I just released a new version of my video browsing plugin for Vista MCE.

More details at: http://bbs.wasnotwas.com/ and http://code.google.com/p/videobrowser

Comments, requests and ideas are more than welcome

Cheers
Sam

Oh my god, this is such a cool project! I have been looking for a MyMovies replacement for so long!

Will test this ASAP and return with ideas etc....

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OML - Open Media Library - Product Manager

Alright, I have this baby installed and I would call it a good start!
I simply love the fact that you can simply put in an xml-file with data and voila, you have a movie synopsis! This is just what I have been looking for.

I have a few ideas already, that you may consider:

- The posibility of getting one (or maybe two) user selected information from the xml-file shown on the same page as the movie itself. #1
- A subpage with detailed information. #2
- The posibility for the user to decide how many lines of movie synopsis there should be displayed. #3
- The posibility to delete a folder/movie. #4

Explenations:

#1: Often I flip through my movies, looking for a movie I could just squueze in before bedtime, meaning that I often look for movies that are of about 90 mins length. The ultimate solution would be if you could sort movies according to categories or runtime, but I guess that a rather big thing to ask for, so what about adding the posibility for the user to decide for an extran information on the same page as the movie? It could be done as simple as editing a config.xml or something. Extra field = runtime or something.

#2: The product as of now is great for an overview, but as you have mentioned yourself it would be cool to display all of the data. I don't ever think you should change the easy way of navigating to a movie as it is done now, instead a subpage to each movie could be available. How about if you press Play on a movie it plays (doh) and if you press OK you enter the subpage!

#3: Pretty self explaining, but for people with a high res monitor or tv it would be nice to have the posibility to change how many lines of synopsis is displayed. Again, this could simply be put in a config.xml for now.

#4: I simply hate the fact that the option of deleting a folder, including all content, have been removed from Vista media center. On media center 2005 I always watched a movie, if I disliked it, I would delete it right away. Now I have to connect to my htpc remote and delete all content. So if you do a subpage, include a delete movie folder button.

I hope you will use my input, I assure you I will start using your application and report any faults etc to you as I go along.

**EDIT**

Bug:
I can see that only the automaticly added folders on my Vista Install eg. c:\users\carlos\videos are in the list here. I have added two folders manually, they are not displayed!

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OML - Open Media Library - Product Manager

looks nice, I'll install this tomorrow and take it for a spin.

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(replied also on my blog)

KingManon,

Thanks for the suggestions!

#1, Will certainly consider adding this, I also would find sort by runtime useful! Im thinking of adding some sort of folder.ini file that can optionally control how the info is displayed.

#2 Yerp, sub page is in the making.

#3 Will consider creating a registry setting for this stuff.

#4 Will look at adding a registry that enables the option to delete a movie (and dirs) from the details page. I am not sure if I want this on by default ...

With the missing folders that were added manually, this is actually by design.

I kept on getting confused with the way you add and remove video folders in Vista. So, instead decided only to look and the current logged on users video folder, and fully support OS shortcuts. So, if you add shortcuts from your videos folder they will work fine, this also gives you better control of the first screen displayed to the user and allows for a hierarchy of shortcuts...



Keep the ideas and suggestions coming :)

Alright, sounds good!

If you like, you could PM me and I could beta test this baby on and off?!

I think the things I listed above are the basic ideas, when they are implemented I have some more ideas :-) But don't you agree that this should be in place first?

Visionary ideas:

1 - Make the background Vista Media Center blue instead of the black ;-)
2 - Consider implemnting the posibility of letting the user choose how to search through the movies. The choises could be: List (as it is now). thumbnail (as in the standard video lib, but for gods sake with bigger images) and finally my favorite Cover Flow (as seen on iTunes, ref: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6NJNiIWxdE Not that I am a apple fan, but tis sure looks nice!)
3 - It would be nice to be able to sort the list of movies by all sorts of things. You know like the top bar could be expanded from "By Name" and "By Date" to include "By Runtime", "By year", "By Category", "By Not Watched" etc.

But like I said, if you implement something new, gimme a buzz and I'll test and come up with some new ideas!

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OML - Open Media Library - Product Manager

Bugs:

1 - If you browse through folders and you eg. choose folder number 2 in the list, then you go to the subfolder and the cursor is at folder number 2 instead at the top of the list. Consider this (never mind the star * for now):

Movies
- LOTR
  - FOTR
  - TTT
  - ROTK*
- Star Wars
  - I*
  - II*
  - III*
  - IV
  - V
  - VI
More Movies

If I am at Movies and click LOTR, then when the page changes to that folder, the "cursor" is at TTT instead of FOTR. Like the choise isn't reset.

2 - This one puzzles me a bit! Again consider the above folder structure. I have marked empty folders with a star *. When I navigate into Star Wars I get a listing of all the folders as I should, but if I navigate into my LOTR folder, the FOTR movie starts playing!

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OML - Open Media Library - Product Manager

Oh yeah, one more suggestion :-)

The ability to move backwards in the list! I have around 100 movies ergo it takes a while to go to the last one if I know I want to watch that one ;-)

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OML - Open Media Library - Product Manager

nice app, I like the simplicity. I just created a shortcut to my DVD recodes that I keep on a separate drive in my videos and everything showed up, meta data 'n all.

A few things I noticed:
1) 1st run it caused media center to lose focus so I saw my windows taskbar
2) it complained it wasnt responding for some reason once when I was navigating
3) 1st selection caused a lonnng waiting cursor before playing

suggestions
1) triple tap on the remote so the lets say we want to watch "Leon" for instance we hit "5" 3x on the remote to get to the "L"'s
2) customisable background gradient (tho I like the black!)

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Vengence_Irl:

A few things I noticed:
1) 1st run it caused media center to lose focus so I saw my windows taskbar
2) it complained it wasnt responding for some reason once when I was navigating
3) 1st selection caused a lonnng waiting cursor before playing

suggestions
1) triple tap on the remote so the lets say we want to watch "Leon" for instance we hit "5" 3x on the remote to get to the "L"'s
2) customisable background gradient (tho I like the black!)

Noticed:
#1: Didn't notice this
#2: I too get this from time to time. I have only seen it when navigating back to the media center main menu using the Back button.
#3: Didn't notice this

Suggestions:
#1: Oh yeah, nice one!
#2: Yeah, could use the standard media center background

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OML - Open Media Library - Product Manager

Thanks KingManon

#1 is in my TODO list already, will sort it out pretty soon

#2 is a bug, which I think I can fix fairly easily

Vengence,

#1 Have not seen this ... will keep an eye out for it
#2 I have seen this a few times, trying to reproduce it consistently so I can fix it
#3 The waiting cursor is most likely caused cause of codecs you have installed ... I would recommend using FFDShow as its probably the best and most comprehensive codec out there.

#1 Triple tap is a great idea will implement it ...
#2 With the background, Im going to keep it black for now. Microsoft do not make it easy for us developers to use the MCE blue theme, we have all the building blocks but have to hand code all the behaviours (Microsofts list view is like 800 lines long). Though I can steal thier themes, it may make them angry and I want to keep a good working relationship with the MediaCenter team. Black is simple and should make it easy to implement reflections later on. So I'm going to stay with black for the time being ...

Just a heads up; you can use the static blue background just by setting your ColorFill element to Transparent. For the animated background, you're right, we have to [re]create it ourselves, and to get it exactly right is a bit of a pita.

As for the issue of copying their styles and whatnot, I believe Charlie once said "feel free, however if you're using it directly from ehres.dll it will break in the future" - or at least something to that effect.

Great little app though.

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Maybe it was drawing thumbnails in the background, but I only have ffdshow installed.

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I'm not able to get the movie data to display against the movie listed on this.

My xml files are named the same as the movie, with all my movies in one folder.

Is this correct ? Should I be able to see the data, or do they need to be named as something else.

Hope someone can help, as this app is excellent.