I found this plug-in works great using the MyMovies collection maanger.  Also, once the file is updated in MyMovies it places the XML file in the folder, so if you move folders, the XML goes with it, you don't have to worry about updating the location.  I went through a few plugin's before finding this one and I have now stopped looking at all others. 
There are a few things that MyMovies does, that this doesn't, but the only one I really miss is the abitlity of the program to go out on the net and find a trailer.  If my wife is looking for a movie to watch, the trailer really helps her figure out if she is interested in a particular film or not, especially if the movie was released a while ago and she forgets what it is supposed to be about. 

Musictype:

Is this plug supposed to work with extenders? It shows a blank screen on my 2100.

So, is anyone successfully using this with an extender?

How are you guys spanning multiple drives with having to click on the drive and only view the movies in that drive?

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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
5TB in storage and counting

I hate the vista video library, IMO its several steps back from 2005, and I would have completely hated the whole Vista Media Center experience if it wasn't for this app (and Ive tried all the others and for me this is the best.  I dont need to re-organize everything, or enter all my videos in some database since I already have well over 1.5tb of stuff arranged in folders, with wrong filenames apparently so stuff like mytv wont pick up that I have any shows, etc, just need something to browse my videos). 
That said, I do have a few issues with it.

The biggest one probably is that it doesn't show .ogm files for me (it lists mkvs, and the Video Library in Media Center lists .ogms and plays them, but they dont show up in Video Browser)

And two are kinda cosmetic/usability
One is that its hard to tell what's a folder and what's not in list view.  Maybe adding something like a > at the end of the text string would help (kinda like in front row for Mac)
Also some kind of scroll bar looking thing that would tell you how far you are in the folder.

Also, the sorting issue, although thats already known about, where if you had 1-9 and then 10, 11, 12 etc would show up before 2. Its not so much a big deal with 1-9 (except I had to go through and rename every 1-9 instance to 01-09 for many shows), but I have some large series broke up by episode number, and the folder like "Show 326-350" is higher on the list then "Show 51-75".

PLUCKYHD:

How are you guys spanning multiple drives with having to click on the drive and only view the movies in that drive?

hi, you can create a virtual folder file which contains references to your other folders/drives that contain your videos, i think i posted some examples a few posts back, if you get stuck then let me know, it should be explained in this thread somewhere.

paul.

I use Video Browser with videos located on different network drives and only see what I want to see.  As mentioned above, the simpliest way is to created shortcuts in your "My Videos" folder.  If you add a folder.jpg image, you also get a cover display instead of the standard folder image.  Works perfectly for VMC as well as Video Browser and keeps all the other clutter out of your navigation.  Just remember to remove any video sharing in WMP or library sharing in VMC.

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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

Figured it out still not ideal having to click on the main folder (filename) first but better than shortcuts as it updates automatically

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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
5TB in storage and counting

Musictype:

Musictype:

Is this plug supposed to work with extenders? It shows a blank screen on my 2100.

So, is anyone successfully using this with an extender?

 

Works on my extenders just fine. All my files are dvr-ms. Make sure and add the shortcuts/or vf reference under the video files of the extender user.

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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
5TB in storage and counting

I cannot get the tvscaper to work

I installed ruby and I have friends episodes in c:\friends\season 1

I type in ruby tvdb_scraper.rb c:\friends

I don't get any error information so I think it runs but I don't get the show information??

I am running this from command prompt. should I be typing in the subdirectory season 1 as well?

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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
5TB in storage and counting

You can run it at a root level folder. You are missing an argument, ie you should be typing:

ruby tvdb_scraper.rb "C:\friends\" --refresh

then you can type this to fix the names for you...

ruby tvdb_scraper.rb "C:\friends\" --fixnames

 

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http://blog.manghera.com

I'm still unable to get this to work with a layered directory structure acting as placeholders for box set titles.  For example, this is what I have and is not working:

\Videos
             \ Wayne's World 1 & 2
                    -folder.jpg
                                                  \Wayne's World
                                                        -mymovies.xml
                                                        -folder.jpg  
                                                   \Wayne's World 2
                                                        -mymovies.xml
                                                        -folder.jpg

What I see is the Wayne's World 1&2 folder with movie poster - which is good.  When I then click on that in the library I get taken to an "Unable to play somerandomname.tmp file".  Of course, what I'd like to see is the two folder entries that are nested below with respective poster art and XML descriptions.

Can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong or is this plugin just not capable of doing this?

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theHTPC.net

Your error sounds like an image caching issue. I'm not an expert so my advice may screw up your system - dont say I didnt warn you. I have seen this issue a couple times, my quick fix was to delete the whole list of cached items which are found in this directory: C:\Users\ [ YOUR USER NAME ] \ AppData\Roaming\SamSoft\

I removed all the files in there and relaunched Video Browser, it then automatically populated the images from there.

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http://blog.manghera.com

sambo99:

 If anyone having issues with the poster mode can you let me know what resolution media center is running at?

I am still ironing out some bugs with this...

did this ever get fixed or is it about to get fixed? would really like to try it...

eTe:

did this ever get fixed or is it about to get fixed? would really like to try it...

Yea, I did localize the issue you can expect to see a fix for this in the next version.

so the next question is: When is the new version coming?

I know there is a bunch of stuff to do, but Sam would be the man to answer this question.

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http://blog.manghera.com

soultaker:

Your error sounds like an image caching issue. I'm not an expert so my advice may screw up your system - dont say I didnt warn you. I have seen this issue a couple times, my quick fix was to delete the whole list of cached items which are found in this directory: C:\Users\ [ YOUR USER NAME ] \ AppData\Roaming\SamSoft\

I removed all the files in there and relaunched Video Browser, it then automatically populated the images from there.

That doesn't make sense though.  This happens on a newly created folder that didn't exist except to test out the new folder layout.

You see, my videos are not in their own individual folders, so I'm having to recreate my entire directory structure if I use this plugin.  I created that structure from scratch - just for testing.  I received that error from the initial load and run of the plugin...it couldn't have had a chance to cache anything (unless cache is loaded from another folder for performance purposes).

I will try your recommendation, just to eliminate that possibility though.  I don't know anything about this plugin to assume you're wrong.  Thanks for the suggestion :)

UPDATE:

Didn't work.  I recreated the folder structure and it still won't let me get past the top-level folder - It takes me to the "Finished" screen (I was wrong about the unable to play such and such) with a filename of tmpE460.tmp.

Any other ideas of how I can create a multi-level file system that this plugin can use?

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theHTPC.net