Thanks for the feedback.
JackLuminous:Thanks for the feedback. The xml is always 'in there'. I download those first then store the data in the db. The plugin then queries the db only and doesn't care about the xml. However, if I blow away the db, I don't have to re-download the data since I can just pull from the xml. Genre was always intended to be added but I haven't sorted out the gallery markup or the actual code to make it work. I put favourites closer to the front (or at the front) because, using my wife and I as an example, we tend to watch the same things more often than not --especially for tv series. Overtime, the list of items in the favourites should be much smaller than the total list of titles. It's cheap slight-of-hand to not have to worry about gallery slowness for now :-) You'd prefer the label of "year" over the current label of "release date"? Ditto for "parental rating" ? Wait, for 'rating' are you referring to 'scale of 1 - 10' and not 'parental rating'? The 'Other' top-level pivot was intended as a catch-all for un-identified stuff. I don't have a problem with breaking this out as separate sub pivots under movies and tv series. Music videos was intended to be a simple view to organize the concert dvds (less < 20) and a few music videos I had. I did not intend to make music videos as comprehensive as Internet TV or as how you described. The primary reason for this involves identification and metadata: how would I know who the artist is or what the album is? I haven't popped in a dvd and checked the dvdid xml but I doubt dvdxml.com has this info. With the concert vs. music video thing I was going to provide a simple UIwhere the user could check off from a predetermined list of tags. Those pivots are just doing queries for tags of 'concert' or 'music'. I can revisit this at some point but I just wanted to show my reasonings. If there is no clear way to get this info automatically, I would have to provide some kind of 'tag' or property/field editor --and that's not near the middle of the priority list right now, unfortunately. Unfortunately, I don't see adding 3 or 4 row galleries yet. I were to shrink the pivot font size ( not happening yet. I still dig 'em ) then I'd reclaim the extra space by providing more metadata in the detail section. I don't think I'll go back to downloading more than 1 each of poster, backdrop, and banner (taken out of plugin for now). It's unnessary pillage of bandwith, methinks. If the user wants more then I feel they can get them outside of the app.
XML-> DB - now I understand how it works :) Do you query the xml if it ever changes?
As for year vs. release date - both do kinda make sense; if I want to see everything released in 2008, I can scroll there, but seeing movies in order of release (Jan, Feb, Mar, etc.) makes sense also. Whichever label you decide, I would guess at putting them in release date order, but grouped by year makes sense. Release Date for movies and Air Date for TV Shows makes sense to me.
For rating, I was thinking the MPAA ratings and the TV show ratings that they get nowadays (TV-14, PG, PG-13, etc.). For 'rating' the 1-10, I would kind of think that's the same thing as favorites, myself.
That's the rub on music videos, certainly - no metadata. I don't know about others who use the plugin, but I've got a number of music videos from artists like Carbon Leaf, REM, and others, so I was hoping to use this plugin to sort them. I'd be completely willing to enter the metadata myself manually if that would mean the plugin enables me to sort through them in some semblance of order, but like you said, a metadata editor isn't high up on your list. If you have an xml spec, I'll write up the tags myself.
As for posters and graphics, if the user manually downloads a new DVD cover, and switched between one or the other using the plugin - the plugin wouldn't be doing the grabbing, but say I have 300.video.cover.01.jpg and 300.video.cover.02.jpg, enabling me to choose two different covers would be nice.
Genre's a good way for me to pick through my horror movies on halloween or through a good comedy with the girlfriend on the weekend...maybe pulling IMDB's information might help? I'm not totally sure where you pull movie info, so I can't say 100% on that.
On pivot size - perhaps making a small/large option for space? I'm looking to put my media center onto a 65" screen, so it's still pretty big :) And if you ever put in a 3/4 option, that'd be awesome...long-term, I'm going to be building a 16' screen as part of a movie theater room, using a media center pc as the heart of it. Your plug-in is the best MC plug-in I've seen, so it'll be one of the most used parts of that. (as a side, I read someone as to whether you'd add your plugin as a custom strip to get straight to movies, tv, etc.)
Best of luck in your programming, and thanks for the plugin!
James
The VideoLibraryService.exe (not a full windows service but it will be at some point) includes file-monitoring but it's not 100% reliable. The idea was that you could add the concert / or music video tags manually, and the exe would detect the change and update the db.
Genres are still on the to-do list. The implementation will be like Internet TV
I pull movie info from MS's dvd service (if dvdid exists in .video.xml or dvdid.xml) then themoviedb.org. On a related note, I updated the code to use their latest 2.1 api. The new api provides more standard genres (instead of the categories/moods they were using before) as well as studio information. They're doing some good stuff over there.
I must apologize to you and the few users out there. There's alot I want to get done to make this as useful as possible; it's just that I don't have enough time to get everything done. As such, I have to prioritize the things I can get done quicker. Towards that end, I tend to focus more on engine-level changes or quick UI adjustments. Sad to say but it's a pain using MCML at times.
Hey,
Just wondering if you can give us junkies a quick-fix update? I know it will be done 'when its done', but any further info?
Sorry folks, I haven't done much coding in 2 weeks or so. I've got a new cablecard PC that I wished I had upgraded the case on (Ps. need advice on Silverstone LC20-BM and a power supply for it...must hold 2 internal ATI DCTs, 1 HVR-2250 and 4670 vid card).
I've been doing some work on the playback side of things and gettting the more info slide working. I need this capability inorder to change chapters, audio, subs, when watching dvd on extender. I want to also have a 'view playlist' button from the overlay so you can quickly jump around instead of only using ch +/-.
I've also hit a wall w/ regards to SQL Server compact edition. Basically, I am running into issues when the extender tries to open the db while the service app has it open. Crap like that.
PS. Anyone tried using vlc ?
Any chance you might be able to add back in custom naming styles to please? or just add in the style of "episode no. - season name - season no. - episode title.avi" i.e. "04 - Entourage - 6 - Running on E.avi"? Ppppplllllllllleeeeeaaaaasssseeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?????????? ;-)
I will look into adding it back into the .config. However, I won't answer questions about how to write the regex. I took it because that's one less headache to deal with, support-wise (i.e. "my app keeps crashing", "why do I have to change the < and > tags")
Or, if not the custom naming styles, perhaps just a 'which episode is this?' matching within the interface, which attempts to match only the season and episode number, assuming that the root folder is the series name, and the subfolder is the season (Andromeda\Season 1\xxxx.avi would assume the series Andromeda, and season 1 episodes).