Guide: Setting up YAMJ (Yet Another Movie Jukebox) + Aeon in WHS

If you are a user of a networked media tank (nmt) such as the popular Popcorn Hour series you already know that the stock UI pretty much blows, giving you nothing more then a “windows exploreresque” experience. Yes, almost all your files will play back, but let’s face it, we want to impress everyone and their mother with a slick looking UI. Fortunately there is hope as there are several add ins that you can use to spice up your nmt (but not your love life). Since I own a PCH C-200 and a PCH A-110, and with all the noise about new PCH products coming out soon such as the PCH A-200, I thought it would be a good opportunity to document setting up one of the add ins called YAMJ (Yet Another Movie Jukebox) developed by Omertron on my WHS. Once YAMJ is set up, you can stick with the YAMJ UI or change it up with some of the many different skins available (I will look at Aeon). As a little background, all my media is stored on my DIY WHS. It then gets served up to various media players throughout my house via cat5e/6. I use NFS or SMB to stream to my PCHs so this guide will focus on such a setup (if I have time later on I will try and document what is needed to set up using an http service such as myiHome). Also, YAMJ can be set up on any PC, it doesn’t have to be WHS, so the steps I will document should be the same regardless.

Files To Download:

• YAMJ
• YAMJ GUI Config v0.51
• Media Info – Grab the 32 bit CLI Version
• YANFOE (optional)

Prep Work:

One of the nice things about YAMJ is that it will go out to TMDB/TVDB and scrape all your metadata. The key to getting accurate metadata though is to make sure you have your video collection named properly. In my opinion the best practice is as follows:

TV Shows:

Each show has its own folder, with a separate folder for each season of the show

\\MyServer\TVShows\ShowName\Season X

• SHOWNAME.S##E##.SOURCE.LANGUAGE.OTHERSPECS – episode name.ext

Movies:

Each movie has its own folder

\\MyServer\Videos\MovieName

• MovieName.mkv (or the Video_TS/BDMV folder would be here if a straight DVD/Blu Ray Rip)

TIP – if you want special box covers to appear add so to the end of the movie filename (for example if a Blu Ray rip label movie “Moviename 1080p BluRay.mkv). I will give a better example of this later when we look at the Aeon skin.

You can allow YAMJ to scrape for all your metadata, but the best way I have found to ensure you get the most accurate metadata is to use a separate metadata program. The program I would recommend for YAMJ is YANFOE, which is a program similar to metabrowserhowever it is set up specifically to generate metadata for YAMJ.

Since WHS is being used to store all the YAMJ created metadata, a network share should have been created already on the PCH for the location where your shared videos are. For more information on setting up a network share please refer to the following two articles:

• Setting up SMB Sharing
• Setting up NFS Sharing

Installation:

• RDP into WHS and extract YAMJ to the C: drive. I made a folder called YAMJ on the C: drive and extracted all files there
• Extract YAMJ GUI Config into C:\YAMJ
• Create a folder in C:\YAMJ called “MediaInfo” and extract MediaInfo into this folder

Once done your YAMJ folder should look like the below screenshot:

Setting Up YAMJ:

• Double click “YAMJ GUI Config v0.51.exe” in C:\YAMJ to run the configuration tool. You should now see the Config tool as shown below

• The first step is to direct YAMJ to where your video collection is located. I have had issued when using drive letters so I generally try to stick with manually typing in the UNC path. You can only pick one location at a time, so if you have several different locations you will need to run through this process once for each location
• The next step is is to select how you are going to access your video files. In this example we are accessing our video files via a network share, so select “on a Network Path on the NMT”. When you select this option a pop up box will appear asking for your NMT IP Address. Once you enter and hit ok you should now see all the network shares available in the dropdown. Select the network share you want to use. For instance, I have a NFS network share on my PCH C-200 called My Videos. After entering my IP Address “My Videos” shows up in the dropdown on the Config tool. One of the benefits of doing it this way is that if you have multiple NMTs you can set this up once and all your NMTs can access YAMJ as long as the network share is the same on each jukebox

• After selecting the Network Path, next step is to select where you want the jukebox files that YAMJ will create stored. YAMJ will create a folder called “Jukebox” in the location that you choose, and all jpeg/html files will be stored here. YAMJ will also create a file called index.htm which will be stored in the root of the location that you choose. The index.htm file is what you will need to select from the NMT to start the jukebox. TIP – if you choose to store the jukebox files in the same location as the network share you choose, when you access that share from your NMT YAMJ will automatically load without having to first select the index.htm file.
• Once you have selected the jukebox directly, now click the Add button. A popup will appear asking you to assign a name, so type in whatever name you want.
• If you have no more locations to add click save, otherwise start back at the first step and walk through the process again. Once done adding all movie directory locations, click Save.

• If you go back into your C:\YAMJ folder you will now see two created files – 1) My_Library.xml and 2) My_YAMJ.cmd. My_Library.xml contains the locations of all the directories you want YAMJ to scan. If you ever need to change this you can either rerun the Config tool or just manually edit this file. The My_YAMJ.cmd file is what will actually run YAMJ, so now with everything set up double click the file to run.

• When you run the cmd file a dos prompt will appear and you can watch as YAMJ goes through your video collection. Once done you can close the dos prompt. If this is your first time running depending on how large your video collection is it could take up to 10 minutes to complete. Afterwards, YAMJ will only run against newly added videos, so the run time should drop drastically. TIP – on the first run I like to scroll through the log in the dos prompt to see if there are any sort of errors.

• Now that YAMJ is complete it is time to run over to the NMT, access  the network share, and hopefully you should have a fresh Movie Jukebox waiting for  you!

Movie Wall

Movie Detail View

TV Show Detail View

Automating YAMJ:

YAMJ is not dynamic, so any time you make a change to your video collection or change/update the metadata, you will need to rerun YAMJ. You can simply RDP into WHS and run the My_YAMJ.cmd file, but obviously the ideal solution would be to automate this process as much as possible. What many people do is create a task that will run the My_YAMJ.cmd file at set days/times (it seems most people will set YAMJ to run twice a day). In WHS go to Start Menu -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Scheduled Tasks. Double Click on “Add Scheduled Task” , browse to the My_YAMJ.cmd file, and set up a schedule for when you want it to run. It is that easy!

Skins:

If you are happy with the look of the default YAMJ then you are all set to go. However, one of the nice things about YAMJ is there is a great selection of user created skins that can be used in place of the default YAMJ skin (I WOULD HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU GET THE DEFAULT YAMJ SKIN WORKING FIRST TO MAKE SURE EVERYTHING IS OK BEFORE MOVING ON TO ANOTHER SKIN). Probably the most popular skin as I write this post is the Aeon Movie Wall skin, developed by ejp. One of the biggest challenges I found when setting up the Aeon skin, and one of the reasons for writing this guide, is that a lot of the information for setting up the skin and making modifications is scattered throughout the main thread over on the nmt forums. To put it in perspective, ejp first posted about the Aeon skin on 29-Jul-09. In less then six months there are nearly 400 pages of posts!!! For the purpose of this guide I am just going to walk through setting up the basic Aeon skin and then go through a few modifications to spice things up.

Files To Download:

• Aeon Skin
• Notepad ++ (optional to edit property files, notepad will work just fine)

Setting Up Aeon:

• Extract the Aeon Skin zip file to to YAMJ Skins folder located at C:\ YAMJ\Skins
• You will now have a few options to tell YAMJ to use the Aeon skin and not the default skin. The first option would be to rename the current “default” folder in the Skins folder to something else and then rename the Aeon skin folder (which for me was named “anwyaj291220″) ”default”. This is probably the easiest method. The other method will involve going into the YAMJ properties file and manually changing:

Assign Skin:

File Location - C:\YAMJ\properties\moviejukebox-default.properties

Go down to line 72 and change mjb.skin.dir=./skins/default to mjb.skin.dir=./skins/amwyamj291220

Example of code:

# Path to the skin to use when generating the Jukebox
# the default skin is geared toward HD displays
# an additional skin named “sd” is for Standard Definition displays
mjb.skin.dir=./skins/amwyamj291220

• You are now ready to run the Aeon skin. Delete all the jukebox files that were created by YAMJ and rerun the My_YAMJ.cmd file. Once done, run over to your NMT and you should have a new Aeon jukebox waiting for you that looks something like this:

Movie Wall View

Movie Detail View

TV Shows Banner View

Modifications

 There are many modifications you can make to the Aeon skin (small stuff like changing the logos used to bigger stuff like changing the entire view). There is no way I would be able to document all of them (nor do I really care to!), so instead if you look at the screenshot below you will see the new Movie Detail view I have running of which I will explain the modifications I made. Whenever you make a modification you need to rerun My_YAMJ.cmd for the changes to take effect. You should also delete all your previously generated jukebox files before rerunning.

Low List:

File To Edit  - C:\YAMJ\skins\Aeon\skin-options.xsl

The new look is called the Low List view. Go down to line 245 and change xsl:variable name=”LowList”>false</xsl:variable> to xsl:variable name=”LowList”>true</xsl:variable>

Example of code:

<!– ************LowList Options***************************** –>
<!– This gives the Movie details a similar layout as the TV details. –>
<!– It will also override dim and coikenMod. –>
<!– You must set fanart.movie.width=1280, I repeat 1280, in the skin.properties if you are setting this to ‘true’. –>
<!– Furthermore, I recommend setting posters.height=332 and posters.width=224 in the skin.properties. –>
<xsl:variable name=”LowList”>true</xsl:variable>

Gonzalu’s Low List 75%:

File to Edit – none

When you first enable Low List the background area where all the movie details show is solid, so you will not see any portion of the fanart. The Low List 75% mod will give the Low List background some transparency so the full fanart will show.

1. Download Low List 75%
2. Extract files to C:\YAMJ\skins\Aeon\html\pictures\dim\, overwriting if necessary.

Gonzalu’s Flag Pack:

File To Edit  - C:\YAMJ\skins\Aeon\lowlist.xsl (optional)

This will replace the current icons.

1. Download Flag Pack
2. Extract files to respective subfolders in  C:\YAMJ\skins\Aeon\html\pictures\, overwriting if necessary.
3. There will be a small space between each icon, if you want to remove the spacing the following will need to be replaced in the lowlist.xsl file. Go to line 357 and replace:

<td>
  <xsl:if test=”$ShowVideoSource=’true’”><xsl:call-template name=”videoSource” />&#160;&#160;</xsl:if>
  <xsl:if test=”$ShowVideoCodec=’true’”><xsl:call-template name=”videoCodec” />&#160;&#160;</xsl:if>
  <xsl:if test=”$ShowAudioCodec=’true’”><xsl:call-template name=”audioCodec” />&#160;&#160;</xsl:if>
  <xsl:if test=”$ShowSubtitles=’true’”><xsl:call-template name=”subtitles” />&#160;&#160;</xsl:if>
  <xsl:if test=”$ShowContainer=’true’”><xsl:call-template name=”container” />&#160;&#160;</xsl:if>
  <xsl:if test=”$ShowVideoOutput=’true’”><xsl:call-template name=”videoOutput” />&#160;&#160;</xsl:if>
  <xsl:if test=”$ShowFrameRate=’true’”><xsl:call-template name=”framerate” />&#160;&#160;</xsl:if>
  <xsl:if test=”$ShowAspectRatio=’true’”><xsl:call-template name=”aspectratio”/>&#160;&#160;</xsl:if>
 </td>

with the below code:

<td>
  <xsl:if test=”$ShowVideoSource=’true’”><xsl:call-template name=”videoSource” /></xsl:if>
  <xsl:if test=”$ShowVideoCodec=’true’”><xsl:call-template name=”videoCodec” /></xsl:if>
  <xsl:if test=”$ShowAudioCodec=’true’”><xsl:call-template name=”audioCodec” /></xsl:if>
  <xsl:if test=”$ShowSubtitles=’true’”><xsl:call-template name=”subtitles” /></xsl:if>
  <xsl:if test=”$ShowContainer=’true’”><xsl:call-template name=”container” /></xsl:if>
  <xsl:if test=”$ShowVideoOutput=’true’”><xsl:call-template name=”videoOutput” /></xsl:if>
  <xsl:if test=”$ShowFrameRate=’true’”><xsl:call-template name=”framerate” /></xsl:if>
  <xsl:if test=”$ShowAspectRatio=’true’”><xsl:call-template name=”aspectratio”/></xsl:if>
 </td>

Fanart Width:

File To Edit  - C:\YAMJ\skins\Aeon\skin.properties

Since fanart is prominently displayed in this few, we need to change the default width. Go down  to line 104 and change fanart.movie.width=795 to fanart.movie.width=1280

Example of code:

# Download fanart image for movies using the IMDB id : true or false
fanart.movie.download=true
fanart.movie.width=1280
fanart.movie.height=720
fanart.tv.download=true
fanart.tv.width=1280
fanart.tv.height=720

Box Covers:

File To Edit  - C:\YAMJ\skins\Aeon\skin-options.xsl

If you want an overlay such as box covers to go over your posters, you need to enable. Go down to line 81 and change <xsl:variable name=”LowListOverlay”>false</xsl:variable> to <xsl:variable name=”LowListOverlay”>box</xsl:variable>

Example of code:

<!– Set this to true if you want to use an overlay for the poster in TV Detail and movie LowList view. –>
<!– false: no overlay –>
<!– true: glass overlay. If you want to change it, the overlay is located at /html/pictures/detail/tvposteroverlay.png –>
<!– box: source box overlay (Blu-ray, HD-DVD, etc). If you want to change them, the boxes are located in /html/pictures/boxes–>
<xsl:variable name=”LowListOverlay”>box</xsl:variable>

The box covers that will be used can be found at C:\YAMJ\skins\Aeon\html\pictures\boxes\. If you want to use different box covers you can write over the current ones

Gonzalu’s Box Covers W/ Right Opening:

File To Edit  - C:\YAMJ\skins\Aeon\lowlist.xsl

If you look at my screenshot you will notice that the blu ray box cover has an opening on  the right. However, the default box covers has the opening to the left. To change this to the right:

1. Download Right Covers
2. Extract all covers to C:\YAMJ\skins\amwyamj291220\html\pictures\boxes\, overwritings if necessary. Please note that if you want to use these covers you will have to do one of two things (i) when you copy the files you must rename to what is currently being used (i.e. by default bluray.png is what gets used for Blu Rays, so whatever file you copy over must be called bluray.png, such as BoxBluRayll->bluray) or (ii) edit the lowlist.xsl file to assign ‘video source bluray’ to BoxBluRayll.png
3. In lowlist.xsl change  go to line 30 and change <td width=”112″ height=”400″ rowspan=”3″></td> totd width=”83″ height=”400″ rowspan=”3″></td>.
4. In lowlist.xsl change  go to line 31 and change <td width=”230″ height=”332″ align=”center” valign=”bottom”> to <td width=”250″ height=”332″ align=”center” valign=”bottom”>

Example of Code:

<td width=”83” height=”400″ rowspan=”3″></td>
                             <td width=”250” height=”332″ align=”center” valign=”bottom”>
                              

• When using the Right Opening mod a gap appears on the left side of the case. To correct this, you need to edit the exportdetails_item_popcornhour.css file. Find the line #Poster_Overlay__TV_NMT { visibility: visible; position: absolute; top: 253px; left: 23px;} and change to #Poster_Overlay__TV_NMT { visibility: visible; position: absolute; top: 253px; left: 13px;}

Example of code:

#Poster_Overlay__TV_NMT { visibility: visible; position: absolute; top: 253px; left: 13px;}

Sources:

File To Edit - C:\YAMJ\properties\moviejukebox-default.properties

YAMJ will determine the source based on keywords mapped against each movie file name. So for instance if you review my tip in the Prep Work section regarding adding BluRay to the end of a file name, this is where it would come into play. YAMJ will associate BluRay in the filename as being a Blu Ray source, and appropriate artwork will be assigned (The Blu Ray cover and logo you see in my screenshot). Since my Blu Ray movies had the work “Blu Ray” (notice the space in between) YAMJ was not picking this up as a Blu Ray source, so I had to add. Starting at line 163 you can edit this.

Example of code:

# comma-separated list of case-insensitive keywords to count as “sources”
filename.scanner.source.keywords=HDTV,PDTV,DVDRip,DVDSCR,DSRip,CAM,R5,LINE, HD2DVD,DVD,HRHDTV,MVCD,VCD,TS,VHSRip,BluRay,HDDVD,D-THEATER,SDTV,WEBDL

# comma-separated list of case-insensitive keywords to map to a particular source
filename.scanner.source.keywords.SDTV=TVRip,PAL,NTSC
filename.scanner.source.keywords.D-THEATER=DTH,DTHEATER
filename.scanner.source.keywords.HDDVD=HD-DVD,HDDVDRIP
filename.scanner.source.keywords.BluRay=BDRIP,BLURAYRIP,BLU-RAY,Blu Ray
filename.scanner.source.keywords.DVDRip=DVDR
filename.scanner.source.keywords.WEBDL=WEB-DL,iTunes
filename.scanner.source.keywords.DVD=DVD5,DVD9

Toolbar Modificiation:

File to Edit – none

 The toolbar is at the top right of the low list (shows “Watch”, 2009, etc…). This modification will give the toolbar the curvy/glossy look.

1. Download Modified Toolbar
2. Extract files to C:\YAMJ\skins\Aeon\html\pictures\, overwriting if necessary.

Gonzalu’s Top 250 Mod:

File to Edit – C:\YAMJ\skins\Aeon\html/exportdetails_item_popcorn.css

File To Edit  - C:\YAMJ\skins\Aeon\lowlist.xsl

For movies that are ranked in  the top 250 by IMDB, a banner will appear above the toolbar

1. Download Top250 Mod
2. Extract top250_bg.png to C:\YAMJ\skins\Aeon\html\pictures\detail\, overwriting if necessary.
3. Place the following anywhere towards the top of the exportdetails_item_popcorn.css file

#top250_t {visibility: visible; position: absolute; top: 310px; left: 895px;}
#top250_n {visibility: visible; position: absolute; top: 313px; left: 995px;}

1. Place the following right before<!– END LOWLIST MOVIE DETAILS PAGE CODE HERE –> in the lowlist.xsl file

<!– start TOP250 –>
<xsl:if test=”top250 != -1″>
<div id=”top250_t”><img src=”pictures/detail/top250_bg.png”/></div>
<div id=”top250_n”>Top 250: #<xsl:value-of select=”top250″ /></div>
</xsl:if>
<!– end TOP250 –>

Miscellaneous:

Studio Icons:

File To Edit – none

Aeon comes with a handful of studio icons. You can download additional studio icons if you would like to add a more complete group of icons

1. Download Studio Pack
2. Extract all files to C:\YAMJ\skins\AEON\html\pictures\studios, overwriting if necessary

Replacing Individual Flag Icons:

File To Edit – none

If there are certain Flag Icons you want to use it is very easy to replace. Users over on the nmt forums have been nice enough to make available custom flag icons.

1. Custom Flag Icons can be found here
2. Locate the Flag Icon(s) you want, and replace the existing the flag in C:\YAMJ\skins\AEON\html\pictures\flags

Filtering Home Page:

File To Edit  - C:\YAMJ\skins\Aeon\skin.properties

When you first load the Aeon Movie Wall TV Shows and Movies will all show together. If you just want Movies to show on the initial load:

1. Go to line 70 in the skin.properties file and change to mjb.homePage=Other_Movies_1. If you only want HD movies then mjb.homePage=Other_HD_1. If you only want TV Shows change to mjb.homePage=Other_TV Shows_1. In the jukebox folder that YAMJ creates you can assign any of the “Other_” files to mjb.homePage.

Sabish’s Low List Mod:

File to Edit – C:\YAMJ\skins\Aeon\html\exportdetails_item_popcorn.css

File To Edit  - C:\YAMJ\skins\Aeon\lowlist.xsl

This is a mod to the current lowlist view. You must have the lowlist view enabled first. I really like this view but have some issues with the top and bottom of the view getting cut off slightly on my tv.

1. Download Sabish Low List Mod
2. Extract all png files to C:\YAMJ\skins\AEON\html\pictures\dim, overwriting if necessary
3. Overwrite the lowlist.xsl and exportdetails_item_popcorn.css with the ones downloaded

Sabish’s TV Mod v2:

File To Edit  - C:\YAMJ\skins\Aeon\tv-detail.xsl

File To Edit  - C:\YAMJ\skins\Aeon\ppp\ppp-templates.xsl

File to Edit – C:\YAMJ\skins\Aeon\html\exportdetails_item_popcorn.css

This mod will provide an alternative view to the default Aeon TV Show view.

1. Download Sabish TV Mod v2
2. Extract tvbg-v2.png file to C:\YAMJ\skins\AEON\html\pictures\sabishmod, overwriting if necessary
3. Overwrite the ppp-templates.xsl and tv-detail.xsl file with the one provided in the download
4. Open the sabish-tvmod-2.css file downloaded, and copy all data to the end of the exportdetails_item_popcorn.css

Enable IMBD Number Rating

File To Edit  - C:\YAMJ\skins\Aeon\skin-options.xsl

If you want to have the IMBD Number Ratings show, a quick edit is needed.

1. Go to line 68 and change <xsl:variable name=”number-rating”>false</xsl:variable> to <xsl:variable name=”number-rating”>true</xsl:variable>Ex

Example of code:

<!– If you want to display the number rating next to the stars, set this to true –>
<!– If you DO NOT want to display the number rating next to the starts, set this to false –>
<xsl:variable name=”number-rating”>true</xsl:variable>

Final Thoughts:

Phew, if you have followed me through the entire writeup you probably need a quick breather and possibly some Gatorade! It is not as bad as it looks, but at the same time it is still a user intensive process. This is where you can appreciate the simplicity of HTPC applications like XBMC or Media Browser, and the ability to just change your view at the click of a button. Whenever you get into a situation where you need to manually edit a properties file there always runs the risk that something gets screwed up, so take a deep breath and take your time going through.

Additional Resources:

• Aeon Thread
• KILL3M’s Reference Guide
• YAMJ Thread
• Gonzula’s YAMJ/Aeon Setup Videos
• accident’s Excellent YAMJ/Aeon Guide
• Chuck Norris Facts

Tagged as: Aeon, Guides, Media Streaming, PCH A-200, PCH C200, Windows Home Server, YAMJ