MyMovies 3.10 Out Of Pre-Release

by Damian on December 27, 2009 · 13 comments

in Reviews

About 2 weeks ago a Pre-Release candidate for MyMovies 3.10 was released. Several days ago 3.10 was officially taken out of Pre Release (and actually as I write this MyMovies is now up to 3.11). Many of the things I highlighted with the Pre Release, such as several new views, has remained the same. I thought I would take this opportunity to highlight a few other interesting features that are now present with MyMovies 3.10 that I think really add to the “Wow” factor.

Intros and Trailers (No points required):

One of the neat features added to MM 3.10 was the ability to have movie intro and trailers show when you play a movie. Now why exactly would you want this? One reason would be to have the total theater experience where promos and trailers show before the main movie starts. Using this feature requires that you have the intros/trailers you want to use all stored in a folder. For example, I have a folder called “Trailers” where I have trailers for many of the movies I own saved. In Collection Management you go to Options -> Intros and Trailers, browse to the trailer folder, specify how many trailers you want to play before the main movie plays, and also specify if you want random trailers show. I tested this out and it is pretty neat and does bring the whole “movie theater” experience to the home. However, I don’t know how practical this is since I have not really found a 100% method for downloading trailers. Metadata programs like Media Center Master will download trailers if available, but you still need to move the trailers to a central folder. What would be nice is if this feature could be implemented, but instead of needing local trailers MM would grab random trailers from its online streaming collection.

CM - Intros and Trailers

Customizing Covers/Genres (No points required):

Another neat feature is the ability to customize the look of your movie posters and genres. If you go back to my Media Browser Phoenix writeup under the Tips/Tricks section I talk about Stark Covers, which is a program that will add fancy “cases” to your movie covers (such as a Blu Ray case). The biggest pain though is that this is somewhat of a manual process, and every time you add a new movie you need to run the app. Well, MM has gone ahead and made the process a little more automated. Users can submit their “cover styles” and if selected you can assign the cover style to your movies via Collection Management. Whenever a new movie is added the covers will be re-generated via Collection Management. It appears that all the covers are re-generated and not just the new movies, but I found it a very quick process (took me less then a minute for a movie collection of over 300).  If you want to customize your covers/genres here is what you need to do.

- Go over to the MyMovies Customization Page and choose what customizations you are interested in (covers, genres, and backdrops)

- When you find a customization you want download and run the .exe file. You will be prompted for a location to unzip the files. The location will need to be as follows:

  • If you are using the WHS add-in you must unzip to \\ServerName\MyMoviesFileStorage$\User Customization\Cover Profiles (replace with Genres if unzipping Genres)
  • If you are using a PC with no WHS interaction you must unzip to C:\ProgramData\My Movies\FileStorage\User Customization\Cover Profiles (replace with Genres if unzipping Genres)

- Now go into Collection Management -> Media Center Interface, and under the “Cover Style:” dropdown you should see the new styles that you have unzipped. (Note this only needs to be done for covers, and genre customization will happen automatically in WMC)

CM - CoverStyleOptions

- After you select a cover style you will get a message that your cover profile has changes and that the covers must be re-generated (keep in mind the original covers are not affected)

CM - CoverStyleOptions A

- After you hit ok you will see a progress monitor as Collection Management goes through your movie collection.

CM - CoverStyleOptions B

- Once done you will get a message that the covers have been successfully generated.

CM - CoverStyleOptions C

 Default Covers

Covers - Default

Original – TomX Covers (Stark Covers type)

Covers - Original

Tabbed – Stylisticz

Covers - Tabbed

Genre – Default

Genres - Default

Genre/Genre Backdrops  - Film Strip Tint

Genres - Tint

Genre/Genre Backdrops  - Film Strip Color

Genres - Color

Genre – Elegance Stylisticz / Genre Backdrops  - Default

Genres - Stylized

 

Right now there is a contest going on over at the MyMovies forums to create custom profiles. The top 3 highest rated profiles by Jan 15 2010 will receive either 2,500 points on their MyMovies account or $50 to a Paypal account. Details on how to create custom profiles can be found here. 

My Movies XBMC Scraper:

I just found this but you can actually use My Movies as the default scraper in XBMC. I won’t go into further detail now as there may be an XBMC writeup coming in the next few days which will discuss further, so stay tuned :-)


Article by

Hi, my name is Damian, and I'm tech gadget addict! Although I always had some interest in technology, it wasn't until I got my EX470 and more importantly found Mediasmartserver.net, that my interest became an addiction. My goal, aside from world domination and to see the Mets/Broncos win another championship, is to set up the perfect digital home where all my media is available at the click of a button. When I am not writing for Mediasmartserver.net you can find me over at my blog at http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com or follow me on twitter


{ 13 comments }

m_woody December 31, 2009 at 6:48 am

Hi Damian, thanks for this excellent review.
I noticed that text based screen are a bit hard to read. I had the same issue in the past and changed to PNG as format for capturing these type of screens. This inproved things at least for me considerably :)

Damian December 31, 2009 at 7:02 am

Hi Woody

Thanks for the tip!!!

Peter Souza IV February 9, 2010 at 7:50 pm

The latest version of Media Center Master has far more options for trailers, including auto-moving them to a separate repository (if so desired) as well as automatic re-encoding.

Damian February 10, 2010 at 2:52 am

Thanks Peter. Media Center Master is on my list of software to test out and hopefully do a writeup on :-)

Peter Souza IV February 10, 2010 at 6:15 pm

Let me know if you need anything in that regard. I just put out a major release today (v1.21).

Comp1962 February 26, 2010 at 10:21 am

@ Damian ~ I have my new server up and running and by the time I return home from work tonight my data migration will be complete. Does this new version work better with WHS then the previous and is there an option to install just the Metadata component rather then the disc copier and other features because I really only used it on my server for the metadata since I do not rip movies directly to the server.

To night I have to move 2 of my 2 TB drives from one server to the new one so I can set my video shares for duplication. I have chosen to leave the videos on the EX470 but not for duplication because it will no longer be my primary server and anything on it will be for redundant storage. Anyway I ask the question about My Movies because I know once I set the other server up for duplication that demigrator will kick and I have no idea what the impact will be but it has duel processors and lan ports so I will soon see how demigrator bangs those procesors.

Damian February 26, 2010 at 10:31 am

@ Comp1962

It is a package deal when you install, although features like the disc copier wont work unless you have a certain amount of points. I have noticed no ill effects of having MM3 installed on my WHS, although I have folder monitoring shut off (I let collection management monitor from my desktop pc). Part of the reason is because I have metabrowser set up on my WHS and doing folder monitoring, so I didn’t want to have two processes running at the same time on my WHS.

Comp1962 February 26, 2010 at 11:05 am

@ Damian ~ could you kindly point me to metabrowser? I just want something to create the metadata on my server automatically. I would rather have only a single component application running on my server then an entire suite of things I will never use.

I appreciate your quick reply and vast knowledge in this area. I am just getting my feet wet and in the process want to keep everything simple.

Damian February 26, 2010 at 11:33 am

@ Comp1962,

Here you go buddy:

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2009/10/09/gathering-metadata-in-whs-with-metabrowser/

There is a new version that I have been helping test that should be released I think this week. More details to come ;-)

Comp1962 February 26, 2010 at 12:07 pm

Thanks Damian! Maybe I should wait till the new version comes out. My folders are all named properly by the title of the movies but the MKV files are like Title00.MKV so I will have to spend time renaming all the files on my server actually twice because they are now stored on two servers that way. Oh my I wish I knew this yesterday before I migrated all those movies over to the new server. Guess it doesn’t really matter all that much since its the movies on the new server which will be the ones accessed and the ones on the EX470 will be sitting there just incase something really bad happens.

Damian February 26, 2010 at 12:09 pm

metabrowser can rename automatcially for you (I only use this feature for tv shows but it should work for movies as well). That should help you out from having to rename every mkv.

WHSbb August 27, 2010 at 2:05 pm

Hi,

Using WDTV Live Plus as player, I wonder if having mymovies installed on WHS would work together?

Any idea?

Thanks

Damian August 27, 2010 at 2:11 pm

MyMovies does not provide support for the WDTV Live Plus player

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