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]

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!

Yes it is.

 

[cooperidol]

hi, i've just stumbled across this ace tutorial but can't seem to get it working!? im not interested in yammm at the moment but i just want to have the cover art in each folder displayed in windows 7 media player.. i;ve downloaded the file2folder download, extracted it to my movies and run it which put the movie files into their own folder... i then searched google for a pic of my movies and right clicked on them, save as folder.jpg, then i copied it into the movie folder i wanted. when i started media center still no cover art?! anything im doing wrong? thanks

 

[stevieray]

hi, i've just stumbled across this ace tutorial but can't seem to get it working!? im not interested in yammm at the moment but i just want to have the cover art in each folder displayed in windows 7 media player.. i;ve downloaded the file2folder download, extracted it to my movies and run it which put the movie files into their own folder... i then searched google for a pic of my movies and right clicked on them, save as folder.jpg, then i copied it into the movie folder i wanted. when i started media center still no cover art?! anything im doing wrong? thanks

Hmmm... what you describe sounds right. Does a typical album folder look like this? (Notice it is named folder, and its type is jpg... it's not folder.jpg with a type of file folder.

 

[DreadStarX]

hi, i've just stumbled across this ace tutorial but can't seem to get it working!? im not interested in yammm at the moment but i just want to have the cover art in each folder displayed in windows 7 media player.. i;ve downloaded the file2folder download, extracted it to my movies and run it which put the movie files into their own folder... i then searched google for a pic of my movies and right clicked on them, save as folder.jpg, then i copied it into the movie folder i wanted. when i started media center still no cover art?! anything im doing wrong? thanks

Hmmm... what you describe sounds right. Does a typical album folder look like this? (Notice it is named folder, and its type is jpg... it's not folder.jpg with a type of file folder.

I had this problem before, I can't quite remember what i did to fix it. I'll brain storm for a bit and see what I can remember. I still have some issues with it. Some folders display a graphic, some don't.

 

[cooperidol]

i think i've got it right.. can you just check?





.....on a side note, is that windows 7 in your screenshot..how did you get it with a black theme?

 

[stevieray]

It looks OK to me too. Hmmm... I don't know why it isn't working for you. If anything occurs to me I'll let you know.

Oh, and if you want a black theme, you can start here: http://www.sevenforums.com/themes-styles/34130-dark7-ultimate-theme-windows-7-x64-x86-final.html

 

[Orbital Shark]

hi, i've just stumbled across this ace tutorial but can't seem to get it working!? im not interested in yammm at the moment but i just want to have the cover art in each folder displayed in windows 7 media player.. i;ve downloaded the file2folder download, extracted it to my movies and run it which put the movie files into their own folder... i then searched google for a pic of my movies and right clicked on them, save as folder.jpg, then i copied it into the movie folder i wanted. when i started media center still no cover art?! anything im doing wrong? thanks

Hi, welcome to the forums

Glad you like the tutorial

You may want to re-try steps 3 thru 6 and making sure that you add the My Videos folder to the library. Just tested it and it works, without Yammm and downloading the movie poster as you've described above.


OS

 

[lobinski]

Yammm Issue

Hi,
I've just installed Yammm and it's done what its meant to do, however i've put some new movies in the folder WMC looks in and none of them seem to be appearing! Anyone got any ideas why this might happen?

The movie folder has been renamed and populated with the XML file just like all the others.

 

[Orbital Shark]

Hi,
I've just installed Yammm and it's done what its meant to do, however i've put some new movies in the folder WMC looks in and none of them seem to be appearing! Anyone got any ideas why this might happen?

The movie folder has been renamed and populated with the XML file just like all the others.

Hi, welcome to the forums

It could be that WMC is taking it's sweet time refreshing your movie library. Try exiting then re-starting WMC

 

[lobinski]

Sorry for the slow reply! You were completely right, it didnt show up even after a reboot at first, but eventually everything appeared! I'll just have to be a bit more patient with it sometimes

 

[Grubish360]

Great tutorial. Media Center is looking much better now.

 

[yak232001]

hey guys, quick question and hopefully a quicker solution. I have Yammm installed on my win 7 x64 machine...runs fine with MC. It doesn't however play nice with the 2 other win 7 machines and the xbox 360 running MCE. The metadata is not showing up on the networked machines...ie..xbox and 2 non local machines. Cover art and movies are perfect and show and play no prob, but I don't receive any plot synopsis or casting roles. Any help with this issue is thanked in advance.

YAK

 

[redtrigger]

Great guide guys,

I just have a couple of small issues: -

1). How can I get 3d blu-ray .iso's to display in the library. Yammm works fine but they do not display in library.

2). Tv Shows - How do you get a series/season folder with episodes within to display in library?. Also I don't seem to be able to get episode information?.

3). file2folder works great except that it put the script/app in its own folder everytime. Is there a way to stop this from happening?.

apart from these small issues, I am wrapped with how it all looks.

 

[Orbital Shark]

Hi,

Sorry for the late reply

I can help for step 2 but that's it

Yammm currently does not currently have full TV Series support. It should have TV support in v2 onwards if I remember rightly.

We currently will have to wait and see when the new version becomes available


OS

 

[veloslave]

Media Center noob screwed it up?

I ran the batch file and now neither my Media center workstation or server (both 7 Pro, 64) can find any movie files at all. I have gone to manage libararies and selected the folder and you can see all the movies as before.. but nothing now... on both computers. "There are no items in this library yet" and that is after a long time of looking... and it used to find them immediately.

Dang

Thanks in advance for any help!

Velo

 

[jriker1]

hey guys, quick question and hopefully a quicker solution. I have Yammm installed on my win 7 x64 machine...runs fine with MC. It doesn't however play nice with the 2 other win 7 machines and the xbox 360 running MCE. The metadata is not showing up on the networked machines...ie..xbox and 2 non local machines. Cover art and movies are perfect and show and play no prob, but I don't receive any plot synopsis or casting roles. Any help with this issue is thanked in advance.

YAK

I'm having the same deal. No Cast & Crew information. My setup is a bit complex as I have my videos on my Windows Home Server, and Windows Media Center is playing them remotely so have to copy some things around to get all the data, thru my XBOX extender, however I do not see any Cast & Crew info in the XML file so do not believe this is being pulled for WMC but would like to here from the experts if something is not configured right or something else other than what I'm familiar with drives the cast and crew.

Thanks.

JR

 

[johnjames]

hey need some help

hey guys im new to the site and new to windows 7 read the tutorial and followed it to the letter im having a few minor difficulties and have a few questions to ask if you can help me out that would be great

my first question is does media centre and/or windows 7 have a file limit by this i mean in xp folders had limit on the amount of files it could have in it. if you had too many it went a bit skittish lol so this is concerning me a bit as i have 1tb hard disc and im just putting films directly into it should i be seperating them into folders?

my second question is that i use my xbox as a media extender theres alot of improvement on the windows 7 version compared to vista but now that iv got about 64 films in there with there metadata thanks to yammm its starting to go sluggish and the posters will display then it will kind of refresh and they will disapear refresh and if not all, some will come back and then it will repeat this one more time is there anything i can do?

my third question is it looks great i love it but i have noticed that e.g. fast and the furious films dont go in order due to there names so the appear as No2, No4, No3, no5 then the first movie same with many other film sets is there a way to fix this?

and my last question is that have two compete series of firefly and seaquest i know im a big geek but childhood nostalgia won my heart rofl is there anywat to make them appear somewhere that looks good because im not sure if id want the in the movie library and in the my films the wont look good is there any way to get the into the tvseries bit or somewhere presented by pics all these files are .avi?

sorry for the big long post for my first one its just because im so excited that windows media centre7 does this and vistas one didnt thankyou very much for any help you can give me

 

[boohbah]

rename the fast and furious movies, add the numbers 1 to 5 to the beginning of each file.

if you like the media center setup then you will love media browser, check it out.

http://www.sevenforums.com/media-center/7276-mediabrowser.html

 

[johnjames]

is it the movie files i rename and will i need to rename the metadata yammm added or do i rename the folder there in?

 

[boohbah]

no i think you just need to name the movie files, im guessing thats what media center reads. it does in media browser.