Most PC related things will do this.  I've always numbered my stuff as 01 02 03 10 11 12 etc so things will always be in order. 

OK I am very confused now After a while away and busy I took time out this evening to give things another whirl...

First of all Kudos to KingManon for MetaBabel. For someone who is claiming not to be a programmer I am very impressed. It is straight forward to just put in a Title, search and then save both the details as a mymovies.xml and a Folder.jpg file for the cover image.

With this Video Browser app it seems to be the case that unless the xml file is actually called mymovies.xml then the details just don't get passed correctly. I thought to myself 'No problem I will simply create a folder with the movies name and then in there store the .avi file, the .xml file and the .jpg.

Giving them a go in VMC was great up showed the film in the list with the picture showing. When you click onto that you then get a nice screen with all the title and other film synopsis that can be shown currently from the .xml file. At the bottom right is the link to then play the file which is does no problem.

So far lovely but then I was thinking that it would be nice to group the folders by genre. To test this I created a folder called 'Comedy' in there (just to test) I copied the folder I had made in my first test and a second folder for another film into the comedy folder.

Are you all with me so far? So I have the D drive then a folder called films then the Comedy folder and the two folders in that.

D:\Films\Comedy > In here Folder.jpg, Movie One Folder and Movie Two Folder.

Movie One Folder > In here: Movie One.Avi, Folder.Jpg and MyMovies.xml

Movie Two Folder > In here: Movie Two.Avi, Folder.Jpg and MyMovies.xml

This is where I begin scratching my head as no matter what I do when you browse to the Films folder in the Video Browser it shows the Comedy folder in the list but when you click on it to goto that folder level it instead jumps straight into playing the Movie One.Avi file.

What is more baffling is that I have another folder on the D drive called TV and in there Folders for different TV shows. In there Folders for different Seasons. Each one has it's own Folders.Jpg file yet the Video Browser app will quite happily go deeper and deeper down those folder levels without a problem.

I hope that all makes some kind of sense to you all.

My questions I guess are...

1) Why is it jumping straight to playing Movie One.Avi instead of listing the two films in that folder and in there the details and option to play the different movies.

2) If I can not do sub folders like this is there a way we could have the Video Browser app recognise the xml file as the MovieName.xml instead of MyMovies.xml? The same for Folder.Jpg being called MovieName.jpg?

That way you could just have a list of films with details in the same folder Ie:

Movie One.Avi
Movie One.xml
Movie One.Jpg

Movie Two.Avi
Movie Two.xml
Movie Two.Jpg

Oh for those interested in the fab XML file that MetaBabel produces here is a snippet:

<Title>
  <ID>ID</ID>
  <WebServiceID>WebServiceID</WebServiceID>
  <CollectionNumber>CollectionNumber</CollectionNumber>
  <Type>Type</Type>
  <Barcode>Barcode</Barcode>
  <Country>Country</Country>
  <LocalTitle>The Golden Child</LocalTitle>
  <OriginalTitle>The Golden Child</OriginalTitle>
  <SortTitle>The Golden Child</SortTitle>
  <Edition>Edition</Edition>
  <AspectRatio>AspectRatio</AspectRatio>
  <VideoStandard>VideoStandard</VideoStandard>
  <ProductionYear>1986</ProductionYear>
  <ReleaseDate>ReleaseDate</ReleaseDate>
  <RunningTime>93</RunningTime>
  <TagLine />
  <Description><![CDATA[As 'The Chosen One' Murphy's on a madcap mission to save THE GOLDEN CHILD, a youth with mystical powers who's been abducted by an evil cult. He battles a band of super-nasties, scrambles through a booby-trapped chamber of horrors and traverses Tibet to obtain a sacred dagger. But it's Murphy's with that turns out to be his sharpest weapon in the 24-karat comedy adventure.]]></Description>
  <ExtraFeatures NotPresent="False"><![CDATA[hej]]></ExtraFeatures>
  <ParentalRating>

Further to the tomb I just wrote I looked back through this forum and realised that I had tried something very early on where in the folder level there was a folder called metadata and then each .xml file in there reletive to the .avi files in the folder up a level so I just tried that ie:

COMEDY -> In here

Movie One.Avi
Movie One.Jpg
Movie Two.Avi
Movie Two.Jpg
Folder.Jpg -> (This is the image I want to depict the Comedy grouping)
METADATA -> In here

Movie One.Xml
Movie Two.Xml

Still no joy. As soon I browse to it I see the title 'Comedy' with the comedy pic I gave in the form of Folder.Jpg but as soon as you click it you then go straight into playing Movie One.Avi instead of getting the list of films in that folder

I am officially dumb founded as to why or what is happening and have decided to open it to you lovely lot to see if there are some ideas out there or tweaks of the Video Browser app required? Maybe I am just missing the correct way of storing and cataloguing the files? Whatever help is out there it is all appreciated and somewhere karma will reward you

As for me I am going to watch the start of Ashes to Ashes to see if it lives up to the Life on Mars.

 

 

Hold tight, I'll try to reply to this tomorrow ... I almost have the genre sort working ... I only have a few hours of work left on it (but im at work at the moment and i need to pay the bills somehow :)

Sam

sambo99:

Hold tight, I'll try to reply to this tomorrow ... I almost have the genre sort working ... I only have a few hours of work left on it (but im at work at the moment and i need to pay the bills somehow :)

Sam

Jeej! nice to hear you are still active developing this great plugin, can't wait for the new release!
Genre sorting sounds like a great feature. Hope you still use the xml files instead of a database (though a database would be much easier to sort by genre or whatever i guess), because the xml files can be accessed by everybody on the network, and sharing a database is much more difficult.

Keep up the good work!

@OxfordRob:

First of all thanks for the kind words, and no I really am no programmer :-)

To your problem, try this as I had something similar and it solved it:

Let's say you have a D-drive for your movies (could just be a subfolder though). On that drive you create a folder for each category you want movies split it. I for example, have: Kids, movies, movies hd and series. Then inside each of these folders you create a folder for each movie and place the movie.avi, folder.jpg and mymovies.xml.

Then the trick is to create a shortcut from each root category folder (eg. kids and movies) in the c:\users\oxfordrob\videos folder. This way only the root category folders show up in the main view.

I don't know if Sam will tell you the same solution, but this worked for me.

@Sam:

Maybe this should be in your FAQ section? Sound great about the genre filter!!

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OML - Open Media Library - Product Manager

Ok here you  go, my first shot at genre browsing

Note if you want pictures for the genre add files named the genre.jpg

So if you have and Action genre

Create a file called Action.jpg in the root folder

This also contains a sort by runtime feature.
and for an added bonus it contains a bunch of fixes the 3.10 yuma bug, linux metadata bug and some other small things... I still need to fix the phantom selection bug ...

Note, for the genre sorting option to show up you need a folder to have more than 30% movies with mymovies.xml that way I do not clutter up the TV UI

Let me know what you think, I'm just testing it out myself now

Rob,

I will try to debug this later, can you let me know if you are still having issues with the latest version, also what happens if you have 3 movies in the sub folder so

Action
   Movie 1
     a.avi
   Movie 2 
     a.avi
   Movie 3
    a.avi

It could be that i need to improve my hueristic for joining movies (the one that makes movies names part1.avi part2.avi play as a single movie)

Fantastic application!  I like the interface so much better than MyMovies.  The interface is really nice and fast.  I am just surprised I didn't try it earlier.  It worked perfectly for me because I already created video shortcuts for my videos (copied them from public folders) and I had MyMovies. 

One nice addition would be movie ratings, so that I'd know what is OK for the kids.

I just need to figure why most of my newer videos have xml files and others don't.  Perhaps it relates to MyMovies and the version changes over time.  

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Asus P5E-VM HDMI (onboard audio/video), Core 2 Duo E8200, 4 GB RAM, Hauppauge HVR-1800 (x2), LG-GGC H20L, DMA-2100 (x4), Yamaha RX-N600, InFocus IN76, D-LINK DIR 655, Vista Ultimate

KingManon / OxfordRob

You should be able to have any level of nesting you want so:

Videos
    Movies
      Action
         Movie1
         Movie2
         Movie3

should work fine, if it does not I have a bug and I need to fix it :) as I said in the previous post, it could be a bug in my heuristic.

Good morning,

I have now installed your latest version and it is looking very good thanks. The genre sorting and selection is brilliant.

First of all I did as you asked Sam and in my Comedy folder I added a third movie folder so I now have:

D:\Films\Comedy\Movie 1, Movie 2 and Movie 3

In each of the Movie folders a Movie X.avi, MyMovies.xml and a Folder.jpg file
(Where X is the number ie 1, 2 etc)

Before I added the third Movie folder I tried browsing to this Comedy folder first using the latest build of Video Browser and it still jumped to playing the first Movie 1.avi from the Movie 1 folder.

Adding a third folder to the listing made the browser work correctly and instead show the three Movie names with the respective images. Removing the third folder reverts back to the original problem of jumping to the first movie.

As it is I am wondering whether I need to now make sub folders for genres such as Action, Comedy etc because the app picks up the different genre settings from the MyMovies.xml that Metababel can produce.

The genre.jpg idea works a treat but you could end up with a lot of jpgs suited to all the different genres ie: Computer animation.jpg, Comedy.jpg, Family.jpg etc. That or just limit how many genres you include on a items MyMovies.xml file.

Superb work thanks Sam.

 

 

 

sambo99:

Ok here you  go, my first shot at genre browsing

Let me know what you think, I'm just testing it out myself now

Nice! works as expected, genre browsing works very good.
Though the sorting options <by genre> and <by runtime> show up with a delay, but i guess that's because i have over 500 movies in my movie folder.
Also the metadata folder hiding is much appreciated!

Some suggestions you may consider;
* maybe add an option to sort by production year (sort by date doesn't really work out to display the newest movies at the top)
* make the additional sortings optional, so you can disable them to not lose some performance if not needed.
* now when no folder.jpg is set the video browser shows an big folder icon (the one vista uses), would be nice if a default image would be displayed (which can be customized/replaced)
* (already been suggested) make the background (blue) like the rest of MCV.

Can't think of anything else, it's perfect!

the by runtime feature is really great! keep up the good work.

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http://www.spore.com/view/profile/Vengence_IRL

I found a little bug, in the xml files when you use characters like ë or è for the description the movie information will not be displayed.

You did it again Sam, love the genre and runtime feature. Implemented the right way in my opinion. What's next on your todo?

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OML - Open Media Library - Product Manager