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+--- Thread: Media Companion Gen2 - Manage your Movies, Shows, NFO, and more (Open Source VB.NET) (/showthread.php?tid=53640)
- billyad2000 - 2009-08-08
Arr MiHardies Wrote:Just saw this SVN announcement pop up in #xbmc
How does it work?
- tvieson - 2009-08-08
What the status on bringing tv support billy. The old version is no longer working for me so I need the TV support. Everything else with the new version works great. My wife is even happy with it.
- Arr MiHardies - 2009-08-09
billyad2000 Wrote:How does it work?
I would assume in the same manner as the "sort name" field does in itunes.
The library view shows the name set in the name field, but determines its position in the list based on the name listed in the sorttitle field.
That is my assumption, anyways.
Running MC on multiple computers against one server? - greybeard - 2009-08-09
I have been busy the last couple of weeks and had not looked in on MC. Looks like there has been a lot of progress!
Even though I have been very pleased with 3.039 I will be upgrading this afternoon. One of the best features in 3.039 is the ability to check just the most recently added movies. I have gotten a few that return "Scraper error" in the .nfo file. I will report if that is cleaned up in the latest version.
The main reason for my posting has to do with WAF (wife acceptance factor): my wife seems to not want to be bothered or to be intimidated by the XBMC on AppleTV interface, even though I have it setup as an activity on her Harmony 880 remote. She almost always has her laptop in her lap, so I thought if I would install MC on her laptop sharing the directories on the main media PC where all the videos with their .nfo, .tbm, etc. files are managed by MC and accessed by XBMC, then she could browse through the movies and TV Shows (MC 2.292?). The only concern I have is that I would not want her to accidentally alter anything on the media PC (server). I really do not want to have to change network share permissions.
Would trying to run MC on both the server and her laptop be feasible? Any other gotchas? Any workarounds?
A stripped down client read-only version or mode would be a nice thing for multiple PC households.
Stew Ellis
- billyad2000 - 2009-08-09
greybeard Wrote:I have been busy the last couple of weeks and had not looked in on MC. Looks like there has been a lot of progress!
Even though I have been very pleased with 3.039 I will be upgrading this afternoon. One of the best features in 3.039 is the ability to check just the most recently added movies. I have gotten a few that return "Scraper error" in the .nfo file. I will report if that is cleaned up in the latest version.
The main reason for my posting has to do with WAF (wife acceptance factor): my wife seems to not want to be bothered or to be intimidated by the XBMC on AppleTV interface, even though I have it setup as an activity on her Harmony 880 remote. She almost always has her laptop in her lap, so I thought if I would install MC on her laptop sharing the directories on the main media PC where all the videos with their .nfo, .tbm, etc. files are managed by MC and accessed by XBMC, then she could browse through the movies and TV Shows (MC 2.292?). The only concern I have is that I would not want her to accidentally alter anything on the media PC (server). I really do not want to have to change network share permissions.
Would trying to run MC on both the server and her laptop be feasible? Any other gotchas? Any workarounds?
A stripped down client read-only version or mode would be a nice thing for multiple PC households.
Stew Ellis
For the first issue about the scraper errors, there is an upgraded imdb.dll file that can be located in the announcements section of the Media Companion forum (See my sig for a link to the forum), this was not added to the last release and it fixes issues with movies containing "&" in the file/foldername
As for the other, it would be perfectly fine to run Media Companion on as many seperate machines as you want as long as they have access to the media folders.
The one downside is that Media Companion now uses a cache on startup that saves the library when the program is closed (This speeds startup considerably since MC does not need to parse all media folders for nfo files). This means that if a movie was to be added on one machine it would not be visible on other machines.
The fix would be to use the "Rebuild Movies" option from the Drop Down Movies menu. This forces MC to reload all available nfo files.
More on scraper error in Plot and Outline fields - greybeard - 2009-08-12
I d/l'ed the new imdb.dll, but it did not cure my problem. The filenames that are returning the "scraper error" in the Plot and/or Outline fields are on-the-trail-of-the-iguana.mpg, a-look-at-the-world-of-soylent-green(1973).mpg, on-location-with-fame(1980).mpg (only shows "scraper error" for plot), on-location-with-westworld.mpg, and the-big-sur.mpg .
Title, Year, Narrator, most other fields are handled.
Feature requests - greybeard - 2009-08-12
A few features I would like to see added or enhanced:
1. Either add a category to genres or create a string search in the genre filter. I have a lot of videos about the making of particular films or about great films, or about particular themes in film. I would like a genre checkbox for "Film" or the ability to search for that string in the Genre field or maybe even in the Plot and Outline fields
2. Same as above, but for Home Movies. Since the Movies manager allows the creation of a blank .nfo, the user could then create .nfos for their home movies and put that string in the Genre field.
3. Ability to search on Actor and Director. I know I can do that in XBMC, but if I am watching something and want to see what other movies I have by this director, or with this actor in it, it would be nice to be able to look that up on the computer.
4. A feature like in the old TV show capability that lets you capture an image to use as a poster.
That's all for now.
- handsomepete - 2009-08-13
Any word on fixing the batch rescraper wizard for trailers billy?
My xbox is finding it hard to play some of the quicktime movs from daves trailer page.
Thanks
- billyad2000 - 2009-08-13
emagin Wrote:Hi there,
I just started using your latest version, hope these UI suggestions are useful to you.
Right now you have the movies/shows on left and buttons (actions) on each movie as buttons on top.
Each action (Editor Fanart etc.) opens a new window.
Would it make sense to just move all the actions into Tabs
Each tab allows editing of info/art and has a SAVE button bottom right in a consistent place to update the record
I find that I am constantly clicking on windows to open / close stuff to update one film. Over time this is a lot of clicking/time used up doing repetitive stuff.
If that is not an option, I would standardize the Save and Close actions
Each window seems to have its own layout and the positioning/graphic of the buttons is somewhat confusing (hard to read and placed funny, see below)
Editor - has Red X close window and Save Changes.
It's an EDIT action on THIS (current) film.
Fanart - has Red X and Save Selected. EDIT THIS film action
Posters has Red X Save Bid, Save Small (make radio button big/small and SAVE button). EDIT THIS film action
Rescrape Movie has no cancel X at top - this should be separated into different area, it's not an EDIT action of THIS film, it's really a REDO this film, which could confuse someone just clicking on the buttons and blow away their settings. Present new data, maybe side by side with old data and present OVERWRITE? option.
Scan Folders has cancel X at top - this is not an action on THIS film, but the entire folder/database. So this could be moved to another area of buttons for global actions. "Global" also could be defined, Global (really all), All Films, All Shows.
Options - Global settings, move into global area
HTML - Should be in left column associated with Films List (also unclear if you are doing this to ALL items, Films, or Shows...guess that can come later)
IMDB - Open Movie in imdb - this is an action on THIS film, it should be next to the THIS film actions, and maybe just be a tab as I suggest above. Much cleaner this way so you can just click on tabs and load the info each time they switch tabs, and have SAVE bottom right to update the film/show.
Paypal donate - this could be the starburst logo of Paypal which gets a bit more attention. I'm all in favor of supporting the cause!
Button Icons. I realize you are in beta mode so perhaps this will all come much later, but the buttons need to have more thought put into them.
Think in terms of Film Detail actions vs. Global actions (settings) vs. Entire Film / Show List actions.
FIlm List - Right now you offer right click to do same actions on Films.
If you went to tabs you could eliminate that as it would be much simpler to just click on the tabs for each action.
Hope this is of some use, I can elaborate with screenshots.
Can't seem to attach anything to this post, only URLs, I have GIFs here for you.
Sorry about the time delay in replying to this post. To be honest it is quite a lot to swallow, but i've been busy implementing some of your suggestions as I think you intended, some of the above coments are not clear.
Here is what I have come up with.
The main page
The Fanart
The Posters
The tabs other than main browser apply only to the selected movie. The other buttons in the tabs just behave as buttons, without opening a tabpage.
The "actor edit" is just a place holder until I figure out exactly what I need to put in the page, since most editing can be done from the main page I don't really need a full edit page. But I do need to add support for edit actors and change movie.
I'm still working on the posters page, but it gives you an idea of what I am looking for, I also intend to implement the crop feature on this page so that all functions related to the posters can be carried out on a single page.
HTML output has been relocated to the drop down movie menu, and once this is finished then it means that the only icons needed in the menu strip would be Settings(Global) and Donate(Global).
I've also added a comfirm dialogue to the "Rescrape Movie" button. I'm not sure this is really needed and people may think this is more of a pain than anything, but it will prevent new users overwriting their edited nfo files.
Feedback is always appreciated.
- hell_spawn27 - 2009-08-13
Hi billy I have a couple of questions...
I have been struggling to get the actor thumbs downloaded sucessfully using MC.
First, they did not display in the MC when I chose only a local directory for actor thumbs to be downloaded, that did not work.
Then I entered both the local directory and directory of XBMC (Windows).
I have a question with respect to the XBMC path is it just the path for the App data folder in windows where XBMC stores userprofiles if so does the path specifically have to be referring to the video directory like C:\Documents and Settings\<Username>\Application Data\XBMC\userdata\Thumbnails\Video or just C:\Documents and Settings\<Username>\Application Data\XBMC\ work fine?
In MC it works fine and I see the actor thumbs but when I run XBMC it does not pick up the actor thumbs even after I set content to be movies and run a scan.
I also have one more problem, when I close the program after it finished scrapping a movie and restart the program only the movie name is listed and there is no data on it.
Can you assist please?
- emagin - 2009-08-14
Holy cow Billyad2k you are on it mate!
Did not realize you were going to jump on all that so quick!
Right on the mark
- billyad2000 - 2009-08-15
hell_spawn27 Wrote:Hi billy I have a couple of questions...Since many people run MC on a different machine to XBMC this means that there will be different paths to the same folder, eg
I have been struggling to get the actor thumbs downloaded sucessfully using MC.
First, they did not display in the MC when I chose only a local directory for actor thumbs to be downloaded, that did not work.
Then I entered both the local directory and directory of XBMC (Windows).
I have a question with respect to the XBMC path is it just the path for the App data folder in windows where XBMC stores userprofiles if so does the path specifically have to be referring to the video directory like C:\Documents and Settings\<Username>\Application Data\XBMC\userdata\Thumbnails\Video or just C:\Documents and Settings\<Username>\Application Data\XBMC\ work fine?
In MC it works fine and I see the actor thumbs but when I run XBMC it does not pick up the actor thumbs even after I set content to be movies and run a scan.
I also have one more problem, when I close the program after it finished scrapping a movie and restart the program only the movie name is listed and there is no data on it.
Can you assist please?
XBMC would be
"smb://homeNAS/public/Actors"
but to MC it would be
"Z:\Actors" (This is still the same folder as above, but I have it mapped to Z on the machine MC runs on)
Both paths lead to the same directory, but from different machines. Simply put, the "Local Path" is where you want to store the actor thumbs from Media Companion.
"XBMC Path" is the same path, but from XBMC, if XBMC is on the same machine then these will be the same. If like me you run it on an XBox then it will be something like the example above, just check that XBMC has permission to access that folder.
- billyad2000 - 2009-08-15
emagin Wrote:Holy cow Billyad2k you are on it mate!
Did not realize you were going to jump on all that so quick!
Right on the mark
I have to admit, it does seem better, although having all these functions on a single form does complicate things a bit.
There will be an update in a week or so, I have an assignment that needs doing and this will be my main concern until it is completed.
- hell_spawn27 - 2009-08-15
billyad2000 Wrote:Since many people run MC on a different machine to XBMC this means that there will be different paths to the same folder, eg
XBMC would be
"smb://homeNAS/public/Actors"
but to MC it would be
"Z:\Actors" (This is still the same folder as above, but I have it mapped to Z on the machine MC runs on)
Both paths lead to the same directory, but from different machines. Simply put, the "Local Path" is where you want to store the actor thumbs from Media Companion.
"XBMC Path" is the same path, but from XBMC, if XBMC is on the same machine then these will be the same. If like me you run it on an XBox then it will be something like the example above, just check that XBMC has permission to access that folder.
Hi Billy, my MC and XBMC run on the same Windows machine. As you had mentioned I used the same directories for both local path and XBMC path (C:\Program Files\XBMC\userdata\Thumbnails\Video)
When added the movies, it instantly picked up the movie info from the NFO files and also the actor list.
But it does not show the actor thumbnails but only their names
How do I rectify this?
Also I noticed one more thing which might help, when I used XBMC to scrape the movie info, it stores the files as .tbn and the actor thumbnails appear correctly and the files are stored under C:\Program Files\XBMC\userdata\Thumbnails\Video
Now using MC I browsed into this directory and noticed that there are no relevant .tbn files showing the thumbnails.
Here is the curious part, when I load MC and browse the movies I am able to see actor thumbs but only in XBMC they are not loaded?
Is it got to do with the fact that when MC stores actor thumbs it stores them as jpg while when XBMC scrapes directly actor thumbs it stores them as .tbn format?
Any idea, what's wrong. I sincerely appreciate your help.
Thanks!
- billyad2000 - 2009-08-15
hell_spawn27 Wrote:Hi Billy, my MC and XBMC run on the same Windows machine. As you had mentioned I used the same directories for both local path and XBMC path (C:\Program Files\XBMC\userdata\Thumbnails\Video)
When added the movies, it instantly picked up the movie info from the NFO files and also the actor list.
But it does not show the actor thumbnails but only their names
How do I rectify this?
Also I noticed one more thing which might help, when I used XBMC to scrape the movie info, it stores the files as .tbn and the actor thumbnails appear correctly and the files are stored under C:\Program Files\XBMC\userdata\Thumbnails\Video
Now using MC I browsed into this directory and noticed that there are no relevant .tbn files showing the thumbnails.
Here is the curious part, when I load MC and browse the movies I am able to see actor thumbs but only in XBMC they are not loaded?
Is it got to do with the fact that when MC stores actor thumbs it stores them as jpg while when XBMC scrapes directly actor thumbs it stores them as .tbn format?
Any idea, what's wrong. I sincerely appreciate your help.
Thanks!
I am not certain tbh, there is little documentation on this. Please try using tbn and let me know if it works.
Remember to change the path in the nfo to tbn aswell, It may be better to ask in a different thread since this is more XBMC related.