My DVD's for Avi's

Treason · **30th April 2007, 12:29 PM**

I hate to cut and paste from my own blog, but no one reads it so hear goes:

So i must be bored again, cuz I am thinking about creating another plugin. MyDvd's is a feature that comes with rollup2. Read more here: http://blog.mattgoyer.com/categories...005/10/20.html

I wrote a My Movies type plugin but never released it because hosted HTML apps blow on a media center. They never quite look right. My DVD's on the other hand looks great. The downside to My DVDs is that it is only for DVDs. So I am thinking about writing a plugin to trick media center into playing avi's through My DVD's.

What do you think of the idea?
Is this a worthwild venture, or just alot of code for no reason?

supafly · **30th April 2007, 12:38 PM**

you bet it is mate

, would be great to get 360 support too

Treason · **30th April 2007, 12:46 PM**

Thanks for the swift reply mate.

Unfortunatly, 360 support is definitly out of the picture because of how I am going to write the app. It won't "reencode on the fly" from AVI to DVD, because it would take alot of CPU usage and I have no idea how to do that anyway. But instead it would start playing a "fake dvd" then push over to the avi instead. See where I am heading with this?

supafly · **30th April 2007, 12:49 PM**

yah understandable mate, i think it will be great either way, im happy using transcode for now anyways

jollster101 · **30th April 2007, 01:42 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Treason

Thanks for the swift reply mate.

Unfortunatly, 360 support is definitly out of the picture because of how I am going to write the app. It won't "reencode on the fly" from AVI to DVD, because it would take alot of CPU usage and I have no idea how to do that anyway. But instead it would start playing a "fake dvd" then push over to the avi instead. See where I am heading with this?

So is it finished yet???

Looking forward to seeing it when it is

GlenR · **30th April 2007, 01:49 PM**

Sounds like a great idea. Go to it!

Nudge · **30th April 2007, 08:13 PM**

Treason,

Most certainly a worthWILD venture

.

I pretty much only use My Videos cause it gives me all formats and MyMovies is too slow.

A hack of My DVD's would be excellent.

Later,

Nudge

BTW: did you ever get around to modifying your lyrics plugin for music videos??

Treason · **1st May 2007, 04:59 AM**

So it seems like this project is a go. My methods for making this happen may not be ideal but I don't see any other way to do it.

Here's how I plan to accomplish this.. (suggestions are welcome)

I will create a fake dvd folder. The DVD folder will contain a short DVD movie that will display something like: "Loading Video Please Wait..."

In that same DVD folder I would have the XML Metadata for the "real" video I want to play... So the XML Metadata attached to the fake DVD would show the info for Star Wars (for example).

Once the Fake DVD Video is playing, I would then poll MediaState to read some little used attribute, like Production Company... In the Prod Company attribute I would store the path to the real DiVx or Xvid video.

Lastly take that attribute, stop the fake DVD and play the real video.*sigh*

So the downside to this approach is that every avi would need to have an associated fake DVD. So lets say my fake dvd is 20mb, that is a lot of overhead.

Open to suggestions before I write, as you can tell it's all planned out and "doable". But I wouldn't mind fine tuning this approach before I write code.

Nudge, I totally forgot about that thing we spoke about...

jollster101 · **1st May 2007, 01:17 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Treason

Open to suggestions before I write, as you can tell it's all planned out and "doable". But I wouldn't mind fine tuning this approach before I write code.

Just as a wonder more than anything else, have you spoke with Impact or Arkay as they both seem clued in as well with regards to MCE stuff? Your idea seems to be a good one but maybe they have an idea about avoiding the overhead you mentioned.

Just a thought.

Treason · **1st May 2007, 01:27 PM**

I have not spoken to anyone about this but if those guys are around I'd love to hear from them. I have been doing more research on this topic and it seems to me that the biggest hurdle will be creating the interface to search for box covers and general movie information. imdb is probably a good source but they lack large box covers. To use that nifty My Dvd's interface and then ruin it with pixelated box covers would just kill it for me. i don't know how My Movies get's its info, from the user or automated. I don't know maybe I should leave all that to the end user?

jollster101 · **1st May 2007, 01:40 PM**

If I remember rightly from when I did my own My Movies population, it would go out to IMDB and grab the info from there. On mine at home, the images look pretty good (from memory as I havent used it for a while as I havent watched a DVD for an age).

I was just looking at another plugin post from Monster as well so he is another talented individual.

All this talent makes me envious.

I cant code for toffee, my brain just doesnt get it but its good that some do so we can get all these quality apps and utils.

amos_82 · **4th July 2007, 05:22 AM**

Looks like a great idea, i'd rather use this than mymovies.

About using covers...
people could maintain the covers themselves if its easier to make the the programme. They could use a folder.jpg, or possibly you could code a little app which lets people pick covers they have downloaded.

Keep up the good work Treason!

Nudge · **4th July 2007, 07:38 AM**

Looks like T's had to drop this idea - LINK