I [didn't] give up

[robert5733]

Thank you for your wishes.

Due to my setup, CME is my best option so it is portable. Maybe in the future I can work on a server setup and move to CCC, my setup is not conducive to that yet.

Here is my after action review from the first time I tried the program, Will add my results from this last attempt in the next post. They were much better.

I finally got the MM database cleaned up, mapped correctly and all problems resolved. The following is what I incurred and my thoughts.

With Windows 8.1 Media Center, the CMC interface still needs a little work to be up to Media Centers performance. If you have Windows 10, then this is an excellent replacement for Media Center. Unfortunately at this time I will continue with 8.1 for the near future.

I ran CMC on a test computer with 8.1, and used a flash drive for running CMC. I was able to test export and was told I would get all 1793 movies on export. I proceeded with export and it was indeed correct. I then ran the sync in CMC and it said I was receiving 1791 in the lower right. (In the end it turned out two movies still had bad Meta Data). During the sync I still received access errors as before.

I waited for sync and the arrows around the JPG quit spinning, had the numbers in the lower right, but no movie covers. I waited another 30 minutes or so in case maybe it was still loading in the background. Received access errors while waiting but No icons were lit and remote had no response, so I closed the program and reopened it, remembering a post where somebody said that worked. Still no covers, but remote was responsive and access errors continued.

I closed the program and copied over the beta you mentioned in another post and opened CMC. Bingo….received all movie titles and program worked as designed, but still receiving access errors.

Now for my thoughts. The remote is slow to scroll through the covers, the super speed mouse scroll in media center would be sorely missed. The ability to minimize the screen for desktop access is a pain when trying to get setup, or if something is needed. Having to close the program and reopen each time is a hinderance(might not be needed as much once fully set up). The search function had and has me bewildered. A couple times I was able to get back to the full database, but most times I had to close and reopen the program. In order to use the full functionality, I had to have a mouse, keyboard and remote all at hand. I still had a few lockups requiring restart, and the access errors were always popping up. Overall it is a great program for replacing media center, but it still needs a little work in my opinion before I would ascertain the idea of full replacement.

I do want to applaud your time and effort on this endeavor. It is by far the best attempt I have seen at a replacement. I have no doubt that with a little time, all these quirks will be corrected and the replacement will be seamless. Unfortunately, with the wife and grandkids trying to use it, I think I would be spending too much time trying to help them use it, outweighing any benefits of the upgrade. Thank you again and I will stay tuned in, for further developments down the road.

[Jamie]

To leave the cmc screen, you just have to press the windows button on your pc's keyboard. you might have to go through the windows program menu, but I find that as the best method to leave cmc temporarily. I believe that using a usb key is what is slowing you down, especially if the usb key is usb 2. I have pc's 2016 and older with windows 10 and I don't notice lag. I am using windows 10, but I did come from 8.1 and did not notice any difference. I think others may be using windows 7 but I could be wrong on that statement. Paul would have respond to that and I am sure he will.

[Pauven]

Due to my setup, CME is my best option so it is portable. Maybe in the future I can work on a server setup and move to CCC, my setup is not conducive to that yet.

Gotcha. Though I would like to point out that you can do both. You can have CMC running with CCC while you're home, and when on the road have a separate CMC install that uses CME data.

I know it seems like I'm trying to push this on you, but I hope you understand that CCC is so much better than CME that it's worthwhile even if you only get to use it at home.

And note, you don't actually need a separate CCC server - you can run everything on the same PC. Basically, you would run My Movies Collection Management, CCC and CMC all on the same PC. You might be thinking a dedicated server is required, it is not.

With Windows 8.1 Media Center, the CMC interface still needs a little work to be up to Media Centers performance. ... The remote is slow to scroll through the covers, the super speed mouse scroll in media center would be sorely missed.

Agreed. Adding the speed scroll to CMC is on my wishlist too, but if I add it, this will be part of a full from-scratch GUI redesign, a very big project. At this time, I can't commit to when this would be available, but it certainly won't be this year.

That said, CMC does have some faster scrolling options that you may not have discovered. The Channel Up/Down, Prev/Next Chapter, and Rewind/Fast Forward buttons all provide faster scrolling. Prev/Next Chapter jumps to the beginning/end of the title list. Rewind/Fast Forward scrolls 1 screen at a time, and Channel Up/Down scrolls 3 screens at a time.

Additionally, you can jump straight to a title by typing its name, and yes you can type with the numberpad on your remote control by pressing each number multiple times to enter a letter.

I ran CMC on a test computer with 8.1, and used a flash drive for running CMC. ... I waited for sync and the arrows around the JPG quit spinning, had the numbers in the lower right, but no movie covers. I waited another 30 minutes or so in case maybe it was still loading in the background. Received access errors while waiting but No icons were lit and remote had no response, so I closed the program and reopened it, remembering a post where somebody said that worked. Still no covers, but remote was responsive and access errors continued.

As Jamie pointed out, running CMC on a flash drive is not ideal. While I designed CMC to be portable, I would expect the performance to be abyssimal on a normal speed flash drive - they are just way too slow!!!

CMC will create a local copy of all artwork (front/back covers, wallpapers) for all titles, and it does this hoping to improve performance. But with you running CMC on a thumb drive, this will actually hurt performance, as this is a large amount of data that is now being read from a slow flash drive, and the data being read is the cover art needed for scrolling. And the larger your collection, the worse a flash drive becomes.

This is likely the main reason you're complaining about scrolling speed. While I agree that CMC doesn't scroll as fast as WMC, when running on a fast SSD, scrolling is fast enough that no one ever complains about it. The way I wrote CMC, if the CMC drive is slow and you're using the artwork caching, the GUI will pretty much hang as you scroll, I admit it is horrible.

So you really should have CMC running on a fast SSD, the NVMe kind if possible. And if you insist on running it on a slow thumb drive, you should turn off Artwork Caching: CMC > Settings > Movie Library Scanning > Movie Artwork Cache <-- Disabled

The search function had and has me bewildered. A couple times I was able to get back to the full database, but most times I had to close and reopen the program.

Yes, the various search and filter options are very powerful, and depending on what you changed, it can sometimes be a pain to just get back to an unfiltered list.

Which is why I created the hotkey, CTRL+E (the E stands for EVERYTHING). CTRL+E turns off ALL filters and shows everything.

The ability to minimize the screen for desktop access is a pain when trying to get setup, or if something is needed. Having to close the program and reopen each time is a hinderance(might not be needed as much once fully set up).

Understood, and I do plan to add a minimize feature in the future.

For now, as Jamie pointed out, you can hit the Windows key on your keyboard to show the Windows Start menu, and this also exposes the Task Bar, so you can flip to another program this way. Alternatively, you can use ALT+TAB to switch between programs, and WINDOWS+TAB to do the same but with thumbnails of all your open windows.

I had to have a mouse, keyboard and remote all at hand.

During initial setup, I can see how this would be. But after it's setup, CMC should be fully usable with just a remote, or alternatively, just a keyboard. I originally designed CMC to only work with a remote/keyboard, and only added mouse/touch support later due to user demands.

So outside of setup, pretty much 100% can be accomplished with just a remote. That's not to say it works out of the box - you do have to configure a remote to handle certain tasks, like launching CMC or closing programs. There are sections on this website dedicated to remote setup.

And almost anything a remote can do, a keyboard can do too - especially if it has the media buttons like Play/Pause/Stop/FF/Rew.

The exception to all of this is of course streaming video from websites, like Netflix, Disney, MAX, etc. These websites are designed to be used with a mouse or touch. So even though CMC can open these sites for you, it can't fix the limitations of those sites.

During the sync I still received access errors as before. ... I still had a few lockups requiring restart, and the access errors were always popping up.

This is NOT normal. I would like to help resolve these errors, but I need you to share the actual errors. I've put a lot of work into making error messages more informative, so that I know where the problem is occurring, but I can't even start to troubleshoot unless you share the errors.

I'm hard at work on programming CMC v7, and it will have a big focus on bug fixes. So far it has 18 bug fixes, plus another 9 enhancements, not even counting new features and other improvements. Since you're experiencing errors, it's the perfect time for me to be working on fixing them for you.

Also note that these errors may be occurring because you are using CME instead of CCC. Since you're on the fence about using CMC at all, I would highly recommend that you at least give CCC a go before giving up. Chances are that all these errors will simply go away.

And for sure, run CMC/CCC on an SSD, not a flash drive.

[robert5733]

Updates for the new trial.

Of note: I am using CME/CMC on a flash drive on Windows 8.1 Media center, running the Beta version v6.0.2022.0006 Beta (because I had better results last time after reading the post you wrote for someone else to try).

Everything seems to be working as designed, export went perfect with no errors, sync has all movies and artwork with no errors. The only exception is that now I am receiving an access violation when viewing the movie covers. It appears to happen when left alone without touching anything. If I scroll over to another movie and leave it there the violation appears after approximately one minute. I went to settings and checked the movie screen saver start delay and it is set at 60s. Perhaps this is the violation. It also appeared on the settings display while I was typing this, but has not appeared again while sitting on the settings page. Viola, Changed the setting to 120s, and sure enough, changed movie selection, sat and waited and about 2 minutes the violation popped. There is no screen saver appearing, so not sure what is supposed to happen at that time setting, but I see no change. Maybe this would go away with the final version, or it is a path with windows 8.1 that won’t happen with windows 10/11, or maybe the other violations would come back. That is yet to be told with trials.

Had to take a hiatus to take care of other things, will attempt a spare computer running Windows 10/11 and see what that does, as well as running it from the hard drive. Not sure when I will get the spare up and running. My movies computers being on 8.1 is not a big factor at the moment since they are not used for anything else, I just know at some point I need to get them up to windows 10/11.

A new thing I found last night while watching movies is the synopsis in 8.1 Media Center. The word wrap now goes behind what I believe is the front/back covers, which are not displaying, causing the synopsis to be partly unreadable. I am going to take a look at that today and see what I can come up with. I am thinking it has to do with the CME export changing the covers, will let you know what I find out as I research it.

CMC error picture.jpg (148.06 KiB) Viewed 3121 times

[robert5733]

just added a new movie to MM and haven't exported or synced it, and the display is the same, so it's not CME/CMC doing it, it's something to do with MM or Media Center. Just wanted to alleviate that concern for you. Will play with settings in MM and see what I can come up with.

MM synopsis picture.jpg (133.03 KiB) Viewed 3118 times

[Pauven]

Your analysis regarding the Access Violation being related to the screensaver is correct. This is a bug that I fixed for v7.0.

In v6 I had added some new parental controls, to restrict access based upon custom Categories in My Movies. These restrictions affect not only what movies you can see, but what screensaver wallpapers are shown. I had some typos in v6 that caused the screensaver to block all wallpapers, and with nothing to show, the Access Violation pops up to complain.

Sorry about that. But at least it is already fixed for the next version.

A new thing I found last night while watching movies is the synopsis in 8.1 Media Center. The word wrap now goes behind what I believe is the front/back covers, which are not displaying, causing the synopsis to be partly unreadable. I am going to take a look at that today and see what I can come up with. I am thinking it has to do with the CME export changing the covers, will let you know what I find out as I research it.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that WMC 8.1 is not working correctly, and that you think the exports for CME are possibly to blame. While I won't say that's impossible, I believe it is highly unlikely. From what I know about My Movies in WMC is that it pulls the images from My Movies via the API in real time, and exporting data via CME doesn't affect that.

On the other hand, My Movies in WMC is getting worse, and Binnerup knows this, and is even saying that he's planning on pulling the WMC functionality out of the next version of My Movies completely. So if I had to guess, an update snuck into your Win 8.1 install and is the core issue behind WMC + MM not working right.

[Pauven]

just added a new movie to MM and haven't exported or synced it, and the display is the same, so it's not CME/CMC doing it, it's something to do with MM or Media Center. Just wanted to alleviate that concern for you. Will play with settings in MM and see what I can come up with.

Definitely check on the Binnerup My Movies forum, this may be a known issue.

But like I just said, Binnerup is planning on killing the WMC support altogether, and even went so far as to tell users to start using CMC.

[robert5733]

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that WMC 8.1 is not working correctly, and that you think the exports for CME are possibly to blame. While I won't say that's impossible, I believe it is highly unlikely. From what I know about My Movies in WMC is that it pulls the images from My Movies via the API in real time, and exporting data via CME doesn't affect that.

On the other hand, My Movies in WMC is getting worse, and Binnerup knows this, and is even saying that he's planning on pulling the WMC functionality out of the next version of My Movies completely. So if I had to guess, an update snuck into your Win 8.1 install and is the core issue behind WMC + MM not working right.

I'm sure the problem is in MM, it is not your problem, found a post back in 2019 of someone with the same problem. Sent it to support and they had the same thing to say "we are not supporting Media Center any longer and will be removing it in the next update or two"

Not sure how to get quotes and responses all in one post so I might have to make a few posts here, sorry about that.

[robert5733]

Oohhh, guess that was it for quotes.

Now for my question. I had CMC/CME on the USB, I am loading a Windows 10 as we speak and want to keep what I did already. Can I just Copy the USB to C: drive and everything will continue seamlessly, or do I need to do a sync with the new C:/CMC? All files and photos and stuff should be in the folder I copy over? Or do I need a clean, export, sync all over again?

[Pauven]

Yes, just copy the flash drive's CMC folder to C:\CMC, it's so easy. Hopefully your C:\ drive is a fast SSD, and performance will improve.

But you can get fancier if you want. If you want to run multiple versions or configs, you can put them in different folders, i.e.

• C:\CMC
• C:\CMCv7beta

The above strategy would allow you to test a new beta version of CMC without risking your current working version.

And since you want to be able to use CMC with CME, but may also want to try CCC, you could do:

• C:\CMC_CCC
• C:\CMC_CME

Copy your flash drive's data to C:\CMC_CME, since that's how you already have it configured. Then in C:\CMC_CCC, extract a brand new copy of CMC (it will default to using CCC), and configure CCC in that folder.

Then, if you want to use CMC with CME data, just run the C:\CMC_CME\CMC.exe. And to use CMC with CCC data, run C:\CMC_CCC\CMC.exe.

CMC is fully contained inside of the folder, including all config settings, which is why you can run different versions or different configs in different folders, side-by-side.

One note: CME and CCC store settings in the Windows Registry (unlike CMC, which does not), so you should only run one copy of CME and CCC per PC, otherwise they won't behave correctly. For example, when CME runs a Changes Only export, it stores the timestamp of that job in the Registry. When CME exports it looks for all changes since that timestamp, exporting any new changes, and stores a new timestamp for the next run to use. If you were to run multiple copies of CME, they would both update the same timestamp, and some movie collection changes could be missed since the timestamp would not be correct for that instance of CME. And if you change the config for one copy of CME/CCC, because it's stored in the Registry those changes affect all copies of CME/CCC.