 |
My Movies
»
My Movies for Windows
»
Support
»
Fresh Installation Issues
|
|
Groups: Member
Joined: 5/13/2009
Posts: 296
Location: Georgia, USA
Rank:
 (3485)
|
Hey khenzel, thanks for the great reply! I was hopeful you would post something, you exceeded my wishes, thank you. You gave a lot to digest, and I'm taking it all into consideration, though I do have some thoughts to share now. khenzel wrote:For starters, I think really selling how CMC consumes WMC... if I saw an ad out there telling me CMC consumed My Movies Collection Manager, I would have abandoned my movies in a flash, as transplanting the solution in a portable stand alone solution suddenly breathed another 10+ years of life into this collection management option. ... may have never realized it if you didn't go "dude, it USES collection manager!" :) That's a good point. Marketing isn't my strength, and I've struggled to convey to users what CMC is, and how it provides that WMC style front-end for My Movies Collection Management. I'll have to work on the messaging. khenzel wrote:I love your tutorial forum with the TLDR section. For tekkies like me, all i had to do was skim the bold text and got things running in under 30 mins. Though, i'd say for the common user seeing the software alone on first boot could be daunting. I, a 15 year dev, opened it at first, saw the opening screen, and was like "what am I looking at here?" :) Maybe an addition of a quick start wizard to plug in the initial settings? More direction on "This is server, this is client" like Binnerup does w/their installer, and for sake of simplicity, gutting the options and just pushing CCC which is all anyone likely needs. The legacy stuff can still exist, but remove it from the tut, make it as a footnote or something less prevalent. I skimmed the 3 options quickly, didn't read in to it too much, saw you suggested option 3 and just went with that. If i spent 3 more mins reading the other 2 points i would understand, but basically the question is "should i care?" - better to add that stuff as a troubleshooting area as options when people tried CCC, didnt work, and they landed there. That's great feedback, thanks. The TLDR stuff for CCC is the newest stuff, because CCC was added less than two years ago. I've been planning to rewrite all the tutorials and to optimize it exactly as you suggested it. The reason it's laid out the way it is, is that in the beginning there only existed option A, then I created Chameleon Metadata Exporter (CME) to improve that process so that was option B, and then finally I created CCC so option C. But you're absolutely right, for 99% of My Movies users, using CCC is the right path and I need to revise the install guides to make that easier. And a setup wizard has been suggested many times, so you're in good company there. My big holdup here is that CMC has changed so much in the past few years, that any wizard I would have created would have been obsoleted several times over. I think CMC is finally getting to a stable point where a setup wizard might actually be viable. khenzel wrote: My next point, see my first post in this thread. I still don't know why this specific windows 11 pc gave me the script error in My Movies Collection Manager, and why 2 other pc's in the house running the same system software and the exact same setup both work. I would be very concerned if this issue pops up more... and validate if its happening on installs on fresh built systems as of 9/1/2022. I'm not the only one, so i'd think this is more prevalent than just a quirky install i hit. As CMC is built on top of collection manager, this could be a software killer just as Media Center's days were numbered unless Binnerup agrees to debug and fix this solution to keep it going. From my discussion with the admin though, sounds like they literally washed their hands of the software and have abandoned it though... so yeah, brings a concern. Agreed, we all want and need Collection Manager to keep our collections alive. To be honest, I thought you were only having a problem with WMC, and I didn't understand you were also having a problem with Collection Manager. I see Brian has posted a potential fix, so fingers crossed. Though one of the nice things about using CMC is that you only need to have Collection Manager running on 1 PC. I've dedicated a virtual machine running Win10, and all it runs is Collection Manager and CCC. For other users, you could easily dedicate an old Win7 machine. This dedicated My Movies Server configuration means you are free to run Win11 and all the latest browsers and drivers and goodies on your HTPC's, and you don't have to worry about MS SQL install errors or keeping WMC alive. khenzel wrote:As to overall experience, the only things i really miss from Media Center are the menu transition animations which add to the menu anesthetics but does not impact the solution's base functionality. But, keeping in mind that this software's chief delivery is for not just collection management but visualization, might be pretty sweet if that could be added in a later revision. I also liked the startup animation in media center - which even allowed for different start up animation hacks using themer. I had mine set up to play a Xbox style bootup sequence which i loved every time i hit the button. Perhaps this is something that could be added too? :) I didn't know you could re-theme the startup logo animation, that's pretty neat. I do have plans to make the GUI more interactive and with animations like you describe - but less so than what WMC did. I'm a much better programmer than when I started writing CMC 5 years ago, and I've been thinking about a major overhaul that takes advantage of my improved skillset. khenzel wrote:One other thing is more of a VLC limitation... but can be addressed by how CMC integrates with VLC for playback.... and that's for continuous play for all videos in one folder (I.E. TV series episodes). You can get around this by adding a hook into CMC to play season as opposed to an individual episode. If you hit VLC's command line with "Open Folder path:", It appends all videos in the folder to the playlist. I looked through VLC settings to see if it supported continuous play on VLC's end of things, but it does not. The only solution would be for the container app to deliver the instruction to VLC. Because of this, unfortunately, I am still sticking with Plex to play tv episodes as nothing is more annoying than reaching for the remote in bed to start the next episode while your trying to sleep. The quick answer here is: Use MPC-BE. The ability to play one episode after another only works with MPC, and MPC-BE is also required to play movie trailers via YouTube. MPC will also close when the episode finishes, and CMC will autoplay the next. I'm not sure about the VLC play folder option. That is very different from what I have developed. CMC can play individual episodes directly, even from ISO's, and it works by CMC to passing the specific path to that episode. Playing a folder for an ISO or DVD rip would not work well. I do understand how it could work for encoded media sitting together in a folder, but there challenge would lie with making CMC understand when and when not using that type of playback would be appropriate. Also, the autoplay feature with MPC also allows CMC to track which episodes have been watched, one-by-one as you watch them. And in a future version it will have pause and resume even across multiple HTPC's. But again, this is stuff that only works with MPC, because MPC is the only player that has bothered to expose all the control points for CMC to integrate at this level. With a player like PowerDVD, you can't even play some episodes directly at all. khenzel wrote:One quick comment here... for client side. This was not obvious to me (and funny thing is my client PC has the same movie drive mounted with the same drive letter as my server PC, so i did not notice this at first)... once you integrate the client to the server and click to sync, it syncs all data, but the PATHS remain static to the server. I found when i re-named some episodes on the server side only and attempted to play that i got errors... looked at the movie landing page and realized the path listed was a local static path. ... Might be nice when the software is configured to hit a server via network share setting, that a notice is posted to the user informing them of this shortcomming, requesting a network share path. I get that CMC should not drive that config as multi-network host locations would be a literal nightmare for CMC to gatekeep, but at minimum informing the user that a static local path assignment inside collection manager just won't work might be a very good thing to present here. Technically, you're going against Binnerup's guidelines for My Movies by using static/local paths. CMC can play local path content, in fact in the non-CCC usage model CMC scans your folders directly for media to play, so local static folders are not a limitation for CMC. The requirement here with using CCC to sync My Movies data to CMC is that obviously the paths have to be valid and identical for all computers, however you want to achieve that. I also have a tool in CCC to "Validate All File Paths for All Discs", which will double-check every last disc path to make sure the location is still valid. It's great for identifying issues. Though I would recommend fixing via the GUI when possible, as the GUI sets the Changed date/time flags that CCC uses for export. khenzel wrote:My last item is the mouse scroll wheel. This may sound silly, but because of this i won't use the mouse to navigate the menu as to me its that bad. I had no issue navigating the media center my movies shell as the mouse scroll wheel would scroll through the collection. As you really just have to click around to move the list, or use arrow keys, makes use of a mouse as stand alone a no-go for me. But whatever... i just had to dust off my old media center remote and move back to that, so i worked around it. When I first wrote CMC, it only supported using a remote control - no mouse at all. Over time I've been adding in mouse and touch support. This is still a work in progress, but mostly complete. No one's mentioned the mouse wheel before, though, so I hadn't even thought about configuring it. I'll add that to the list, thanks. khenzel wrote:adding a media center stock slideshow with family images would also be a nice touch if one would prefer that over movie art, but a pure bonus Actually, that is there, but it's currently only exposed in the Music Library. I still have work to do on it, but I integrated it with Google Photos, so I can play slideshows of my photos straight from the web while listening to music. I think it got broken recently, so I need to work on fixing it again, and I also need to add in local media support. Long term, I do plan to make this more like how WMC let you play photo slideshows. That's a good idea to have that work in place of the movie slideshow too. khenzel wrote:I LOVE the VLC and Power DVD integration. I don't know if you are familiar, but running media center on a 4k/8k tv has an unsupported resolution. Playing through the default player in media center would always have this messed up line on the right side of the screen that would only go away if you minimize/maximize the screen the garbled line goes away, but the entire video becomes grainy and un-watchable on a HD TV. So once i upgraded to my HD TV, i started using my movies just for a video navigator. I would find a movie i wanted to watch, closed out media center, and opened it via file system. Horrible.
With your system, it actually makes it functional again as both a movie picker and a player. Took a few settings to get it to work exactly as media center did (would be nice to have a tutorial to outline this - auto close when the video stops, auto resume where you left off, and auto maximize when the movie plays) but took me 2 secs to google and get going.
I NEVER got iso playback to work well with media center. I installed a hack that got it to work for a bit, then it stopped working and didn't bother trying again. Yours works great! I did have to disable the VMC or w/e iso image mount setting for power dvd to work, but once i did, it works incredibly! Another huge improvement for me as I always wanted that to work well, but it never did due to the limitations of media center. That's awesome, glad you got this working well for you. I worked very hard on simply making these work out of the box, so users don't have to do much config, certainly less hoops than other solutions. VLC is admittedly rough around the edges, I did most of that work pre v3.0, and I need to spend some time playing with VLC to see what new capabilities I can exploit. Did I read that correctly, you have VLC auto close, auto resume, and auto maximize working? Were those settings in VLC? Please share. khenzel wrote:Beyond that, I'm probably a bit niche in how anal i am at sorting my collection just as i like it, and have spent tons of hours in collection manager adding everything manually by hand, assigning categories, and combining movies into collections. For me i wouldn't consider another option like plex as auto import just doesn't work the way i want it. That is why I am so stoked for CMC... so much so i just bought one of these for my bedroom: https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-nucxi5-nucxi7?variant=43044971774197So i can use it in all rooms of my house :) That MinisForum NUC looks very interesting, I'm sure it will be a great player. I agree with you 100% - anyone who uses My Movies for their Collection Management shouldn't even waste time with KODI or PLEX, because they haven't bothered to properly integrate with My Movies. And I'd like to make the integration even better in the future, but that will require Brian to add some new API functionality. khenzel wrote:Hats off to you for building this software. I'm digging it!
anyway, sorry for the lengthy post, but you asked for my thoughts, and there they are! I hope they are useful :) Awesome, my friend. It makes me very happy that you're enjoying it. I plan to keep making it better, so feel free to share ideas and ask questions, though I would recommend doing this on the CMC forums. Also, surprise, I'm halfway done with programming the Parental Restrictions by Categories. This capability seems quite a bit more advanced than I imagined based upon your description. I'm modelling it after the My Movies solution, so at least the solution should be familiar - fingers crossed it ends up working the same.  khenzel wrote:
EDIT: one final thing, i tried the remote mapping setting to map opening of CMC with the colored buttons - notification of admin to push registry after i changed the setting, which i did and got the success message, but no level of setting alteration allowed my remote to launch CMC... yet. I still have some fiddling to, but so far it's not working for me. I saw the advanced software and haven't touched that yet. May go there if the setting UI just won't work for me... Just a FYI :)
Did you reboot? The steps are to start CMC as Administrator, change the button config, save the button config, then reopen the settings and click the update registry button, then reboot. Though there could be a conflict with WMC on this PC. I know on Win7/8.1 with WMC, Microsoft prevents the remapping of certain button (like the big green button and the media buttons), but you can reprogram them on Win10 & Win11. But I've long wondered if installing WMC on Win10/11 would block the reprogramming of those buttons. For maximum button programmability, I recommend running CMC on a PC without WMC installed, so stock Win10/Win11 are best. Though since you said colored buttons, those should be reprogrammable regardless. I'm guessing you didn't reboot. Note of caution on the Advanced Remote Mapper - late in testing, we discovered that it only works with true RC6 Media Center remotes. Some CMC users have what appear to be WMC remotes, but they are not RC6 compatible, so they don't work with the Advanced Remote Mapper at this time. Thanks again! -Paul
Chameleon MediaCenter (CMC) v5.0 - A FREE WMC replacement GUI for My Movies Collection Management on Win7/8.1/10/11, plus a Music Library and App Launcher!
|
|
Groups: Member
Joined: 11/23/2008
Posts: 45
Rank:
 (2505)
|
Heading off to bed now and just saw your post. I'll reply more tomorrow, but i wanted to reply to this bit now:
"That's awesome, glad you got this working well for you. I worked very hard on simply making these work out of the box, so users don't have to do much config, certainly less hoops than other solutions. VLC is admittedly rough around the edges, I did most of that work pre v3.0, and I need to spend some time playing with VLC to see what new capabilities I can exploit.
Did I read that correctly, you have VLC auto close, auto resume, and auto maximize working? Were those settings in VLC? Please share."
Resume setting:
Tools > Preferences > Playlist and Instances group > Continue Playback? = Always
This creates a bookmark with auto resume on every video you jump out of, and kicks off where you left off on next open.
Tools > Preferences > Video > Fullscreen = checked
this auto maximizes the screen when played.
I also suggest Force Aspect Ration = 16:9 for those of us who just can't stand the 4:3 letterbox videos. This forces 16:9 aspect on all opened videos by default.
Tools > Preferences > Show settings = all > Advanced Preferences pane > Playlist group > Play and exit = checked
This auto closes VLC when the video completes, or when stop is pressed.
with this setup, the only way you know an outside player is handling this is the vlc launch white text when opening a video. Other than that it is 100% seamless.
Oh, and that collection management integration you are working on, amazing! I love seeing a developer that has a passion for his work. Not many developers see software development as an art form, more a way to pay the bills. You are definitely one of the former :)
Hats off to you!
|
|
Groups: Administration
, Windows RT/8 Discussion Group
Joined: 2/1/2005
Posts: 49,429
Location: Aarhus, Denmark
Rank:
 (158246)
|
|
|
Groups: Member
Joined: 5/13/2009
Posts: 296
Location: Georgia, USA
Rank:
(3485)
|
Disappointing that all of the settings were manual settings you had to make in VLC. I prefer when they expose these via the command line, so I can call them from CMC. Thanks for sharing. khenzel wrote:with this setup, the only way you know an outside player is handling this is the vlc launch white text when opening a video. Other than that it is 100% seamless. This too is configurable, and you can hide it if you want: Settings > Display Settings > GUI Verbose Level
khenzel wrote:Oh, and that collection management integration you are working on, amazing! I love seeing a developer that has a passion for his work. Not many developers see software development as an art form, more a way to pay the bills. You are definitely one of the former :)
Hats off to you!
Thanks! 
Chameleon MediaCenter (CMC) v5.0 - A FREE WMC replacement GUI for My Movies Collection Management on Win7/8.1/10/11, plus a Music Library and App Launcher!
|
|
Groups: Member
Joined: 2/25/2010
Posts: 188
Rank:
(2726)
|
|
|
Groups: Member
Joined: 6/6/2011
Posts: 1
Rank:
 (0)
|
This new version fixed my script issue. Good show! 
|
|
Groups: Administration
, Windows RT/8 Discussion Group
Joined: 2/1/2005
Posts: 49,429
Location: Aarhus, Denmark
Rank:
(158246)
|
|
|
Groups: Member
Joined: 11/23/2008
Posts: 45
Rank:
(2505)
|
pauven wrote:Disappointing that all of the settings were manual settings you had to make in VLC. I prefer when they expose these via the command line, so I can call them from CMC. Thanks for sharing. khenzel wrote:with this setup, the only way you know an outside player is handling this is the vlc launch white text when opening a video. Other than that it is 100% seamless. This too is configurable, and you can hide it if you want: Settings > Display Settings > GUI Verbose Level
khenzel wrote:Oh, and that collection management integration you are working on, amazing! I love seeing a developer that has a passion for his work. Not many developers see software development as an art form, more a way to pay the bills. You are definitely one of the former :)
Hats off to you!
Thanks! Tried posting again to the CMC forum... another 10 mins of failures lol, figured i'd just ask here... really quick question... It looks like you are reading the watched bool to show check marks on the UI, but I noticed that they do not update when viewing under CMC. What is the possibility of adding a watched boolean to the videos? I understand that you would need to write to the MYMOVIES db to set the watched flag to true, but this is a VERY valuable feature. I'm guessing as it makes use of various external player that a "partially watched" option isn't realistic, but would be killer if it was as well. Any way this can be implemented? Seems it could be a relatively easy feature to implement: on play, execute sproc: This way you can update that check mark while using CMC. Thoughts? I'm not sure if you have an apprehension to writing directly to the MyMovies DB directly, but this is a very minor db update. I suppose if the write to the DB is a no-go for you, you could always use the application setting location for CMC as well, perhaps produce a flat file dump of watched only title id's with the watched bool from the tblTitlePersonal table on initial load, and from there just maintain the flat file to paint the UI with instead... something like on open, check for any new watched titles that don't already exist in the flat file and add. From there you can simply store new titles as they are watched independently from the My Movies DB. I like that I can see what i've already watched in the legacy app, but deff would be good to have the watch bool updating inside CMC as well... also if we could bring back the unwatch option as well to remove that check mark as a bonus... Also, i don't see how watched is working at all on TV series? I notice after episodes every tv episode has a * after the title, but these are after EVERY tv title i have regardless of watched status. Perhaps the * is supposed to indicate watched, but isn't working? EDIT: I see under title -> Actions you have the setting for "Mark as Unwatched", so seems like you already have the feature baked in. I wonder if the watched feature is already baked in, but for some reason my setup is just not updating watched, perhaps because of my player of choice = VLC? Also, i LOVE the watched filter and the add to watch list feature! I just now found this and its an amazing feature! Still finding cool things as i go! :) -would also be great to be able to add a tv series/season/episode to the watch list as well! AND, if this isn't too crazy a thought... what if there was an additional watch list? Like one for the adults, and one for the kiddo's? That would be pretty awesome! :D could just be something like a click cycle - add to watchlist a, add to watchlist b, remove from watchlist (and the bow could show yellow for watchlist a, and red for watchlist b on the UI). Would be a killer feature for parents. We are always on the search for movies that aren't too painful to watch with our two 3 year olds... so we could have a dedicated watch list we build for the kids on the ready for family movie nights to save the hours of scrolling through all the kid trash out there LOL :)
|
|
Groups: Administration
, Windows RT/8 Discussion Group
Joined: 2/1/2005
Posts: 49,429
Location: Aarhus, Denmark
Rank:
(158246)
|
khenzel wrote:pauven wrote:Disappointing that all of the settings were manual settings you had to make in VLC. I prefer when they expose these via the command line, so I can call them from CMC. Thanks for sharing. khenzel wrote:with this setup, the only way you know an outside player is handling this is the vlc launch white text when opening a video. Other than that it is 100% seamless. This too is configurable, and you can hide it if you want: Settings > Display Settings > GUI Verbose Level
khenzel wrote:Oh, and that collection management integration you are working on, amazing! I love seeing a developer that has a passion for his work. Not many developers see software development as an art form, more a way to pay the bills. You are definitely one of the former :)
Hats off to you!
Thanks! Tried posting again to the CMC forum... another 10 mins of failures lol, figured i'd just ask here... really quick question... It looks like you are reading the watched bool to show check marks on the UI, but I noticed that they do not update when viewing under CMC. What is the possibility of adding a watched boolean to the videos? I understand that you would need to write to the MYMOVIES db to set the watched flag to true, but this is a VERY valuable feature. I'm guessing as it makes use of various external player that a "partially watched" option isn't realistic, but would be killer if it was as well. Any way this can be implemented? Seems it could be a relatively easy feature to implement: on play, execute sproc: REMOVED This way you can update that check mark while using CMC. Thoughts? I'm not sure if you have an apprehension to writing directly to the MyMovies DB directly, but this is a very minor db update. I suppose if the write to the DB is a no-go for you, you could always use the application setting location for CMC as well, perhaps produce a flat file dump of watched only title id's with the watched bool from the tblTitlePersonal table on initial load, and from there just maintain the flat file to paint the UI with instead... something like on open, check for any new watched titles that don't already exist in the flat file and add. From there you can simply store new titles as they are watched independently from the My Movies DB. I like that I can see what i've already watched in the legacy app, but deff would be good to have the watch bool updating inside CMC as well... also if we could bring back the unwatch option as well to remove that check mark as a bonus... Also, i don't see how watched is working at all on TV series? I notice after episodes every tv episode has a * after the title, but these are after EVERY tv title i have regardless of watched status. Perhaps the * is supposed to indicate watched, but isn't working? EDIT: I see under title -> Actions you have the setting for "Mark as Unwatched", so seems like you already have the feature baked in. I wonder if the watched feature is already baked in, but for some reason my setup is just not updating watched, perhaps because of my player of choice = VLC? Also, i LOVE the watched filter and the add to watch list feature! I just now found this and its an amazing feature! Still finding cool things as i go! :) -would also be great to be able to add a tv series/season/episode to the watch list as well! AND, if this isn't too crazy a thought... what if there was an additional watch list? Like one for the adults, and one for the kiddo's? That would be pretty awesome! :D could just be something like a click cycle - add to watchlist a, add to watchlist b, remove from watchlist (and the bow could show yellow for watchlist a, and red for watchlist b on the UI). Would be a killer feature for parents. We are always on the search for movies that aren't too painful to watch with our two 3 year olds... so we could have a dedicated watch list we build for the kids on the ready for family movie nights to save the hours of scrolling through all the kid trash out there LOL :)
Having trouble installing or upgrading to My Movies 5? Click here for troubleshooting.Having a problem? Searching our Knowledge Base is always the first step.How can I produce a log file in My Movies for Windows?How can I fully uninstall My Movies for Windows
|
|
Groups: Administration
, Windows RT/8 Discussion Group
Joined: 2/1/2005
Posts: 49,429
Location: Aarhus, Denmark
Rank:
(158246)
|
I have removed a database editing script from this post. The database is to be considered internal and a locked part without access - yes, when you are a Windows admin, you can bypass the internal security set in place to ensure that users do not edit the database. You should not in any situation edit the database, as it can lead to various problems - specifically the script posted here would lead to the device being out of sync with the online service, which can give various sync issues. So, the database should not be touched.
Having trouble installing or upgrading to My Movies 5? Click here for troubleshooting.Having a problem? Searching our Knowledge Base is always the first step.How can I produce a log file in My Movies for Windows?How can I fully uninstall My Movies for Windows
|
|
Groups: Member
Joined: 5/13/2009
Posts: 296
Location: Georgia, USA
Rank:
(3485)
|
binnerup wrote:I have removed a database editing script from this post. Hey Brian, just a head's up, looks like you somehow missed removing the script.
Chameleon MediaCenter (CMC) v5.0 - A FREE WMC replacement GUI for My Movies Collection Management on Win7/8.1/10/11, plus a Music Library and App Launcher!
|
|
Groups: Member
Joined: 5/13/2009
Posts: 296
Location: Georgia, USA
Rank:
(3485)
|
khenzel wrote:Tried posting again to the CMC forum... another 10 mins of failures lol, figured i'd just ask here... Sorry, khenzel, I had a catastrophic web server failure last week, and was forced to restore from a backup that was 3 weeks old. Since you had created your account after that backup, that means your account was lost. Please register on the CMC forum again, and sorry for the inconvenience. khenzel wrote:really quick question... It looks like you are reading the watched bool to show check marks on the UI, but I noticed that they do not update when viewing under CMC. ... I see under title -> Actions you have the setting for "Mark as Unwatched", so seems like you already have the feature baked in. I wonder if the watched feature is already baked in, but for some reason my setup is just not updating watched, perhaps because of my player of choice = VLC? CMC/ already has full support for this, and it is better than you are describing. CCC has a bidirectional API link to My Movies. Not only does it extract the Watched status for each title/episode, it can also update the Watched status in My Movies via the API. There is one limitation to this update of My Movies, it doesn't allow for specifying the user account, so the status is always updated for the primary My Movies account. For this reason, in CCC's User Accounts panel, you can specify a CCC account that will sync their Watched status back into My Movies (for best results, I would recommend only configuring one account to do this, but you can configure multiple if you prefer). Additionally, CCC/CMC tracks Watched status per user, for every user, even if they are not synced back into My Movies. One of the benefits of this is that you can create a Guest account, and when you have friends staying with you they can watch under the Guest account and it won't affect your own personal watched history. You can create separate accounts for each family member to not only implement parental restrictions, but also for tracking the watched status. And in CCC > Settings > Reports, you can see the watched history for each account. It's extremely comprehensive. As you noticed under Title Details > Actions, you can toggle each title as Watched/Unwatched. You can also use the remote control button "Clear" to toggle this status (same as with WMC) which is also the Escape key on your keyboard. This works not only for movies, but also for TV series episodes. Anytime you change the watched status, it syncs to CCC immediately (assuming CCC is online) or is queued up for later sync (when CCC comes back online). This way, the Watched status is synced to all CMC HTPC's in your house. Additionally, CMC will automark a movie or episode as watched if you have it playing for at least 85% of the runtime (that 85% threshold is configurable in Settings > Video Playback Options > Automark Watched Playtime Threshold). While this works extremely well, it does require that the runtime is actually set in My Movies (it's missing for some titles, which throws off this calculation). Additionally, CMC doesn't know the difference between playing and paused, so if you start a movie and then hit Pause for a couple hours, CMC will think you've watched for 2 hours and might mark the movie as Watched. You cannot directly mark Box Sets/Movie Collections or TV Series or Seasons as Watched/Unwatched. For these special items, the Watched status is inferred based upon the children. So to mark a Box Set or Movie Collection as Watched, you have to mark each individual movie in the set as Watched. Ditto for a TV Series/Season, you have to mark each episode as Watched. khenzel wrote: I'm not sure if you have an apprehension to writing directly to the MyMovies DB directly, but this is a very minor db update. Out of respect for Brian and Binnerup Consult, I will never include any DB writes in software I release. For the most part, the My Movies API does everything we need, so there's really not even a reason to discuss the DB. The major exception that I hope Brian will address someday is permitting export of the Actor/Crew data via the API (bio's and pictures). Those were a really nice feature in WMC, and it is sorely missed in the API.khenzel wrote:I like that I can see what i've already watched in the legacy app, but deff would be good to have the watch bool updating inside CMC as well... also if we could bring back the unwatch option as well to remove that check mark as a bonus... As I wrote above, this all already exists, and has been working for years. I'm not sure why you perceive it as not working. khenzel wrote:Also, i don't see how watched is working at all on TV series? I notice after episodes every tv episode has a * after the title, but these are after EVERY tv title i have regardless of watched status. Perhaps the * is supposed to indicate watched, but isn't working? The Asterisk indicates Unwatched (aka New). Once an episode is flagged as Watched, the asterisk goes away. You can use the "Clear" button on your remote, or the Escape key on your keyboard, to toggle this. And as long as you watched at least 85% of the episode's configured runtime (episode runtime set in My Movies), then it will automark the episode as watched. khenzel wrote:EDIT:
I see under title -> Actions you have the setting for "Mark as Unwatched", so seems like you already have the feature baked in. I wonder if the watched feature is already baked in, but for some reason my setup is just not updating watched, perhaps because of my player of choice = VLC? This works with all players. It does work best with MPC (as do most things) because MPC allows CMC to query the actual movie/episode watched position, to see if you have truly watched at least 85%. But this works with all players based upon "time spent in player, away from CMC". khenzel wrote:Also, i LOVE the watched filter and the add to watch list feature! I just now found this and its an amazing feature! Still finding cool things as i go! :)
-would also be great to be able to add a tv series/season/episode to the watch list as well!
AND, if this isn't too crazy a thought... what if there was an additional watch list? Like one for the adults, and one for the kiddo's? That would be pretty awesome! :D could just be something like a click cycle - add to watchlist a, add to watchlist b, remove from watchlist (and the bow could show yellow for watchlist a, and red for watchlist b on the UI). Would be a killer feature for parents. We are always on the search for movies that aren't too painful to watch with our two 3 year olds... so we could have a dedicated watch list we build for the kids on the ready for family movie nights to save the hours of scrolling through all the kid trash out there LOL :)
The Watchlist can be used to flag any movie or TV Series from the main screen. The star/asterisk * button on your remote (if it has one), or the asterisk on your keyboard, toggles the Watchlist status. This is per user account. So if you want to flag movies or shows on your kid's Watchlist, then just log in as them to set it. Hope that answers everything! -Paul
Chameleon MediaCenter (CMC) v5.0 - A FREE WMC replacement GUI for My Movies Collection Management on Win7/8.1/10/11, plus a Music Library and App Launcher!
|
|
Groups: Member
Joined: 11/23/2008
Posts: 45
Rank:
(2505)
|
Thanks, this fixed my script error as well. Note, in Media Center, the old error is now replaced with an "Invalid Application" error when launching through media center. Any ideas on this? Seems the script error you fixed advanced the old menu strip issue a bit further, but still is hitting something in launch...
|
|
Groups: Member
Joined: 11/23/2008
Posts: 45
Rank:
(2505)
|
Thanks for the feedback! I appreciate the explanation! When you say you need to watch 85% of an episode, how is this calculated? Does CMC start a timer and compare the active play time against the movie length?
This leads to two more questions:
1. if the movie length is not entered in Collection Management, will it consider any play click at all to = played? Or will it never show played as movie length = null?
2. If you skip around the movie to like the last half and finish the movie, will it see completion back from VLC player and mark watched?
Reason why i thought it wasn't wired up is i tested by playing a movie, skipped to the last 30 seconds and allowed the movie playback to finish - didn't mark as watched, so I assumed it displayed db values only w/o updates.
One other question, you mentioned user accounts for watch lists. How so? Are you referring to windows users? I.E. log out and in as a kiddo user on the machine and cmc saves to the local appdata path for the logged in user?
And if that is the case, if i carry a CMC install up to my bedroom, will the watch list be tied directly to the client machine i'm running on, not the server machine? For general use, i'd much prefer my general watch list to carry over to all machines in the house that run cmc client-side.
for binnerup, sorry about that, i removed my db script via edit.
and for the remote issue i hit, i discovered why the program mapping didnt work. I have a Inteset remote which for all sake and purpose IS a media center remote, complete with the colored buttons. After some fiddling i got an app that showed me keyboard associations to the remote to see what each key actually did. I discovered the colored keys were oddly mapped to CTRL+key combos, not pure color keys.
I then just fiddled with the remote till i found a button that suited my needs - the input button mapped to the home key. Your app probably supports that assignment, but i just short-cutted things and pushed an auto hotkey script to open the program on home key press.
I then noted that when AHK executes, CMC's app execute location presumes the home location of the AHK script - no bueno as i tossed the AHK script in startup (the db bin creates at home directory location, and you guessed it, on start up windows would open the lovely 37mb database in notepad++, ugh!)
again simple fix, i just created a shortcut in startup pointing to my AHK script in the CMC.exe location path... now everything's bueno bueno.
|
|
Groups: Member
Joined: 5/13/2009
Posts: 296
Location: Georgia, USA
Rank:
(3485)
|
khenzel wrote:When you say you need to watch 85% of an episode, how is this calculated? Does CMC start a timer and compare the active play time against the movie length? Yes, a timer. khenzel wrote:if the movie length is not entered in Collection Management, will it consider any play click at all to = played? Yes. Length is not null, but 0 (zero). So any playtime at all equals Watched. You can always toggle afterwards if the new status is incorrect. khenzel wrote:If you skip around the movie to like the last half and finish the movie, will it see completion back from VLC player and mark watched? No. The only exception may be MPC, which reports playback position to CMC, so CMC can see if you've made it to the 85% mark. But for all other players, including VLC, you have to let the timer run for 85%, you can't skip ahead to the end. khenzel wrote:Reason why i thought it wasn't wired up is i tested by playing a movie, skipped to the last 30 seconds and allowed the movie playback to finish - didn't mark as watched, so I assumed it displayed db values only w/o updates. Nope, that test wouldn't work. khenzel wrote:One other question, you mentioned user accounts for watch lists. How so? Are you referring to windows users? I.E. log out and in as a kiddo user on the machine and cmc saves to the local appdata path for the logged in user? No, CCC/CMC users. In CCC, open Settings and go to the User Accounts tab. You can create and manage the users there. This is independent of My Movies, and independent of Windows. khenzel wrote:And if that is the case, if i carry a CMC install up to my bedroom, will the watch list be tied directly to the client machine i'm running on, not the server machine? For general use, i'd much prefer my general watch list to carry over to all machines in the house that run cmc client-side. You can log into any CCC/CMC account on any CMC PC. The Watchlist is per account. You can easily change accounts on the Exit menu (assuming you have more than 1 account configured). CMC will prompt for the User on startup, or optionally you can configure it to always use the last used account. That makes it easy to have the kid's account set on the living room PC, and your personal account on your bedroom PC, for example. CMC works with CCC to automatically sync your account across all CMC PC's. One note about accounts and version updates. The new CMC version prompts will only show if an Admin user account is logged in. This is to prevent your kids/guests having to deal with an ugly upgrade prompt, possibly mistakenly upgrading when you're not ready. When you're ready to upgrade all your PC's to CMC v6.0 (for example), you would have to login as one of your CCC/CMC Admin enabled accounts on each PC to get the prompt and do the upgrade. It's easy, but not obvious to a new user that this is how it works. khenzel wrote:for the remote issue i hit, i discovered why the program mapping didnt work. I have a Inteset remote ... the colored keys were oddly mapped to CTRL+key combos, not pure color keys. The basic CMC remote configuration tool basically only works with stock programmed remotes. Since your remote is not stock, it didn't work as excepted. khenzel wrote:I then just fiddled with the remote till i found a button that suited my needs - the input button mapped to the home key. Your app probably supports that assignment, but i just short-cutted things and pushed an auto hotkey script to open the program on home key press. No, the basic remote programmer wouldn't work with the Input button. Your solution is certainly valid - you don't have to use CMC's solution, it's just there to make it easy for users who don't want to mess with one of the more advanced solutions.
Chameleon MediaCenter (CMC) v5.0 - A FREE WMC replacement GUI for My Movies Collection Management on Win7/8.1/10/11, plus a Music Library and App Launcher!
|
|
Groups: Member
Joined: 2/15/2014
Posts: 2
Rank:
(4)
|
So here we are about 5 months on and yesterday I get the same problem as the original post "invalid application unable to to launch "My Movies Start Menu Strip 1"" and it seems there is still no answer or fix or have I missed something?
|
|
Groups: Member
Joined: 2/15/2014
Posts: 2
Rank:
(4)
|
bobkat wrote:So here we are about 5 months on and yesterday I get the same problem as the original post "invalid application unable to to launch "My Movies Start Menu Strip 1"" and it seems there is still no answer or fix or have I missed something? Just some feedback that might help others and to be honest, I have not read through all the replies so don't know if this has been mentioned. I decided I would try installing My Movies again but before doing this did a backup of the database plus exported all my movies. I then had a read of the My Movies Knowledge Base and I found this - How can I fully uninstall My Movies? and downloaded the My Movies Clean Tool - Version 4 and used it to clean out the old installation. I then did a new installation and let it scan all my movies again, all 460 of them. Once it had finished the scan I ran up WMC10 and looked for the My Movies strip and it opened and showed all my movies. To get my original data back I cleared the latest scanned database and restored the previously backed up data and it all worked as it should have, no more error: "Invalid Application - Unable to launch my movies start menu strip 1".  Hopefully this might help others that are getting the same error.
|
|
|
guest |
| Forum Jump
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum.
You cannot reply to topics in this forum.
You cannot delete your posts in this forum.
You cannot edit your posts in this forum.
You cannot create polls in this forum.
You cannot vote in polls in this forum.
|
Main Forum RSS : 
Powered by Yet Another Forum.net version 1.9.0 (NET v4.0) - 10/10/2006
Copyright © 2003-2006 Yet Another Forum.net. All rights reserved.
|
|