[In v1.9] Online/Offline Titles

[michael1]

Hi,

I use My Movies for many years and was very happy to hear about the MMBrowser which I want to use for Win10.
I installed trial version 1.7 and it shows properly the first 101 titles of my online collection (movies saved on hdd).
My question is whether MMbrowser (after I purchased the full version) can also show my offline titles (mainly blu-ray and uhd blu-ray discs).
For these titles I would like that PDVD17 as player will be opened and I can insert the disc.

Or can MMBrowser only display the online titles based on a directory on my hdd?

Thanks a lot for your suggestions!

Mike

[Pauven]

Hi Michael,

The free/trial version of MM Browser is 100% functional, only limited in # of titles.

MM Browser has been designed to work with online titles. The current version will not display your offline titles. The main limitation here is that My Movies only produces the mymovies.xml files for your online titles, and MM Browser reads these XML files (and your online media) to build its local database of titles.

To be able to show offline titles would require My Movies API access, and for MM Browser to be programmed to work with the API. I have challenged Binnerup on the pricing of the API access - my belief is that it is too expensive. There has been some talk of Binnerup making MM Browser a "certified" front-end to My Movies, with discounted pricing for API access, though Binnerup has not made a decision on this front.

I have been thinking about ways to make MM Browser work with inserted discs, but I have not come up with a solution yet. I do believe it is possible to have MM Browser recognize that you inserted a disc, and offer to play it with your designated player (v1.8 has support for new players beyond PowerDVD). Hopefully that is functionality I can add in the coming months, though I know that doesn't achieve your goal of browsing your offline collection.

While I will work to improve the situation, I want to be upfront and honest that for now, offline title support is not available.

Paul

[Jamie]

I believe that if people want Paul to have API access that more people should goto the Mymovies forum and request the certification of MMBrowser so that Binnerup will see the need. So far there have only been two or three people making the request including Paul and myself.

[michael1]

Hi Paul,

Thanks a lot for your reply!
I don’t know the internals of the software such as API etc. but I would support your requests towards MyMovies if there is any need. Actually they started a big discussion and asked for the users priorities after the MCE became legacy, but never came up with a proper solution for Win10 systems, which I would have paid for of course.

I thought that the data for offline titles (cover front and rear, fanart, etc.) are stored elsewhere in the MyMovies installation folders and could be easily accessed or moved to a place where MMBrowser can access it. If this is not the case I thought what if I would create folders for all my offline titles, just same way as I have it for my online titles. Within the Collection Management I can assign that folders for each movie, pretending they are online titles. I assume MM would store the data to that folders. Probably I would get an error message (“file not found” or similar) when I push the play button in MMBrowser or MyMovies, but I could live with that since I need to insert the disc anyway. Also the effort for me to create these folders is still reasonable, I have 200+ Blu-rays and just started with UHD Blu-rays. And if I have more capacity on my hdd(s) later on, I still can create .iso files and store them into that folders. Means the effort would not be wasted but anyway..

Do you think it would work that way? Anyway, once I have some time I will give it a try for a few movies.

Mike

[Pauven]

Interesting. Perhaps My Movies does generate folder data for offline titles and I just assumed it did not. I do not have any offline titles myself, so I obviously have made some assumptions here.

What I can confirm is that MM Browser will skip any titles (online or offline) if it can't find the playable media. This is to "clean-up" the quality of the data, as I only wanted to present titles the could be instantly played directly from the cover rows.

Your scenario had not occurred to me.

If you can show me a screenshot of a folder with an offline title, that would be most helpful. And if there is a mymovies.xml file in the folder, please share it with me so I can review the data and see what options are available.

My contention with the API is simply this: The My Movies Windows Media Center Plugin was free, and it had free access to the API. Sure, you could pay extra for some bells and whistles, but the core product was free. After Binnerup basically abandoned our use case, I filled the gap with MM Browser. Yet for MM Browser to have the same level of functionality as the WMC Plugin, it will require EVERY USER TO PAY $100 FOR API ACCESS.

True, many users already have this access, but many do not. In fact, I am a user who does not have API access. Six months ago, Binnerup even told me to pay up for API access so I could program MM Browser for other users who would also have to pay up.

In my heart, it just feels wrong to drive that kind of revenue for a company that said we were not worth helping.

Binnerup did publicly tease that they could make MM Browser a certified front end that could use the API for 500 points / $20 user - and when I said yes they then came back and said they have technical issues on their side.

I also offered to honor their points policies just as they worked in the WMC Plugin. I got no response on that.

To Jamie's point, we need more users to speak up and demand action from Binnerup.

[michael1]

Hi Paul,

Yesterday I tried following:
- Added a new movie (Kong Skull Island) to my collection (via Collection Management) as offline title
No problem with that, all covers, fanart, etc. is properly displayed in the MyMovies MCE interface.
(though not sure where these data are stored)
Once I click the play button it says “please insert the disc…” as expected

To find a workaround for my question I did following as next

- I created an empty folder “Kong Skull Island”
In CM I defined this folder as “online folder” for that movie
Looking in the folder again it was filled with the files as shown in the picture
All covers, fanart, etc. is still properly displayed in the MyMovies MCE interface.
Once I click the play button it still says “please insert the disc…”
This is the expected and correct behavior because there is no playable file (.mp4, etc.) in the folder
(I just wanted to extract the cover data etc. to be accessible for MMBrowser)

- I opened MMBrowser but the movie is not displayed (I was hoping it will be shown there…)
Is this because the limitation of the trial version to display only 101 movies?
(I have plenty of online movie titles starting with “K”, but only a few are displayed, maybe randomly)
Or is there any other reason, like a playable file must be in the folder?

Mike

[Pauven]

To answer your question, yes a playable file must be in the folder for MM Browser to display the title. You could do any one of the following as a test:

• Create a directory named VIDEO_TS
• Create a directory named BDMV
• Create a file named Offline.ISO
• Create a file named Offline.MP4
• Create a file named Offline.MKV

If any one of the above folders or files exists, then MM Browser will think there is a playable file (even if it is empty) and will display the title in the list of available titles (assuming it does not get excluded by the 101 title limit of the free version).

Question: Did I read you correctly that you had to falsely configure this title in My Movies as an ONLINE title to get the files written to the folder? Can you accomplish the same with an OFFLINE title?

As long as you can get a folder to populate with data (mymovies.xml, fanart.jpg, folder.jpg, mymovies-front.jpg, mymovies-back.jpg), I can add an option to MM Browser to "Include Offline Titles", which would eliminate the requirement to have playable media in the folder.

Thanks,
Paul

[michael1]

First regarding your questions

Did I read you correctly that you had to falsely configure this title in My Movies as an ONLINE title to get the files written to the folder?

Yes, I did this to find a workaround for my issue

Can you accomplish the same with an OFFLINE title?

In MyMovies offline titles are displayed without folder anyway.
In MMBrowser offline titles are not displayed, so I am trying this workaround.

Today I created a folder "VIDEO_TS" into the movie folder containing the artwork.
But MMBrowser still did not show it, at least not the trial version.
In MyMovies when I push the play button, the behaviour became random. Messages are shown "No Valid media..." or PDVD starts but stops playing and idling. The behaviour depends on the folder or file created "VIDEO_TS"' "BDMV", offline.mp4, etc. These are of course undesired effects. Before that, the response was "Please insert disc..." is correct and desired.

Yes, the movie folder is populated via MyMovies with data (mymovies.xml, fanart.jpg, folder.jpg, mymovies-front.jpg, mymovies-back.jpg), although there is no playable media inside. Therefore it would be great if you could add an option to MM Browser to "Include Offline Titles", which would eliminate the requirement to have playable media in the folder, as you mentioned.

Thanks,
Mike

[Pauven]

I've added Offline Titles to the roadmap.

[Pauven]

Hi Michael,

I just wanted to give you a heads up that Offline Titles support did not make it into the next version, 1.8.

v1.8 was just getting too many changes for a single release, and was taking too long to get out the door. So I've marked v1.8 as feature complete, and we are doing final bug fixes before release (anticipating this weekend).

Offline Title support should make it into v1.9.

Hope that's okay.
Paul