George, just create a .vf file with notepad and save it in programdata\mediabrowser\startup folder. call it videos.vf(or whatever) and it must contain the server name and folder in the form "folder: //server name/folder name"(probably videos). Once you save it then it will show up in the configuration program. The folder: is really folder: while the folder name is probably Videos if that is where you stored your movies.

_________________
HP EX470, 4 GIG, 4200+ EE SFF, WHS V1, Production
HP EX485, 4 GIG, E5800, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Transfer Server, Backup Server
HP EX490, 4 GIG, Q9400S, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Mediaserver
HP EX485, 4 GIG, Q8200S, WHS 2011, ITUNES Server

Hey George,

Just follow what erail said about creating the virtual folder (vf). It is not necessary to view your media in MediaBrowser but the MB Config requires it for network shares. Using the Virtual Folder you can essentially create groups. For instance, I have 4 movie folders (Movies SD, Movies HD, Movies Family SD, Movie Family HD), so I created two VFs (Family / Movies) and assigned the relevant movie folders to each VF.

As far as naming convention, here is a good wiki for MB that explains best practice (http://www.mediabrowser.tv/wiki/index.p ... Collection).

My Movies:
- each movie has its own folder (try to name the folder the exact name of the movie)
- If an SD Rip (Video_TS) nothing else needed, just make sure the Video_TS folder is in the movie folder
- If an individual file, make sure it is in the respective movie folder and once again named as close as possible to the actual name. You can have some extra info at the end. For instance, my mkvs are usually labeled My Movies -> Terminator -> Terminator 1080p Blu Ray.mkv

My TV Shows:
- Each TV Show has its own folder
- Under the TV show folder there is a folder for each season
- Under the Season the actual media files are stored, with the naming convention SXXEXX (Ok that looks bad ). So for the tv show Scrubs my structure is as follows: TV Shows -> Scrubs -> Season 8 -> S08E01.mkv (as well as S08E02, S08E03, etc...). Another is TV Shows -> Supernatural -> Season 4 -> S04E16.mkv

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

To: erail and Damian

Thank you both for nudging me in the right direction. I appreciate the detials. I am sure I will be getting back with more questions, but it may be a day or two before I do...after I have set up and understand the suggestions each of you have made.

I Thank Posted you both for the help. I have so much to learn in this area.
George

_________________
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle - Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC - 322 BC)

Latest version of Media Browser is available for your tweaking pleasure. I got a chance to do a quick install and post some screenshots which can be seen here. Looks sharp, especially the trailer plug-in.

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

Finally got some more time to look at this.

I created a file called video.vf. I assume this file should be created in the C:\programdata\mediabrowser\startup folder of the VMC computer. Right? I tried to creat the file in the root directory of the c: drive on my VMC. I could only create it in the user directory of the Vista file system. I don't have much experience with Vista yet... going direcly to Win7 instead, but I am operating Vista Ultimate on my VMC right now. To be honest I could not figure out how to creat the .vf file in c:\progamdata\mediabrowser\Startup so I just created it in C:\Users\Public\Public ProgramData\MediaBrowser\Startup

I know this is not MB's default location so that might be part of the problem I am having.

Here is a screenshot of the video.vf file I created in the C:\Users\Public\Public ProgramData\MediaBrowser\Startup directory.


Questiion: I use forward slashes. Right?

Then I go to the MB config softwre and add the startup folder from C:\Users\Public\Public ProgramData\MediaBrowser\Startup?

If I do that I get the folowing:


The three meida locations shown above the Startup media location are ones that are on my VMC machine. I can see the videos in those three when I start MB on my VMC but I cannot see the server locations I defined in the startup folder. Instead, in MB I just see the folder "startup" with no movies in it.

I am sorry to bug you guys again about this, but I just can't see how to get MB to locate and display my movies over on the server. I have searched the MB forums especially the Tutorial area and still dont see how to "see" my server movies within MB.

If this gets too complicted to explain over the forum. I would be glad to call either one of you guys (erail or Damian) at my expense and at your convenience. If you think we can deal with this subject ok on the forum, of course, thats fine with me as well. Sorry to be such a dunce about this.
George

_________________
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle - Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC - 322 BC)

George, it's backward slashes ie.(folder: \\SUPERWHS\Videos). To create a .vf file - open notepad, enter your data, save it to the desktop and then move from desktop to c: \programdata\mediabrowser\startupfolder. does no good to have it in public.

Edit: Sorry I confused you with the previous post. Always get forward and backward slashes reversed.

_________________
HP EX470, 4 GIG, 4200+ EE SFF, WHS V1, Production
HP EX485, 4 GIG, E5800, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Transfer Server, Backup Server
HP EX490, 4 GIG, Q9400S, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Mediaserver
HP EX485, 4 GIG, Q8200S, WHS 2011, ITUNES Server

OK, thanks erail. I have backslashes now. And I was able to save video.vf in the c:\programdata\mediabrowser\startup folder. The programdata folder in the root directory was hidden. I finally got it unhidden and things went well from there.

Does it take a while before the video folders defined in my video.vf file will show in MB? I still see the other three media folders on my VMC, but do not see the server share folders I defined in the video.vf file.
George

_________________
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle - Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC - 322 BC)

Does it show up in the config screen? if so, then they should show in MB. It may take a little time to populate but the top folder video should show.

Edit: I'm assuming that the folders you show in previous post are top level folders you created in the mediasmart and are not under videos folder. If so they should show, if not you have to have the full path to them.

_________________
HP EX470, 4 GIG, 4200+ EE SFF, WHS V1, Production
HP EX485, 4 GIG, E5800, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Transfer Server, Backup Server
HP EX490, 4 GIG, Q9400S, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Mediaserver
HP EX485, 4 GIG, Q8200S, WHS 2011, ITUNES Server

Update: Never mind, erail. I was saving the video file as a text file (video.vf.txt). Once I saved it as a .vf file, my server movies started loading in MB. This looks fantatcic! I think I am really goint to like this MediaBrowser app.

Thank you very much for your help, erail.

Yes it shows in config. See Screenshot


I can't get a shot of MB wokring inside VMC but will describe. It shows the three top folders but not the two server folders defined by the .vf fle.

Maybe it just takes a while before the sever folders show up. There is a large number of movies in each of the two directories. Could be reading these large files and processing them somehow maybe? All the files on the server are .dvr-ms files and I DID tell MB that dvr-ms files were one of the extentions. Most of the movies on the server are in folders by movie name, so I guess I will get nice looking metadata (thumbnails/posters) for those movies when they load. The stuff I am seeing for moveis I have in folders on the VMC machinne (as defined by the three top folders) looks great!!!

_________________
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle - Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC - 322 BC)

Damian and erail,
Just wanted to tell you both how much I am enjoying using MediaBrowser. WOW! What a great product. Damian, now I see what your mean about MB's UI kicking butt. Now that is a flashy app. I now have all my movies in folders pointed to by MB when I fire it up as part of my VMC experience. Couldn't be happier.

It looks like MB will even play a few .avi files I had from long ago. Now that would save me a ton of disk space if I converted all my dvr-ms files to avi files. They are usually about 75% smaller that the corresponding dvr-ms files. I am temped to find a batch processsing program to convert all my 300+ dvr-ms movies to avi.

Do you think I can do that without a quality loss... of course, understand my moves are all SD at this point so anything close to the SD quality I see now would be acceptable to me. I do have one reservation even if there is not much quality loss... the time to convert all those files.

As All4Fun said... MediaBrowser Rocks!!!!!
George

_________________
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle - Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC - 322 BC)

Hey George,

Sorry I have been MIA of late, been an odd few weeks with my monitor going down (just got a new one for fathers day so I should be back up in business) and just had an unexpected trip to the dentist today for a route canal...Glad to see you like MB, they really have done a great job. I am tinkering with their new release (2.1) and there is some real nice enhancements. I also have been working on getting my local trailers to link up with each movie which is nice, and the new Apple Trailers plug in I am a big fan of. Couple items I have come across in the latest version - 1) Actor Images doesn't seem to be working, or if it does the process has changed and needs to be documented 2) Apple Trailers works for some, not others (appears x64 systems are having trouble, even on my x32 system about half the trailers work). Overall though I can do nothing but tip my hat to the developers for an outstanding job. I hope to post full details of my setup (from grabbing individual trailers to setting up start covers, etc... shortly).

As far as the quality loss with conversions, I would recommend you pick one DVR-MS movie and convert to avi (keeping the original DVR-MS). Play both files and see if the quality loss, if any, is acceptable.

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

No problem, Damian. I actually forgot yesterday was Father's day (I'm not one and my Dad has passed) so no wonder you were not on the forum yesterday. Sorry to hear about the RC (not Release Candidate ) I have had a few of those done too... no fun.

Glad to see you are going to give us some info on trailers and such. Looking forward to that.

Good idea on the quality of avi vs dvr-ms. I'll do just that.
George

_________________
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle - Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC - 322 BC)

I downloaded and installed meta browser at the same time I instlaled MediaBrowser. I have not looked at meda browser much, however. I was wondering if my metadata was coming from meta browser or from MediaBrowser. I ask because several of my movies have not yet populated with metadata at all and some have partial data. This is not a major problem as most of my movies have complete metadata (as far as I know what data is "usually" available, but some moves, even failrly recent ones don't have any data. Is there some way I can tell MB or meta browser to get the right data in where data is missing?
George

_________________
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle - Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC - 322 BC)

George - MediaBrowser pulls the metadata into cache, I don't believe it actually stores the metadata with your files (how Metabrowser does it). Best bet would be just to let Metabrowser run through your collection first (I think you can set an auto save feature to write over any missing data). Another option is YAMMM, but honestly I have not tried it out yet.

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

Thanks for the tip, Damian. I will look at Metabrowser some more. Thanks for the link to YAMMM. I will check it out.
George

_________________
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle - Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC - 322 BC)