So...do the episodes need to be dvr-ms files or can I use shows I've already converted to xvid to save space?  If so, how do I get the meta-data to show up?  Secondly, same with the films...how are you associating the DVD cover with the film file if they are all in the same folder?  I can't wait to try this out when I get home!

The MCE2005 version uses XML files to provide metadata for .avi files (one .xml file to one .avi file). The XML schema is documented here: http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/permalink/130668/143771/ShowThread.aspx#143771

Don't know if this will work on the Vista version, but is worth a try.

 

For the DVD cover, create a .jpg file with the same name as the video file - e.g. if the video file is called "archangel.dvr-ms", then create a file "archangel.jpg" in the same folder.

There are two "views" - films (2 rows, DVD aspect covers) and episodes (1 row, 4x3 aspect thumbnails) - to configure the folder for a specific view, create a file called "folderdetails.ini" in the folder with the following entries:

[FolderSettings]
DisplayName=Films
Description=Films recorded off TV
Image=films.jpg
ViewType=covers

where DisplayName and Description are whatever you want to see displayed for that folder (if you don't enter anything the folder name is used for DisplayName and Description is left blank).

ViewType=covers sets the view type to DVD covers.

For episodes viewtype just leave out ViewType as follows:

[FolderSettings]
DisplayName=TV Shows
Description=TV Shows recorded off TV
Image=tvshows.png

You can specify the folder image here too if you like, but if you want to just create folder.jpg you can do.  

Cheers,
Andrew

Thanks AndyC.. I will test it out tonight!

Great to see that you are back to developing..

I've not stopped developing, just not been able to work on my own stuff!

Cheers,
Andrew

bledsoe:

So...do the episodes need to be dvr-ms files or can I use shows I've already converted to xvid to save space?  If so, how do I get the meta-data to show up?  Secondly, same with the films...how are you associating the DVD cover with the film file if they are all in the same folder?  I can't wait to try this out when I get home!

Any video type that is recognised by Windows as a video type (i.e. in the registry it shows as PerceivedType = video) should be displayed.

If the video file doesn't have it's own metadata, then the app will search for an XML file of the same name to get the metadata out of.  Format should be the same as previous (as commented above) but I'll check (long time since I wrote that bit of code).

Cheers,
Andrew

 

Any chance of developing a library management app to go along with this that would be tied to http://www.thetvdb.com to help batch create the .xml files?  I have a pretty big collection of episodes already converted.

I will report back my results after testing...thanks for releasing the beta!

The problem is that there are so many different sources of metadata that would be required, dependent on country, etc.

I'll have a think about it and see if I can come up with a way that doesn't involve lots of work, but meets 80% of peoples needs....

Cheers,
Andrew

thanks for the program

 

I have it setup to look in my movies folder where I have all the my films in one folder and then jpg's of the same name. But when I go into my movies folder with your program it just opens lots and lots of ffdshow and haali splitter and media center says the program is not responding (well thats what it said the first time i tried it). So it restarted media center and now instead of saying the program is not responding it just says invalid application , unable to launch addin.

tv library "cache" folder

Something I didn't mention earlier - in previous efforts at this software I've used different ways to capture the metadata from the files, from "do it every time" (very slow) to "hold it in a file" (becomes out of date quickly and needs refreshing).

What I've done with this version is to create a hidden folder called "cache" in each folder that you browse using the application - this folder contains an Access database with the metadata in it which is populated first time you access the folder, and it also contains thumbnails for the video files in the folderl, created the first time you access the folder too.

Each subsequent time you access the folder, the contents of the folder are checked against the database to see if the files already exist in the database - if they do, the metadata is retrieved from the database; if not, the metadata is retrieved from the file and then stored in the database.

If anything goes screwy where you can't see a file in the folder in the app when you would expect to, delete the cache folder and it will get recreated next time you navigate to the folder.   Also, you'll need to do this if I need to change the database structure - simple enough job, at the root level of the folders, search for "cache" and delete the folders that are found.  I'll put a note on the install that this is required if we ever get to that point.

Cheers,
Andrew

Update: What this also means is that your Media Center needs to be able to write to the folder where you have the video files you want to show in "tv library" - if it doesn't have access, the app should fail semi-gracefully, by loading the metadata each time rather than caching it in the database.

and the cache folder has screenshots of the films like media center itself does but not what I want in this case

moontan:

thanks for the program

 

I have it setup to look in my movies folder where I have all the my films in one folder and then jpg's of the same name. But when I go into my movies folder with your program it just opens lots and lots of ffdshow and haali splitter and media center says the program is not responding (well thats what it said the first time i tried it). So it restarted media center and now instead of saying the program is not responding it just says invalid application , unable to launch addin.

Sounds like an issue with the thumbnail grabber - I use a standard Microsoft componnet called "MediaDet" to pick up the thumbnails out of the files - ffdshow and haali must be causing an issue with the retrieval of the thumbnails using MediaDet that I don't see with the decoders I have on my system.

Can you enable error reporting on your system in the registry by adding the following:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\Extensibility\EnableErrorDetails (REG_DWORD) = 1

This will show a "Details" button when you get "Unable to launch addin" - click details and post the output here.

Cheers,
Andrew

 

moontan:

and the cache folder has screenshots of the films like media center itself does but not what I want in this case

See further up the thread, here: http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/permalink/196101/196083/ShowThread.aspx#196083 for how to resolve that.

Cheers,
Andrew

 

thats what comes up in details, even with the folder details file it still open ffdshow and haali

for this

[FolderSettings]
DisplayName=Films
Description=Films recorded off TV
Image=films.jpg
ViewType=covers

do you actually mean have all your film in individual folders and then do a folderdetails.ini file for every folder? and change films.jpg to the name of the film in that folder?

 

 

I uninstalled ffdshow and haali and it still caches the screengrabs unless u mean u have to do what I said above