Moving Pictures Public Beta 0.5.5c (2 Viewers)

[Raytestrak]

Where does the plugin get the movie length from? A lot of my movies are found and the movie information is correct, but the duration is 0:00 quite often.

 

[eXDee]

Not sure if this bug has been reported, but i can confirm and reproduce it on my setup. Pretty sure its to do with having the configuration open, then making a file within the database or a new detected file which it's monitoring being locked and unaccessible due to being in use, but heres what i did.
I have the HTPC running RC3 networked to the main PC which has an external hard drive containing movies. So i've added this external hard drive which is shared as a folder in Moving Pictures.
Due to it detecting movies which are in two files (eg MovieTitle a.avi MovieTitle b.avi), and not being able to join them, i began to use virtualdub to merge them into one file. When i do this on the main pc, the mediaportal configuration crashes on the HTPC. I opened it up again, looked for the next movie double up with two parts and the same thing happened when virtualdub started creating a new file.

Speaking of two files/discs, when will two files be supported to play seamlessly one after the other split into parts as above, and for direct disc copies with menus (eg music DVD's), when will you be able to put them under one title and be able to select which disc to play back when you hit play?
It would also be nice to have the 'each movie has its own folder' option which could solve the first issue or provide an automatic detection for both parts.

Cheers, sweet plugin.

 

[SwissBuster]

I began to use virtualdub to merge them into one file. When i do this on the main pc, the mediaportal configuration crashes on the HTPC.

As a workaround, why don't you save the new file to a different folder, and once it's finished, copy it to your movie folder? After all, you're only going to do this virtualdub stitching exercise once.

 

[armandp]

Speaking of two files/discs, when will two files be supported to play seamlessly one after the other split into parts as above, and for direct disc copies with menus (eg music DVD's), when will you be able to put them under one title and be able to select which disc to play back when you hit play?
It would also be nice to have the 'each movie has its own folder' option which could solve the first issue or provide an automatic detection for both parts.

The features you mention are in the upcoming version. You should already be able to join two files as one in the importer. Also the most common multi-part patterns should already be detected and files joined automatically.

 

[marvenius]

2 things:
1. I've discovered a "bug" when using my 4x3 movingpictures skinfiles in combination with Blue3. I've enabled a while back a sort of hack to have some sort of default (animated) moviebackdrop when none was available. For this I copied a set of favorite backdrops in the following location:
<skin>\Media\animations\MovinPictures\
When you copy over the skinfiles to the new Blue3 skin and DO NOT have that animations folder you get a missing files message and MovingPictures will not be visible.

2. I'm currently working on a B3 variant of the 4x3 files, including some animated effects. I will very soon (prob, begin next week) distribute these files as a WIP, but would like to know if these new options are also going to be included in the default 16x9 files?

 

[fforde]

Hi all, Awesome plugin. Something like this has been needed for a long time. The standard My Movies configuration was not up to scratch.

For me the best part of the plugin is the scanning and matching. Not only does it find more films than My Movies but the admin GUI to quickly scan, match and fix via drop downs made my 600+ movie import complete in under half an hour (about 15% manual fixing - I have lots of foreign films).

I have added onto the Google bugs list but thought I would consolidate my issues/requests in one post:

1. Import from My Movies. While I said above that the scan found my movies quickly, unfortunately due to my tastes in film this is not enough for the initial scan. I spent about a week in My Movies finding art and renaming movies and reallocating genres and couldn't fathom doing that again. I know a better cover art scraper is coming but I practically guarantee it will not find the 25% crazy Korean horror movies and Italian Giallo/Crime movies I have! Most of those took careful Googling to find.

I read that an import on the images from My Movies is coming which is awesome, but I really need to get the whole DB as it stands into the new plugin. While I enjoy foreign movies I prefer their display names to be the English AKA from IMDB, or failing that, just the filename (which I have correctly formatted to "Movie Name (Year).avi". Also I find the genre choices from IMDB lacking, and prefer to keep my Horror movies seperate from my J-Horror and K-Horror, and my Giallo away from the generic Crime/Thriller.

Yes we are working on an importer to pull artwork from MyVideos. I think actual movie data is a little further off though, sorry. It's something we definately want to do to help with the transition, but it all takes time...

2. Already mentioned but just re-iterating: After the initial scan and my library went from 0 to 600+, if I close the plugin admin GUI and then the MP admin GUI, I have to wait for the process "configuration.exe" to die off before re-entering the admin. This takes about 5-7 minutes with my 600 movies in the library. Not waiting and re-entering MP Configuration completely corrupts the DB and it needs to be deleted. MP informs you that the plugin is not compatible and will be excluded.

This is a known issue that has already been corrected for the next release.

3. Very minor but may help you in improving matching. Any movies that on IMDB have parenthesis in the name will not be found, for example: "Black Cat (Gatto nero) (1981)" would not match. I had to use the manual override to scan for just "Gatto nero".

What is your filename? I assume something like "black cat.avi"? If so that is the problem, that is just not a descriptive enough name for the correct movie to come up in the top 10 or so search results. Let us know what your filename is though, maybe there is a problem.

4. Automatically add cover art from the folder the movie is in if it is named the same as the movie. Eg. "Iron Man (2008).avi" should find "Iron Man (2008).jpg" along side it and add it as a cover. As the IMDB scrape on this plugin is so good, and as the plugin watches folder similarly to MP-TvSeries, in many cases no matter how obscure the movie is, all I would need to do is drop the movie.avi and movie.jpg (and movie.srt!) into the watch folder hierarchy and it will be added correctly (with only the genre perhaps needing to be tweaked). This improves the WAF ten-fold, not having to drop out to Windows and edit file details.

This is coming in the next release.

5. Multiple disc movies. How does this work currently? On my first scan, any movie suffixed with -CD1, -CD2, -Disc 1, -Disc 2 etc. were added to the database as two seperate movies. Only on ONE occasion did it correctly combine the movies - "The Midnight Meat Train (2008)-CD1.avi" and "The Midnight Meat Train (2008)-CD2.avi" were added as one movie with multiple files. However, after my database became corrupt (see point 2) and needed to be re-scanned, this same movie was picked up as two movies. The only difference between the two occasions was that on my initial import first time around I did not have the movie, and it was auto-matched during a subsequent import. The second time was after the DB crashed so it became part of the initial scan.

As Armand mentioned, most common naming conventions should be auto grouped, but it sounds like there might be a problem there. I will see if I can reproduce the problem.

5. "No cover" default image is really needed for non-list views!

I agree, this is actually a skin issue, but since most people are still using our default skin while all the popular skins implement our interface, we will try to add something to the next release.

6. Filtering by genre, last 25 added, etc. though I know everyone has already requested this; just raising my hand as well!

I think that is everything I can think of. Really awesome work and thank you for reading my post, I hope it is useful.

Filtering is coming soon. But it is a version or two away.

Thanks for all the feedback Sutekh!

#MovingPictures.SelectedMovie.watched does not return true, false or anything for that matter. Hope this will be included in the next release? Nice to know what movies I have watched.

In the next release there will be a variable passed to the skin that gives the number of times a movie has been watched, and there will also be basic filtering by the watched flag (both already implemented in SVN). The variable name will be different from what you list though. I will update the skinners guide with the next release and answer any questions you may have.

Where does the plugin get the movie length from? A lot of my movies are found and the movie information is correct, but the duration is 0:00 quite often.

It is pulled from IMDb, but the current version has a bug with the parsing, so sometimes it doesn't return the correct runtime (or sometimes it returns nothing at all). This is already fixed for the next release, and you will be able to click a button to update everything in your database.

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Phew... sorry for the huge post. That's what i get for not following the forums over the weekend.

 

[armandp]

I already fixed the "Black Cat" issue

 

[fforde]

Ah, awesome.

 

[DarkWader]

Filtering is coming soon. But it is a version or two away.

Oh crap, I thought I read that filtering was coming in the next version..
All I really need to filter, is between watched and unwatched movies.

Since the watched TAG, is allready there - how much work would it be to code that as a filter for the upcoming version?
I am not sure, but maaaaybe this is possible to filter with the skin...?

 

[fforde]

Filtering is coming soon. But it is a version or two away.

Oh crap, I thought I read that filtering was coming in the next version..
All I really need to filter, is between watched and unwatched movies.

Since the watched TAG, is allready there - how much work would it be to code that as a filter for the upcoming version?
I am not sure, but maaaaybe this is possible to filter with the skin...?

A full configurable filtering system is a few versions away. Basic Watched Flag filtering is coming in the next release.