I did some cross review this morning, both my PC's are running the same (latest) windows 11 install. Neither machine have IE11 (Edge replaced IE some time ago). My last machine still works perfectly booting My Movies and even collection manager with no menu strip or script errors. I did notice that my second machine has Java 8 update 341 x86 installed, though this machine does not have java installed at all. Perhaps the installer is missing a pre-requisite there, as the script error is pertaining to a javascript issue? Does the app not require a Java runtime installed to function?

I'm still poking around, just did another full uninstall and am re-installing now that i have java installed to see if there's any difference.

I saw the last pre-release update you posted was in July 2022... are you not making any updates to the product anymore?

Please let me know if there are any version compares i should do here. Obviously its not IE/OS related as i have the EXACT SAME windows install on both machines. What else can i compare? Something on this machine is different from my second machine as this one does not work, but like i mentioned, my last machine works perfectly without issue.

Please provide some recommendations? I'll be happy to do some version cross reviews between my machines.

Hi khenzel.

I hope you don't mind me replying, I'm trying to save you some time. I feel your frustration - it seems like everything should work but for some reason it just doesn't.

Unfortunately, WMC died over 5 years ago, and Binnerup has very publicly pulled support for it. Brian reiterated that stance in his last two replies to you - no WMC support, he can't help you.

Also unfortunately, all of your questions and requests pertain to WMC. You are flat out asking for support for WMC, and for logging changes to troubleshoot WMC. While I commend you for trying, I'm pretty sure Binnerup is not going to help. Users are free and welcome to keep using WMC with My Movies for as long as they can, but when it stops working Binnerup won't help.

While I can't help you with WMC, the one positive bit of advice I can share is that you should try CMC. If you look around on the forum, a few times Brian has even commented that CMC is the way to go for WMC users these days.

I created CMC to solve exactly the type of problems you are having. I'm a smart guy, smart enough to write CMC from scratch, yet I too struggled with keeping a WMC install alive. I figured if even I was having trouble with WMC, then it would be a nightmare for less technical users. Plus, it really does seem like Microsoft has gone out of their way to actively kill WMC, and it's very possible that with the recent IE retirement that the final nail has been set.

I'm happy to help with any CMC questions you have. CMC is now completely for you to use, plus you have over 2500 My Movies Points, which is all you need to use CMC. Link in my sig below.

Also, some food for thought: you've already wasted a month trying to get WMC working. You can have CMC working within a day.

-Paul

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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!

Perhaps you don't understand. CMC was designed to be used as a front-end for My Movies. You will still use My Movies to maintain your collection.

The CMC front-end closely replicates how the WMC + My Movies plugin worked. You still get full control over how your collection looks. Including Genres, custom Categories, Media Types, and even Movie Collections with is new in My Movies but never back-ported to WMC.

So to use CMC, you don't abandon your carefully curated My Movies collection. Just the opposite, you get the most out of it, even better than WMC.

-Paul

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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!

Oh Really?? In that case i'll definitely check it out! Thanks so much to you both for taking the time to inform me of this. <3

What about collection management? As its a front end for My Movies, and as collection manager has that script error now, does that mean even though i'll have a working front end, i'll not be able to manage and maintain the db anymore? Or does CMC have a fix for that too?

Thanks again!!

I just looked at my mymovies installation and your first post in this thread. I noticed that you are running windows 11. I am running windows 10. I also went into windows control panel - program and features - turn windows features on or off. I noticed that I have ie turned on. Please check this out on your windows 11 pc and see if you have the opportunity to turn ie on. If not you may need to hunt down how to install windows ie on windows 11. I saw this mentioned in a similar thread and it was mentioned where you can get the ie 11 installer.

Jamie

edited

you you might want to check out this thread on this mymovies forum.

https://www.mymovies.dk/forum.aspx?g=posts&t=46932

I may be leading you down the wrong path, but this might be worth a try. This person was using windows 7

Quick question for you... i tried posting these questions on the CMC forum but wouldn't allow me to submit my thread. (something may be wrong with the forum, or my pc? i dont know which).

At any rate:

1. CMC offers themes in the settings but i'm unable to locate any themes to download online. Are you able to point me to a repository of themes for the app?
2. Does CMC run on any other device other than a PC? Plans for support from an app, fire stick, or raspberry pi etc? I would love to have this on the go as a full replacement to plex!

Thanks again, I have this installed and running now and i LOVE it! :)

Thanks! :)

Two last quick questions...

First, In My movies it has the ability to hide movies from a list based off a custom category you create. Entering the parental pin would unlock the titles to show in main view. I liked to create a category "Blocked" that would hide restricted movies from showing... great to have when the family is over and i'm scrolling the collection in front of them. Is there support in CMC for this?

Second, when i add movies in My Movies, do i need to log in to the CCC app on the host PC and click to run a full export to update the new titles i added? Or is there a way i can just scan for changes?

Thanks!

cool sounds like that is a good work around to solve the same outcome. One suggestion though while you consider the addition of the blocked on category item... maybe also exclude the screen saver slide show for movie posters to not show those blocked items as well? :)

I love the slide show feature, but would be nice to not have some movies like Hostel etc to show up in a slide show with the kiddos around.

Absolutely! It's the least I can do considering how awesome you have been giving me all this info. As somebody heading a community project like you (and coming from a lead developer role myself so I can relate), it's unusual to see somebody reply to the level you have, so that is very appreciated! :)

For starters, I think really selling how CMC consumes WMC. I'm a details oriented guy, but even so with the flood of info out there, as I was focused on repairing my WMC solution, I had less than an elevator pitch in me for considering transition, primarily because I was here looking for that quick fix to get me back into it - to consume as little time as humanly possible to get this bit of tech back in action. If i spent 5 more minutes looking more detailed at the product you were trying to introduce to me I'd have figured it out, but i took one quick glance and went back to debugging my solution.

As we all know WMC has been on death row for nearly a decade now, and My Movies living on borrowed time, if i saw an add 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. Though, to realize this i would have had to do a little digging and may have never realized it if you didn't go "dude, it USES collection manager!" :)

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, didnt 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.

In short, I would suggest a wizard installer that places CMC and CCC auto on the server with a few questions that config the base settings in minutes, and a client folder already set up for "copy paste" to other pc's in the house to integrate to. How simple and badass would that be? :)

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.

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? :)

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.

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. I worked around it in 2 minutes by executing a SQL replace in my movies DB:



Though ofc this is advanced user status. 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.

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.

Apart from those gripes, I love the ease of updating the background image theme, the ability to customize how many titled show on screen, the screen saver with movie titles (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), and the check box view for categories that i tagged.

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 didnt 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.

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=43044971774197

So i can use it in all rooms of my house :)

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 :)


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 :)

Try this please:

https://www.mymovies.dk/media/My%20Movies%20Home%20and%20Essentials%20Server%20Solution%205.41%20Pre%20Release%205.zip

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