huh, good question,

Not likely in the first release.  I have all three of those pieces so I shouldn't have any trouble playing with that, but it's still a matter of coding it in.  Now, to be fair follow ups will NOT take as long as the initial release will/has.  Once we start getting good feedback after the initial release we will be planning to do smaller updates on a much faster timeline. 

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OpenMediaLibrary - Senior Programmer

Ok great.. you still rock .. and I still can't wait

Hi Guys,

 

Just a quick question about OML, will it support 64 bit vista?  Sorry if this has been answered before, I had a quick look through the forum pages but you are up to 16 pages.

 

Thanks,

hamiltonguy

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My VMC HTCP - Vista Ultimate
ASUS P5Q, Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz
3GB DDR2-800
XFX Fatal1ty 8600
1 X 750 GB,
ATI 550Pro, HDHOMERUN
2GB Flash for Ready Boost

vvincent:

That said - I came across this today: http://aeoncentral.com/

 

Wow!

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PC (HTPC): Vista x64 • AMD X2 4800+ • 2GB DDR400 • eVGA 7800 GT • 250GB HDD
SERVER: WHS • CM Stacker 810 • 3.4TB Storage • 300+DVDs • 19,000+ MP3s

hamiltonguy:

Just a quick question about OML, will it support 64 bit vista?  Sorry if this has been answered before, I had a quick look through the forum pages but you are up to 16 pages.

 

Yes, 64bit is/will be supported in the initial and all future releases.

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OpenMediaLibrary - Senior Programmer

Hi all, sorry for the long-winded post ......

I have almost 1000 DVDs on about 7TB of storage and they follow a logical hierarchical file structure (e.g. Horror/Stephen King/Kingdom Hostpital/Disc One/VIDEO_TS). I love the 'large view' of VMC's DVD library - particularly seeing the art and the name at the same time. I don't really need to be able to filter by director etc. So what's the problem?

Trying to find anything with 1000 DVDs displayed is impossible (and slow). Even if I could filter by genre (which it can't), I really don't want all the episode folders of Kingdom Hospital (for example) to appear with horror in general. I would like to see all the DVDs in the horror folder, with just an art image for subfolders (eg Stephen King). If I selected that, I would then expect to see my Stephen King DVDs and an art item for the Kingdom Hosptial folder. In short, I wish to be able to navigate by folder. VMC DVD library can't do this.

I have tried mymovies but other than a ghastly interface, it also appears to be unable to navigate by folder. I tried TV Library but no metadata for DVDs. I then tried Video Browser. This does exactly what I need but it's painfully slow, does not have an equivalent of the VMC 'large' view, has no horizontal scrolling and development appears to have stopped.

I'm hoping that this project will give me close to what  I need. I have read all 16 pages, bee to the development forum and read the wiki but I am still uncertain if it will allow me to navigate by folder. Can anyone shed some light on this? If it won't support that, can anyone advise on how on earth you sensibly navigate a 1000 DVDs. They are in a totally logical structure o n the drives and I really want to navigate in the same way.

 

Thanks in anticipation

At this point we don't browse by folders, we use only the meta data for browsing. For now the best you can do is use the existing filters (Genre, Director and Tags - you can add your own tags).  We may need to come up with something more generic in the future.

There are also a few things to help you. Starting typing will navigate directly to the movie (it's a little slow now but it works). Also in the releases after the first beta there will be a search option.

We are trying to cover all the cases to accommodate everyone and I think browsing by folders is pretty common so we'll probably add an option to Browse by Folders.

translucent:

hamiltonguy:

Just a quick question about OML, will it support 64 bit vista?  Sorry if this has been answered before, I had a quick look through the forum pages but you are up to 16 pages.

Yes, 64bit is/will be supported in the initial and all future releases.

Praise the Lord.

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PC (HTPC): Vista x64 • AMD X2 4800+ • 2GB DDR400 • eVGA 7800 GT • 250GB HDD
SERVER: WHS • CM Stacker 810 • 3.4TB Storage • 300+DVDs • 19,000+ MP3s

I know - my intent in posting it here was to show the kinds of things that are being done with user interfaces these days. My hope is that OML will separate coding logic and data from the manner in which it is displayed so that alternate interfaces might be created.

I'll confess that I haven't posted this as a request before now - mostly likely because it didn't occur to me until I saw the Aeon Central.

By implementing such options, OML would let people customze how they want their library to appear, eliminating much of the need to meet everyone's bill of particulars with a single GUI. If you like cover-flow as a GUI - great, use it. If you like the My Movies format - great, use it. If you like Kalidescape/Nievus Movie Collector format - great, use it. If you want something else - that's fine too.

I'm kind of surprised that no one made a post on this before now, because the Aeon interface is stunning. If something like this could be implemented in Media Center, it would really draw some attention.

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Vernon L. Vincent

vvincent:

I know - my intent in posting it here was to show the kinds of things that are being done with user interfaces these days. My hope is that OML will separate coding logic and data from the manner in which it is displayed so that alternate interfaces might be created.

I'll confess that I haven't posted this as a request before now - mostly likely because it didn't occur to me until I saw the Aeon Central.

By implementing such options, OML would let people customze how they want their library to appear, eliminating much of the need to meet everyone's bill of particulars with a single GUI. If you like cover-flow as a GUI - great, use it. If you like the My Movies format - great, use it. If you like Kalidescape/Nievus Movie Collector format - great, use it. If you want something else - that's fine too.

I'm kind of surprised that no one made a post on this before now, because the Aeon interface is stunning. If something like this could be implemented in Media Center, it would really draw some attention.

 

The basic design of MCML already pretty much enforces this model (MVC model).  That being the case OML already supports 2 types of layouts, one being what you've seen in the screen shots, we also already support what we can "list" view which doesn't show the boxart but simply provides all the movies by name.  We have planned from the beginning to support multiple layout UIs and have simply spend most of our time working on other features (plugins, filters, JIL, configurable settings, extender support via transcode360, disc image support, a complete windows application for managing your movie collection, and many other items).  Rest assured that an SDK will be available for writing plugins (data sources/parsers) and the OML team will be working on more layout options in the future.  One of our settings screens already provides 10 ft. support for changing the layout, running importers, configuring daemontools, and a number of other items.

I am quite impressed by the Aeon l&f and honestly the OML team can and will do quite a bit on the UI side of things, one thing we could really use though is a solid graphics artist / designer to prototype layouts and build the framework graphics that the OML programmers could then built as MCML templates.

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OpenMediaLibrary - Senior Programmer

taranu:

We are trying to cover all the cases to accommodate everyone and I think browsing by folders is pretty common so we'll probably add an option to Browse by Folders.

Thanks taranu - the more I think about it the more I am convinced that the only effective way to browse a truly large collection is by folder. It's great to hear that you'll 'probably add an option' - you will then have the mother of all browsers :)

Thanks again for the response

translucent:

vvincent:

....

I'm kind of surprised that no one made a post on this before now, because the Aeon interface is stunning. If something like this could be implemented in Media Center, it would really draw some attention.

 .....

I am quite impressed by the Aeon l&f and honestly the OML team can and will do quite a bit on the UI side of things, one thing we could really use though is a solid graphics artist / designer to prototype layouts and build the framework graphics that the OML programmers could then built as MCML templates.

You guys have to remember that at this point we don't have any graphic designer on the project.  We've tried to come up with something practical and at the same time decent-looking but I will guarantee that we'll have a cooler interface in the future.

We're trying to implement as much functionality as we can in the backend so that later people can use MCML to develop new layouts.  Hopefully with the beta out soon we'll get more people involved in this project.  The beginning is always the hardest.

taranu:

translucent:

vvincent:

....

I'm kind of surprised that no one made a post on this before now, because the Aeon interface is stunning. If something like this could be implemented in Media Center, it would really draw some attention.

 .....

I am quite impressed by the Aeon l&f and honestly the OML team can and will do quite a bit on the UI side of things, one thing we could really use though is a solid graphics artist / designer to prototype layouts and build the framework graphics that the OML programmers could then built as MCML templates.

You guys have to remember that at this point we don't have any graphic designer on the project.  We've tried to come up with something practical and at the same time decent-looking but I will guarantee that we'll have a cooler interface in the future.

We're trying to implement as much functionality as we can in the backend so that later people can use MCML to develop new layouts.  Hopefully with the beta out soon we'll get more people involved in this project.  The beginning is always the hardest.

 

Sorry - I wasn't meaning to disparage or anything like that. It was more of a "see what others are doing - can OML do it too" type of thing. I fully appreciate the amount of hard work that the whole OML team is doing - for no payment I might add - so nothing I have said is intended to be a knock or criticism. Even if there is no Ui customization - the finished product will still be something the community can be proud of. I was just offering Aeon as an example of 'a next step'. Media Center needs some "break-out" apps that really showcase the power and promise of the platform. I think OML can be one of those (along with a great TV series manager) - and given the trend toward High Definition, an interface like Aeon that is beautuful and really shows what can be done in HD would stand out enormously. I've seriously considered trying to get a modded Xbox just so I can run Aeon.

But I digress. The point is: I (and I'm sure everyone else) recognizes the enormous effort being put into OML. These are suggestions and observations, not criticisms. If they result in a new line of think for you - great. If they are something you've already considered - well and good too. Regardless - I can't wait to see OML in action. Thank you to the team for all of your hard work.

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Vernon L. Vincent

vvincent:

Sorry - I wasn't meaning to disparage or anything like that.

 

You didn't, we're not disparaged.  L&F has always been a challenge for the OS community, just look at any linux offering in the market (my opinion only).  For some reason more programmers are willing to offer their services for free then are graphics artists I guess.  Thats my experience anyway.  I think we are all open to more UI designs, one of the challanges the OML team is facing is to provide the same L&F both on the htpc connected television and on the extender device connected television. 

I can tell you that I test both daily (I have a 40in samsung 1080p lcd on the htpc, and a 26in samsung 1080i lcd  on an xbox360).  Both show the exact same UI and both are able to behave the same (i.e., if I can play it on the htpc, then I can play it on the extender).  This is nice because sometimes the wife will kick me out of the living room while I'm watching a dvd or something and I can just move to the other room and keep watching from there. (I have to load the movie and ff to the same spot but at least isos, and video_ts dirs stream without issue). 

Sorry, I didn't mean to go into all that but it does give you an idea of some of the problems we are aiming to solve and the extent to which we are using our own pre-release code on a daily basis.

We are completely in bug-fix mode at the moment (and speeding things up!)  I've personally been spending some time reviewing and rewriting based on our memory usage and am happy to say that things appear to be running fairly smoothly at the moment.  eshell.exe on my machine tops out at about 97 megs while using OML (as opposed to 89 megs when not using OML), this is an improvement from the 200+ megs OML was consuming just 1 week ago :)  Rest assured we're on our last leg and a public release should be just around the corner.

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OpenMediaLibrary - Senior Programmer

OML update pending...

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OpenMediaLibrary - Senior Programmer