YAMMM Discussion

[barnabas1969]

I love YAMMM! It just works. I don't have to do anything! That's the beauty of it. Even if I didn't have My Media Center, I would want YAMMM! It's awesome.

[Moderator note: Topic split from the State of the Echo #3 thread: http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... 432#p45432]

[epayson85]

Yamm doesn't just work. No meta data scanner just works, especially not 100% of the time. There are so many movies with similar names or even the same names if they are remakes. For example the karate kid, if you have the original do you really want the cover for that crappy new one with will smiths son showing up? No you want your library to be accurate. Further more I like to be able to customize. I like my Blu-ray movies to have blu-ray covers and my dvd movies to have dvd covers. I want to choose my fan art and so forth. Now can you customize yamm? Yes you can go and edit the pictures yourself and put your own in the folder... UNTIL someone updates what pictures Yamm uses for that movie... then Yamm updates your movie too deleting what you customized. It never stops, it just constantly scans and re-scans my movies never giving my hard drive a break. Yamm SUCKS! My media center needs to be designed to read already created NFO files. Media Browser can read my "My Movies" nfo's and use the same images without re-downloading them. It shouldn't be too difficult to get My Media Center to do the same thing rather than have multiple sets of images. With all my movies and TV shows I already have over 4 gigs of just images. I don't need Yamm making another copy but not just another copy a worse copy, a copy that I don't approve of.

[hub1]

YAMMM doesn't work for you, but for me and a lot of others it does "just works".

[barnabas1969]

Yamm doesn't just work. No meta data scanner just works, especially not 100% of the time. There are so many movies with similar names or even the same names if they are remakes. For example the karate kid, if you have the original do you really want the cover for that crappy new one with will smiths son showing up? No you want your library to be accurate. Further more I like to be able to customize. I like my Blu-ray movies to have blu-ray covers and my dvd movies to have dvd covers. I want to choose my fan art and so forth. Now can you customize yamm? Yes you can go and edit the pictures yourself and put your own in the folder... UNTIL someone updates what pictures Yamm uses for that movie... then Yamm updates your movie too deleting what you customized. It never stops, it just constantly scans and re-scans my movies never giving my hard drive a break. Yamm SUCKS! My media center needs to be designed to read already created NFO files. Media Browser can read my "My Movies" nfo's and use the same images without re-downloading them. It shouldn't be too difficult to get My Media Center to do the same thing rather than have multiple sets of images. With all my movies and TV shows I already have over 4 gigs of just images. I don't need Yamm making another copy but not just another copy a worse copy, a copy that I don't approve of.

Have you read the setup guide for My Media Center? Pay special attention to the part where it explains how to name your folders. There is a section that explains that if YAMMM doesn't select the correct movie (or if you are concerned this might happen) that you should name the folder like "Movie Title [imdb=tt0892769]" or "Movie Title [tmdb=13550]". So, if you name the folder with the IMDB or TBDB keys, YAMMM will get the correct metadata 100% of the time.

I've only had one or two movies that required this, but it's nice to know that the feature is there when I need it.

[epayson85]

ORRRR I could have my folders just have the title of the movie, have a GOOD meta data scraper, and not have Yamm constantly rescan my movies looking for updates taking valuable life span off my hard drives.

[barnabas1969]

ORRRR I could have my folders just have the title of the movie, have a GOOD meta data scraper, and not have Yamm constantly rescan my movies looking for updates taking valuable life span off my hard drives.

The argument about the life span of your hard drives being affected by YAMMM is ridiculous, but I think there's a way to use My Media Center with My Movies. Have you thought to open a support ticket with Ceton? I'm sure they can help you.

[epayson85]

Its not a ridiculous argument at all. Its a green drive have you heard of head parking? A green drive has a default head park at 12.7 seconds of no use. Typical hard drive is at least over 5 minutes. The beauty of these drives is they consumer less power, let off less heat, and will last longer if they are used for storage. My drives only get used when I am playing a movie or ripping a new one to it so not very often. If Yamm is constantly using it and causing the head to park and start over and over again the hard drive's head will die thus the drive is gone. Not to mention the fact that I use a virtual raid so instead of a real time raid the back up only occurs every couple of weeks to a parity drive. This is awesome for data that rarely changes, but you want it backed up, and still need great speed for playing high bit rate files. However if Yamm is constantly changing files then it will cause problem with the backup. The backups work great with files that are deleted or added on but if a file is changed then it can cause major issues when restoring a drive during a failure.

[barnabas1969]

Its not a ridiculous argument at all. Its a green drive have you heard of head parking? A green drive has a default head park at 12.7 seconds of no use. Typical hard drive is at least over 5 minutes. The beauty of these drives is they consumer less power, let off less heat, and will last longer if they are used for storage. My drives only get used when I am playing a movie or ripping a new one to it so not very often. If Yamm is constantly using it and causing the head to park and start over and over again the hard drive's head will die thus the drive is gone. Not to mention the fact that I use a virtual raid so instead of a real time raid the back up only occurs every couple of weeks to a parity drive. This is awesome for data that rarely changes, but you want it backed up, and still need great speed for playing high bit rate files. However if Yamm is constantly changing files then it will cause problem with the backup. The backups work great with files that are deleted or added on but if a file is changed then it can cause major issues when restoring a drive during a failure.

I don't have time to go into it, but what you are talking about is trivial in the life of a hard drive. Just for example, my drives are not "green" drives. They run for an average of more than 12 hours per day. When they are running, they are in nearly continuous use to play or record video (often, with 4-6 streams going simultaneously, which means that there is plenty of seeking going on). Neither of them shows any errors in the SMART data. I expect them to last for several more years. I've been running YAMMM since the day that "My Media Center" came out. No problems.

[innesst]

My initial impression is that I'm not excited about this. I have zero desire to replace the Windows Media Center interface - that's why I still used Windows Media Center. It works, it looks nice, and it is stable.

Like others, I want android on the Echo, but only for the non-media center functionality.

I completely agree. I see windows 8 and other media functionality as 2 separate things, and I can only assume that Windows 8 is the more complex thing. Why make one wait for the other? Get the media out now and add in functionality when it's ready. If they wait for everything to be perfect they will have to integrate windows 9 !

[xnappo]

I don't mind yamm, but where ghe hell is the TV collection support?!

[3rob3]

I don't mind yamm, but where ghe hell is the TV collection support?!

No Doubt! Will this ever get implemented?

[epayson85]

It is not trivial in the life of a hard drive! If the head breaks then nothing gets read. Its a moving part and if it gets started and stopped over and over again then it gets worn out faster.

[staknhalo]

Watching/recording TV is wearing your HDDs out more than YAMM ever could. That's not a good argument against YAMM. I should state - I don't mind YAMM; I just prefer to choose my own metadata/posters as I stated above. My posters are better looking than anything YAMM would pull from it's providers IMO.

[richard1980]

epayson85's argument has a bit of truth to it. All hard drives have a target number of load cycles for which they are designed, and thus the faster you burn through the load cycles, the faster you approach the expected end of life of the drive. And epayson85 is correct that any software that causes the hard drive to constantly rack up load cycles will eventually kill the drive.

Unfortunately, that's where epayson85 stops being correct. None of that stuff applies to YAMMM because of the way YAMMM works. YAMMM uses the FileSystemWatcher class to listen for notifications from the OS that the contents of the monitored folders have changed, and only once a change notification is received does YAMMM do anything. And obviously that means the drive is not idle at the time YAMMM starts reacting to the notification, so YAMMM cannot be responsible for increasing the load cycle count of the drive.

[muaddib]

YAMM talk has detailed this thread.

[epayson85]

Except that Yamm isn't only monitoring changes on the drive. I certainly do see Yamm immediately see a new folder and start to download meta data. What I am also seeing is any time a new dvd cover comes out / even the slightest change in meta data occurs it goes and updates mine as well. I will constantly see old movies that it has already scanned show up in my new movies section only because something in the meta data has changed. What ever they are using as their meta data source gets updated and thus Yamm is updating mine as well. The beauty of software like My Movies is I can set it to only update meta data when I want to. So I can choose to scan all of my library for changes and do it in one swoop. With Yamm I constantly see my old movies reappearing as "New" with changes being made. I can also see this as I sort my folders by date and sure enough they have been modified. I am sorry, but you are wrong about Yamm. Maybe there is a setting some where or a config file I can change but this goes wayyyy back to my point before why I just dont like Yamm because I want meta data software that works and is easy. This is not easy. Also going back to my point that even if I change my meta data manually Yamm will still go back to the old data because all it will take is a small change in the meta data source and it will revert back. Unless I want to go and rename all of my folders to the IMDB codes like someone suggested..... YEA THAT IS WHAT I WANT TO WASTE MY TIME DOING. Yamm is great because it is basic very simple runs in the background. Its not for someone that wants full control and full customization through a easy to use GUI.

[volfan6415]

Yamm is great because it is basic very simple runs in the background. Its not for someone that wants full control and full customization through a easy to use GUI.

You are correct as this is exactly why Mikinho designed YAMMM .... (which by the way means Yet Another Media Meta Manager). He didn't want YAMMM to have a GUI or to be customizable the point was for it to run in the background and be headless. If you don't like YAMMM then don't use it. But don't complain that it doesn't do things it wasn't designed or intended to do.

[foxwood]

But don't complain that it doesn't do things it wasn't designed or intended to do.

He's not - he's complaining that it's doing things that it was designed to do, which is even more pointless than complaining that it doesn't do things it wasn't designed to do!

Though the fact that YAMM is bundled with the My Media Center server does change matters somewhat - that means that some people may get bitten by YAMM messing with their existing collections without quite realizing what they have let themselves in for.

[epayson85]

No my complaint if you go all the way back to the echo discussion is that I HAVE TO USE YAMM for "My Media Center"! When I already have perfectly good meta data with easily readable NFO files that have been customized just the way I like them. So then started the discussion of how awesome yamm is and isn't so I had to tell everyone why I HATE IT. Even if you do like the features of YAMM, I have still shown all of you why you shouldn't like it because if it is just continually updating your meta data even meta data it already downloaded for you and it will take life off of your hard drives. Unless of course someone can tell me a setting some where to turn that feature off. Regardless I dont have Yamm, but I also don't have my movie library in "My Media Center" which is no big deal because I only wanted it for the Tv Guide and setting recordings when I am not home. What is going to suck is when they change the UI for the Echo to a My Media Center look a like running on Android. If I can't access "My Movies" like I can now then my entire library is not accessible on my extender. Which was the entire reason I started posting.

[richard1980]

Except that Yamm isn't only monitoring changes on the drive. I certainly do see Yamm immediately see a new folder and start to download meta data. What I am also seeing is any time a new dvd cover comes out / even the slightest change in meta data occurs it goes and updates mine as well. I will constantly see old movies that it has already scanned show up in my new movies section only because something in the meta data has changed. What ever they are using as their meta data source gets updated and thus Yamm is updating mine as well.

So what you are saying is YAMMM updates the local metadata to keep it in sync with the metadata server. I do not find any evidence of this, so I'd be interested to know what evidence you have. Your mention of the folder modification date doesn't really count as evidence because any number of applications could be modifying the files in those folders, thus changing the folder modification date. You'd really need to look at what files are modified, when they were modified, why they were modified, and what program modified them. Keep in mind that YAMMM is triggered by certain changes to the folders/files, so it is very possible that another application is responsible for triggering YAMMM activity. If you are going to blame YAMMM, you need solid evidence to back up your claim.

With Yamm I constantly see my old movies reappearing as "New" with changes being made.

Where is this "new" feature you talk about?

No my complaint if you go all the way back to the echo discussion is that I HAVE TO USE YAMM for "My Media Center"!

I'm not at my HTPC right now, but IIRC you can disable that feature.

Even if you do like the features of YAMM, I have still shown all of you why you shouldn't like it because if it is just continually updating your meta data even meta data it already downloaded for you and it will take life off of your hard drives.

I already debunked your original theory about YAMMM killing the HDD, so what's your new theory? And I hope you have evidence this time.