DVD Library Manager for Vista Media Center (VMC) is a free Windows program which allows you to edit the DVD information (meta data) used by DVD Library in Vista Media Center (VMC). It can download additional movie information from Amazon.com and IMDB.com. This program is to be run outside of the Vista Media Center but on the same computer as VMC (It can also be run on a different computer if you are familiary with symbolic links).

This program started as a small utility for personal use but I figured that other people may be interested in it. It's a very early version of the program (Version 0.7) and I will continue to update it often. I hope you find it usefull and please don't hesitate to contact me for bugs, comments, new features, etc. I am open to all the suggestions.

You can uninstall the program through Vista's control panel.

Download from:

http://www.taranu.net/download/dvdlibman01.zip

Who is it for?

• - Users of the DVD Library feature of the Vista Media Center for watching DVDs from a hard disk (or network share)

What does it do?

• It allows you to graphically modify the movie information (meta data) for the DVDs displayed in the DVD Library, including cover art.
• It can download additional information from Amazon.com (can specify .de, .ca, .fr. and .jp) including cover art.
• It can download additional information from IMDB.com including cover art.
• It allows you to open the raw .XML file containing the meta data to be updated manually.
• You can drag and drop cover art to the DVD Details screen or just select an image file from the hard disk.
• It can modify the DVD information downloaded by VMC
• It will scan all the DVD folders found in the monitored movie folders (DVD Library) of VMC and present all of them in a grid format with the information available (Covert Art, Folder, Movie Title, Director, Actors, etc). This way you can sort on any columns and see what kind of information is missing for a certain movie.
• When creating new DVD information it will automtically create a DVIDID XML file (default name taranu.dvdid.xml) and the corresponding .XML file in the Cache folder.
• It can delete all the DVD information by deleting the corresponding .XML files by right-clicking on a movie.
• It can play the DVD with the default DVD player (that handles .IFO files) by right-clicking on a movie.

Future additions

• Lots of polishing of the user interface
• maybe add support for Windows Media Center 2005
• DVR-MS support
• Support for other video files
  
• Anything else that people find useful

Screenshots

• Main Screen
• DVD Details
• IMDB Search
• Amazon Search

Interesting :) will pass onto clients and friends who are a bit more onto dvd management in mce than I am(I prefer to archive in H264)

good luck :)   always good to see people working on new things :)

astro

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MCE Buddy : User Friendly DVMRS to H264/DIVX/XVID/ZUNE/PPC etc. Give it a try !! // Freeware !!

I have downloaded your Library Manager and given it a go, I like it.

Your app came at the right time for me as I am just part way into reorganizing my DVD library and have been manually assigning folder.jpg files for my 340 odd dvds.

Works well although I couldn't work out how to download covers with it, which doesn't really matter as I have already downloaded most in a higher res anyway.

Application finds all my DVDs and I have been able to get details for them no problems, no chapter details is not bad as I can edit the existing xml and cut and paste it afterwards.

Thanks , would be interested in any updates and also how do you download cover and save it.

Circuit

 

Hi Taranu,

People will like your app also here :)

Wondering why no chapter information is imported?

 

other than that i like the app

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Dell xps420 w/ dual ATI cable cards
Hdhomerun for QAM
Panasonic 50" Plasma fed by xbox 360
Panasonic 42" plama fed by xbox 360
3TB in storage and counting

I have uploaded a new version.

Changes:
- When doing drag and drop of a cover art image from a web browser, a folder.jpg file will not automatically be created. You have to save the cover art image first (default is folder.jpg or moviename.jpg but you can change it)
- When getting cover art from Amazon, a folder.jpg file will not automatically be created. You have to save the cover art image first (default is folder.jpg or moviename.jpg but you can change it)
- When getting data from Amazon you can select which fields to used (there's a checkbox for each field)

- Added button to launch IMDB.com in a browser window, with the name of the name of the movie (or folder name) as the search parameter. A little bit better and copy and paste.
- Added Play DVD to the DVD Details dialog

New feature:
- added a setting for the default folder when reading or saving cover art:
   - you can have it look in the DVD folder, default image name to folder.jpg
   - can select a custom folder, default image name is MovieName.jpg
- this way you can have all the cover art images stored in one place on the local computer (useful for network shares and backup purposes).

Circuit:

Works well although I couldn't work out how to download covers with it, which doesn't really matter as I have already downloaded most in a higher res anyway.

Application finds all my DVDs and I have been able to get details for them no problems, no chapter details is not bad as I can edit the existing xml and cut and paste it afterwards.

Thanks , would be interested in any updates and also how do you download cover and save it.

Circuit

Hi Circuit, the only way to automatically download cover art right now is if you use the Search Amazon.com button. It may or may not find cover art. You can select different Amazon (Canada, Germany, etc) and sometimes they have different information about the movies.

You can drag and drop existing image files to the DVD Details dialog. You can also drag and drop from a weg browser, but it won't accept the link (even if to an image), it has to be a non-clickable image (I usually choose "View Image" from the browser)

I have added a new button to start an IMDB.com search in an external  web browser, should simplify getting to the cover art though I find IMDB's cover art is very low quality. There are many web sites that have very good quality cover art that you can use.

As I get the program more stable and useful I will look at more ways to automate getting cover art and other data.

PLUCKYHD:

Wondering why no chapter information is imported?

 

other than that i like the app

I will have chapter information soon I hope. I just never used that feature and I didn't include in the initial development but now I should have it in a day or two.

Great news about the chapters.

The problem I'm having with covers is I can't figure out how to save the cover when it finds it on Aamzon site.

 

 

Circuit:

Great news about the chapters.

The problem I'm having with covers is I can't figure out how to save the cover when it finds it on Aamzon site.

 

1. If the Amazon Search dialog finds a cover, just press Select Movie to use the information from Amazon. If you want just the cover you can uncheck the checkboxes for the other fields that you don't want and just check the Cover Art. You can also edit the fields before pressing Select Movie.

2. Once you press Select Movie, the information will be added to the DVD Details dialog (all the fields that are checked) but it won't be saved yet.

3. Then under the cover art image in the DVD Details dialog you'll see 3 buttons:

Choose Cover Art...

Save Cover Art...

Clear (it clears the image)

4. Under the buttons you should see some text: [Please Save the Cover Art]

5. If you select the Save Cover Art... it will bring up a dialog to save the image. By default it will save an image called folder.jpg into the DVD folder but you can save it anywhere under any name.

6. Then select the Save button from the top of the DVD Details dialog.

So basically the Amazon Search dialog just feeds the DVD Details dialog.

It may seem complicated but once you do it once it should be fine. I guess it can be done in less steps but then it won't let you preview and modify the data.  Initially I was automatically saving the Amazon image but not all people want that, they may want the cover art image to be saved in different places. 

I may add an option to automatically save to folder.jpg (with prompt to overwrite) and to have the Amazon search dialog automatically save the data and go back to the main dialog instead of the DVD Details dialog.  I am trying to have a balance between ease of use and flexibility and it's great that you guys are tellling me what you need.

Any specific .Net framework required?  As soon as I start the app I get an Unhandled Exception error?

Thanks,

Marcus

dravor:

Any specific .Net framework required?  As soon as I start the app I get an Unhandled Exception error?

Thanks,

Marcus

Normally the installation program would detect if you don't have the required .Net framework.

It should only use .Net 2.0 which is included in Vista. I belive v3.0 is also included in Vista so it shouldn't be a .Net issue.

On startup it reads the registry and the cache folder but you would get a more specific error if you had permission problems. Is there any other information in the exception?  I will try to take a look and add some more debugging and exception handling to the startup.

taranu:

Normally the installation program would detect if you don't have the required .Net framework.

It should only use .Net 2.0 which is included in Vista. I belive v3.0 is also included in Vista so it shouldn't be a .Net issue.

On startup it reads the registry and the cache folder but you would get a more specific error if you had permission problems. Is there any other information in the exception?  I will try to take a look and add some more debugging and exception handling to the startup.

Here is the error it throws:

See the end of this message for details on invoking
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************** Exception Text **************
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
   at DVDMetaDataVMC.MainForm.AddFolders(List`1 folders)
   at DVDMetaDataVMC.MainForm.RefreshUpdateGrid()
   at DVDMetaDataVMC.MainForm.backgroundWorkerRefresh_RunWorkerCompleted(Object sender, RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e)
   at System.ComponentModel.BackgroundWorker.OnRunWorkerCompleted(RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e)
   at System.ComponentModel.BackgroundWorker.AsyncOperationCompleted(Object arg)

************** Loaded Assemblies **************
mscorlib
    Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.312 (rtmLHS.050727-3100)
    CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.NET/Framework/v2.0.50727/mscorlib.dll
----------------------------------------
DVDLibraryManager
    Assembly Version: 0.3.0.0
    Win32 Version: 0.3.0.0
    CodeBase: file:///C:/Users/marcus/AppData/Local/Apps/2.0/2YAZ1L4Q.8JW/X0YDANR6.YL2/dvdl..tion_31a159a10b022ee4_0000.0003_a54d5727ec994b61/DVDLibraryManager.exe
----------------------------------------
System.Windows.Forms
    Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.312 (rtmLHS.050727-3100)
    CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Windows.Forms/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Windows.Forms.dll
----------------------------------------
System
    Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.312 (rtmLHS.050727-3100)
    CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Drawing
    Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.312 (rtmLHS.050727-3100)
    CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Drawing/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Drawing.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Configuration
    Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.312 (rtmLHS.050727-3100)
    CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Configuration/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Configuration.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Xml
    Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
    Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.312 (rtmLHS.050727-3100)
    CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Xml/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Xml.dll
----------------------------------------

************** JIT Debugging **************
To enable just-in-time (JIT) debugging, the .config file for this
application or computer (machine.config) must have the
jitDebugging value set in the system.windows.forms section.
The application must also be compiled with debugging
enabled.

For example:

<configuration>
    <system.windows.forms jitDebugging="true" />
</configuration>

When JIT debugging is enabled, any unhandled exception
will be sent to the JIT debugger registered on the computer
rather than be handled by this dialog box.

I'll see if there's anything odd registry wise.

 

 

Thanks for the report. I think I found a problem. I have added some more exception handling, hopefully it will catch your case.  How many folders do you have monitored by VMC? I think the problem on your machine is reading information in those folders. There was a problem with the program if it couldn't find any folders. I have uploaded a new version.

Uploaded new version 0.4.0.0

- Updated to a newer version of the Amazon web service.
- Amazon Search should be more accurate now.
- Amazon Search can be on Title, Actor or Director
- Amazon Search: Can now see all the results from Amazon, 10 at a time (added button Next 10 Results)
- Amazon Search: Movie genre should be available for most movies but it's not perfect yet
- The Release Date should be of the format yyyy mm dd for VMC to see it. The program tries its best to write the correct format but it many not get it right every time. If you leave just the year then it will save in the correct format (will append 01 01 to the year).
-  If you used a previous version of the program and your Release Date is not in the format yyyy mm dd or contains just the year, just open the DVD Details for the movie and save it.