MetaBrowser 2.0 On The Horizon

Nearly 6 months ago (wow, has it been that long) I wrote an article on how to gather metadata in Windows Home Server with Metabrowser. It may appear as if not much has happened with metabrowser since then, with the last update being done on September 2, 2009. However, the developer “<><“ has been hard at work doing a complete rewrite of metabrowser.  I have been lucky enough to help test out metabrowser 2.0 and get the inside scoop into the mind of a madman! Although probably still a few weeks away from public release, here is a look at what to expect with metabrowser 2.0.

Things To Note Before Proceeding:

• metabrowser 2.0 will not be free, but instead require a $20/year donation (you get a license for 2 computers). There will be no trial period. You can continue to use the free beta version but it will no longer be supported. NOTE – The pricing has not been finalized, so this is subject to change prior to release.
• An internet connection will be required for verification
• Currently metabrowser 2.0 will not work on a RAID system (a fix is being looked in to). It does work with Windows Home Server, but not a RAID setup (such as my RAID 0 PC).
• metabrowser 2.0 will initially only support movies. TV Show support will be added in the near future (you can continue to use the current metabrowser beta for TV Shows)

Files To Download:

• metabrowser 2.0 (when available)
• MediaInfo.dll (Optional)
• ImagesByName (Optional)
• Media Icons (when available)

Prep Work:

First thing to do is to read my original metabrowser guide linked to above regarding how your media should be named/organized.

If you plan on using the MediaInfo.dll make sure you download the correct version (x32 or x64) and place in the MetaBrowser folder located on your C: drive (either C:\Program Files\MetaBrowser 2.0 or C:\Program Files (x86)\MetaBrowser 2.0)

If you plan on using the Media Icons download and place in C:\ProgramData\MetaBrowser 2.0\ Windows 7 or if using Windows Home Server C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\MetaBrowser 2.0

Setting Up Metabrowser:

When you first open up metabrowser you will notice that the main screen has had a makeover. I will  go over the different views available, but first lets get the movie library set up by clicking on the “Settings” icon.

The first menu item “General” should look very familiar as it is nearly identical to the beta metabrowser. Simply point to your media locations and scan through the rest of the options to see if any changes need to be made.

The next menu item is “Value Lists”. You can pick and choose what values you want to be available to choose from. You can append Media Types, Genres, Aspect Ratio, Movie Studios, and Movie Ratings. This will further help to customize your metadata to your liking.

A new addition to the Settings is “Mapping”. What mapping does is it allows the user to replace any values retreived with a user defined value. An example of how mapping would work, let’s say you want the MPAA rating “PG-13″ to be replaced with “13″. By creating a mapping for this any time the fetcher pulls in “PG-13″ for the MPAA rating it will be replaced by “13″.

The final menu item is “Movies”. The first thing you will notice is that Plugins are referenced. This is a new feature to metabrowser and is a pretty significant change from how the beta version of metabrowser worked. The plugin architecture is open source so it can be used for any media center platform that supports local metadata. Each plugin has its own settings that is independent of metabrowser. A good example of the plugin architecture, SageTV has a metadata structure that is different then that of Media Browser. If someone wanted to use metabrowser to gather the metadata/artwork for SageTV they could create a plugin with all the settings/options so this could be done.

In the “Movies” menu item you can assign how your media collection appears, as well as assign where your Posters and Backdrops are pulled from.  If you want metabrowser to only use the Preferred Poster Plugin and not fall back to any others in the event that the Preferred Plugin is down, simply check the “Only use preferred poster plugin” box. The “Only use preferred plugin” and Backdrops/Posters to download feature only gets used for automatic retrievals (i.e. if folder monitoring is enabled or if you right-click on a movie and select process movie). If you manually fetch images metabrowser will show you a preview window of all available artwork from your preferred plugin, but if not available it will show results from the fallback plugins.

You may have noticed there is also a “Trailers” feature. This is pretty cool, metabrowser can now download trailers if available for local content (i.e. any movies you currently have in your library). With the release of Media Browser Thunder Blade, a new plugin structure was put into place. For trailers to work with Media Browser the trailer must be in a “Trailers” subfolder of each respective movie. If metabrowser finds a trailer for your local content it will create a “Trailers” subfolder and save the trailer there. My only gripe about this is that previously you could use local trailers with Media Browser as long as you had them referenced in the my-movies.xml (so you could save all your trailers in a central folder elsewhere). Instead of keeping this feature and also allowing for the new “Trailers” subfolder feature, the developers killed the xml reference feature (if you use various media platforms or test out different software as I do having a “Trailers” subfolder that is not supported by other programs causes problems). If you are interested in having this feature reimplemented please go to Media Browser and vote (I started a request here, I need more supporters!!!).

Within “Movies” there are several sub menus:

Locals: Here you will see the plugins that are available to look at what local metadata you currently have. For instance, if you want to use metabrowser to grab metadata for Media Browser you need to have the MediaBrowser local plugin set to primary. If you want to get metadata for XBMC you need to have that plugin set  to primary. Only 1 plugin can be set to primary

Fetchers: Fetchers are plugins that go online to get movie metadata. IMDB is set as the default fetcher. The neat thing about this feature is that you can pick and choose where metadata is pulled from for each field. For instance, lets say you want to use IMDB but decide that you want the field “Rating” pulled from TMDb, simply click on the dropdown next to “Rating” and select TMDb

Savers: This plugin will save your metadata locally in the various formats selected. This is a very important feature for me because I have multiple media center platforms that I run (for testing or otherwise). Since each platform has their own naming conventions for metadata this means that you need to run separate metadata programs as well. With this feature I might finally have the one metadata program to rule them all!!!

Renaming: If you wish to have metabrowser rename your movies you can enable it here.

Trailers: If there aren’t enough exciting new features added, this one is the icing on the cake. You can set metabrowser to automatically download the most recent trailers. Why this is nice is because getting a reliable streaming service for movie trailers has been somewhat unstable (i.e. Apple Trailers), so you can use this feature to download the latest trailers for viewing. Even better, you can schedule when the download should occur as well as instruct metabrowser to delete any trailers x number of days old.

You may have noticed that for most of the plugins there is a little “cog” icon next to them. By clicking on this icon you will be taken into the “Options” menu where you can enter in additional information required for each plugin. For instance, to be able to utilize MyMovies as a fetcher you need to have access to the MyMovies API which I believe requires having 2,500 points from MyMovies. If you have this, you simply enter in your username and password to access.

Managing Your Media: With all the settings/options set it is now time to explore the Main UI which is broken down into three columns. The first column to the left is the list of all the movies in your collection. Simply click “Refresh” in the toolbar above if you want to rescan for new content or click “Rebuild” if you want to rebuild your entire library. As in the previous version of metabrowser highlighting a movie will bring up all the associated metadata. Right click on a movie and you will be presented with several options, including “Lock Movie”, “Refresh Movie”, “Process Movie”, “Download Trailer”, “Download All Trailers”, and “Export List” (an excel file listing your entire movie collection will be exported).

The middle column showcases the movie poster. If you want to change or select another poster you can simply click on the “fetch” button at the bottom right of the column. A really nice feature that has been added is the ability to add whatever poster you would like by simply clicking and dragging the poster into Poster column. This is one feature I know many people asked for, and “<><” couldn’t have made it any easier. YOu will also notice at the top of the poster there are several media icons. If you decide to download the Media Icons from the “Files To Download” section these icons will appear based on the media info of the selected movie. If the movie also has an associated local trailer you will see a movie reel icon denoting this.

The far right column represents the selected movie information. It has been further broen up into several tabs:

• Information – Shows the main information of the movie that has been gathered and stored in the xml by the fetcher

• Backdrops – Similar to posters you can click and drag any local backdrops  you may have

• Cast – list of all cast members. If you have ImagesByName set up properly you should also see the Actors images.

• Crew – list of crew members involved in the selected movie
• Genres – list of genres tagged to the selected movie
• Studios – list of studios tagged to the selected movie
• Countries – list of country(ies) tagged to the selected movie
• Taglines – list of any memorable quotes/movies lines

• Unused Tags – shows unused tags in the xml. You can edit directly from the UI.

• Browser – web browser, takes you to the metabrowser home page
• MediaInfo – Assuming you downloaded MediaInfo.dll this will show detailed information on the movie file type. Very useful information to have.

• Trailers – if you are downloading any trailers you can see the status here.

So Should You Upgrade?

This is probably the question everyone is asking, or do you even need a separate metadata program such as metabrowser. Programs such as Media Browser and XBMC have their own internal scrapers, so you could easily get by without a separate metadata program. For me, I prefer to use a separate program because it gives me complete control over what metadata/covers/fanart is used. I also like to be able to see a listing of my entire video collection without having to open a media center application. The point here is you don’t have to use a separate program, it really just serves more as an enhancement.

As far as upgrading to the new metabrowser 2.0, it is really a matter of taking a look at the new features versus what you get currently with metabrowser or any other metadata program, and whether you even need or are willing to pay for the new features. For me, the following new features available in 2.0 interest me:

• Automatically schedule/download/delete recent trailers
• Download trailers for local content
• Ability to choose from various fetchers such as IMDB, TMDB, etc…
• Drag & Drop – see a cover/backdrop you like on the web, simply drag and drop it into metabrowser
• Ability to generate metadata for multiple front ends (saved me from have multiple metadata applications on my PC for testing)

The current beta metabrowser will continue to work, so if that does everything you need and the new features aren’t important to you then there probably isn’t much incentive to upgrade.

Final Thoughts:

As you can see metabrowser has undergone a very significant overhaul. It is amazing the amount of features that have been added and although some people will be dissappointed that it will no longer be free I feel it is definitely worth the price of admission. For a more detailed writeup of some of the features, head over to “<><“’s detailed writeup.  I have been waiting for a metadata program to rule all metadata programs, and this could very well be the one.

Additional Links / Resources:

• metabrowser home page
• “<><” metabrowser 2.0 writeup
• Media Browser Setup Guide
• MyMovies3 Setup Guide

Tagged as: Guides, Media Browser, Media Center, Media Streaming, Metabrowser, metadata, Releases, XBMC

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Article by Damian

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://dbone1026.blogspot.com.

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