[Lot of ideas for future versions] Limiting export to some shares

[Manni]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the detailed reply and no problem at all, I take your remarks in the same spirit as I hope you're taking mine.

There are some points that you made that are very valid, for example I did miss the Media Type option, so that addresses that concern.

Yes jRiver needs some files too, but that's just one per title (one of the 4-5 I mentioned for MyMovies), as I generate that metadata file with MMCM. I haven't seen that MM generates one file per episode for the TV Series that are fully defined (with episodes mapped). I guess I need to look closer. By the way, even if the number of files created by CMC is the same, it's 100% of unnecessary files from the point of view of a user like myself who is still using MCE/MM, given that these files are additional. But let's not get bogged down with this, I totally accept that you are doing your best with what you have. I only commented on feeding the central CMC database because you mentioned it and said that it wouldn't be that difficult. If it's not an option, let's forget about this. As you say, it's the feature that counts. Yes, there is a part of my that's a bit OCD, and I don't like to see losts of files being added, especially within the disc structure itself (I don't mind that much about the series/seasons folders. By the way, you could do what MyMovies does, and hide some of these files. It won't solve the issue, but it might make it less visible, so more easily forgotten

I also get the advantage of exporting all this information, so it's not necessary to spend time on this either.

Re speed for a centralized database, it depends on the case use. My HTPC is the MyMovies server, and the main computer where I'd use CMC. So there would be no network latency as the CMC database would be local, on the fast system SSD. But for sure, it would be slower on other clients, same as with MyMovies.

What I cal the browser menu is the top icon bar.

All the titles I've tried playing (UHD BD folders) are marked "watched" after only a short attempt to play the file. That seemed to be the case with all of the 101 files I could import in the demo. I'll double chekc and will give you a few examples if I can reproduce with 2.2.

You are correct that I haven't spent much time day to day with CMC. I have identified a few dealbreakers, so I'm waiting to see how it progresses before spending more time with it. It sounds like it's moving fast, so I'll do a few more tests soon. All my comments are based on first impressions, after a few quick tests. I certainly am not familiar with the software yet and don't consider myself like a user, only a "potential" user.

Then the real test will be when/if I buy a license and import my 3,000+ titles

Yes I did mean getting an actual exception error when pressing ESC from the main browser page. I'll take a screenshot when/if I get this error again.

An option for cycling the menu would be great if you can add that. If ESC could be used to exit, that would be a great option too, because that's pretty much standard (though not on MCE). It does mean ESCape, after all

I'm very impressed with how reactive you are. I'm in a bit of a rush so please let me know if I forgot anything, I didn't have the time to re-quote you.

Looking forward to doing more tests soon,

Manni

[Pauven]

With jRiver (my main candidate for MCE replacement until I found out about CMC thanks to Jamie), I already have:
- Support for BD/UHD BD Menus with a very good internal player that supports LAV/madVR (that's a big plus) and emulates perfectly a standalone bluray/UHD Bluray player. This provides support for forced subtitles without having to guess which track is supposed to be correct during ripping, which is a big plus for me.

...

The fact that I'm already semi-committed to an MCE replacement with jRiver makes it also more difficult for me to make the jump to CMC if it doesn't bring me features that jRiver doesn't support, especially as I'd lose the big one, which is BD/UHD BD menus support.

I knew there was something I forgot to respond to, and your latest post reminded me - Blu-ray menus! While I get the benefit of having a player embedded directly in JRiver, not being able to use Blu-ray menus with CMC is not a limitation.

CMC can use PowerDVD (Blu-ray/UHD menus), DVDFab Player (Blu-ray/UHD menus), MPC (free, but no Blu-ray/UHD menus), VLC (ditto to MPC), and even Win10 Movies & TV (ditto to MPC).

So that is at least two player options that provide Blu-ray/UHD menus, and arguably they represent the absolute best possible Blu-ray/UHD player experience on the market.

But CMC is more powerful than that - you can define different players for different media types. For example, you can specify PowerDVD for playing Blu-ray and UHD discs, and MPC for direct playing Episodes on Blu-ray and UHD discs.

I also give you the option to either browse and direct play episodes, or browse and launch the full discs, so you don't have to choose just one way or the other.

So I don't see how JRiver being able to play Blu-ray/UHD menus is an advantage, unless you are factoring in the requirement to purchase either PowerDVD/DVDFab Player.

I only commented on feeding the central CMC database because you mentioned it and said that it wouldn't be that difficult. If it's not an option, let's forget about this.

I already posted I will be adding this capability, likely in the next 3 months. In case you missed that on the previous page...

By the way, you could do what MyMovies does, and hide some of these files. It won't solve the issue, but it might make it less visible, so more easily forgotten

Wait.... what?!!! Are you talking about hiding them in the Windows File System? Personally, I find hidden files unethical unless they are system/OS files, and even then I like to see them.

Or are you saying something different?

But you did just make an idea pop into my head. I could create a single zip file containing all the CMC related metadata for a directory. So instead of a couple dozen episode meta-data/artwork files, there could be just a single mmXML.zip file, with all the files inside. I hesitate to mention this, as it might cause more problems than it solves, but in theory it might provide a nice compromise.

I really don't think this is something I would do unless there was a strong outpouring of demand. I think the current solution works well and has most of the kinks worked out, and for those that are file-adverse, the forthcoming direct DB write feature will completely eliminate the need for files at all.

All the titles I've tried playing (UHD BD folders) are marked "watched" after only a short attempt to play the file. That seemed to be the case with all of the 101 files I could import in the demo. I'll double chekc and will give you a few examples if I can reproduce with 2.2.

Aha! That's the clue I needed. v2.1 does NOT automatically mark anything watched. That is a brand new feature in v2.2.

And since you mentioned getting the error message when hitting Escape on the IconBar (which I haven't been able to replicate, by the way), I'm putting it all together and I think I know what is going on.

In CMC, the Back/Backspace button (sometimes called Exit on a remote) is how you go backwards. The ESC/Escape button (usually the Clear button on a remote) is used to mark a title as Watched or Unwatched. Perhaps you are simply hitting Escape and marking a title as watched.

Other than the Escape/Clear button to mark a Title/Episode as Watched/Unwatched, the Watched/Unwatched status comes from My Movies in v2.1.

v2.2 adds in the automatic Mark Watched if you've been in the external player for 85% of the runtime (both options configurable), and can also autoplay the next Episode if you use MPC as your episode player, since it will auto-close when the episode completes. You can even manually close MPC early when the credits start rolling, and because that is typically after 85% of the episode's runtime, CMC will then auto-launch the next episode. So with a single button press, you are watching the next episode a couple seconds later. It's a game changer.

I'm very impressed with how reactive you are.

Thanks, I try and I appreciate you noticing.

Paul

[Manni]

Re players, I thought I made it clear, but for me a player isn't on my list if it doesn't support madVR (especially for HDR, there is nothing that beats madVR pixel shader tonemapping). So PowerDVD is definitely out for UHD Bluray playback. I owned every version until V18 but I don't use it often anymore, especially as its a licensed player that requires silly hardware to play UHD Bluray (as you know it won't play UHD BD Folders or ISOs).

There is one use that I have for PowerDVD with MCE/MM, it is to play bluray (not UHD bluray) bd folders with the menu, instead of playing the main movie. MyMovies has an option to play the movie (main movie) or to play the disc (menus). Can CMC do this?

jRiver AFAIK is the only software player supporting madVR that plays UHD Bluray menus without making a protected path and physical UHD Bluray drive a requirement.

I'm happy to use MPC-BE because it supports LAV/madVR, unfortunately it doesn't support BD/UHD BD menus. Occasionally, I use PDVD when I need BD menus, and jRiver when I need UHD BD menus. Currently jRiver only has my UHD BD titles (films and TV series). I use MCE/MM for everything else.

That's why I'm still using both jRiver and MCE/MM at the moment. There is no software solution that does all I need.

Anyway, we digress, let's stick to the point, I'm not expecting CMC to play BD/UHD BD Menus (with my requirement of madVR and no physical discs). I tried jRiver in the past as an external player with MyMovies, and it doesn't play well. It requires jumping through lots of hoops, so I'll probably keep a two software solution for a while.

The question (for me) is can CMC replace MCE+MM (with MPC-BE+LAV+madVR), not can it replace jRiver.

[Pauven]

Re players, I thought I made it clear, but for me a player isn't on my list if it doesn't support madVR (especially for HDR, there is nothing that beats madVR pixel shader tonemapping). So PowerDVD is definitely out for UHD Bluray playback.

...

jRiver AFAIK is the only software player supporting madVR that plays UHD Bluray menus without making a protected path and physical UHD Bluray drive a requirement.

While I think you mentioned this, I must have mis-understood how important this was for you. Yes, you've kinda boxed yourself into a corner with that requirement, and unless I add JRiver as a player (is that even possible?) then there is not much I can do to help you with this requirement.

In general CMC has better support for external players than My Movies, so perhaps it would be possible for me to add JRiver to CMC too. What kind of hoops did you have to jump through? I always thought of JRiver as a competing GUI, not a target media Player. I've already jumped through a thousand hoops to get CMC this far, I'm a good hoop jumper...

There is one use that I have for PowerDVD with MCE/MM, it is to play bluray (not UHD bluray) bd folders with the menu, instead of playing the main movie. MyMovies has an option to play the movie (main movie) or to play the disc (menus). Can CMC do this?

At this time, when CMC launches PowerDVD, it will always be to launch the full disc with menu. No one has asked for anything different, and to be honest I didn't even realize this was configurable in MM.

It's also fairly quick to update the CMC configuration to change the player, so you can change it to PowerDVD if you want menus, and MPC if you don't, plus you get your LAV and madVR enhancements.

The question (for me) is can CMC replace MCE+MM (with MPC-BE+LAV+madVR), not can it replace jRiver.

I think this is a question that you're going to answer for yourself, right? You're not really expecting me to answer this, are you? Since CMC can launch MPC-BE with LAV and madVR, it really boils down to your offline servers and resistance to metadata files, right?

[Manni]

While I think you mentioned this, I must have mis-understood how important this was for you. Yes, you've kinda boxed yourself into a corner with that requirement, and unless I add JRiver as a player (is that even possible?) then there is not much I can do to help you with this requirement.

In general CMC has better support for external players than My Movies, so perhaps it would be possible for me to add JRiver to CMC too. What kind of hoops did you have to jump through? I always thought of JRiver as a competing GUI, not a target media Player. I've already jumped through a thousand hoops to get CMC this far, I'm a good hoop jumper...

It was a long time ago but I tried adding support for jRiver to mymovies using externalplayers.xml (or whatever it's called). I think the issue was to get jRiver to close after playback, so you had to call an external utility called MC-close or similar (tried to find it, couldn't) which in turn called jRiver. It wasn't very reliable, and I had issues with remote control, so I gave up. I guess what you need as a starting point is there: https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/The_Command_Line

You could also get in touch with Nevcairiel, author of LAV and one of the lead devs on jRiver, he might be able to help if you wanted to add support for jRiver in CMC.

At this time, when CMC launches PowerDVD, it will always be to launch the full disc with menu. No one has asked for anything different, and to be honest I didn't even realize this was configurable in MM.

It's also fairly quick to update the CMC configuration to change the player, so you can change it to PowerDVD if you want menus, and MPC if you don't, plus you get your LAV and madVR enhancements.

Sorry I wasn't clear, what MyMovies does is that it allows you to set two default players, one for BDMV movie or episode ((with MPC-BE in my case) and one for BDMV menus (PowerDVD 15 for me as that's the last version with MCE integration):

MM players options.JPG (199.35 KiB) Viewed 17892 times

So when the title is a BD folder, it gives you the choice between playing the main title or episodes directly (resume or restart in the example below as the title has already been played partially) or the "play disc" option with menus:

Playback options.JPG (520.63 KiB) Viewed 17892 times

It's very clever because that way you can play the film/episode directly without bothering with menus etc (you can still choose between a theatrical and director's cut for example if you've configured to correct playlists in MMCM for that title), or if you want to be able to select a specific bonus, option, episode etc you can launch the disc with PDVD and navigate the structure.

I think this is a question that you're going to answer for yourself, right? You're not really expecting me to answer this, are you? Since CMC can launch MPC-BE with LAV and madVR, it really boils down to your offline servers and resistance to metadata files, right?

Yes, I was trying to put this exchange in context. I'm not expecting CMC to replace everything, only to replace MCE+MM plugin. Of course, if CMC was able to support jRiver as an external player, that would be a huge bonus and an all-in-one solution, but based on my earlier experiment that's not something that I am expecting to work seamlessly. That was a long time ago, jRiver might have evolved and it might be working fine now, no idea.

[Pauven]

FYI - I just posted CME Beta 19: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=185

[Pauven]

Sorry I wasn't clear, what MyMovies does is that it allows you to set two default players, one for BDMV movie or episode ((with MPC-BE in my case) and one for BDMV menus (PowerDVD 15 for me as that's the last version with MCE integration):

So when the title is a BD folder, it gives you the choice between playing the main title or episodes directly (resume or restart in the example below as the title has already been played partially) or the "play disc" option with menus:

It's very clever because that way you can play the film/episode directly without bothering with menus etc (you can still choose between a theatrical and director's cut for example if you've configured to correct playlists in MMCM for that title), or if you want to be able to select a specific bonus, option, episode etc you can launch the disc with PDVD and navigate the structure.

It seems with every passing day I learn something new about My Movies. Thanks for pointing this out to me, I had no idea about it.

This also gives me reason to rethink something I'm doing with CME: I'm skipping the Title/Chapter/MPLS export for Movies, and only exporting this for TV Series, as I thought no one needed this for movies.

But as you describe it, you are setting the main playlist in MMCM, so I would need to keep that data in the exported metadata in order to even consider implementing this as an option.

Interestingly enough, with MPC it automatically determines the main file to play (though I assume it gets it wrong sometimes).

Now, help me out with something - I thought WMC only had integration with PDVD up through v15 or something like that. Is the Restart/Resume dependent upon that integration, or will this work even with newer versions of PDVD?

I think the issue was to get jRiver to close after playback, so you had to call an external utility called MC-close or similar (tried to find it, couldn't) which in turn called jRiver. It wasn't very reliable, and I had issues with remote control, so I gave up.

As a standard feature in CMC, I let you program a remote button to perform the Windows standard Alt+F4, which closes the currently focused application. That works in every player (so far): PowerDVD, DVDFab Player 5, MPC, VLC, and W10 M&TV. The nice thing about this approach is that it is universal, and you get to use the same button for everything, even closing CMC too (without the pesky navigation to the exit menu, hint hint).

I would imagine this would work for JRiver too. So if that was the only real challenge, JRiver integration just might be possible. I was more worried about launching JRiver from the command line and getting playback going, but based on your comments perhaps that's pretty easy. I'll take a look.

[Manni]

It seems with every passing day I learn something new about My Movies. Thanks for pointing this out to me, I had no idea about it.

Yes, if you're using all the features of MyMovies with MCE, it's *very* difficult to find a replacement that does it all. CMC is the closest front end I've found, but it's not there yet.

Interestingly enough, with MPC it automatically determines the main file to play (though I assume it gets it wrong sometimes).

MPC, like many players, has a simple algo to determine the main playlist, usually based on longest playlist and number of tracks. This means that you usually end up with the director/extended cut when two version are present. MPC-HC and MPC-BE frequently end up with a different playlist. jRiver often gets another one. I investigated this closely recently in order to get a tool that measures the right playlist for madVR measurements files.

MyMovies does three things, as far as I know. If first looks if you've specified the playlist(s) for main and theatrical. If you have, it checks that the disc structure is the same as in the actual folder (just to make sure the data doesn't relate to another edition of the same title), then plays the specified playlist according to the user choice. Doing this with BD folders is beneficial because it means you don't have to rip the same movie twice (doubling the storage space required) whne you have theatrical/extended cuts on the same disc.
If the manual playlist info is missing, MyMovies looks at disc.inf, a file generated by AnyDVDHD that specifies a few things about the rip (including whether it's 3D or not) but also which playlists are valid, which is very useful when playing titles with obfuscated playlist protection (where you have dozens of playlists with the same lengths, but only a few of them are valid, Lionsgate does that a lot). This is better than the player's detection, so is preferable in that case. Most players get it wrong if they don't use the disc.inf info from AnyDVDHD.
Finally, if none of this info is available, it lets the player choose the playlist, as a last resort.
I worked with Brian at the time to get this logic to work, and it works very well, 99% of the time.

Now, help me out with something - I thought WMC only had integration with PDVD up through v15 or something like that. Is the Restart/Resume dependent upon that integration, or will this work even with newer versions of PDVD?

You are correct, as I mentioned earlier, PowerDVD 15 is the last version with MCE integration, which is why that's the version I'm using with MCE/MM. Any newer version doesn't support this option to chose in the browser interface if we want to play the main movie or the disc structure.

I would imagine this would work for JRiver too. So if that was the only real challenge, JRiver integration just might be possible. I was more worried about launching JRiver from the command line and getting playback going, but based on your comments perhaps that's pretty easy. I'll take a look.

Great to hear you're ready to give it a go, looking forward to seeing the results.

I'll give a try to the new beta of CMC with TV Series when I get a chance, now that it can be limited to selected shares.

[Pauven]

You are correct, as I mentioned earlier, PowerDVD 15 is the last version with MCE integration, which is why that's the version I'm using with MCE/MM. Any newer version doesn't support this option to chose in the browser interface if we want to play the main movie or the disc structure.

That may pose a problem. CMC doesn't have any integration with any player of any version. CMC uses command lines to call external players, and passing parameters to them. If MM is using it's integration with legacy versions of PowerDVD, this may be a feature that is beyond my control. I've tried to pass playlists to PowerDVD, and so far I haven't been successful. With the Episode Direct Play functionality, I actually open up the playlist myself, parse it and extract the Blu-ray Stream, and pass that to the external player for playback. This works really only if the entire episode is contained as a single Stream file. Movies typically are multiple stream files, gaplessly bridged by the playlist files, so this breaks using my current approach.

I'm not saying its impossible. Only that at the moment, I don't know what the solution will be. If you or anyone knows how to pass a Blu-ray MPLS playlist file to PowerDVD for playback, please let me know how.

[Pauven]

Beta 20 has now been posted: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=185