Media Center- Setup Movie Library

How to Setup a Media Center Movie Library in Windows 7​

   Information

This tutorial will show how to manage your movie library in Media Center, including poster images & full synopsis information.

   Note

Windows Media Center is not available in Windows 7 Starter and Windows 7 Home Basic editions.

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The N and KN editions of Windows 7 have all the features that normally come with each individual Windows 7 edition, except for Windows Media Player 12 and related programs, such as Windows Media Center or Windows DVD Maker.

The N editions of Windows 7 allow you to choose your own media player and software required to manage and play CDs, DVDs, and other digital media files. If you choose to use Windows Media Player 12, downloading it, along with related software, is free. Download Media Feature Pack for Windows 7 N with Service Pack 1 and Windows 7 KN with Service Pack 1 (KB968211) from Official Microsoft Download Center

Examples: With & without poster information.


Before you start:
NOTE: Special thanks to DemonSeed for the file2folder batch file. 1. Click on the Download button below to download the file2folder.zip file and extract the file2folder.bat file to the drive containing your movie files (e.g. G:\MOVIES). Run the file which will create directories based on the movie file name (e.g. Babylon A.D.avi will have the directory Babylon A.D created) and the movie file moved to the directory.

Download

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2. Search for & download a file for the movie you would like as a poster and save it in the movie folder and name it folder.jpg. Do this for each movie.

   Warning

I would advise at least 2GB of memory as due to the size of the folder.jpg files there is a lot of memory used. You could (like me) resize all folder.jpg files to a width of 300 pixels & maintain aspect ratio.

Here's How: 1. Run Media Center and navigate to Movies
2. Open movie library, you should notice no movies shown
3. Right-Click within the inner (empty area) and select Manage Library, you will be shown the 'Add folders' wizard. Select 'Add folders to the library' and click next
4. Select the location where your drive with the videos is stored, and click on next.
5. Navigate to the folder where your videos are stored (e.g. G:\MOVIES), and click next.
6. On the final screen select 'Yes, use these locations' and click finish


Now your folder is added, Media Center will show the Video folders (with posters if you downloaded an image file for each movie).

   Note

If you wish to include metadata you will need to download Yammm. The meta data will download the DVDID.XML file which will allow for Media Center to download full synopsis information for each movie

Recommended Yammm settings

   Note

These setting will automatically rename folders/files, download folder.jpg & DVDID.XML files for Media Center to read from.

Update

The Yammm application has been updated to include Image Resizing


This will allow Media Center to use less memory when rendering folder images.

   Tip

It's recommended that you use a setting of 92 Quality & 300x420 medium size as this will greatly reduce the amount of memory used by 7MC when viewing a large movie library

Update 2: More Synopsis

I thought i'd include an example of how the DVDID.XML file works.

1, Full synopsis information
2, Similar Movies shown, with posters
3, Click the similar movie to get full details of that movie
4, Cast & Crew information
5, Click on a name to see a fimography (film list) relating to that actor/director

Enjoy

 

[mikinho]

Yes you'll need to run the bat per folder. I would keep them broken into genre subfolders as well. You'll see performance benefits of doing so (a blog post on why is coming).

 

[Darryl Licht]

Yes you'll need to run the bat per folder. I would keep them broken into genre subfolders as well. You'll see performance benefits of doing so (a blog post on why is coming).

When and where will I find your blog... on your YAMMM site?

 

[Demonz]

Yes you'll need to run the bat per folder. I would keep them broken into genre subfolders as well. You'll see performance benefits of doing so (a blog post on why is coming).

Hope this was my answer as I didn't want to break up my folders. will be looking for your blog soon.

Do I have to put the bat per folder in each of my folders ?

 

[mikinho]

Do I have to put the bat per folder in each of my folders ?

Yes you'll need to move the bat into each folder and run from there. That or if you run the below command from your root folder it should do the trick as well.

FOR /D %d IN (*) DO FOR %i IN ("%d\*.*") DO (IF NOT EXIST "%d\%~ni" MD "%d\%~ni") & (MOVE "%i" "%d\%~ni")

Note: Only run the above command from the root movie folder. It will create a subfolder for every file located in the genre folders.

 

[mikinho]

When and where will I find your blog... on your YAMMM site?

When I don't know, it is a work-in-process. A lot of the delay in Yammm v2 has been work to improve the performance of the native Movie Library. I've been testing with 15,000 movies (I don't have this many but I create dummy files for test purposes) and it is near instant now.

The blog post will be on mikinho.com. I'm working on a "Early Access" area that I'll be publishing work-in-process apps to.

 

[Darryl Licht]

When and where will I find your blog... on your YAMMM site?

When I don't know, it is a work-in-process. A lot of the delay in Yammm v2 has been work to improve the performance of the native Movie Library. I've been testing with 15,000 movies (I don't have this many but I create dummy files for test purposes) and it is near instant now.

The blog post will be on mikinho.com. I'm working on a "Early Access" area that I'll be publishing work-in-process apps to.

When you say, "improve the performance of the native Movie Library" and "it is near instant now" do you mean the speed of loading the images and meta data?
If so, I welcome the revision with open arms.

If we all send you $5... would that help? LOL!

Or... everyday when you get home from work tired and you dont want to work on Yammm... turn on your stereo and blast the theme to Rocky to pump your self up!

Personally, I love what your app has done for my digital media Library... and I know others do to!

 

[Gunnerhead]

Could you guys help me please?

When I choose the folder with just my movies, windows media center loads up EVERY video file I have on my computer when I scroll to Movies section.

Any idea why? Please reply or email me at [email protected]

Thank you.

 

[ricardoclown]

Hi Orbital Shark, two questions:
I have a lot of splited videos (eg. aaf-disgrace-cd1.avi and aaf-disgrace-cd2.avi), is there any way to show only one cover in my library? and when I play it, part 2 start automatically after part 1?
I cant see Similar Movies and Cast + Crews like yours screens, what should I do?

Thank you


edit: you have a splited movie in your 2nd screen, lesbian vampire killers and its shown in two parts... =/

 

[mikinho]

It is a feature of Yammm v2 to hide the splits movies. Since the Movie Library disregards the Hidden attribute on files it was a lot more difficult to do it gracefully but I think I my new method is pretty slick.

Other front-ends like Media Browser, OML, ... will only show the playlist that Yammm creates and not the hidden movie files.

 

[jacklynee]

Yammm did not work for me

Hello Guys,

This plugin did not work for me , i used Yammm and file2folder and did everything as the doc said but it did not work , Yammm wont save the data properly and i dont see it getting any info from imdb. i guess i will pass to a diffrent software that will do everything for me and that works

Thank you

 

[Ghost623]

So this doesnt appear to work very well when its attached to a network storage device. I removed all video, and had it rebuild everything. Everything then showed up instantly with the art work and synopsis. But then after about 5 minutes or so everything just disappeared. All the artwork disappeared, and so did the synopsis. If I copy everything off the NAS drive, then it appears to work instantly.

I am running WIN7 x64, with 8GB ram and an AMD X6 processor. The LAN is all 1GIG from my computer to the router, to the NAS drive. I can transfer files to the NAS drive at about 20mbs/ps. So its fairly quick. I dont get whats happening here. Anyone have any ideas?

 

[gsgriffin]

ROCKS!!!!

I love it when I come across something that is not the way I had hoped, can Google the problem and often come right here to SevenForums and get the perfect answer.

THIS WHOLE SOLUTION IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!

Follow the steps...Open IMDb website and be ready to rename folders to the actual name of the movies as copied and pasted from IMDb. Be sure to have the YAMMM configuration running each time you make changes to folders or add movies. Something wrong, just delete the images, change a folder or whatever and it automatically updates. ROCKS!!!!!

 

[hxangel]

I have used the batch file,but I don't like it,how can i fix the icons as before

 

[chahour78]

thanksssssssss

 

[lennie paz]

P.S What does the file2folder.bat do?

The File2Folder will place all single files bunched up in one folder into a folder for each file named after the file

Just place it in the folder with files and run and into folders they will go!

After I put file2folder.bat in my movies folder, I clicked on it and it puts all my movies in a folder and adds the cover. The only problem is that it also puts the bat file in a folder and every time I add a new movie, I have to take the bat file out of the folder and put it in the main movies folder. Is there a way to keep the bat file from getting placed in a folder like the movies do?

 

[stevieray]

Gah! I've got one movie that is driving me crazy!

I used Yammm to get the movie artwork, and it works great... except for one movie. It is convinced "Return of the King" (LOTR Trilogy) is some Disney version from 1980. Every time I delete the jpegs and .xml folders, it rebuilds it again as fast as I can delete... as the 1980 Disney thing!

P.S. Great tutorial, Orbital... and thanks Mikinho for the tasty Yammm!

How can I get Yammm to lose the data for this one movie and get the right stuff?

 

[mikinho]

Do three things:

1- Delete folder.original.jpg
2- Rename the folder to tt0167260
3- Delete folder.jpg

Both jpg files will be hidden by default so you may need to show hidden files to delete them.

Let me know if that works.

 

[stevieray]

Do three things:

1- Delete folder.original.jpg
2- Rename the folder to tt0167260
3- Delete folder.jpg

Both jpg files will be hidden by default so you may need to show hidden files to delete them.

Let me know if that works.

In step two, which folder should I rename? Folder.jpg or the movie's folder?

 

[mikinho]

The movie's folder. Assuming you have the latest Yammm you can specify the exact movie to tag in 1 of 3 ways:

1- Rename the movie folder to its imdb id
2- Add a hash of [imdb=<imdbid>]
3- Add a hash of [tmdb=<tmdb>]

i.e.

1- tt0167260
2- The Return of the King [imdb=tt0167260]
3- The Return of the King [tmdb=122]

Each of these will result in the folder being renamed to The Lord of the Rings- The Return of the King (2003)

 

[stevieray]

It worked! Yay!

So that number is the same as the number in the imdb url for each particular movie? That's a handy trick to know.

Thanks for the help!