[REQUEST] New separate forum and sub-forums for standalone media managers?
#1
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There are quite a number of media managers in General Discussion forum, I suggest a separate forum for these so it is a little easier to find and sort through them as well as get help.
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#2
Which current one are we getting rid of then? IMO we have far too many as it is.
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#3
until the unified media manager takes flight, one scraches where one itches.
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#4
I prefer more forums for organization and grouping of content, there are a lot of posts to go through, often I find myself stumbling on something that I didn't think of and therefore would have never search for.

Perhaps, then make it a sub-forum of the General Discussion group.
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#5
Some thing needs to be done. 100+ pages for an application is a little excessive dont you think.. People tend to just keep adding to the announcement thread with bugs etc. And if you had a bug and didnt want to post it in the announcment thread then chances are its not going to be seen in the general discussion thread.
A sub forum for media managers and then perhaps some sub forums in there for Ember, MIPS and the unified project, they are the three main applications people are/will be using.
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#6
IMO these apps aren't directly related to XBMC (even if that is what were intended for) and every single thread discussing them should be moved to off-topic.

Furthermore if the users and the app's authors thing they need subforums for their media management app they should make one themselves. There are tons of free forum sites to choose from.

The first of these media managers to come about (I think it was called media companion?) realized this and had a separate forum outside of XBMC. Everyone else should follow this precedent.
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#7
Yes all third-party media managers should really have their own forum own their own websites, especially since many of the third-party media manager not only work with XBMC but also with other media center applications (such as Boxee, Plex, MediaPortal, and sothers).

You have to remember that XBMC is really designed to work fins without these third-party media managers. In a perfect world we would not need these third-party media managers at all, XBMC would instead be able to automatically scrape all this information itself without any input from the user. Our goal for XBMC should always be to try to remove the need third-party media managers, it is of course a moving target so we will never reach it, however at least XBMC's own scrapers should work satisfactory for 99% of all XBMC users, it is a realistic goal as not all people need to try out the very latest 'cutting-edge' eye candy artwork until it goes mainstream and is supported by XBMC nativly.

It is however true that XBMC scrapers and flagging support sometimes lag behind these third-party media managers because of the rapid development in the custom artwork and metadata that are becoming available as both HTPC skins and their users and modders evolve and learn new things or get new ideas.

These third-party media managers are also good for the media center enthusiasts because of the 2-foot desktop layout media managers it makes it easier to manager your media collection in front of your computer with a keyboard and mouse, ...instead of in your living-room 10-foot away with your remote control.

So both third-party media manager and XBMC built-in media scraper have their place in the HTPC world, but one is meant for a niche market and one is for the mass market.

My 2 cents Big Grin
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#8
Maybe create a separate subforum 'Third Party Apps' in the Off-Topic forum.
Since there is is already a HTPC subforum in Off-Topic, which is also not strictly related to xbmc, this might be the correct place.

In my opinion third party apps do earn a spot on the xbmc forums. I think a lot of new, creative ideas come from these applications and xbmc could benefit from this.
Code from one of those apps might eventually end up in xbmc.

A good example might be fekker (Media Info Plus) and CapnBry have been doing some work together on the media flagging code, which has become one of the new features in xbmc.
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#9
In my opinion there will be a place for stand alone-media managers for some time to come. XBMC as mentioned will scrape automatically, but has no provisions (as far as I am aware) to edit the movie information scraped.

As such XBMC can not handle home movies I believe. Also, some may wish to edit the results that have been scraped, replace the posters, fanart, etc. A stand-alone media manager can help make these sort of things a lot easier.

While yes these software programs are stand alone, they have been written specifically for XBMC's XML file formats, poster/fanart naming conventions and XBMC preferred directory structure.
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#10
ronie Wrote:Maybe create a separate subforum 'Third Party Apps' in the Off-Topic forum.
Since there is is already a HTPC subforum in Off-Topic, which is also not strictly related to xbmc, this might be the correct place.

In my opinion third party apps do earn a spot on the xbmc forums. I think a lot of new, creative ideas come from these applications and xbmc could benefit from this.
Code from one of those apps might eventually end up in xbmc.

A good example might be fekker (Media Info Plus) and CapnBry have been doing some work together on the media flagging code, which has become one of the new features in xbmc.

I completely agree with this. Since it'll be quite some time till the third party media info applications lose their usefulness completely, it would probably be useful to implement some sort of organization within the forum to accommodate them. Personally, I've used 4 different media info applications up to this point and it would have made things a little nicer had there been a sub-forum to show all of the choices right up front. A sub-forum might also be conducive to some more collaboration between the many projects out there.

Maybe a 'Third Party Media Organization Apps' in the 'Off-Topics Forum'.

Just another suggestion/opinion to choose from!
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#11
I think UMM will change this slightly, being an open-source universal media manager supported by XBMC.

A lot of the media managers will probably become obsolete very soon (with their coders joining UMM)
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#12
tetsuo55 Wrote:I think UMM will change this slightly, being an open-source universal media manager supported by XBMC.

A lot of the media managers will probably become obsolete very soon (with their coders joining UMM)

That may be true, but my understanding is that no coding of the UMM has started and it will be quite a while before it is reality.
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#13
Gamester17 Wrote:You have to remember that XBMC is really designed to work fins without these third-party media managers. In a perfect world we would not need these third-party media managers at all, XBMC would instead be able to automatically scrape all this information itself without any input from the user. Our goal for XBMC should always be to try to remove the need third-party media managers, it is of course a moving target so we will never reach it, however at least XBMC's own scrapers should work satisfactory for 99% of all XBMC users, it is a realistic goal as not all people need to try out the very latest 'cutting-edge' eye candy artwork until it goes mainstream and is supported by XBMC nativly.

Media flagging is nice.
For me using an external scraper is more an issue of accuracy.
XBMC native scrapers seem to get alot of my movies wrong and then i have to fix them manually anyways so i may as well do all my scraping before i load up XBMC and then just update my library once i have everything the way i want it.
If there were an option to pick between a list of movie choices in cases where several movies have the same title, say by date or by a short plot description before it just chooses for me the internal scrapers would work fine.
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#14
Vampirebat Wrote:For me using an external scraper is more an issue of accuracy.XBMC native scrapers seem to get alot of my movies wrong and then i have to fix them manually anyways

In the meantime, you could post your debug log of movies scraping incorrectly here to help the devs out:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=45405&page=3 (I THINK that's the place for them to go...)

Although it's probably not a big help if you post a debug log with 500 movies and only 20 are scraped incorrectly.

Obviously it's not guaranteed that they fix your issues specifically, but it'll help them move one step closer to a flawless internal scraper (hope I'm not out of line hereOo).
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#15
Though I agree with the thinking behind moving such threads to the off topic section and that maybe they should even have there own forums
I must disagree with it not being xbmc related.
these are designed to make xbmc look and feel good with all the extra whistle and bells that no-one would have
the patience to sit and go through with a remote ok they work with other software as well but the people
putting ALLOT of effort and work into these are doing so with YOUR software in mind.
I am not affiliated with any and have used a few myself all found through this website but I felt a need to speak up for these guys
Moving these threads is like kicking them in the teeth or at least its how I would feel if i had spent 100s of hours developing something like that.
hope this isn't out of line not meant to offend anyone I love xbmc and appreciate all the work the developers put into it....
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[REQUEST] New separate forum and sub-forums for standalone media managers?0