Well, I said I am going to do it ... so here you go, all of the code for video browser is now open source under GPL at:

http://code.google.com/p/videobrowser

(I'm considering a BSD style license but I'm not really sure, if anyone wants to contribute and will only contribute to a BSD project let me know)

The download location is the google project link.

There is now a new discussion board at: http://bbs.wasnotwas.com/


I have been discussing with the OML guys how this project can help the OML team. But .... I just want to clarify something here. Video Browser is my baby and while I use Vista MCE I will use it to browse through my media. I am the decider when it comes to what features go in and what features are left out. I have a vision of where I want this to go and will lay it out as soon as I can get it in writing.

If you use my video browser, it will not go away, it will not get slower, it will not get bloated. The current SVN trunk already has some awsome metadata caching algorithms that makes browsing network shares really fast.

If you feel like helping, here are some things that will help:

1. Submit all known bugs to the google code page.
2. If you are good with graphics, I would like to ship with stock images for TV, Movies and each Genre.
3. If you are good with websites and would like to mock one up please shoot an email to me, I intent to have the website under source control with the video browser, I am fine hosting it
4. If you want to buy a domain and donate it to the project shoot me an email. I would be happy to rebrand.
5. Make the wiki on google code useful ... it should explain what it is and how to use it.

If you are a developer, let me know what it is you want to write, off the top of my head here are some things I would be keen on

1. Media center native look and feel, powered by olcay and soultakers open source controls.
2. Auto update feature: It should check daily if a new version is out there and offer an upgrade, all the windows for doing the upgrade should be in mcml and it should describe whats in it for me when upgrading.
3. Localization: some people want it. I want an option to localize but do not want any complex configuration menus (like xbmc). A registry setting should do since the vast majority are using this in english.
4. Online content. I really want online content like trailers and video podcasts.
5. Richer movie browsing without making the interface too complex. click on actor to see his/her movies.
6. An option for watched unwatched tracking.
7. Show me which movies / shows are new in my library this week.
8. Fix bugs, I want Video Browser to have 0 bugs, no crashes and always be ultra fast.
9. Transcode 360 and extender support

Feel free to PM me with any ideas (or just edit the wiki and add them)

Peace
Sam

With online content, add support for flash based media.

I did a rough first stab at reorganizing the behind-the-scenes UI code. Unfortunately a lot of this was to help create/enhance things going forward.

One thing I did do was remove the black background which doesn't shock the family as much when they launch V.B.

Anyways I better get back to work, I still have a lot of things to do.

 

Holy moly that looks awesome.

I love this so hard.  This has replaced MyMovies as my frontend.  I need to spend some time with the TV scraper before I am comfortable with that aspect, but this is 5 stars.

*double post*

Hi All,

I updated my blog with the latest screens for Video Browser, check it out here: http://blog.manghera.com

*EDIT *

I really hate the image tags in this forum!

 

looking VERY nice...

Any chance you cqn get rid of the pink and black border around the folder.jpg files?

Does it do per dvd bookmarking?

MC stores the last bookmark location at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Multimedia\DVD, DVD.bookmark

I've done some testing and saving the reg value after the dvd stops, playing another disc, then putting it back before playing the original disc makes it resume playback perfectly.

use a reg key listener to detect when the key/value is written to trigger saving
before calling PlayMedia test to see if a bookmark exists, and update the registry with the value if it does

I was going to update the bookmarking feature in DTB to work like this, but it won't be as clean because I don't know a disc is going to be played until it does (it would have to stop playback, update the reg, then restart).

I'm happy to write code that does this btw, I don't have the SVN client installed on my box to do it directly though.

babgVant:

Does it do per dvd bookmarking?

MC stores the last bookmark location at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Multimedia\DVD, DVD.bookmark

I've done some testing and saving the reg value after the dvd stops, playing another disc, then putting it back before playing the original disc makes it resume playback perfectly.

use a reg key listener to detect when the key/value is written to trigger saving
before calling PlayMedia test to see if a bookmark exists, and update the registry with the value if it does

I was going to update the bookmarking feature in DTB to work like this, but it won't be as clean because I don't know a disc is going to be played until it does (it would have to stop playback, update the reg, then restart).

As of right now, no it doesn't have any extended DVD Bookmarks, however, if you want to work on this feature just get in contact with Sam and he can give you read/write access to the project. As for SVN, all you really need is tortoise which is ~5MB? I think.

Soultaker, so when are you going to be sharing this new verion of the Video Browser with everyone.

It looks great!!

One thing that needs to happen is the scaling of the cover image to fit the selection box..... it should be relatively easy to do with the image function in MCML (it has a fairly reasonable image scaling algorithm.

I just uploaded an alpha version of Video Browser, its unfinished we still have quite a few fixes we need to implement, but it should give you a feel of the new direction.


** Thanks soultaker, for all your hard work !  

Any feedback is more than welcome.

Re: scaling

I want to keep the original aspect ratio of the images ... also tv shows have wide images and movies have long images and I want it to look good with both. so Im thinking we will make the box have the same aspect ratio as the first image in the folder.