Request meta data download capability

[michael1]

Hi Paul,

As far as I understand the folder synchronization, display of all movie titles, launching of playback software, etc. is all done by MMBrowser. It seems that MyMovies is “only” needed to download all relevant information from the public database for each movie title. Once these data exist for each movie in its movie folder, MMBrowser can read it and display it, start playback software etc.

My question would be whether this task (connect to public database and download relevant movie information, meta data like cover art, actors, etc.) can be integrated to MMBrowser, so that it becomes a completely independent solution.

Propably there is good reason that this part is not integrated and i am not aware of, but I would appreciate if you could consider about it.
I also had a look in your roadmap and it looks really exciting and many nice features are addressed.

Thanks,
Mike

[Pauven]

Hi Mike,

You are absolutely right in your assessment. My Movies is only required to initially populate the meta-data, and MM Browser handles the rest. As long as the meta-data doesn't change and need to be updated, then the meta-data stored in the media folder is good forever.

You are also right that, in theory at least, MM Browser could perform these meta-data related tasks - but only with some significant updates.

Including this functionality directly in MM Browser would also eliminate the data integration headaches of getting My Movies meta-data into MM Browser. Sounds like a win-win-win, right?

But there are some real-world challenges that make this a very daunting task.

First, meta-data isn't always free. There are various sources of meta-data on the internet that can be tapped into, including IMDB. But typically the better quality data is more expensive. I think there are some free sources of data, but I've also seen some complaints about this data being wrong.

Second, because this meta-data costs money every time you access it, you want to minimize access to it. That means I would have to create and maintain a meta-data database and host it online somewhere. MM Browser would have to always query it's own online database first, and if the data wasn't there, then I would have to have the online database turn around and query an online service for a fee. This introduces two issues: the costs of running an online database with millions of entries (with CPU costs, storage costs, and bandwidth costs), and the complexity of creating the infrastructure to support this workflow.

Third, a decision needs to be made: do entries represent Movie/Show titles or Disc/Edition titles? There's only one T2: Terminator 2 Judgement Day movie, but there are probably more than 20 discs titles for that one movie, spread over DVD, Blu-ray, HD-DVD, UHD 4K, remastered, box sets, etc. My Movies seems to treat meta-data as disc titles, not movie titles.

Fourth, what happens when meta-data isn't available? My Movies handles this by having users contribute this data in return for contribution points. Without this crucial function, I think we all would have much worse data in My Movies. I'll admit, I've never contributed data myself, so I don't truly understand how often manual contributions are made vs. data supplied by other online services, but from reading the My Movies forums it seems like contributions are a huge part of what make My Movies work so well.

Fifth, what about international support? This is a really big deal for many users. To be honest, I'm not sure if MM Browser even correctly displays titles in other languages. Certainly the text I've coded, like the Settings and Filters, are English only. I do plan to to provide support for other languages in the MM Browser GUI. But extending this concept to the meta-data itself opens a whole new can of worms. I was reading in the MM Browser forums a few days ago that a user in one country was complaining about a user in a neighboring country who was adding French data to titles in the wrong country, and how that was causing problems. Without getting into specifics, it seems that meta-data needs to be maintained on a country level, and not necessarily a movie/show level. This is a lot of complexity, plus it drastically increases the data storage requirements for an online database.

Finally, the last issue is paying for the cost. I'm happy to report that, even with some increased expenses recently incurred, MM Browser is on track to cover expenses and essentially pay for itself. Of course, this doesn't pay for my labor, which is essentially free. Basically, MM Browser is becoming revenue neutral: it doesn't turn a profit, nor does it empty my bank account, as the revenue just barely covers expenses. This is exactly where I wanted to be, as I'm happy to continue improving MM Browser as long as it doesn't cost me money to do so, and I'm not doing this to make money either. I also can't discount the possibility that another company might sue me for taking these steps and essentially competing against existing businesses.

All of that also means that there's nothing left over to pay for meta-data subscription services, or online database hosting. So the only way for me to be able to offer these features would be to charge more. And because these fees are ongoing, this expense would most likely be in the form of an ongoing annual subscription. Pricing for this would be tricky - price it too high and you don't get users, price it too low and you don't cover monthly expenses.

So what does all that mean? Two things: I've obviously thought about hosting meta-data, and I'm seeing some technical and financial hurdles that make this path look problematic. While I haven't ruled out hosting meta-data, there are certainly a lot of functional improvements to make to MM Browser that are higher priority, and these improvements will help further grow the MM Browser user base. And the larger the user base becomes, the more consideration I can give to adding features like meta-data hosting.

So now that I've answered your question, let me ask one of my own: If I did add meta-data hosting functionality, how much are you willing to pay on a monthly or annual basis as a subscription to this service?

Paul

[michael1]

Hi Paul,

I really thank you for the explanations. I already thought this may be some kind of license issue, but I was not aware of all the consequences which you kindly explained (e.g. server hosting etc...)
I absolutly agree what you say and I don't want to become MMBrowser a too overloaded program like MyMovies became in my opinion. I am happy MyMovies works on my current Win7 pc, but propably I use only 10% of all functions (i.e. add&download data, archiving and maintaining my movie collection, read the movie info, and play it..). I never care about disc/movie title, local/global data etc. Also I have no TV series...
The main reason why I asked is that I will transfer all data from Win7 to Win10 soon, and was wondering if this would be possible without MyMovies...

Regarding your question, if MMBrowser would have this meta-data functionality, I would pay the same price as for MyMovies as one-time payment. But I would not like to sign-up a regular payment however.
Again, I am very happy with MMBrowser as it is

[Pauven]

Your movie meta-data is windows version agnostic.

What that means is that the meta-data stored in your media folders is identical regardless of what version of Windows you are running.

For example, I have a Windows 7 laptop, and a couple Window 10 PC's, all of which are running MM Browser and accessing the same meta-data on my network folders, and producing the same results.

You also don't need My Movies on every PC anymore, only on a single PC to maintain your collection as you make changes. If your collection becomes static, you wouldn't even need My Movies installed at all.

MM Browser now runs without My Movies even being installed, it only needs the mymovies.xml meta-data and artwork to function. This also makes MM Browser very portable. You can copy a few movies to a portable drive or laptop, and with MM Browser you can have the same at-home experience while you are on the go. I have one user who does this for his daughter so she can have movies and shows while she's away at college. On her occasional visits home, he can update or swap out the movies on her portable drive.

I know I've actually gotten a lot of push-back on MM Browser not utilizing the My Movies API, but as a counterpoint, this portability is one aspect that breaks if you tie MM Browser functionality to the API. In fact, if you had a 1TB portable drive, you could copy 20-30 full-size Blu-ray ISO's onto it, and put a copy of MM Browser on it (it's Portable), and a copy of Media Player Classic - Black Edition (MPC-BE) Portable too, and have a nice portable solution for vacations or visiting friends. And because MM Browser is free to use up to 101 titles, this would actually be a free solution!!!

Not sure if any of that impact your ability to upgrade to Windows 10. If you've only got the one PC, and you are still growing your collection, then you'll need My Movies installed on Windows 10 to maintain it.

Paul

[dobbsa]

Paul,
New user here. I am looking through the forums for additional information, and ran across this thread from earlier this year. Back in the WMC days, I was a big user of the WMC Plugin "Media Browser (MB)". It sounds like MB and CMC (MM in its WMC Plugin Days) did very similar things. I am trying to get up to speed on just what "MYMovies" is and does, and this thread explained a lot of that for me.

Back in my MB days, I used (and some still use) a tool called "Media Center Master" which is a stand alone windows application that will generate the metadata, backdrops, DVD Cover, and download trailers for your movie collection. As there are several MM/CMC type of programs out there, "Media Center Master" allows you to select the format or type of metadata,folder structure, etc based on these various programs.

I looked at the latest version of Media Center Master (2018) and did not see a "MyMovies" selection, but it could be that the format of MYMovies metadata, folders, etc are the same as another type. If not, I am certain Pete (the developer) can add the MYMovies format.

If you get a chance, please have a look at Media Center Master (http://mediacentermaster.com/) and let me know if it would be a adequate substitute for MyMovies.

Thanks!

[Pauven]

Hi dobbsa,

Welcome to the neighborhood, always happy to see a new member.

I know reading the various terms can get confusing, partly my fault because I originally named my program MM Browser (as in My Movies Browser), making it very easy to confuse MM Browser with My Movies - these are completely separate programs written by separate companies.

That's part of the reason why I just renamed MM Browser to Chameleon MediaCenter. CMC is essentially a graphical front end to the meta-data that My Movies spits out, plus a Music Library similar to WMC's Music Library.

If you want to read more about My Movies, check out the Binnerup website https://www.mymovies.dk/home.aspx.

My Movies has a Windows Media Center plugin that gives a really nice GUI to the My Movies data. But with the death of Windows Media Center, Binnerup has gone on record as saying they will not create a standalone GUI to replace the WMC+My Movies plugin. Many My Movies users cling to Windows 7/8.1, or struggle with WMC on Win10, just to use My Movies. That's why I created MM Browser/Chameleon MediaCenter.

Without WMC, for desktop users My Movies is really nothing more than a collection management tool (appropriately called My Movies Collection Management or MMCM). It's still a very powerful tool, and can produce metadata not only in its own mymovies.xml format, but also for about a dozen different formats like Apple TV, Dune, DViCo, Mede8or, Popcorn Hour, SageTV, MediaBrowser, Kodi and Zappiti.

I took a quick look at Media Center Master, and it looks like it performs a similar role to My Movies Collection Management, and I think you are right - it might be a suitable substitute for My Movies.

I've been thinking about adding support for a second meta-data format in addition to mymovies.xml. I'm not sure I want to create my own, at least not yet, but something common like Kodi or Emby(MediaBrowser) might make sense.

I would be interested in hearing from users what meta-data format(s) they most want supported. Kodi/XBMC/OSMC/Boxee .NFO files, Emby/MediaBrowser movie.xml files, or something else like JRiver or MythTV.

By implementing a common format like Kodi, I could make CMC compatible with several collection management programs at once, beyond just Media Center Master.

Obviously some research needs to be done to pick a format that has all the necessary data to give CMC a complete data set. Some of these formats may not have adequate support for TV Series, Box Sets, or some of the details like Audio/Video info or Cast/Crew info.

Thanks for bringing Media Center Master to my attention. It looks very interesting. I plan to research it further and evaluate how best to add support for alternate meta-data.

Thanks,
Paul