Media Browser: Great alternative to DVD Library/My Movies/Movie Collector - Page 113

Of all the metadata scrapers, I've had the best luck with MediaScout for TV series, with one caveat... I much prefer the older v0.9 to the current v3.0 that got bloated (in the "other downloads" section). BTW, it can simultaneously look up your TV meta data AND rename your files. I like the "Series - S##E## - Episode" format too. My folder structure is like this:

..\\[Series Name]\\Season #\\[Series Name] - S##E## - [Episode]

-for example-

..\\Lost\\Season 4\\Lost - S04E05 - The Constant.mkv

This folder structure works with all 3rd party metadata scrapers and with the built in Media Browser scraper too.

Yup, that is the exact format I use as well (I use Metabrowser)

Well in media browser, its actually not set.. but when you click on a bluray iso.. it then auto runs the integrated version.. which is this one uMCEDVDPlayer.exe

For a BR Folder rip you need to set media browser to launch TMT3 as an External Player in the Configuration Tool

Nice, thanks, this worked great.

Any reason why i should Not expand my isos and go the folder route instead? (IE: any reason why iso's would be preferred.. ie: streaming advantages on inhouse network etc?)

Media Center Master is my favorite "metascraper". If basically does all the work for you, run the program and it will autofind and load the metadata

media center master doesn't seem to work for me. For example, it scanned jurassic park over and over about 18 times before i shut it down. sure it loaded the backgrounds into the folder. but it did it forever. and never moved to the other movies. also, i was hoping (and assuming) the places that were blank I could fill in. it lets me...but then doesn't save anything. odd.

Back to the TV series, maybe I need to move on from Dirty Jobs? Among other options, I now tried the media scout and it really doesn't seem to know what to do with it. Am I supposed to have already named things a certain way for it to even know what the files are? I assume so...but then again if its a renamer then i guess you wouldn't have to name things a certain way. again, chicken or egg? i've tried every conceivable order of file names and nothing works so maybe i need to try a new TV show instead. Perhaps it just doesn't have Dirty Jobs. Very frusterating though

okay now with firefly i have the folder as tvshows\\firefly.(2002)\\Season 1 and then the episodes. again, mediascout does nothing, and when the window comes up to pick the show it just hangs. perhaps itdoesn't work on 64 bit win 7? honestly, it just looks like i don't know what i'm doing because I have tried 3-4 meta data editors and a couple TV show "look up things" and nothing works. And I'm fairly good with software stuff in general so I'm not sure if I just got duds or am missing some crucial piece of info or what.

Firefly can be a tricky one as well since the dvd and bluray may have the episodes in a different order than what they appeared in when they first ran on tv. Fox ran the series out of order. When I first organized my Firefly folders I placed them in the wrong episoded order, changing it fixed my problems.

Really just depends. I stick with BR folders simply because using ISOs just adds one extra step to the process which I find unnecessary. However, if you are using a player like PDVD you need ISOs since it won't play back folder rips.

haha, okay. So my first two choices of TV shows weren't the best evidently. Since all my movie DVD rips were working great I assumed TV ones would too. I'll check into that. However, I'll move onto a THIRD option to see. How about various seasons of Prison Break, 24, Band of Brothers or Terminator? Will any of those be odd or any "should really work" that I can start with?

Also, is the "best practice" for TV NOT to do full disc rips (iso or folders) since it would make more sense to have the episodes separated? (that's what I've done so far, but then again, I guess I'm missing other things off the DVDs)

okay, so while folder rips or iso files work through media browser through WMC for DVDs... you're saying that ONLY iso rips work for Blu-Rays (if in fact Power DVD is your software, which for me it is)

From my experience, it is best to separate the episodes into individual files. That way you can get episode thumbnails, synopsis, actor images, etc for each episode. Plus, you can immediately launch the episode instead of waiting for the FBI warning, previews, menus, and so on.

Yes,

TMT however will play back BluRay from folders. I too do everthing in folders because I feel that ISO is just another un needed step and another program that you don't need running to mount them.

+1

I haven't looked into TMT yet so know nothing. Obviously you get that to work fine. If I chose not to do that, I could naturally do BD iso rips and still have done DVD folder rips, since Media Browser can be set up to make it look like everything is fine, right? at least with covers. I guess that one little icon would still show "iso" instead of the blu-ray logo... for the purist in me i guess I'd have to go to TMT.

Okay, so back to TV stuff. I had been doing avi files for them..not sure when or why i settled on that. is mkv the more "standard" with you all? still lossless and all that? does anyone actually rip and store the FULL disc as well as a backup or do you drop the features, languages, etc and just have the eps?

mkv can be lossless but it can be lossy as well if you do any sort of encoding. For my tv shows I just rip the individual episodes. I find that Media Browser as well as most other front ends handle episodes much better then tv show full discs

+1

And yes, MKV is pretty much the "standard" when ripping movies or TV shows from either Bluray or DVD when you're not doing full ISO or folder rips. Only real reason not to is if you have devices that don't support it (mostly mobile) and so you may choose another format instead that is more compatible with your device.

great, though if i get something like that in the future i can just handbreak/agk/formatfactory them to whatever i assume.

I think for movies I'll stick with full rips for now since if I change my mind I can always batch some translations whereas i can't go the other way. I do agree that having the individual epps for tv makes more sense though so I'll do mkv for that and if i really think the special features are worth it I'm sure i can just do another mkv for that (but then again i'll need to find a meta editor that works for me.)

i'm learning that handbreak is not the place to go for lossless mkv. hmmm. time to try out makemkv. keeping handbreak around for any compressed versions since the options are great other than the inability to keep it 1:1. All i want is to strip out the single episode but change nothing else

MakeMKV is definitely the easiest program for doing what you want

I use ISOs because Windows thinks it is a real disc. No matter what the media player companies do or change, they will always work.

Try losing the "." between Firefly and (2002). The (2002) is probably unnecessary as well. You only need to append the TV titles with the year when there are multiple entries in the TVDB database, like for Hawaii Five-0.

okay, thanks. in the meantime i've started ripping Band of Brothers and that seems to work. less confusing that Dirty Jobs and Firefly that seemed to both have odd schedules that is confusing things. I'll still want to go back and figure out how to fix those, but for now BoB seems to go the way its supposed to. I've ripped as folders, used makeMKV to pull out each episode with their various audio, etc (i assume programs can pick audio somehow even though the DVD menu isnt' there) and then brought up WMC and it knows what to do it seems. awesome.

Because other seasons need to be manually edited it seems, i still want to figure out media center master. I've reigned in the oddities that were happening i think but I still have a couple questions. Obviously it goes out and finds a bunch of backgrounds, etc (i love that feature in MB by the way). But then an option is there to "pick the one you want". okay, I understand for the main image you might want to pick a different poster for the DVD cover. But it SEEMS that picking one of the various backgrounds then stops the others from rotating. I would have thought perhaps you can select a few of them?

also, the shows that didn't work out in media center master (firefly, dirty jobs) listed a plus sign and all the eps underneath. for BoB, i get a single listing without individual episodes. is that normal? still shows as TV but I can't expand to individual ones it seems.

looks like i hit another wall. everything looks so great in MB i just assumed all was well. But i cannot play the files. my assumption was lack of MKV support, so I went to shark007's site and installed his win 7 codec pack. still nothing. perhaps i have to change settings somehow? i assumed the installion of the codecs did the whole job... perhaps i still have to run the program? (i checked the program and its quite confusing)

Okay, I think my own posts are going to 1) answer some of my questions and 2) burry my other posts so they don't get answered. sorry.

after fiddling a ton i have no idea why but i got the TV show BOB to have the eps listed under the plus sign in media center master. I'm not even sure what i did. but its there. not sure it matters, but great.

for the posters question, media center master is confusing me. at first, i thought picking a poster meant its the only one that would show. then i thought maybe it just picked the first one, and then rotated the rest.

Here are my two examples which confuse me. For jurassic park, i picked the cover and a poster, and the cover worked (its now my dvd coverart image) and the poster is the first of the fan art that shows, but it still rotates. great!!

for Band of Brothers, the cover i picked is NOT being used on the dvd image, and the poster IS showing up in media browser but is staying there and never rotating. How do i get more to rotate like before?

Okay, those are the nitpicking things. However, for the actual playing of files, I have a win and a few losses. My win is that after not only adding the shark007 codecs but ALSO the 64-bit extensions, and then picking media player 64 bit, I'm finally able to get the MKV files to play from Media Center through MB.

However, even though i used MakeMKV and chose all the audio options and subtitles, I see no ways to pick. It plays, and right clicking to bring up the options (that do work in DVDs like Jurassic Park) shows nothing. So I get spanish subtitles and who knows what audio track, am unable to switch, and for whatever reason the audio needs to be trippled its normal level to even hear it okay.

MKV might not have been the way to go?

First thing to remember is that Media Browser does not play files at all, it just passes them along to your player of choice. So anything related to sound, not playing, codec, ect probably aren't going to get much attention in this thread. You get some great help in other threads that are dedicated to such things.

okay, well there were plenty of MB specific questions up there as well. I guess some questions were about media center master which is not technically MB. Hmm. sorry. I guess I feel like the people who USE media browser and have spent a lot of time "getting it right" could pass that knowledge off.

Well, if anyone has thoughts on the above posts, or if anyone has a great idea for MKV players that can be called from MB through WMC that would be great. Or if I should use MakeMKV differently like only using a specific audio and subtitle option i suppose.

Either way, its a bit moot for now. I want to have a general idea how i'll do Blu and how it will do TV shows but for now my immediate desires I'll just be doing about a couple hundred DVDs and for that, I think I am all set. Both ISO and Folder rips seem to work, coverart makes it better. and I'm MOSTLY getting media center master to work. So I guess I can do that and then when I have another 2+ TB to spare I can work on my TV series and Blus and find the right forums then.

I rip everything to ISO and play it with TMT. I have AnyDVD and use Clone DVD to mount them. It is just easier for me to do it that way. I tried MKV's but it wasn't worth the hassle for me. Usually I only rip the movie and the audio stream that I want, using tsmuxer, then convert it to an ISO. If I am ripping the whole disc, then I use AnyDVD and use the rip to image option.