[Partially in v2.2] Considering moving to CMC but a few issues and missing features in the way...

[Manni]

Hi there,

I'm a long-term user of MyMovies and following Jamie's suggestion on the MM forum I've had a first look at the software.

It looks very good (and it doesn't have the issue I have at the moment with MPC-BE when launching some titles from MCE), so well done. It looks like it's not far from being the MCE replacement that I could use as a front-end for MyMovies (I don't like any of the other front-ends I tried). I have jRiver as a standalone/don't need MCE/play UHD BD Menus solutions, but I still use MCE/MyMovies due to some features that I haven't found anywhere else.

I've run in a few issues though and I have some questions:

1) Filters and categories do not seem to work. I get the following error whenever I try to access these:

CMC Access violation when accessing categories.JPG (89.67 KiB) Viewed 11937 times

Categories are one of the main reasons why I still use MCE/MyMovies, as jRiver handles tags but doesn't support the MyMovies categories. I have 3,000 titles and I don't really want to retag all my titles

2) MyMovies supports WOL, so that when a NAS is powered off, it sends a WOL magic packet to wake it up if I try to play a title that's not online. I don't think CMC supports this. Any chance to see this added?

3) MyMovies supports Vera Lite automation, and I use this to switch the lights off when playing a film, and switch them back on when playback stops. I haven't seen any mention of this, so is it something that you might consider adding?

4) I've looked at episode supports for TV Series in CMC and it's too clunky fro my taste. I have more than 6,000 points in MyMovies. Any chance to see the MyMovies API supported so that we get direct episode playback support, as in MyMovies, from bluray and UHD Bluray discs once the episodes are mapped in CM?

These are the main showstoppers at this stage for me. 1) and 4) are the most important. 2) and 3) could wait, but I wouldn't commit to the software unless I knew they were on the roadmap short term (happy to help with beta testing by the way).

I still have a working MCE install, although I have to use MPC-HC rather than MPC-BE due to recent issues. So at the moment, I use jRiver when I need UHD BD Menus, and MyMovies/MCE for everything else.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts, and again well done for a very nicely designed software.

[Pauven]

Hi Manni,

Welcome to the neighborhood and thanks for giving CMC a try.

1) Filters and categories do not seem to work. I get the following error whenever I try to access these:

Hmmm, that's unfortunate. I had a bug in pre-v2.0 related to Genres and Cats, though I thought I had that all fixed up back in v2.0. Please post or email your CMC_MovieDB.xml file for me to look into this.

2) MyMovies supports WOL, so that when a NAS is powered off, it sends a WOL magic packet to wake it up if I try to play a title that's not online. I don't think CMC supports this. Any chance to see this added

I hadn't thought about that - this is a good suggestion. As a temporary fix, v2.2 (which is going Beta today and final next week) has a new external app launcher, and you could configure this to launch a WOL tool to wake up your NAS manually without leaving CMC.

3) MyMovies supports Vera Lite automation, and I use this to switch the lights off when playing a film, and switch them back on when playback stops. I haven't seen any mention of this, so is it something that you might consider adding?

I've been wondering when someone would ask for lighting integration - looks like you're the first! I happen to have a Mi Casa Verde in storage (from my previous home), which is an older version of a Vera. I'm certainly willing to look into adding this functionality, though it will require that the Vera be open enough for me to send commands to it. If you have any information you can share, that would be appreciated.

Since MyMovies can do it, I'm hopefully optimistic this will be possible.

4) I've looked at episode supports for TV Series in CMC and it's too clunky fro my taste. I have more than 6,000 points in MyMovies. Any chance to see the MyMovies API supported so that we get direct episode playback support, as in MyMovies, from bluray and UHD Bluray discs once the episodes are mapped in CM?

Perfect timing on this question... Yes, v2.2 has this!!!

I agree that the episode support in earlier versions was way too clunky. CMC v2.2 is sooooo much better, but I do want to temper expectations on a couple items: 1) As you stated, you will still have to map episode Titles/Chapters in My Movies Collection Management, but this should not be anything different than what you have to do for WMC+MM Plugin (and quite a bit easier than earlier versions of CMC), and 2) I chose to create a standalone Metadata Exporter that uses the My Movies API.

The standalone metadata exporter makes getting the meta-data files created so much easier than with My Movies Collection Management, while retaining the speed of browsing your CMC (since the MM API is quite slow). I wanted to point this out since I think most people expect that CMC using the API would eliminate the need for meta-data files and syncing (which was my original plan too), but a direct API solution just didn't live up to my performance requirements. Another benefit of writing my own metadata exporter is that CMC syncs about 40% faster, even though the quantify and quality of metadata exported is drastically improved.

Also, I don't have any episodes on UHD 4K Blu-ray disc, so I'm not quite sure if this will work as it should. You may be the first to try it, and I'll appreciate your feedback.

Paul

[Manni]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the detailed reply, it's very encouraging.

1) I've emailed you the requested file.

2) Thanks for the suggestion, but the idea is to only switch on the necessary NAS on playback of a specific title. I have 5 different NAS boxes. One of them is always on, but the titles I access less often are on NAS boxes that are switched off, unless I try to play a title stored on one of them. In that case, MyMovies switches that box, and only that one, off. MyMovies can already switch on boxes on windows start or on MCE start (which are interesting options to have depending on the situation and the use for each box) as well as a few other options, so if you could offer a similar way to control how we want to WOL each box, that would be great.

MM WOL settings.JPG (169.8 KiB) Viewed 11932 times

The most important for me is WOL on playback. I also have commands in iRule to send a WOL packet to individual NAS BOX manually (using MCE Controller), so it's not something manual that I need, but something that works automatically when the user asks to play a title located on a switched off NAS share. Having a way to show if a title is online or offline when browsing a collection (as MyMovies does) would also be very useful, so that you don't find out when pressing "play" that you have to wait 5-10mn for a NAS box to boot before you can watch the film.

3) Re Vera Lite automation, it's actually called MiCasaVerde automation, and it simply sends the commands for the scene actions you've programmed in the MiCasaVerde software for each light/room. It works very well in MyMovies. Here are the settings:

MiCasaVerde Settings.JPG (226.63 KiB) Viewed 11932 times

At the moment I don't have "dim" for pause, because I'm doing lots of testing, but usually that's how it's set.

4) Great news. I'll give 2.2 a try and I'll let you know.

Thanks again for your detailed reply.

[Pauven]

1) I've emailed you the requested file.

Got it, thanks. I loaded it up, and I'm able to successfully filter by both Genres and Categories (using the same 2.1.2019.0123 CMC version). Perhaps that access violation error only happened after a fresh sync? Is the access violation still occurring? There's also a small possibility I may have fixed this issue in v2.2, maybe we'll get lucky.

2) Thanks for the suggestion, but the idea is to only switch on the necessary NAS on playback of a specific title. I have 5 different NAS boxes. One of them is always on, but the titles I access less often are on NAS boxes that are switched off, unless I try to play a title stored on one of them. In that case, MyMovies switches that box, and only that one, off. MyMovies can already switch on boxes on windows start or on MCE start (which are interesting options to have depending on the situation and the use for each box) as well as a few other options, so if you could offer a similar way to control how we want to WOL each box, that would be great.

The "External Links" capability (new in v2.2) is quite sophisticated, and you can provide quite a few parameters to 4 fully custom links. In theory, you could configure one link for each NAS server, and selecting the link will awaken only that box. This will of course require some kind of app that does the WOL call, and CMC would call that app with the appropriate parameters. It's been a long time, but 5-10 years ago I used a tiny desktop app that I could configure to wake my server, and all I had to do was run it and it took care of the rest, so something like that would be good.

The most important for me is WOL on playback. I also have commands in iRule to send a WOL packet to individual NAS BOX manually (using MCE Controller), so it's not something manual that I need, but something that works automatically when the user asks to play a title located on a switched off NAS share. Having a way to show if a title is online or offline when browsing a collection (as MyMovies does) would also be very useful, so that you don't find out when pressing "play" that you have to wait 5-10mn for a NAS box to boot before you can watch the film.

What you are asking for is quite a bit more than simply WOL. I think it will be possible to program it so that you can configure multiple WOL targets, and to have CMC only WOL on playback and Sync. Being able to indicate that a server/title is offline is quite a bit more complex and is something I'll have to think about. Just a tip, if you select a title to view the details page, at the bottom it indicates the filepath for that title, so that should give you the information you need to determine for yourself if playing that title will require waking up a server.

But that does expose a secondary issue for you: The Sync is designed to work with your media folders online, and since you are putting yours to sleep then the sync on those NAS boxes will fail. Anytime you add a new title to My Movies, you'll need to run a Sync in CMC to import it. But if some of the NAS boxes are asleep/offline, then best case CMC will see those titles as removed and it will remove them from CMC's own database (worse case will be errors during the sync since the shares are offline). I think I will have to add some new logic to handle your configuration, so that when you put a NAS to sleep, you can still run a Sync to pick up new changes but not remove any titles from sleeping shares or generate errors.

This is not a simple change, and will take some time. Since I no longer sleep my single NAS server, and apparently none of my CMC users do either, this just isn't something I've had to consider up until now. Hopefully you'll hang around and have some patience with me while I figure this out.

Thanks for the info on MiCasaVerde automation. I'll do some research on my end to get a better idea of how hard this will be to implement.

Paul

[Manni]

Thanks again for the reply.

Yes the most worrying part is how CMC handles "sleeping" NAS boxes. It's one thing not to be able to wake them up automatically on title playback (Which would indeed require a separate config to assign a MAC Address to each NAS box, as MyMovies does), but it's another to delete all the titles if the NAS is powered off.

I have about 250TB of storage space to host my 3,000+ titles collection (DVD/BD/UHD BD Folders, most of them 1:1 rips with menus), so gone is the time when all of it could fit in one NAS... The "cold storage" NAS boxes are not used very often, so it would be a waste of HDD life and power to have them on all the time. I only have my UHD Bluray content on my 8am-1am powered main NAS, all the older content (DVD, Bluray) is on powered off NAS boxes.

MyMovies and jRiver handle this fine.

With MyMovies, I only switch all my NAS boxes "on" when I run an "Optimize" of the database. That's really the only time when it needs to have all the shares accessible. It doesn't delete the titles otherwise, but it marks them as "missing" with a little yellow warning sign.

And when browsing, I can ask MyMovies to show on the cover with a logo if the title is offline, which gives me a nice warning that I won't be able to play it back without waking up the server first.

I don't use folder monitoring with MyMovies, I add my titles manually, it gives me more control on the country, metadata etc.

jRiver, which uses the MyMovies metadata when importing the titles and does an automatic sync in the background (that's because the titles have already been added by MyMovies, so I know the metadata is valid and optimal), simply shows a little "one way" sign on the cover when browsing if the title is offline (i.e. if the NAS is powered off). But it doesn't delete anything unless I ask it too, and when the NAS is powered, the "one way" sign goes away. I'm trying to figure out if jRiver supports automatic WOL on playback at the moment, it's not clear.

I'm aware that some of these changes require more work than others, and if neither yourself nor other users are requesting them, motivation might be low to implement them, so no worries. It's good to know that you are willing to consider them.

I'm not in a hurry, MCE+MyMovies stilll works fine, I only have to use MPC-HC instead of MPC-BE, which isn't ideal but not a dealbreaker compared to all the features that are important to me and that I can only get with MyMovies/MCE at this stage.

I'll give 2.2 a try when it's available and I'll report back about the errors and the TV Series support.

Thanks again for your time!

[Pauven]

I don't think it will be too hard to prevent CMC from removing titles that are offline. It's probably just a few lines of code, and a toggle switch to control CMC's behavior (similar to the 'Optimize' setting).

I do make use of an 'offline' indicator in CMC, but it is for a different scenario (truly offline titles that are only on disc). I think it should be possible to re-use it for your needs as well, though I'll have to think about how best to do this.

Probably my biggest challenge is how to handle the SmartSync feature for you. While the FullSync always rebuilds the entire CMC database from scratch, the SmartSync simply takes a snapshot of your directories, and compares it to the previous snapshot to identify any changes, and processes only those changes for a much quicker sync. But with you taking servers offline, those directories won't be in the SmartSync snapshot, so the next time they are online and you run a sync, these will appear as changes and all of these directories will get re-imported as if they were new or changed, so your sync would be quite a bit slower but only if you run it while one of these servers is awake. I've worked really hard to make the SmartSync really quick, and I think I'll have to do some re-engineering to make this compatible with offline servers.

I always like to listen to my users to tell me what features to add next to CMC, and I'm more than willing to consider all of your suggestions. I appreciate your feedback. I'm glad you're not in a rush, as some of your needs will require quite a bit of development on my end, though I think all of your suggestions are very valid and will make CMC a much more capable product.

Thanks!

Paul

[Manni]

Thanks Paul!

Please could you give me access to the pre-release forum? I might have a bit of time this week-end to test 2.2.

A couple more issues/questions:

1) When browsing, the software only takes one letter into account. That's not great. With 3000+ titles, you can have more than 100 titles starting with the same letter... MyMovies or jRiver let you type at least 3, which is great to narrow down the search. I know that you can use the search feature, but for a quick title search, it would be great if you could support more than one letter. Preferably using the sort title to display the titles, that way prepositions such as "The" and "A" are not taken into account.

2) When browsing, there is an empty space next to the selected title, as if a title was missing, which is very confusing. Why is that?

Thanks again,

Manni

[Pauven]

Please could you give me access to the pre-release forum? I might have a bit of time this week-end to test 2.2.

Done.

1) When browsing, the software only takes one letter into account. That's not great. With 3000+ titles, you can have more than 100 titles starting with the same letter... MyMovies or jRiver let you type at least 3, which is great to narrow down the search. I know that you can use the search feature, but for a quick title search, it would be great if you could support more than one letter. Preferably using the sort title to display the titles, that way prepositions such as "The" and "A" are not taken into account.

Enhancements to the browsing are definitely on my to-do list. I'll keep your suggestion in mind.

2) When browsing, there is an empty space next to the selected title, as if a title was missing, which is very confusing. Why is that?

Screenshot?

[Manni]

Thanks Paul,

Re 2) above, please ignore this, there was a title with a missing .xml. V2.2 now shows a black box with a ?, so I was able to correct this. No empty title anymore. However it looks like you're sorting with the original title, not the sort title by default. It would be great if we could have the option to use the sort title or not take the prepositions into account.

We didn't get lucky, the exception errors with categories/filters are still there in 2.2

I'l try TV Series episodes ASAP and I'll report back.

[Manni]

Update: I only got the exception errors with categories the first time I launched CMC 2.2. Now it looks like they are gone.

Categories / filters seem to be working fine in 2.2.

I'll let you know if they come back, but for now it looks like we did get lucky