thinking of switching to mediaportal (1 Viewer)

[aquatarkus]

Hi
am currently running windows 7 x64 with mediacenter, media browser, stark covers, musicbrowser2 and mediacenter master to get the backdrops etc for movies, codec installed are, ffdtryouts 32 and 64 bit, AC3 and i couple of others (can't remember which) to let mediacenter play flac, ogg and mvk files.

thinking of switching to mediaportal due to issues with mediabrowser etc.

have a few questions, can i use mediacenter master with media portal for the movie backdrops posters, actor images still or do i have to use something else?

The musicbrowser2 plugin doesn't work very well so looking for something better that can display the album covers etc, i have all my music tagged using tag&rename and have covers in each of the folders labled as either the album or as folder.jpg, there is also a metadata folder in most of the music folders that seem to have been created by the musicbrowser2 plugin or the mbmusic plugin from mediabrowser that really didn't work.
I have my music on a drive on my server configured as \\albums > artist-album, in the case of more than 1 album per artist i have the artist folder then inside that will be multiple albums listed by album name.
Will i need to clear out all the metadata folders etc?

My movies are either avi's, iso's, mkv's or dvd rips (video TS and Audio TS folders) do i leave the ffdtryouts codecs installed or should i uninstall them?
Will they display as dvd covers like in your screen shot of the default/default wide skin or is that a plugin similar to coverart - stark covers?
sorry for the long post
regards
aquatarkus

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

have a few questions, can i use mediacenter master with media portal for the movie backdrops posters, actor images still or do i have to use something else?

I used that to create a xbmc nfo in movie folder along with backdrops, which you can chose to be used for the MovingPictures plugin scan\import if you wish.

Personally now use the great imdb+ plugin for getting movie details for MovPics.

Some examples using the Avallonis skin.

Scrolling you see this


Static view


Info view


I'm only answering regarding mediamaster and its use with MP, as its not necessary both MyVideos (MP's inbuilt) and MovingPictures are both capable of downloading info\artwork.

 

[ryan20021982]

For the backdrops and covers you can install the Movingpictures plugin and you just point to the folder or drive with your movies and it will import all the movies and download all the images and movie info. Same as the TVseries plugin for TV shows.

The music plugin can do the same as for movies and tv shows, not sure about the naming since I don't even have any music setup on any of mine. As far as the metadata you won't need to clear it out but it probably won't be usable by Mediaportal.

All of those video formats are fine, for the iso's you will need to change a few things but nothing hard. Most people use the SAF codec pack for MP it is on here and is designed for MP and to play pretty much everything.

As I said above you don't need anything but the plugins to get the covers, and in MP the frames around the covers to make them look better are just masks that are part of the skin so the covers are downloaded as just standard covers and then displayed behind a frame. The covers can also be stored in the movie folders as folder.jpg and backdrop.jpg and other variations.

 

[mpsam]

Hi and Welcome.

I have not used the programs that you speak of but I am sure MediaPortal can give a similar, if not superior experience.

For the music, the internal music section will read the tags into its database and download album covers. You should install Fanart Handler and Lastest Media Handler to enhance the experience.

In terms of movies, the video section can handle it. There are dedicated plugins that improves the experience. Moving Pictures is the simpliest and it handles every thing about movies fanart, covers scraping etc. My Films also manages your movie collection but it is geared towards person who catlogs their collection with software such as Ant, MyMovies and others.

In terms of codecs, there is SAF 6.xx which is based on LAV filters which works well. If you are using Windows 7 Home Premium or Ultimate however, some people recommend just the LAV Filters along with the Microsoft codecs. That is how I do it and it works well. Less to fiddle with.

 

[aquatarkus]

Thanks very much guys
know what i'm going to be doing next weekend, will be reading through the wiki's etc this week.

gets me out of the household chores that the wife wants done but still!!!!!

Thanks

regards
Aquatarkus