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[Nemulate]

If I 'acquire' a tv program that I didn't record or maybe some other 'none' movie file then it's a video! See it's easy

 

[chenks]

ahhh.. well i have 3 "video" sub-folders

"Movies" - dvdrips of actual movies/films/talkies whatever you want to call them
"TV Shows" - tv program seasons etc
"Other" - dvdrips of non-movies (ie comedy gigs, music dvds etc)

 

[VdR]

Much like Nemulate, I have a HD shared on the home network called 'shared media', it has the folders: movies, video, music and pictures.

This allows me to access these shared media from two machines with MP on the network. Unfortunately the MP cannot share the movie and music database, so it is a little tricky to keep the two local database up to date.

Movies are copied DVD's and sometimes recorded television (for the kids, they like to watch stuff 100 times in three weeks ...). Video's for me are home made videos.

Where I'm struggling is with slide shows (you know, a collection of pictures and some short videos all combined into a show and rendered in MPEG) should I keep these in the pictures folder or should these be promoted to video? Well, life is hard and full of difficult decisions ...

VdR

 

[mzemina]

...Where I'm struggling is with slide shows (you know, a collection of pictures and some short videos all combined into a show and rendered in MPEG) should I keep these in the pictures folder or should these be promoted to video? Well, life is hard and full of difficult decisions ...

I would answer your question "...should I keep these in the pictures folder or should these be promoted to video?" with a question: Is this question to help you or your family to find content? I would question your family to understand where they might believe these slideshows would be expected when they would go to look for them. I am guessing they would say under pictures, because they may think the "slides" as being pictures. Or so that is what I have found in hte past. Usually less technical (people who are not exposed to technology day in and day out) people would simplify it along those lines.

Mike

 

[VdR]

I like your approach; ask the customer!

Looking at it from that angle, I guess the family pictures and family videos and family slide shows should ALL be in the same folder (family images?) since they are all images, be it still (pictures), moving (video) or a combination (slide show). What they have in common is the family.

Unfortunately this goes wrong with the MP interface, it dictates still images to be accessed through 'my pictures' and moving images to be accessed through 'my videos'. The interface is format (jpeg vs. mpeg) driven not content (personal vs. public) driven.

VdR

 

[magnuje2]

Would also be cool to have the possibility of touch screen buttons instead of the traditional scrolling menu items. So the user can go right, left, up and down, instead of just vertical scrolling. Makes an HTPC much nicer to use imo.

Im currently working on a plugin that will work as a frontend for a trouch screen in my kitchen. This will have touch screen friendly buttuns to all "kitchen important" aspects of the MP system. Like an extensive basic home with additional information like news, weather etc. This could solve your problem since im planning on making it configurable

 

[mzemina]

I like your approach; ask the customer!

Looking at it from that angle, I guess the family pictures and family videos and family slide shows should ALL be in the same folder (family images?) since they are all images, be it still (pictures), moving (video) or a combination (slide show). What they have in common is the family.

Unfortunately this goes wrong with the MP interface, it dictates still images to be accessed through 'my pictures' and moving images to be accessed through 'my videos'. The interface is format (jpeg vs. mpeg) driven not content (personal vs. public) driven.

VdR

I agree with what you say! I am hoping that at some point a developer will attack this. There are only a few areas where MP needs some improvement (overal lthis is a great project and the developers and skin authors have done a fantastic job) and I believe that this is one of them. This is an area of improvement that will really help out the non-technical people (this is related to the WAF). I thought at one time that is what MP was after, keeping the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) high, but then many new functional areas have been added and with that changes also.

Please note that I didn't bring this up to fustrate you, I didn't even think of that when I posted the message. I tend to believe that the interface will change over time to make it easier for all people. Until then you will have to instruct family member what butons to push to see your slide shows.

 

[VdR]

I'm in the middle of re-installing my MP machine, so I don't have much time now, but;

Talking about the purpose of MP, the interface, WAF etc. I do beleive this needs some discussion.

I changed from MCE (that's why I'm re-installing, I'm moving from Windows MCE2005 (french) to Windows XP prof (English)) to MP because MCE had too many issues that totally diminished WAF and the whole thing would have flown out the window if is had been up to my wife.

MP is much better in that way. Indeed a big load of appreciation for the developers. However I have the impression that I see more and more attention to features and nice to have's and less to basic stability. Maybe worth a seperate thread for a wider discussion?

VdR

 

[mPod]

However I have the impression that I see more and more attention to features and nice to have's and less to basic stability.

Oh please, not again such a stupid discussion. We hear this since MP started and that's simply NOT true. If you wanna know why, search the forums, there are old posts where this topic has been discussed endlessly. What do you think did we found our quality assurance test team for? If you say that the team doesn't care about stability, this implies that the test team is not doing their work properly. I doubt this, they're working their ass off just for you, exactly like the development team does. Maybe you just don't realize how hard it can be to run such a project. It's not a fingersnap and voila - there's your perfect MediaCenter. FOR FREE!

Long story short: We're doing both, some are working on features, others on stability, others again on both.

But: If you don't like how things go in the project, grab yourself a visual studio copy and get coding to make MP as stable as you want.

Off topic again, get back to the original questions, pls.

 

[skillmaster]

Mabeeee

what's the difference between a "movie" and a "video" ?

--------Movie : like the good old ones with sylvester stallone that lasts for one hour and a half ------- videos: the 5mins clips with funny potatoe heads running naked through granmas 80 party