Media Browser: Great alternative to DVD Library/My Movies/Movie Collector - Page 6

Yes, you do loose FF/REW and chapters but skip (forward and back) works.

Thanks. I guess I'll install TMT on my desktop too.

At the moment, FLAC is giving me nothing but headaches, though. I got my test movie split into mkv and flac (trueHD by random luck) then re-muxed to one .mkv. TMT will play the mkv fine but with no audio. If I try to play the mkv in VMC it says it can't play because it is missing a codec. I had installed madFLAC but still no go. When I drop the mkv on graphedit it says there is an unsupported stream in it and shows no audio as well. If I open the .mkv in mkvmergeGUI it shows the flac audio stream.

I tried installing the full flac package and that really screwed up my machine. Now when I drop the mkv on graphedit my screens start to scramble and the machine eventually freezes. I'm in the process of doing a system restore right now which will hopefully get me back to at least a functioning system but I'm not sure what to try next with this mkv.

But skip back is the same key as that exits menus in Media Center. So if you hit skip back it just exits the movie. I would have to look at the remote codes, maybe this can be changed.

No, these are 2 different remote buttons. One is 'Back', the other is 'Skip Backwards'

You refrenced MM which I asume you mean My Movies, that works fine. I am trying to get TV Scout to work with VOB's

I did try renaming a VOB like that and TV Scout didn't pick it up at all. Also if you combine the VOB's and play it directly doesn't that eliminate your chapters? I thought that chapters were held in the .IFO file?

Looking at the TV Scout code these are the files it recognized =".avi;.mkv;.mp4;.mpg;.mpeg;.ogm;.wmv;.divx;.dvr-ms"

I my harmony they are the same, but it is proably just how I have them mapped. I will check it out.

Thanks Politby for the great software recommendation, it looks like a very nice addition to VMC!

Has anyone gotten Media Browser and My Movies both to live together on the TV & Movies strip of Media Center. It seems that they don't play well together at all. Even MC Menu Mender won't let me do it.

there was a new beta put out last night, but this did not fix the problem im having with vcd

Love the Media browser app!!! Thanks for starting this post.
I do Have one Problem. SMO crashes everysingle time I search for metadata from IMDB. I have version 0.2.6.4 . The program is fine until I click "lanuch metadate search".

Anyone else having trouble with this?

Vista 32bit.

I decided to use MyMovie Collection Manager to update my collection since I could not get SMO to work, (crash, crash, crash.....)

I also DL the Genres images, works great but I have a couple of categories without images, it looks sloppy with some categories blank and some with images. How can I control what genre categories are being displayed? I do not see the categories without images listed in the folder with the rest of them...

How I can I create my own meta files? I have several home movies I view with Video Browser that are dvd iso files and would like to add descriptive text for the iso contents.

Thanks

Use SMO for that. You can add genre and a description. Of course you could also just write your own .xml file by editing another file already created by SMO for one of your movies.

I don't think you can control the genres that are displayed (someone correct me if this is wrong). I think it is just enumerating all the genres that are defined in your movies.

The folders of images are simply repositories for the images that match up with a genre. If you want to have images on the genres that don't now, you need to create a folder in that same place (ImagesByName or whatever it is) that is named the same as the genre. Then drop a folder.jpg in there and that's the image that will show for that genre. I think problems arise, however, for genre's like Mystery/Thriller as you cannot create a folder with that name.

I do love this interface so much more than the bland MyMovies. Especially with the stuff they've done with backdrops in the latest releases. But I don't like how muted they've made them (always overlaying them with a strong blue hue). I understand why they did this but I've seen what some others have done and wanted to play around a bit.

So... I learned a little about SVNs and MCML (gotta love open source) and have come up with some mods I like. I've gone nearly full color on the backdrops and moved the text a little further down and made it smaller in the strip view. Gives a much more high-impact visual in this view, I think:



Then, for the details page, I went full screen and full color with the backdrop. Also moving stuff around a bit and making it smaller so the image is more prominent. As an added touch, I fade in the background over a half a second or so - makes a smoother transition from the smaller image to the larger one in the details.



In both cases, I threw a slight backshadow behind all the text elements so that they would remain readable even on light backdrops.

I can't wait for these guys to get external player support in there so I can use this as my main interface!

That is great. Any tips on how to do it?

One of my home movies is titled "Seven" and metadata was downloaded for the movie Se7en. I could not find the xml (Vista Home Premium) file. Can you tell me where the xml file is located and is the edit simply a wordpad edit?

Thanks

Pretty tough to not look fantasic with Kate Beckinsale pasted all over the whole screen...huh?

Basically, you need to understand how to download and deal with the source code (you need an SVN client and a Visual Studio installation for this). Then learn about MCML (if you don't already know). I found a great blog that has a 10 step tutorial on a VMC application that goes through all the basics of MCML too.

After that, I started de-constructing the logic in the app to find out where stuff was that I could modify. I ended up mostly in MovieDetailsPage and ThumbDetailsView. Those are the two pages I posted pics of.

Then I started playing around with the elements and moving and changing things to see what happened.

The one thing I'm not positive of is, since I'm not an official developer of this project and so cannot create a new branch of code, will I be able to easily merge my changes back into any new versions they come out with? I'll wait til the next update and see if the SVN software can do that. If not, I'll just re-implement my mods (if they don't already do something similar). Even though it took me quite a while to do them (the better part of two days) the mods are actually quite minor - now that I know where they are and what to do.

Should be in the same directory as the movie as "mymovies.xml". Anyway, you can create/edit that file from scratch with SMO.

Ebr, how were you able to get it to show up fullscreen. I have media center set up for 1920 x 1080, but with MB I have a 1" black bar top and bottom and 1/2" black bar on the sides. This only happens when using MB to view a movie, I can watch the same movie using DVD library in vista with no black bars.

You mean your whole media center environment appears in some sort of letterbox? Or do you just mean the dark blue "bars" that MB has designed into their screens?

When I start media center then go to MB and click on it. It opens it up and I have blue bars on the sides, then when I play a movie they turn to black bars. Later on I can try and get a picture of it.

Thanks for the reply. I am currently in the process of editing all my genres and removing genres that do not have assocaited images. I have to go through mymovie collection database manager thingy..... SInce SMO STILL CRASHES !!! Can't belive I am the only one with issues on this. Maybe I will try and redownload the program and reinstall, can't think of any other opitions at this point.

Thanks again.

Installed this program last night. Very easy to install once i figured out how to set up the virtual folders.

I have to say...it's very sexy. I will keep MyMovies installed in addition for the external player/iso support but for my ripped movies/tv shows this thing is an absolutely winner as is and they are still improving it frequently.

You shouldn't have to wait long...this is a beta version recognizing my BD folder structure of TDK

Don't feel bad, SMO crashes for me also. It will open, I can select a movie from the list on the left, but as soon as I click "Get Metadata" (or whatever it is), it crashes. I can sometimes see the IMDB page coming up, sometimes I can't. Drives me nuts.

I'm currently using metababel. Just not as good as SMO, since it uses DVDEmpire for it's metadata.

This is an excellent plugin. Great work everyone. Can't wait for Blu-ray support.

That is Exactly What mine Does! When I 1st discovered this program I finally thought I had a way of ditching MM altogether, but alas.

Currently I have my recorded TV saving into Public folder "recorded Tv" And all movies are saved on another HDD. I have media browser currently pointing towards the movie hard drive, but I would like to use the interface and metadata for my recording tv shows. Is there a way it could monitor two separate file locations?

BTW Vista 32 bit

Thanks