More > JRiver Media Center 18 for Windows
Wish List: New MC User from XBMC & iTunes
spiggytopes:
--- Quote from: Bizarroterl on August 27, 2012, 10:11:52 am ---I think there may be a bit of confusion here.
Wizards have nothing to do with hiding the flexibility of MC. If you cancel or choose not to run the wizard then you're presented with the regular interface.
For music MC'ers the current startup may be sufficient. However if I'm a MB/WMC/XBMC/etc user evaluating MC the initial setup is lacking. A typical HT user will already have a video collection. MC doesn't find videos on my NAS or configure TheaterView for me. Currently I have to browse the forum or the wiki/help to figure out where I get it to locate my videos. Umm, now how do I get it to start in Theaterview? Why aren't my TV shows under TV Shows and Movies under Movies? How do I get it to show seasons under a TV show and episodes under that? How do I get it to show movies by genre or diplay all my James Bond movies in one set?
All the above is doable. It just takes a lot of research and fiddling around. A lot of people evaluating MC will just give up. I have in the past. My though process was - this is going to take quite a while to set up to get to where I'm already at. I'd rather not go through all this again. I guess I'll just stick with what I have...
--- End quote ---
That's exactly what was trying to say!
InflatableMouse:
Do people really need a wizard to import videos, while things are as simple as Tools/Import?
C'mon ...
rick.ca:
--- Quote ---Do people really need a wizard to import videos, while things are as simple as Tools/Import?
--- End quote ---
The issue is clearly not as simple as it's being made out to be. A better question might be, if videos are organized in a logical and perfectly consistent manner—as they likely are if some other media manager was being used—why would 'Carnac' need to guess the media type and how to extract the necessary data from the file pathname? The design premise must be that some users are not this organized, and the Carnac aspect of the system is necessary for them. Unfortunately, this means they never have to get organized, and if they do, they may continue to be plagued by Carnac's bad guesses (e.g., "All my media is well organized; why aren't all my TV shows under 'TV Shows' in Theatre View?).
This is just one of a number of examples where attempts to make things easier for a some results in more complexity for all. The Carnac function would have been better placed in a wizard that guides new users towards consistent file organization and an effective configuration for whatever that is. That might look something like, "The program has detected what appear to be the indicated media types in the following folders. Please make corrections as necessary. Note that if a folder contains more that one media type, different types may have to be moved to separate folders if the program is to be able to classify them correctly—now and in the future." One of the media type specifications could be 'Use Carnac to determine'—for those situations where, for whatever reason, a folder must remain a mixture of media types.
As it stands now (which is unlikely to change), the most effective way to 'fix' Carnac exceptions is to use Auto-Import rules to set the correct values (here is a good illustration). Yes, an example of using the awesome power of MC to make things as simple as they should have been in the first place, but what else are you going to do? ;)
InflatableMouse:
No denying that Theater view needs work, I just don't think wizards are the way to go in this respect.
rick.ca:
--- Quote ---No denying that Theater view needs work, I just don't think wizards are the way to go in this respect.
--- End quote ---
Yes, in the case of Theatre View, it's difficult to imagine how a wizard could help. What's needed there is a friendlier, more flexible configuration UI. One of Theatre View's greatest strengths is the simple elegance of it's design. Unfortunately, this was not reflected in it's configuration.
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