Videos only play from SHARES? (1 Viewer)

[dither]

TV-Server Version: n/a
MediaPortal Version: 2.3
MediaPortal Skin: blue
Windows Version: xppro
CPU Type: core duo 4600
HDD: WD Sata 2 500g
Memory: 2 gig ddr2 800
Motherboard: Gigabyte
Motherboard Chipset: Intel
Motherboard Bios: f7
Video Card: XFX 8600gt
Video Card Driver:
Sound Card: Realtek HD Audio
TV - HTPC Connection: HDMI


I have a couple of questions.
I have MP set up to use PowerDVD when I play Videos, and if I click on a title while I am in the SHARE list, it comes up with the proper IFO listed first, and clicking on that IFO brings up PowerDVD and it plays fine. But SHARES does NOT show the coverart.
If I am in ANY other list, such as ARTIST or GENRE, the coverart shows up fine, but clicking on it brings up an error saying that Windows Media player does not recognize this kind of file.
The best part about the coverart is that my children can see the dvd's, as though they were in their hands, and easily pick out what they want to watch. Shouldn't they then be able to click on the picture and get the movie started? Or do they HAVE to switch back to SHARES to do that?
Simple:
Shares, plays fine, but no coverart
anything BUT shares, coverart is there, but won't play

If clicking on the picture is supposed to bring up the movie, please help me with what I am doing wrong. I've tried Media Player as the player, and it says the same thing. I do have the proper codecs installed, because both Media Player AND PowerDVD will play these titles just fine.

Second question,,
Is there a way to take a DVD title (mpeg2) and convert it to MPEG4, or H.264 ?
My goal would be to use the better compression of the HD format to store my NON HD movies and get more of them on my hard drive.

Which leads a bit to my THIRD question.,,,
It seems that MP will only recognize one drive at a time for movie location. When this drive gets full, will I be forced to go into MP Config and change the folder when the movie I want to watch is on another drive?
IE: My database will contain all the coverart and other info, so browsing that coverart will tell me all the movies I have... good. But lets say I have it configured to look at drive F, but the movie I wish to watch is on drive G. Do I have to exit, go into CONFIG and change that to drive G, then go BACK into MP and into SHARES to find it and play it? I understand that I could just go to the folder and get the movie, but the idea is to use MP and my Firefly remote to do this.

I've lot's of other questions that I'll sort out, but these have me stuck, and any help is appreciated.

 

[charli181]

Answer for Question 3.
In the MP configuration, go to the Movies section and select sub menu folders. In there you can add multiple shares(drives). If you have one checked (has a tick against it) this will be the default share to be shown when you select the share view. If you have no check boxes selected, when you go to the shares view, it will show all the shares configured. Some extra info can be found in the Docs MediaPortalSetup Movies - MediaPortal Wiki Documentation

Now answer for question 1,
Once you have your shares setup, you can run a scan of your shares. This can be done from MP confugration under Movies/Movie database/ Scan Tab. You just need to select all the shares you want to scan. Another way also is from within MP itself, from the shares view, find the individual movie to be added to the database and press F3 on the keyboard or right click and select IMDB. Note internet connectivity is required for this. This will add the movies to the database. Once all your movies are added to the database, clicking any of the other views (genre, Title, Actor, Year,etc)will display the Coverart of the movies. Then you can click on it to start playing the movie. Note, the database allows movies from different shares to be compiled into one big list and the user (ie. kids/wife/non PC people)do not need to navigate through shares and folders.

Question 2 - Can't help you there. Will be interested to see how you go with that as I am in the same dillema. I am looking at DIVX6 or XVID(opensource).

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

Is there a way to take a DVD title (mpeg2) and convert it to MPEG4, or H.264 ?
My goal would be to use the better compression of the HD format to store my NON HD movies and get more of them on my hard drive.

Took all my DVD's, ripped them with DVDShrink & DVD decrypter and changed them to .mp4 files with nero digital and 5.1 sound producing filesize of 1.4Gb for each movie, it a incredibly time consuming thing to do, but i worked on the principal of only doing it once and have my 200+ files backed upto a 500gb external hdd, in case anything goes pear shaped.

Cannot tell the difference between DVD and mp4 version of film, so very pleased.

 

[dither]

Answer for Question 3.
If you have no check boxes selected, when you go to the shares view, it will show all the shares configured.

Now answer for question 1,
Once you have your shares setup, you can run a scan of your shares. This can be done from MP confugration under Movies/Movie database/ Scan Tab. You just need to select all the shares you want to scan. Another way also is from within MP itself, from the shares view, find the individual movie to be added to the database and press F3 on the keyboard or right click and select IMDB. Note internet connectivity is required for this. This will add the movies to the database. Once all your movies are added to the database, clicking any of the other views (genre, Title, Actor, Year,etc)will display the Coverart of the movies. Then you can click on it to start playing the movie. Note, the database allows movies from different shares to be compiled into one big list and the user (ie. kids/wife/non PC people)do not need to navigate through shares and folders.

Question 2 - Can't help you there. Will be interested to see how you go with that as I am in the same dillema. I am looking at DIVX6 or XVID(opensource).

Number 3. That is what I was missing. I've removed the checkmark and now all the drives will be seen. THANK you.

Number1. I didn't know I could do this from within MP. I knew that the way I was doing it wasn't making any link between my artwork and the actual movie - at least I coudn't see how. The movies listed on the drive had no link to the database, they were just a list of what was on the drive. Again, your remedy was right on the money!
But it leads to another question.
Since I've ripped all but the movie off of my dvd's in order to save space, the "header" (or whatever info IMBD looks at to get info on the movie) is gone. So I went into MP Config and did it manually. For artwork that wasn't good, or wasn't found, I was able to find it manually, edit in PhotoShop then insert it. Looks great, but as you know doing it this way did NOT link the database to the actual IFO so the movie could play. This is why I could only play from the SHARES. Doing it from within MP will do what I need, but having done all of the database work the WRONG way for about 100 of my movies, instead of going back thru and manually doing them all again, is there a way to alter the DataBase so it points to the proper IFO? Or is there a way to go into MP Config to the Movies/Database tab and link what I've already done to the correct file so that clicking on the artwork will work?
When I do it manually from within MP, it DOES link

Number 2. Seem to be a stickler for a lot of people.
Thanks for your help!

I tried Nero REcode, and used the same file size that you did (1.4g) but it kept coming up with errors.
I use DVDFabPlatinum to pull the main movie out, without compressing the original MPEG.
I'll try to reinstall, but frankly I don't really like many of Nero's offerings.
I've seen that it takes a bit of time, not looking forward to recoding 100 movies, but once that's done it's just a matter of doing it as I get new movies - not that bad then.
What size tv are you viewing it on? We're looking at a 61" Samsung DLP, and if it's a tradeoff between file size, and picture quality I'll stick with the larger files.
As for file size, once I found a method that worked I was going to shoot for a 2:1 compression,,, ASSUMING that what I've read, I've understood correctly:
H.264 (or Mpeg4 v10) is roughly 5 times more efficient at compressing the movie. If this is accurate, and it does so without compromising picture quality, then I should be able to take a 5 gig Mpeg2 rip and recode it to a 1 gig H.264 rip with the same picture quality.
If that is the case, then something else doesn't make sense to me.
Blue-Ray HD Movies are HUGE files aren't they? Granted they are natively larger due to more information (roughly 5 times as much info in an HD movie as there is in a standard dvd?)
If they are 5 times larger, but using a compression that is 5 times more efficient, wouldn't the same movie fit onto a standard DVD?
IE: A 4 gig movie in standard would be a 20 gig movie in HD, using the same MPEG2 compressions. But compressed with H.264 (5 times more efficent) it would be a 4 gig file. But it isn't. Does this mean that BlueRay is NOT using the H.264, but mpeg2 instead?

 

[charli181]

Number1. I didn't know I could do this from within MP. I knew that the way I was doing it wasn't making any link between my artwork and the actual movie - at least I coudn't see how. The movies listed on the drive had no link to the database, they were just a list of what was on the drive. Again, your remedy was right on the money!
But it leads to another question.
Since I've ripped all but the movie off of my dvd's in order to save space, the "header" (or whatever info IMBD looks at to get info on the movie) is gone. So I went into MP Config and did it manually. For artwork that wasn't good, or wasn't found, I was able to find it manually, edit in PhotoShop then insert it. Looks great, but as you know doing it this way did NOT link the database to the actual IFO so the movie could play. This is why I could only play from the SHARES. Doing it from within MP will do what I need, but having done all of the database work the WRONG way for about 100 of my movies, instead of going back thru and manually doing them all again, is there a way to alter the DataBase so it points to the proper IFO? Or is there a way to go into MP Config to the Movies/Database tab and link what I've already done to the correct file so that clicking on the artwork will work?
When I do it manually from within MP, it DOES link

If you have DVD rips which have IFO & VOB files, what I have done is the following folder structure.

"Movie Name/ VIDEO_TS/" and then the files. (mine are all VTS_01_1.IFO,etc)
When you do a scan or update, the Movie Name is picked up from the folder name.

Also, you can manually edit the database in 2 areas. First one is with the MP Configuration. Again in the menu Movies/Database, click the editor tab. From there select the movie you wish to modify, and then click the Files button. This is where you can modifiy the path to the IFO file. From here also you can also do coverart lookup as well.

Second option is a bit more complicated, but will allow you to do search and replaces. Chck out the entry in MediaPortal1/tips and tricks on the wiki UserGuides/ViewingDatabases - MediaPortal Wiki Documentation

A side note to consider would be this.....
If you are considering on having multiple clients with access to the same movies, either use mapped drives or the full UNC Path (\\ServerName\Share Name) even if it is on the same machine. I use the UNC path myself as it then keeps the movies files hidden from curious eyes (i.e. Kids). If you have mapped drives then each machine needs to have the shares mapped to the same letter on each machine, UNC does not. Then all that is needed when a movie is added, is to copy the Video database and the thumbs directory to each of the clients.

 

[Paulio51]

Don't forget to go back to the Title tab and click on Save. I spent most of today trying to fix this problem (of videos not playing in Title view) until it just hit me. Shouldn't I be saving these changes?

Paulio51

 

[dither]

You steered me in the right direction, and I found that using PowerDVD all I had to do go into the MP Config/editing/file tab and put in the path for the VIDEO_TS.IFO of each movie - nothing else needed, and it works perfectly!
This will be a movie server, but rather since each movie is within it's own folder all the kids need to do in their rooms is find the movie they want, double click on the VIDEO_TS.IFO file and it plays perfectly to their computer. We're running a gigabit lan using Jumbo Packets which helps to keep the cpu overhead down, and we've run it with 3 puters at the same time watching different movies.
It would be nice though to keep things consistent in the interface and use MP for each of the clients as well though, so I'll look into that.
Learned on other thing the hard way,,, make SURE that the folder that the movie is in is titled EXACTLY the same as the movie I pull from the IMBD database,, otherwise it makes duplicate entry's into the database, and they show up in any view other than SHARES. IE: Parent Trap (name on the folder) THE Parent Trap (from IMBD database) gave me two entrys under the TITLES view,, Parent Trap and The Parent Trap. And NEITHER of them had it all. It would either show the artwork, but not link to the movie, or show NO artwork, but the link was valid.
Had to go and delete ALL of the entries, correct the folder name, THEN use MP to gather the info.
I'm glad you told me how to do this before I had MORE than 100 movies to fiddle with!!! Your help is appreciated.

For cautions sake, I was hitting SAVE after EVERY movie entry I changed. I'm not sure that was needed, but I'll experiment with it later.
Thanks

 

[charli181]

Glad to hear all is sorted now. Happy MP'ing.