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

 

[DreadStarX]

what kind of insanity is this!!!

is this the only way to put folders in there? to make and compile a script in EVERY FOLDER!

well someone needs to figure out a reg hack or tweak so we can enable folders cuz right now i have over 15000 videos showing up in my videos livrary like im ever going to btoher to navigate that, well ill just stick to VLC until sherlock gets on this one

Ok, first off. If you're going to insult someone's work, better learn how to spell your words. It makes you look like a bigger idiot than you already are. If you can't figure out how YAMMM works, don't use it. I use it fine, I have no beef or quarrel's with it. It does EXACTLY what I need it to do. Why don't you explain what kind of problems your having, because it looks like a rant to me, which is unacceptable.

 

[Darryl Licht]

what kind of insanity is this!!!

is this the only way to put folders in there? to make and compile a script in EVERY FOLDER!

well someone needs to figure out a reg hack or tweak so we can enable folders cuz right now i have over 15000 videos showing up in my videos livrary like im ever going to btoher to navigate that, well ill just stick to VLC until sherlock gets on this one

Let me try and understand your problem. Do you currently have all your movies in the Win7 Movies Library?

If so, that's the issue. I had the same problem and I just created a new folder and moved all my movies to that folder. Then just point Media Center in that direction. Trust me... YAMMM is an awesome program, it just doesnt work with the movies in the Movie Library.

 

[Grimmjow]

include your movies folder to videos library

use file2folder:

and give the path to WMC and YAMM, use the recommended settings and you are done.
It works for me just fine
cheers

 

[Willsium]

Hi there guys, my first post here, I only became aware of the forum when a friend emailed me a link to this tutorial and very good it was. I'd been wanting something to make my films a little more fun to navigate for while now. My only problem is that when I go into my movies folder in WMC all the pictures appear fine but after around 20 seconds or so they all dissapear again and then 5 mins or so later they return and stay. This obviously is rather annoying but as I'm new to the whole media database thing I'm unsure of why it's happening. I've been using the Yammm software.

Anyone have any ideas on why thid might be happening, once again thanks to orbital shark for the tutorial.

 

[Darryl Licht]

Try using YAMMM's built in ability to shrink the images sizes... if the jpg's are all large that may be the issue.

 

[Willsium]

Hi Darryl, thanks for the reply. I have already used the shrink feature on the medium setting and 92 quality. The average image size is around 100k. I find it odd though that pictures all appear straight away when I first enter WMC but then dissapear. I also have a system that should be cabable of displaying thumbs very quickly, in windows explorer for example the images appear instantly and stay there for me. Any other ideas guys?

I also can't get WMC to display any more than the basic synopsis info, so no cast crew, similiar movies etc. I also got Yammm to download the background art but it won't display it when I select a film.

 

[Icetech]

Just curious if anyone has been able to get YAMM to work over a networked storage drive? I keep my movies in a /video/movienamefolder setup on another machine on my net, yamm wouldn't let me choose network directories, but i could map the drive then pick it on the local computer, no errors in the event logs, but yamm doesn't seem to want to work with it like this

And i can write to the mapped drive/dirs no problem

Thanks guys

 

[mikinho]

Yammm only works w/ UNC paths. If you can't select it from the Folder Open dialog then you can manually edit the config file. Replace the mapped drive w/ the UNC Path. Also make sure that you have explicit remote credentials configured in the Library tab.

1- Open %ProgramData%\Yammm\Yammm.config in notepad
2- Find the Folder tag and make it look similar to <Folder>\\WHS01\Videos\Movies</Folder>
3- Save the file

 

[Icetech]

Actually got it working... when i first setup yamm it wouldn't let me choose any network shares.. tonight it worked perfect thanks much! great program

 

[tigpoppa]

what kind of insanity is this!!!

is this the only way to put folders in there? to make and compile a script in EVERY FOLDER!

well someone needs to figure out a reg hack or tweak so we can enable folders cuz right now i have over 15000 videos showing up in my videos livrary like im ever going to btoher to navigate that, well ill just stick to VLC until sherlock gets on this one

Ok, first off. If you're going to insult someone's work, better learn how to spell your words. It makes you look like a bigger idiot than you already are. If you can't figure out how YAMMM works, don't use it. I use it fine, I have no beef or quarrel's with it. It does EXACTLY what I need it to do. Why don't you explain what kind of problems your having, because it looks like a rant to me, which is unacceptable.

Wow! Sorry. I was NOT insulting the work of the OP. In fact great work providing a tutorial on how to navigate through this new mess and make it so we can organize our libraries again.

My problem is I would like to view folders again, also I cant figure out how YAMMM works and would like to.

Let me put the insult where it belongs on the M$ team for fixing something that wasnt broken.

 

[mikinho]

The folders view is still available under "Video Library". The Movie Library is the evolved DVD Gallery from Vista Media Center, which also did not have a folder view.

Any Yammm questions feel free to ask. Some of the internals have changed greatly in v2 but I'll have a separate post for that when available.

 

[cosmiqeddie]

windows media center doesnt show all the thumbnails of the video, sometimes showing all, sometimes showing only 1, even though all are from the same folder with the same folder.jpg thumbnail, why is it so?

 

[mikinho]

windows media center doesnt show all the thumbnails of the video, sometimes showing all, sometimes showing only 1, even though all are from the same folder with the same folder.jpg thumbnail, why is it so?

Since they are in the same folder there is a race condition to access the image file that can occur. If Media Center errors on accessing the image or it takes too long it skips it.

 

[cosmiqeddie]

Since they are in the same folder there is a race condition to access the image file that can occur. If Media Center errors on accessing the image or it takes too long it skips it.

so what are the possible solutions?

 

[mikinho]

so what are the possible solutions?

1- put them in their own folder. for episodes it isn't a very good solution.

2- remove them from the Movie Library and use Video Library (or another 3rd party like Media Browser, OML, ...)

 

[cosmiqeddie]

thanks.
but is there any tutorials that i can read up about setting up media browser coz i cant seem to get it working, after including the folder in my media collection.

 

[Darryl Licht]

thanks.
but is there any tutorials that i can read up about setting up media browser coz i cant seem to get it working, after including the folder in my media collection.

Is that english? LOL!

 

[CBers]

thanks.
but is there any tutorials that i can read up about setting up media browser coz i cant seem to get it working, after including the folder in my media collection.

Have you read this ??

 

[Demonz]

Great tutorial.
My Movies is on an external 500GB hard drive. I downloaded the Yammm but nothing is happening.
My movies are AVI in 5 folders (Action,Comedy,Drama,Family and Horror.
I only use the Media Center on my Xbox 360.

Do I need file2folder to put each movie in it's own folder first ?

 

[Darryl Licht]

Great tutorial.
My Movies is on an external 500GB hard drive. I downloaded the Yammm but nothing is happening.
My movies are AVI in 5 folders (Action,Comedy,Drama,Family and Horror.
I only use the Media Center on my Xbox 360.

Do I need file2folder to put each movie in it's own folder first ?

Perhaps mikenho can comment on this but I believe you do... otherwise the meta data and images would all end up in the same folder which wont work.

Also, have you set the folder path(s) through the YAMMM config?

Furthermore, no need to catagorize your folders as you have...just lump em all in a folder called movies or similar. Once you have all the meta data, WMC will allow you to sort by title, genre, year, parental rating, type, and date added.

This should be your result in WMC: