Play MP4 videos from the Movies library?

[LuckyDay]

If something goes titz-up on the media center PC, and i'm out of town, it needs to be something I can walk the wife through over the phone or easily get to using vnc.

Simple is a must.
Oh, and we only have Xbox360 as extenders, so other functionality is not required.
I have remote-potato server installed to watch recordings or live TV from my android phone/tablet.

I hear you on that, I have to deal with the same thing.

[bigjohn]

OK!
So, yes. I guess that MyMovies makes a config change that populates all the client/extender library options automatically.

without it, manually configuring the movie library works damned fine!

So - i'm now not even sure i needed the Haail splitter or not but, what's not broke I'm not fixing.

- File2Folder installed and running.
- Movies playing on Xbox!
- Installing YAMM again for meta-data.

simple, clean, no SQL database eating up CPU and resources.

I'll update later when I can confirm everything is the way I want it.

[LuckyDay]

Cool, so once you uninstalled MyMovies it's still showing everything like it should?

There must have been a media library that was disabled at one point on the extenders, maybe that fixed it.

[bigjohn]

Cool, so once you uninstalled MyMovies it's still showing everything like it should?

There must have been a media library that was disabled at one point on the extenders, maybe that fixed it.

Yes, this seems to be working. now to tweak my movie encoding settings a bit... need to go to 2 pass encoding I think to get the quality my 70" LCD tv needs...

I have to put folder2file in the startup group to make sure it runs all the time even after sunday morning's scheduled reboot.

I Yammm is renaming the folders properly and putting the meta data including the synopsis, similar movies, and review.

SO, THANKS GUYS!!
Now it's time to write my personal documentation so if I have another critical failure I can get back to jump quicker.

Any tips on encoding parameters you guys want to share?

[LuckyDay]

I honestly just use the default "high" profile setting on handbrake. I only have a 42" 720P tv plus some smaller ones in other bedrooms so I don't have much need for high quality.

[mcewinter]

I would build your libraries before moving on to metadata software.

Transcoding isn't ideal, I just thought I'd point that out as it does the trick and you're set on watching movies on extenders. You're trying too much at once to get this working while it should be quite simple.

Well, heres the good news:
Went to the xbox, and the MyMovies movie strip was there. it included the sample Mp4's. and they played back.

The bad news:
I have the mymovies interface. overly complicated.

I'm going to try to uninstall it, and see if the movies will now show in the default library. then I may try YAMM again...

You may learn to appreciate the interface over time. I was all for using the native movies library until it took forever to open after my collection grew. I never liked that YAMM manipulated the folders and names but to each their own. MyMovies has some great features, like copying a disc to MP4 format automatically, but I can appreciate your simple approach. At least you know you can add some features with the things you toyed around with over the last couple of days.

At what point did your movies populate on your extenders?

[bigjohn]

I would build your libraries before moving on to metadata software.

Transcoding isn't ideal, I just thought I'd point that out as it does the trick and you're set on watching movies on extenders. You're trying too much at once to get this working while it should be quite simple.

Well, heres the good news:
Went to the xbox, and the MyMovies movie strip was there. it included the sample Mp4's. and they played back.

The bad news:
I have the mymovies interface. overly complicated.

I'm going to try to uninstall it, and see if the movies will now show in the default library. then I may try YAMM again...

You may learn to appreciate the interface over time. I was all for using the native movies library until it took forever to open after my collection grew. I never liked that YAMM manipulated the folders and names but to each their own. MyMovies has some great features, like copying a disc to MP4 format automatically, but I can appreciate your simple approach. At least you know you can add some features with the things you toyed around with over the last couple of days.

At what point did your movies populate on your extenders?

If I get to 2000 movies, maybe.
But not being able to sort on genre quickly (remember, I am using a remote and arrow keys on the xbox360's) make MyMovies nuts. Nuts to use and expensive to buy the features...
But enough on that.

Adding the directory on the Xbox did it.
- libraries
- movies
- local on this PC
- browse to D:\movies
- select - all including subfolders shows up

next/yes use these directories.
Done.
and the movies show up, with their cover art.

[mcewinter]

I'm going to have to look when I get home but I thought you could sort by genre by arrowing up to the top of the screen. I use my phone or tablet to launch movies and those apps sort as described, I thought the MC interface has the same ability.

It is expensive but the features are great. You can have the ability to toss a disc into your media center (and/or server) and it will copy it to one of several file types (including MP4) without pressing a button, wether its music, dvd, or blu-ray. You would also need AnyDVD to accomplish that, but once you have invested in the software the experience is awesome and offers simplicity like no other. For example, I come home with a DVD, Bluray disc and a music CD. I simply open the ROM drives on my server and insert the discs. The discs will automatically eject after they're ripped to a predetermined format to a predetermined folder. ...all by simply inserting discs.

I'm not trying to sell you on MyMovies, but don't be so quick to disregard it.

[bigjohn]

I'm going to have to look when I get home but I thought you could sort by genre by arrowing up to the top of the screen. I use my phone or tablet to launch movies and those apps sort as described, I thought the MC interface has the same ability.

It is expensive but the features are great. You can have the ability to toss a disc into your media center (and/or server) and it will copy it to one of several file types (including MP4) without pressing a button, wether its music, dvd, or blu-ray. You would also need AnyDVD to accomplish that, but once you have invested in the software the experience is awesome and offers simplicity like no other. For example, I come home with a DVD, Bluray disc and a music CD. I simply open the ROM drives on my server and insert the discs. The discs will automatically eject after they're ripped to a predetermined format to a predetermined folder. ...all by simply inserting discs.

I'm not trying to sell you on MyMovies, but don't be so quick to disregard it.

I've got anyDVD and vidcoder on my "real" pc. it can transcode 2x faster, or more, than the media center could.

Thanks though!

[LuckyDay]

One of the reasons I like RecordedTV HD is the simple interface, my main problem with it is there are some titles it doesn't find info for, because they're not in themoviedb or thetvdb.

I actually like how the default WMC interface looks and it keeps it pretty close, but it's customizable with the headers at the top for genre, title, and anything else you want (I only use about three headers to sort it).



It adds a row for both TV and for Movies, so if you only wanted to use one or the other you can disable whichever you don't use.

Might be worth giving a try.

[mcewinter]

I'm going to have to look when I get home but I thought you could sort by genre by arrowing up to the top of the screen. I use my phone or tablet to launch movies and those apps sort as described, I thought the MC interface has the same ability.

It is expensive but the features are great. You can have the ability to toss a disc into your media center (and/or server) and it will copy it to one of several file types (including MP4) without pressing a button, wether its music, dvd, or blu-ray. You would also need AnyDVD to accomplish that, but once you have invested in the software the experience is awesome and offers simplicity like no other. For example, I come home with a DVD, Bluray disc and a music CD. I simply open the ROM drives on my server and insert the discs. The discs will automatically eject after they're ripped to a predetermined format to a predetermined folder. ...all by simply inserting discs.

I'm not trying to sell you on MyMovies, but don't be so quick to disregard it.

I've got anyDVD and vidcoder on my "real" PC. it can transcode 2x faster, or more, than the media center could.

Thanks though!

You missed the point but we'll save it for another day.

Well MyMovies does NOT sort by genre.

[bigjohn]

Yeah, probably missed the point entirely, but the adrenal rush of geting this working with your guys help was, well, just overwhelming.
The one thing i miss about this is that my blue-ray player 'upconverts' standard DVD's to the tv. No (or minimal) black bars. guess with the digital format I'm stuck...

[mcewinter]

There's a handful of people here who might recommend a standalone player. I prefer the convenience of storing my movies to hard drive. MC makes for a great movie server, as you are already discovering.

It is very possible to upconvert your DVDs with bluray software but I'm not sure if it would carry the same advantages as your player.

[bigjohn]

There's a handful of people here who might recommend a standalone player. I prefer the convenience of storing my movies to hard drive. MC makes for a great movie server, as you are already discovering.

It is very possible to upconvert your DVDs with bluray software but I'm not sure if it would carry the same advantages as your player.

I made some tweaks to my encoding process. It's going to take 'real time' + to do the encoding/upsample/2pass - so 2.5 hrs for a 2 hr movie... that's 'expensive' as far as time goes, but if the output is what I hope it is, I think the wife will be very happy.

[bigjohn]

Thought I'd follow up and close my question.
DVD's are compressing between 1gb and 1.5gb, quality is great. very satisfied.

Thanks to all for your guidance and suggestions and help.

I've still not decided on a media manger other than YAMMM but the list in 'movies' is getting slow and so I think that time is near...

[DavidinCT]

Thought I'd follow up and close my question.
DVD's are compressing between 1gb and 1.5gb, quality is great. very satisfied.

Thanks to all for your guidance and suggestions and help.

I've still not decided on a media manger other than YAMMM but the list in 'movies' is getting slow and so I think that time is near...

You ripping your movies down to 1-1.5gb, are they carrying the Dolby digital 5.1 sound tracks in your rip ? It happened to me, I ripped about 30 movies (back in XP days), then I wanted the home theater thing (and I love it) so all these movies I ripped I had to RE-RIP to get the audio right. Just a little tip.

Mine was getting slow with about 190 movies in it. I keep my OS on a single drive with no media, so I found a used 90gb SSD for $35. Put it in and WOW it made a huge difference. This is just the OS drive. The OS drive stores all the Image art and DVDID's for all your movies, so on a SSD it might make it faster... In my case it was a OMG difference.

I use YAMM too, works great, if I even get a movie detected wrong, I go to the movieDB and find the movie, and on the top row it will say "movie name (year)" I copy that, rename the folder with that, and Bing it's updated.

YAMM takes the headache out of dealing with Metadata, I tried other packages over the years (been using MCE from XP days) and YAMM was the only one where I didn't have to ANYTHING besides add the movie to the folder and drop in.

Trust me there was some program that took almost 20 min after you added a single movie just to get all the meta data right, and we are not talking about custom image art. Ripping 10 movies in one night could be a whole night affair.

I have no problem with the look and feel of the Movie Library in WMC, it's simple, can find movie based on actor or type, so lots of features based on that. I just want one EXACTLY like the Movie Library but, something that works solid, smoother and faster. No codecs, no remote access, no back end server(do not want to use the overhead for background processes) and works the same on a extender. I have yet to find one that I like.

[T Rush]

....

YAMM takes the headache out of dealing with Metadata, I tried other packages over the years (been using MCE from XP days) and YAMM was the only one where I didn't have to ANYTHING besides add the movie to the folder and drop in.

...

I had a big problem with YAMM, and I'm still in the long process of restoring my dvdid.xml files from all the 'fake' ones YAMM made in the movie folders

So this was awhile ago when I used YAMM, and it did seem to cache the movie's folder images and info, however it was not portable; meaning once I moved my collection to a new computer(or shared the movies to another computer on my network) none of the data worked...now I have a mix of movie files/folders that have true dvdid.xml files(that were copied from the actual DVD disc) stored with them, but other movies I used YAMM on still have the fake ones(made by YAMM) that are dead...and looking in the folders, there is no way to tell them apart...you only see that some movies in WMC have info and others don't(anymore, now that they are on a different computer), and I have close to 1,000 movies!

understand what the dvdid.xml files do:
The real DVDID.XML files(on a disc or saved with your movie backup files) use the internet to go online to a database and they fetch the cover art and info downloading it to -
Local Disk (C:) > Users > [name] > AppData > Roaming > Microsoft > eHome
- into folders called: DvdCoverCache and DvdInfoCache so WMC can display it
...any time a DVD disc or Movie file is used on a different computer the dvdid.xml file will go online and retrieve freash cover and info from the database for WMC

However what YAMM(and I'm pretty sure MyMovies and any programs that allow you to edit the cover or info) does is use their program to go online to fetch the cover and info then save that directly to the DvdCoverCache and DvdInfoCache, and/or just put a folder.jpg and info file directly in the folder where the movie file is kept(if you look in your movie file folders and have "show hidden files" you might find a bunch of extra crap these programs have stuck in there!..I think MyMovies makes a secret hidden share on your network)...then they make a fake dvdid.xml file that doesn't go online to refresh the cover art and info, but instead points WMC to use the files stored locally on your computer(wherever that is!?!)....so now if you backup your entire movie collection to a removable hard drive or move/share your collection to another computer without the DvdCoverCache and DvdInfoCache or those modified cover and info files that these programs make, all of your data about your movies will be missing and you will have to go thru the painstaking task manually weeding out any old unusable hidden cover folder.jpg, manufactured info files, and fake dvdid.XML

I've found it so much easier and better just to backup/copy DVDs in their native VIDEO_TS folders(containing .VOB etc files) along with the real dvdid.xml file(I still add a folder.jpg just in case, but the dvdid.xml won't use it) to keep my movie file storage as simple and clean as possible

If you must convert your movie files to mp4 m4v mkv avi formats to save space, at least copy over the original real dvdid.xml file into the folder where you save your movie
...if you lost your dvdid.xml files, a site like http://www.dvdxml.com will let you search movie titles to download them