ShapeGSX:

Dwight2001:

Of all of the new Movie Plugins that are coming out the only one besides the native DVD Library that plays from a Firewire Changer is MyMovies or the Exclusive Niveus Movie Gallery.  That in my purely selfish opinion would be a great feature. 

Some of us have a mixture of ripped and changer dvd's would be nice to have access to all of your movies.

Dwight2001

Yes! The standard DVD Library is pretty good. But I have no way of adding a dvd ID XML file to the discs in my changer for Media Center to read. Actually, maybe this is a good place to ask. :) Is there any way of faking the DVD ID in the standard DVD Library for discs in a DVD changer? I have the Sony VGP-XL1B3.

I'll PM you, so that this thread can stay on topic.

Dwight2001

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Dwight 2001

Vista Ultimate|E6600 Core2 Duo|ATI 4670 256MB|2 GB Ram|Pioneer BDC-2200 BluRay Drive|XBOX360 HDDVD Drive|Sony XL1B2 200 Disc Changer|1.5 TB Storage|HDHomerun

Linksys DMA2200|XBOX360

It's all good

Good luck guys.

Have any of you contacted brian over at mymovies? only a couple days ago he stated his position on letting people make their own frontends.

Would be great if you got together and he could in someway provide access to the sql backend of mymovies given that mymovies has tons of users and a good collection management system already in place.

Would be great if that could happen, would save you chaps time on making a backend database so more time could be put into the interface which is something mymovies users are all waiting on now.

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c2d 6600 | 2gb Ram | 7800gt Gfx | Vista Ultimate x86

Ok, I'm going to try to put this as nice and clear as I can.  I don't believe we are interested in making this project a "front-end" for mymovies.  I also use mymovies and believe it is a very nice application.  That being said we are aiming to develop a complete movies solution (read: no tv support for now).  We will be running a series of benchmarking tests to determine the fastest and most flexible data storage solution for the project (sql might be it but we haven't done the tests yet so I can't say).

We are very much interested in providing all the features that users of various programs have come to expect from a total video solution for vmc.  We will be providing the ability to import data from many different sources and that may or may not include mymovies.

We are very greatful for all the feature requests, sugguestions and interest this project is generating. Please believe me when I say we are working hard to develop and provide the BEST movies solution for vista media center and vista media center extenders.

The code base is quite small and is currently under the knife, we will try to begin some open alphas as soon as we can (I don't have a timeline but it won't be months).

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OpenMediaLibrary - Senior Programmer

translucent:

taranu,

   Is this sql server compact available now?  I'm not really looking to embed something directly inside the app itself but more likely move to a service based system so that data could be edited from an external source (web?) while the app is being used without performance issues and/or other problems.  Also, it would be nice to have data become available while the app is running.  Please pm dbldown768 if your up for joining, I'm all in for it but he controls the source access.

SQL Server Compact is avaliable now  at  ttp://www.microsoft.com/sql/editions/compact/default.mspx

I don't know if it will be faster and easier to install than SQL Express but it's something to look at.

It would be nice to have the app get data from a web service but we still need something locally and that's where the big decission is: use a DB backend or just plain XML files.

The advantages of a DB is that you have unlimited flexibility on how you manipulate the data, especially with large collections. You can add all kinds of criteria (genre + actor + movie length for example), which will be quite tedious without a database.

A hybrid model may also work. If we can make this process of storing data transparent to the user then it shouldn't matter what kind of technology is used as long as it's solid and reliable.

I would not be surprised if the next version of Microsoft's media player / media center will be based around an SQL database.

Oh my god I love this project already :-)

To think that so many people are willing to contribute with ideas and suggestions are just great. As you all can read from this thread, there are A LOT of ideas. Some better than others, some are weighted higher by the dev team than others, but trust me consider all options.

As Translucent wrote, I think we need to focus this project on a Movie library for now. Can't tell if it will include tv later or not, it's way too early to tell.

Again I encourage people to post suggestions to our dev forum over at www.ornskov.dk/forum this way it's easier for us to collect and judge them. On the forum you also have the ability to chip in by joining the dev team if you have some killer skills in C# and/or MCML.

Thanks for all the attention, don't stop.

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OML - Open Media Library - Product Manager

I completely agree, I don't think fiji will use sql server but the next thing after that very well may.  At the moment I'm developing a binary data file for local machine storage.  I don't like using xml for general data services (importing from them is fine, but otherwise they suck).  sql is nice for alot of things, I've downloaded a copy of sql server compact and I'll take a look at it.  sqllite is something else we might look at if sql is decided to be the right direction.   Or for that matter we could stick with out binary data file and just use linq against it. (thats a joke, btw)

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OpenMediaLibrary - Senior Programmer

+1 for sqlite - I've used it in the MCE move library I started developing

Any updates?

Dwight2001

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Dwight 2001

Vista Ultimate|E6600 Core2 Duo|ATI 4670 256MB|2 GB Ram|Pioneer BDC-2200 BluRay Drive|XBOX360 HDDVD Drive|Sony XL1B2 200 Disc Changer|1.5 TB Storage|HDHomerun

Linksys DMA2200|XBOX360

It's all good

Since this is open source it could use PostreSQL or MySql.  Just to keep things completely open and free.

This seems like it will be a great project.  Can't wait to see a first alpha of this tool.

Is there a place to list out some possible features just to keep track of what this tool might do and not do?   For instance, I assume this will do more than just play DVDs but will also allow all filetypes supported by Vista MCE (divx, avi, mkv, etc)?

Anyway, I will keep an eye on this and see where it goes.  Good job getting it into an open source type environment.

Update:  We have been hard at work modularizing the code and adding unit tests.  At this point we've broken the "project" into a number of pieces.

 

Engine:  This is the guts of the code and controls the primary database.

Library: This is the actual vmc plugin.

DatabaseEditor: Just as its name implies.  This will be used to add/edit/remove entries from the database outside of vmc.  All importer plugins will be active and usable inside this application.

SDK: This will provide an interface class and a number of custom classes that should allow anyone to write a data source plugin for OML.  Such as a new website providing movie information or whatever.

Short term goals:

We are working to get everything togeather for an alpha release.  The initial release will support dvds on the hd, and other local files (avi, mkv, mpg, etc).  We will likely also support the ability to NOT use the Engine and instead allow for direct use of an external file (dvd profiler, mymovies, movie collectorz to start with).  This wouldn't be great since the plugin will have to load the xml file each time is runs.  Feel free to continue with comments, questions, req's etc.  We're compiling a list.

Also, the code is open source, if you feel the need to download and modify it go ahead.  If you have something that you feel is really great (or fix a bug) please send us a patch file and we'll try to get it in the core codebase.  I really can't give a timeline on when the first alpha will be available but I can say that it won't be months away.  We now have 6 people on the development team (had 3 before) so I'm hoping things begin to speed up.

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OpenMediaLibrary - Senior Programmer

This is great news !

I'm really looking forward testing the first alpha, as i'm currently using the backend of mymovies, together with the standard dvd library of WMC..

When all is up and running, a donation coming your way !

Hello, you guys have a lot of people excited, and I'm one of the people willing to pay for a pretty interface once it is completed.

I just wanted to confirm that .dvr-ms will be a supported file type.  I currently use mymovies, but converted all of my dvd's to the file type mentioned to allow streaming to the XBOX360 thoughout the house from my computer in the study.

Good luck.

goofme:

Hello, you guys have a lot of people excited, and I'm one of the people willing to pay for a pretty interface once it is completed.

I just wanted to confirm that .dvr-ms will be a supported file type.  I currently use mymovies, but converted all of my dvd's to the file type mentioned to allow streaming to the XBOX360 thoughout the house from my computer in the study.

Good luck.

DVR-MS will definitely be a supported format :)

The developers may already have seen this news but just in case, the dev of mymovies made it official the other day:

http://www.mymovies.dk/forum.aspx?g=posts&t=7821

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c2d 6600 | 2gb Ram | 7800gt Gfx | Vista Ultimate x86

tom_son:

The developers may already have seen this news but just in case, the dev of mymovies made it official the other day:

http://www.mymovies.dk/forum.aspx?g=posts&t=7821

Thanks for the heads up tom_son, I have had a chat with Brian already and it seems we, OML, will be able to use the services of My Movies in the future. This along with range of offline movie organizer applications for Windows. If you know of a movie organizer piece of software, please mention it here and we'll have a look at supporting it.

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OML - Open Media Library - Product Manager