movies in my collection...that is not a task I look forward to...but I will do a couple to see how it works and the result, and if I like it I will then proceed.

Cheers for the info.

Asmodeus

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#178413 17-Nov-2008 18:24

TheBartender:
Asmodeus: You have to have every movie in it's own folder.

Hmmmm....

I now have over 900 movies in my collection...that is not a task I look forward to...but I will do a couple to see how it works and the result, and if I like it I will then proceed.

Cheers for the info.

Yeah I have 300 and that was bad enough.... It was worth it in the end though, OML is a great program

You may want to consider something like this. Not sure how good it is, but I know there are others around too (some free ones too prob). Worth a look

Regs

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Snowflake

#178963 20-Nov-2008 00:16

Asmodeus:
TheBartender:
Asmodeus: You have to have every movie in it's own folder.

Hmmmm....

I now have over 900 movies in my collection...that is not a task I look forward to...but I will do a couple to see how it works and the result, and if I like it I will then proceed.

Cheers for the info.

Yeah I have 300 and that was bad enough.... It was worth it in the end though, OML is a great program

You may want to consider something like this. Not sure how good it is, but I know there are others around too (some free ones too prob). Worth a look

batch files can be your friend....

REM ***********************************
REM *** Make 'filename'Dirs and Move Files ***
REM ************************************
@echo off
d:
cd d:\movies
for /f %%a in ('dir /b /o *.avi') do echo mkdir %%a_dir >> makedirs.bat
for /f %%a in ('dir /b /o *.avi') do echo move %%a d:\movies\%%a_dir\%%a >> movefiles.bat

once this has run you can then run the two resultin batch files to create the directories, and then move the avi files. Get more clever by altering the batch script to remove .avi from the directory name

Regs

Sales Engineer
Snowflake
www.snowflake.com

about.me/nzregs
Twitter: @nzregs

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Asmodeus

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#179035 20-Nov-2008 11:27

Regs:
Asmodeus:
TheBartender:
Asmodeus: You have to have every movie in it's own folder.

Hmmmm....

I now have over 900 movies in my collection...that is not a task I look forward to...but I will do a couple to see how it works and the result, and if I like it I will then proceed.

Cheers for the info.

Yeah I have 300 and that was bad enough.... It was worth it in the end though, OML is a great program

You may want to consider something like this. Not sure how good it is, but I know there are others around too (some free ones too prob). Worth a look

batch files can be your friend....

yes... yes they can!

mruane

420 posts

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#179069 20-Nov-2008 14:14

Regs

Your DOS script does not handle long file names from what I can see. Long file names appear as seperate parameters auto assigned during the DIR command. So a three word filename say ends up in %%a, %%b and %%c. How do you handle movies with long file names.

Cheers Mike

FreddyK

84 posts

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#179115 20-Nov-2008 17:00

Thanks Asmodeus for putting me onto OML. Quite simply an excellent plugin for VMC. I was using MyMovies so it wasnt too much of an issue to install OML. Just a couple of things from your instructions that tripped me up. I found it better to export to a single XML file in MyMovies and import this into OML rather than importing the movie root folder. I found it faster and didnt miss any meta data.

I was wondering if you have tried any of the other backends that OML supports (like DVD Profiler & Movie Collectorz) and whether they're any better? Im guessing not since otherwise you would probably be using them :)

The only thing I miss from MyMoves in OML is the "last added" section, which doesnt work in OML due to you having to add the entire catalogue each time. I read in the forums that OML now supports individual imports of XML files from MyMovies, but I've had no luck installing the new build of the beta. It looks like a general release isnt too far away so I think I'll just wait for that. Some of the new features sounds great, especially the Carousel (coverflow).

Thanks again.

Asmodeus

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#179164 21-Nov-2008 00:31

FreddyK: Thanks Asmodeus for putting me onto OML. Quite simply an excellent plugin for VMC. I was using MyMovies so it wasnt too much of an issue to install OML. Just a couple of things from your instructions that tripped me up. I found it better to export to a single XML file in MyMovies and import this into OML rather than importing the movie root folder. I found it faster and didnt miss any meta data.

I was wondering if you have tried any of the other backends that OML supports (like DVD Profiler & Movie Collectorz) and whether they're any better? Im guessing not since otherwise you would probably be using them :)

The only thing I miss from MyMoves in OML is the "last added" section, which doesnt work in OML due to you having to add the entire catalogue each time. I read in the forums that OML now supports individual imports of XML files from MyMovies, but I've had no luck installing the new build of the beta. It looks like a general release isnt too far away so I think I'll just wait for that. Some of the new features sounds great, especially the Carousel (coverflow).

Thanks again.

No problem. I havnt tried any other movie programs apart fom these two. After reading the respective threads on greenbutton, this just seemed the easiest way to go. Will try the single xml file method next time I have a tinker with it though. Im also looking forward to the general release, it's already a great plugin as you've found out so improvements will hopefully make it stellar.

Regs

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Snowflake

#179165 21-Nov-2008 01:38

mruane: Regs

Your DOS script does not handle long file names from what I can see. Long file names appear as seperate parameters auto assigned during the DIR command. So a three word filename say ends up in %%a, %%b and %%c. How do you handle movies with long file names.

Cheers Mike

try the following instead... it does handle the long file names correctly i think. the last one was merely an example, but i neglected to mention that....

@echo off
for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=." %%a in ('dir /b /o *.avi') do echo mkdir "%%a" >> makedirs.bat
for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=." %%a in ('dir /b /o *.avi') do echo move "%%a.avi" "%%a\." >> movefiles.bat

i'm sure a bit more time and effort could be put in to handle different extensions etc on the same lines of code....

Sales Engineer
Snowflake
www.snowflake.com

about.me/nzregs
Twitter: @nzregs

mruane

420 posts

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#179591 23-Nov-2008 12:01

Regs:
mruane: Regs

Your DOS script does not handle long file names from what I can see. Long file names appear as seperate parameters auto assigned during the DIR command. So a three word filename say ends up in %%a, %%b and %%c. How do you handle movies with long file names.

Cheers Mike

try the following instead... it does handle the long file names correctly i think. the last one was merely an example, but i neglected to mention that....

@echo off
for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=." %%a in ('dir /b /o *.avi') do echo mkdir "%%a" >> makedirs.bat
for /f "tokens=1,2 delims=." %%a in ('dir /b /o *.avi') do echo move "%%a.avi" "%%a\." >> movefiles.bat

i'm sure a bit more time and effort could be put in to handle different extensions etc on the same lines of code....

Cheers Regs - thanks...

Mike

euanandrews

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#182546 7-Dec-2008 00:15

I tried, and did not like OML (or My Movies 2) for the following reasons:
- Its not very clean, info gets cut of at the bottom of the page
- It does not match the Media Center colour scheme and styling, so looks out of place
- Having to have every movie in its own folder (to make it work) is a pain in a A

Someone was saying there were some updates coming...any word on when and what they are specifically?

Has anyone found anything else/better?

rhysb

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#182924 9-Dec-2008 10:07

It's not free, but Collectorz has a plugin that comes with Movie Collector for VMC. Version 6.0 is supposed to be released any day now...

http://www.collectorz.com/movie/windows-media-center-mce.php
http://mcezone.com/moviecollectormce.php

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