Vista: New App: Movie Browser 0.1

[Treason]

Hi All,

I wrote some new stuff and need collaboration from my favorite community. It's flash based media center program to browse movies and i think it looks awesome. Even though it is a complete iTunes RiP. The software is open source so feel free to poke around. If you make something better, let me know and I'll include it. The main component my app is lacking is a metadata retrieval method. Right now to use the app you would need to modify xml files by hand, which is a real drag.

Download links here: http://treas0n.blogspot.com/2008/04/...rowser-01.html



This works on Vista and MCE 2005...

[lillgreen]

Thats pretty good, i made a suggestion for the mc organizer guy to include a similar thing with the covers slightly of center and come face about when highlighted.
Top effort so far from what i see, dinner and dishes then ill check it out.

[dannybuoy]

Where does your prog get all the metadata from? Does it need another app to collect and store this data or is it all self contained?

I've never seen a Flash app inside Vista Media Center before, but it looks interesting as I know Flash but not MCML!

[gonijn]

Hi Treas0n,

I already have been so happy with BookmarkIt!, but this looks very good.
Will there be an option to get the movie playing when selected?

Gonijn

[Treason]

Originally Posted by dannybuoy

Where does your prog get all the metadata from? Does it need another app to collect and store this data or is it all self contained?

I've never seen a Flash app inside Vista Media Center before, but it looks interesting as I know Flash but not MCML!

Yea, the downside to my program is that YOU have to supply the xml data. I need another way to get this info. It's too cumbersome to hand write it.

Where do you guys have your movie data stored now? If there is an overwhelming lot of you in one format, I'll write a script to do it.

[Treason]

Originally Posted by gonijn

Hi Treas0n,

I already have been so happy with BookmarkIt!, but this looks very good.
Will there be an option to get the movie playing when selected?

Gonijn

After you install the software you will see metadata in there for movie you don't have. That is why nothing plays when you hit the boxcover.

Edit this file: C:\WINDOWS\ehome\MovieBrowser\Recent.xml

Here's a basic snapshot of the format it's expecting:

<artworkinfo>
<albuminfo>
<artLocation>file://C:/Windows/ehome/MovieBrowser/img/2.jpg</artLocation>
<artist><![CDATA[The Hills Have Eyes (2006)]]></artist>
<albumName>Horror / Thriller </albumName>
<fpath>file://C:/Whatever/MovieName/Movie1.avi</fpath>
<ratingdesc>6.4 - 13,805 votes</ratingdesc>
<stars>6.4</stars>
<Plot><![CDATA[A suburban American family is being stalked by a group of psychotic people who live in the desert  far away from civilization. ]]></Plot>
<Act1>Maxime Giffard As First Victim</Act1>
<Act2>Michael Bailey Smith As Pluto</Act2>
<Act3>Ted Levine As Big Bob</Act3>
<Act4>Kathleen Quinlan As Ethel</Act4>
<Director>Directed by: Alexandre Aja</Director>
<Runtime>107 min</Runtime>
<Rated>Rated R for strong gruesome violence and terror throughout</Rated>
</albuminfo>

[dannybuoy]

MyMovies is widely used and stores everything in a SQL db but also creates xml files. There is an MCML program called VideoBrowser that reads these xml files in a nice interface and uses MyMovies purely as a backend, kinda like what your app would be doing.

There is another app by somebody named Salami (http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/250545.aspx) that scrapes data from imdb and stores in the same xml format as MyMovies, for use by VideoBrowser. I would suggest this as it downloads the artwork as well and creates nice clean xml files without the need for another huge app and SQL backend like MyMovies.

[gonijn]

Cant seem to get it playing. Already removed the spaces from the paths.

My Recent.xml

<Movies>
<movieInfo>
<boxcover>file://C:/temp/folder.jpg</boxcover>
<title><![CDATA[21 (2008)]]></title>
<genre>Whatever</genre>
<fpath>file://C:/temp/i-21prp.avi</fpath>
<ratingdesc>10.1 - 1 votes</ratingdesc>
<stars>9</stars>
<Plot><![CDATA[Bla Bla Bla]]></Plot>
<Act1>Gonijn as 21</Act1>
<Runtime>128 min</Runtime>
<Rated>Rated R</Rated>
</movieInfo>
</Movies>

Any suggestions?

BTW the XML that Salami's produces looks like this (but is placed in the folder where the AVI resides):

<Title>
<LocalTitle>21</LocalTitle>
<OriginalTitle>21</OriginalTitle>
<SortTitle>21</SortTitle>
<Added>15-4-2008 19:14:24</Added>
<ProductionYear>2008</ProductionYear>
<RunningTime>123</RunningTime>
<IMDBrating>6.4</IMDBrating>
<Description>Bla Bla Bla.</Description>
<Covers>
<Front>folder.jpg</Front>
<Back />
</Covers>
<Genres>
<Genre>Drama</Genre>
</Genres>
<Persons>
<Person>
<Name>Robert Luketic</Name>
<Type>Director</Type>
</Person>
<Person>
<Name>Jim Sturgess</Name>
<Type>Actor</Type>
<Role />
</Person>
<Person>
<Name>Kevin Spacey</Name>
<Type>Actor</Type>
<Role />
</Person>
<Person>
<Name>Kate Bosworth</Name>
<Type>Actor</Type>
<Role />
</Person>
</Persons>
</Title>

Thx for your help sofar

Edit 1: Running VMC Ultimate.

[Treason]

Hey gonijn,

I am going to rewrite movie browser to use the same mymovies.xml format. So hang tight and I'll release it in a couple days. But to get your Recent.xml try this instead:

<Movies>
<movieInfo>
<boxcover>file://C:/temp/folder.jpg</boxcover>
<title><![CDATA[21 (2008)]]></title>
<genre>Whatever</genre>
<fpath>file://C:/temp/i-21prp.avi</fpath>
<ratingdesc>10.1 - 1 votes</ratingdesc>
<stars>9</stars>
<Plot><![CDATA[Bla Bla Bla]]></Plot>
<Act1>Gonijn as 21</Act1>
<Act2>Gonijn as 21</Act2>
<Act3>Gonijn as 21</Act3>
<Act4>Gonijn as 21</Act4>
<Director>Director: Gonijn</Director>
<Runtime>128 min</Runtime>
<Rated>Rated R</Rated>
</movieInfo>
</Movies>

I think it is expecting those 4 actor nodes... if you can't get it, no worries, I'll hook up something soon.

[Circuit]

Have you thought of using the bulit in DVDgallery metadata, there is a program to add to or modify it which works well and is free thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/211911.aspx

Coverart can be change and xml data can also be scraped from Amazon and IMDB.

Also http://www.dvdxml.com/news.php has a lot of dvdids available which are also free.

[gonijn]

Hey Treas0n,

Did not get it to work with the new code, but am sure it is gonna work sometime.
Really hope you get this interface to work, looks very nice.

BTW the mymovies.xml has no location where the .avi file is. Most movie interfaces build their own DB or as "MCE_Video_Browser_1_1_4_0" does it; scan a (or more) directory for all underlying dirs if a mymovies.xml is present. This MCE Vid Br will play the dir and not the file.

Good luck on building the Movie Browser to be the best one there is. I always used MyMovies, but it has grown so big now. Nice it you use all options, but if you only want to browse movies, see basic metadata and start the movie then your project look very good.

Would be happy to help you test.

Cheers,

Gonijn

[josuff]

I had the same problem with the videos not playing ('Cannot play video') but when I converted my AVI's and Mpegs to WMV, it worked. Try it and let me know what happens.

Joe