Moving Pictures vs' My Films (1 Viewer)

[kiwijunglist]

Hi

I've always used moving pictures, but I'd be interest to know who has tried both moving pictures and my films, and which do they prefer and why?

What are the differences between my films and moving pictures?

What are the advantages/disadvantages of one vs the other?

 

[geov]

I tried Moving-Pictures a while back, but decided to stay with MyFilms because I like the fact that I can maintain my "Ant Movie Catalog" remotely. The same "Ant Movie Catalog" is also used by all my Client-PC's, therefore I only have to add my movies on one place and its automatically picked up all over my house.

Cheers
GeoV

 

[z3us]

I also tried moving pictures, and I really prefer MyFilms. Ant Movie Catalog is a great software for creating and updating your films data base, with lots of scripts for import info from internet.
Also you have media info and can use logos

 

[uncertainty]

Ease of Use and Importing posters/fanart you have to give the advantage to Moving Pictures. However if you want advanced features (such as Media flags, ie logos) only Myfilms offers that atm. Moving Pictures is due to have that available in 0.8.0 but its been 3+ months thus far and no firm date for when its released.

 

[kiwijunglist]

So My films supports a centralised database on 1x client that the other clients can access?

Can my films store the fan art poster/movie details/etc in the movie folder, so the data isn't lost when you reformat the HTPC or copy/move the files?

 

[Guzzi]

Yes, that's possible. But I use a configuration where all data including cover and fanart is stored on a networkshare. The only thing you need to backup before reinstall is the myfilm configfile in the userdirectory on the client.

 

[geov]

Yes, that's possible. But I use a configuration where all data including cover and fanart is stored on a networkshare. The only thing you need to backup before reinstall is the myfilm configfile in the userdirectory on the client.

If you don't want to backup, to re-configure in MediaPortal takes 30sec....this is because you already have all the information in your Ant-Movie-Catalog and all you have to do is point MyFilms to the correct items in the ant-database.

 

[z3us]

Configuring again the logo rules, additional info fields, etc takes a lot more than 30 seconds for me. Better if u save a backup of the configfile

 

[Dadeo]

I think MovingPictures wins out on ease of use, for new users, mostly due to the automatic download of fanart, but I prefer MyFilms because:
1. It supports more fields and custom user fields
2. You can index your DVD collection and display the catalog number of the DVD in the MyFilms GUI (very helpful if you have hundreds of DVDs)
3. You have total database control (and can keep track of borrowers in the Ant Databse)
4. You never lose your database when MP changes i'ts database software and you have to rescan all your data (which takes me hours to do)
5. You get logo support (and yes Zeus, save your logos config file!, we actually provide one with aMPed)
6. Many more options in Conifg - to create and use your own views specify grabbers for additional info specify how your titles sort, which title displays, and on and on
7. You can use MyFilms with DVDProfiler and MovieCollector, not just Ant
8. You can display more than one picture if your database supports it (Ant doesn't)
9. You can automatically update your ANT movie database when a film is watched
10. You can use AMC Updater to do autolookups and update your Ant database

Actually, MovingPictures does the last two much more easily.

The only 'problem' with MyFilms is it has so many options it can be a bit overwhelming at first. And of course, the fanart support is not that great yet. It takes some work to get fanart going, but the Ant scripts actually find more and better fanart than Moving Pictures does at least for me!

 

[GDusty]

Some other benefits of MyFilms, which I don't believe Moving Pictures is currently capable of:

1. You aren't restricted to a flat list of movies. You can create folder hierarchies (which I like to do, eg, for box sets of movies like LOTR)

2. You can define multiple categories, and choose from a menu at MyFilms startup which category you want. For example, I have a "Children's movies", a "High Definition", an "All Movies", etc...