Media Browser: Great alternative to DVD Library/My Movies/Movie Collector - Page 126

Well, we are shooting for June 1st, but as we all know... Its not done till its ready.

What can you tell us about the new internal scraper? That's my biggest gripe with Media Browser.

I've spent most of my free time since sunday night screwing with making Media Browser seamless and I'm finally pretty happy with how its working.

I'll update this post when I get home this evening to give exact specifics, but I think my htpc looks better now than ever.

-I am using the Subdued theme on Media Browser
-I set the umceplayer5.exe player to be the external player for bluray and hd-dvd
-I set MB to show the splash screen and to minimize during external player launch
-I only have one media collection in Media Browser (titled Movies). I was able to find that in the registry and change it's icons to the default WMC Movie Library ones.
-I used Media Center Studio to remove the default WMC library and replace it with Media Browser Movies collection, which I renamed to Movie Library. A WMC user who didn't know anything about MB would never know from looking at my WMC menu strips that anything was different until they opened the Movie Library and saw all the great animations and artwork.

One neat thing about the TMT5 plug in is that buried within the Arcsoft program folder there is a folder called MCEUI. It contains a bunch of .png files that fill out the backgrounds and popup boxes of the Media Center plugin. Mostly they're all blue to match the default WMC theme.

I am using the Brokeh Media Center Studio theme I found at Hack7mc. When you download a MCS theme, it comes in as a .mct file. That can be opened with WinRAR, and once extracted you find all the .png files that make up the backgrounds and icons for WMC.

I replaced all of the blue png files in the Arcsoft folder with the ones that came in the Brokeh Media Center theme. You could do that with any theme you have. That way, when you open the TMT5 plugin the background is no longer blue, it matches your MCE background.

I also placed a spash.png file in the Media Browser general folder. I can't remember the exact path of that offhand so I will update later. I renamed the same png file that I use for both my desktop wallpaper, WMC background and for my TMT5 plugin background to spash.png, so when I launch the external player from Media Browser the background does it looks very clean and intentional.

My last problem with the TMT5 plugin I suspect is caused by the iMon software that my ir receiver uses. I had WMC set as the default use of the ir receiver. So when I launched the external player, I could see the video but if I tried pressing a remote button it minimized the player and made Media Browser the full screen window, with the movie still playing in the background.

Going into the iMon settings and taking the exclusive launch control away from WMC seems to have everything working so far. I just need a way to get iMon, my Harmony remote, and TMT5 to play nice to bring up the right click menu. I can't seem to map anything to that (yet).

When I press stop on a movie, it takes me immediately back to the Arcsoft plugin home screen. Pressing back from there takes me back into Media Browser.

Very very satisfied so far. If I could only find a way to auto-hide the taskbar 100% so that a single row of pixels was not showing. I would still like to be able to mouse over the bottom of my screen and bring the taskbar up, but I worry about the long term effects of that on my plasma screen.

I can't believe I never gave MB more than a 20 minute glance in the last few years I've been using WMC. It was not as easy to configure as I'd like but I feel like I have a brand new HTPC toy.

Good Morning,

First of all, thank you to all the contributors to this wonderful forum. I've learned a ton in a short period of time.

In setting up the subdued theme in MB on a machine running 32bit Vista. On the first page I get a "recently added" window. This window is not a high priority item for me and it's placement (right in the middle) brings down the overall look and feel of my htpc experience.

Is it possible to -

A) Remove it all together?

or

B) Move it near the bottom of the page?

If so, How?

I've searched the forums without luck, so I'm asking for help.

Thank you in advance for any help you can lend.

how many media collections do you have?

I only have one, and I used Media Center Studio to replace the standard Media Browser entry point (which goes into the screen you don't like - I didn't either) with one that goes directly into my movie library.

The internal meta fetchers have undergone extensive improvements. You can set it up to save locally now which is working very well during testing. It will also search and download fan art which will also save locally. Here is a link for more information.

if it is possible, im assuming it would be done in the .xml files inside the MCEUI folder. im just looking through them now, trying to find something that would indicate its possible, but this is a little bit over my head. hopefully someone else can chime in?

for anything that is a logo or based on an image, like movie ratings or the arcsoft logo, you can replace that

I'm new to media browser so maybe you guys can help me.
I use media center master for meta scraping. When I run a full and complete scan of my "Movies" folder media center master does a great job of adding all the metadata, but media browser will drop some of my movies from the menu and I can't get them back(all movies in MKV). They show fine in WMC, but not media browser. When I say doesn't show in media browser I don't mean just the metadata, I mean the whole thing. No MKV file, nothing shows up.

Quick question for MB experts. Is the "Intros plugin" working well and will it work with iso files.

Thanks

try the simplest thing first. go into the settings within wmc and rescan the library

Already tried, but do the mkv files have to be renamed to [movie name].mkv?
I only rip the movie itself with makeMKV and it usually just names the mkv file title1, 001, etc.
I'm at work right now so I can't try it, but will when I get home.

definitely do that, and make sure their folders have the correct name too. adding the year wont hurt either, such as

Movies Folder\\Bad Boys (1995)\\Bad Boys (1995).mkv

I use the MBIntros all the time and love it. I haven't tried but I don't belive you can use ISO file, has to be something that the Media Center Player can play native.

Makes sense. I'll try it when I get home. Thanks.

ive only been using media browser a few weeks so im not a pro at it, but doing all the set up stuff is fresh in my mind.

i went through and took note of all the movies it either labeled incorrectly or didnt show, and then i tried to figure out what they had in common to fix that. many of them were simply spelled wrong or were missing relevant info, like a year or subtitle.

i don't really recall something now showing at all though.

Recommended file format for blu ray files?

What exactly are you trying to do? Intos are normally downloaded in a .mp4 format or something like that.

The strange thing is that they all worked fine until I ran media center master. That's when it broke.
The MKV file is fine and all metadata is in the folder with it. It show/plays fine in WMC, but will not show in Media Browser. It happened to 5 movies out of my collection and I'm not sure why it did it to just those movies. The others show in Media Browser just fine and all have similar structure.
My folder structure is: D:/Movies/movie name/mkv and metadata.
I'm not sure why Media center master broke it, but it worked fine until I ran it.

Pittsoccer33.
Like you said. Start with the easiest solution.
Naming them .mkv didn't work(couldn't hurt though and looks more organized).
What worked is: In the Media Browser configuration on the left side where you put the root folder I had that set up as movies like it should be, but on the right I was only inputting the sub folders ie BD/DVD. I, instead input the movie sub folders ie [movie name 1][2], and so forth(a lot of work) and it's working.
I feel kind of stupid because I'm sure this was in the configuration how to, to begin with.
Anyway... Got her working. Thanks for the suggestions.

Okay I converted the desired iso to mkv and installed shark codecs. When file is played back, volume is very low when played by Media Center video is fine. When same file is played with TMT audio is normal (will blow you out of seat if desired) but can't seem to get volume under Media Center improved???

Help appreciated

Glenn

See my FAQ. I have a fix that might help.

Volume is better, but still not close to being equal with TMT playback??

Not bitstreaming audio as this is on my test rig, which is using computer speakers as my main theater system is off limits until I am satisfied with any changes or upgrades.

Any other ideas?

Its a couple of weeks since you guys asked so you may have the answer already but here it is anyway.

MB scraps meta-data from The Movie DB & The TV DB. So the name of the Movie/TV Show has to be exactly the same as in their respective databases.

Eg: Face/Off (1997)

If you have it listed as above it should pull the correct information.

[1] See above
[2] Turn off Auto Play in Windows Default player settings as well as in TMT settings and see if that makes a difference. Other than that I can only suggest to uninstall and reinstall or repair your current installation.

How do you get around the fact that Windows won't allow a / character in either a file name or a folder name?

I know how to do it in MCM, by using the record number from The Movie DB or IMDB instead... but the poster seems to be using MB to scrape.
Edited by Pagali - 6/6/12 at 7:13am

in such cases, alternative titles can be tried.
Scroll down and view the left side of the movie page to see a list of alternative titles for that movie.

Face/Off has:

Face Off
Faceoff
Face Off - Im Körper des Feindes
Volte Face
A Outra Face


Try any one of these and it should work.

As a last resort, it can be done manually.
I usually do that when I don't like the default poster or background, or for box sets etc.
Simply drag the image from the webpage to the local movie folder and name it as folder.jpg and backdrop.jpg
You wouldn't get all the metadata but you would get the images you want.

Like mentioned in my original post, the problem is that those alternate titles find other movies or nothing at all.

Still looking for help with this issue

Thanks Glenn

Tried the setup guide and volume is still very low compared to playback of mkv with TMT

Looking for more ideas? MKV playback with Media Center

I saw that you tried different versions of FaceOff.
Did you try 'Volte Face'?
It seems that should pull the correct data.