Can you help me set up Mediaportal perfectly? (1 Viewer)

[Kung Fu Hung]

A lot of you have surely spent a lot of time customising Mediaportal to suit your own needs. Plugins, skins, messing with codecs and so on. So surely before I waste time getting started on trying to tweak Mediaportal, I'd like to get some help =) If I don't get any help that's fine, I'll just go digging on my own.

I'm using the Monochrome skin at present. By default there are lots of unused icons like My TV and My Radio throughout MP that don't get used, and also no easy way to watch DVDs. I've started using My TV Series, which does pretty well except when dealing with multiple episodes in a single file, or specials like Making Ofs. Is there any way to deal with those kinds of files?

I have a lot of audio books and such like. Is there any way to say, add a button in addition to My Music, that does the same thing as My Music but goes to my audio book folder?

I have a lot of movies, and have spent a long time acquiring my own very large movie covers for each movie, since I noticed that Mediaportal uses picture files as the movie's thumbnail if they have the same filename. Are there any movie plugins that take advantage of this? They all seem to use pictures downloaded from the web.

Also, I have a couple of gamepads hooked up to my computer. Is there a way to navigate menus without using something like Joy2Key? And is there any way for Mediaportal to easily launch external programs, returning to MP when they finish, or play video game ROMs?

Summary!

• Is there a way for My TV series to handle videos that are not actual TV episodes?
• How can I add and remove buttons to Mediaportal?
• Is there a movie plugin that uses existing picture files for movie thumbs instead of downloading them?
• Can game controllers be used in any way in Mediaportal?
• Can mediaportal launch applications or play ROMs?

Thanks a heap guys. Also, I'm a 3rd year software engineer, but I specialise in writing software documentation. If it would be of help (which I think it would =] ) I'm happy to write some very nice looking, concise and easily understood doco for some of the plugins here =)

 

[hoborg]

Is there a movie plugin that uses existing picture files for movie thumbs instead of downloading them?

Rename your jpg same as video file - video123.avi + video123.jpg (and place them in same directory) - thats do the trick.

 

[SpudR]

PLEASE USE THE SEARCH FACILITY!
ALL the info you need is available if you'd taken the time...

TV Series specials are added as - series 0 episode xx name
I.e. Stargate SG-1 0x8 Continuum

I believe monochrome (and Indigo) have a tutorial file in the .zip file - it's an image detailing the editing of the XMLs

MyVideos and moving pictures can use local images for the posters

[HowTo] Use Gamepads to control MediaPortal

MyPrograms - The Original
MyProgramsAlt - A replacement for the old (official) one - not finished

 

[Kung Fu Hung]

I already know that TV episodes are added fine in that way. I wanted to know if TV Series could handle "specials", that is, videos related to a TV series but are NOT an actual episode in the series, like a "Making Of" or "Featurette".

I'm having a wrestle with the gamepad, I didn't see it at first because it's only visible in Expert mode.

I already knew that My Videos uses pictures of the same name, as I said. I'll have a look at Moving Pictures.

My Programs looks potentially useful, but will it allow me to play a game ROM directly?



Irritating, Mediaportal Config stops working after I enable gamepad input. I'll fix that later.

Ah, I've just read that My Programs is the same as the old one I used to use in 2.3.0, which is all I need. Excellent.

 

[revs]

I already know that TV episodes are added fine in that way. I wanted to know if TV Series could handle "specials", that is, videos related to a TV series but are NOT an actual episode in the series, like a "Making Of" or "Featurette".

TV Series only works if the tv item is in the TVDB (Online TV Database - An open directory of television shows for HTPC software). If its not on there, then it wont work. If its a valid show, then feel free to create an account and add the episode yourself! Then it will work

 

[Kung Fu Hung]

Little Britain: Season 0 Episode List

Here's what I mean. The series has "special" episodes. How can I indicate this to My TV Serie? Just series 0?

 

[SpudR]

Name the file:
Little Britain s0exx episode name.ext
i.e.
Little Britain s0e02 Making Little Britain Too.avi

 

[Maedhros]

Little Britain: Season 0 Episode List

Here's what I mean. The series has "special" episodes. How can I indicate this to My TV Serie? Just series 0?

I believe that SpudR already answered that question for you earlier.

By the way..... Let me give you a piece of advice:
If you want people in a forum to help you then you HAVE to do a bit of research yourself. Like it has already been said, take a bit of time to search on the main website, the wiki, the forum.... not just 1 search term, but several synonyms and try to think about what people would call it. Not everyone writes TVSeries. Some write: TV-Series, TV Series, TV Shows, Series, and so on..... Search each term in turn and don't only look at the first post in the results. Take a bit of time, so that you don't ask others to take that time for you. If you stick to those rules you will find yourself having a lot more replies.... and more so-called "Street respect" with time.

Don't take me wrong, I love to help people.... But it also struck me at first that you didn't do any work yourself but expect the answers on a silver plate. Please don't ;-)
An Open-Source community is kind of a "Communist" community. Everyone do what they can with the time they have to help other and to improve the product. This way when you yourself have a problem you are likely to be treated exactly the same way. This also means that if you find that the info on a subject is spread in pieces around different posts in the forum, then try to take the time to test that the combined information works and collect that info into ONE post naming it "How-To: Do this and that" and thereby helping others and gaining their respect with time.

I for example have recently tried to set up MediaPortal on Windows Server 2008 (x64) and have trouble with it. What little information there is on the subject in the forum is spread in small small pieces. I am collecting the information on problems and solutions that I encounter during the setup in Windows Server 2008 in ONE place, so it might help others setting up a centralized media server. Try to do a search on the subject and see if you can find it ;-)

 

[Kung Fu Hung]

I apologise, I didn't read his post properly.

That said though, I HAVE been searching for information on mediaportal. Having done so since 2.3.0, it's tiresome. Very tiresome. I was sick of it, and made this post asking questions instead, because it was easier. If you feel that I would be better off digging then being given a reply, then just tell me to dig. I ask questions because they tend to receive answers in almost any context. I did say as well that if I get no answers, then I'll just dig on my own. Don't waste your breath if you don't want to help. Not only that, but I'm personally finding that asking questions gives me an opportunity to meet people. Now I know of a handful of people on the MP forums.

I fully intended to help with creating documentation as I stated in my first post. I used to do this with the PC game Oblivion - that work has been viewed almost 37000 times, and I worked on this night and day for 9 months, so I most definitely do know how to help people when I want to.

That all said, thanks for the help. I'll RTFM in future <.< Speaking of which, I can see that plenty of work can be done improving it. I'll work on that when I can.

 

[Maedhros]

I know that doing that research can be tiresome. I have been sitting even before 0.2.3.0 to find info on how to set up this and setup that. That's just the reality as it is today. I haven't found a proper mediacenter out there that was just working with all the bell and whistles after ½ hour of setting it up. I have spent many many hours, days, weeks becoming wiser on MP and codecs and stuff over the past 2 years or so. So yes, I agree with you, it can become tiresome. My problem was just that you missed the reply earlier (okay, shit happens), but also much of the information could be found using 2 minutes of searching the forum ;-)

I remember doing the same thing as you just did in this post a long time back, and I also got the rough side if you know what I mean. I just gave you an advice for the future, as I know how people in open-source forums respond to these kinds of posts. I could have remained silent and ignored your post as probably many others did, but just thought I would give you an advice before I closed my browser..... wasn't meant to give you a lashing ;-)