INTERACT FORUM

More => Old Versions => Media Center 12 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: bil1010105 on April 17, 2008, 04:56:54 am

Title: Theatre view item display question
Post by: bil1010105 on April 17, 2008, 04:56:54 am: Hi all,

Is there any way to get Theatre View to show a short paragraph in an item list? I'm thinking in terms of movies / TV shows etc, which I'd like to add a short synopsis to preview the files before actually playing them. Something like:

[Name]
[Comment]

I've tried using expressions ([Name] [Comment]) but it always appears on a single line (would like a carriage return after the [Name]) and the [Comment] field is truncated so you only get the first 10 or so characters on my TV. How can I get it to show everything?

Thanks in advance for any help.
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: Matt on April 17, 2008, 08:31:05 pm: Currently there's no way to add long metadata text to the item caption. Maybe in a future version.

Anyone else interested?
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: galahad1974 on April 18, 2008, 01:02:44 am: definitely
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: ThoBar on April 18, 2008, 01:35:36 am: I think this (or similar) has been requested a few times in the past.

IMO, it's one of the many things that Theater View needs to take it to the next level.
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: bil1010105 on April 18, 2008, 02:12:09 am: Please please please!! ;D

There's quite a lot of 'extra' space, which could really be utilitised for something like this.

Looking at the release notes, it seems a long time since Theatre View had any love, and although it works well - this is one thing which really lets it down IMO. When browsing films with my partner, she'll ask "What's this one about?" and I haven't a clue. This would solve that problem.
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: raym on April 18, 2008, 03:25:27 am: I agree. Look at any decent HTPC software for inspiration if required. There's plenty of room for customisable comments etc in both lineup and thumbnail views. Perhaps something like the way news and weather items work?

Ultimately though, this is where I'd like to see Theater View heading:-

(http://www.team-mediaportal.com/images/zoom/bluetwo/viewsize/snap014.jpg)
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: jmone on April 18, 2008, 03:33:37 am: Yup - I'm with Ralf....Theater View is starting to look dated / restrictive compared with others.
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: gappie on April 18, 2008, 06:26:16 am: :)
im interested 8)
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: Matt on April 18, 2008, 08:54:37 am: It seems like there are really two parts to this problem:

1) A "zoomed in" view of a single file. This might be nice for audio, images, and video. What if at the file level, you could "View in Detail" along with play, add, etc.?

2) A data source for all the good video information. I'm less sure how to solve this one.
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: fitbrit on April 18, 2008, 10:04:05 am: Yup, count me in. I've requested this in the past too. The 3-D effects in Theater View are great, but the ability to have a synopsis of each movie would be very useful indeed.
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: bil1010105 on April 18, 2008, 10:07:54 am: If by 'datasource' you mean - "where do you obtain all the information from automatically?" then there exists various web services out there (IMDB-Pro do one, but it costs £££) which can query the data. I don't know. Otherwise, its a case of manually inputting the data - something I'm quite happy to do with my own collection.

The 'zoomed in detail' idea is a good one too - raym's screenshot looks awfully tantalising. 8) I would be happy though just for an improvement on the current detail level - all I really want / need is the ability to put a paragraph in to describe the item, and for that to be visible in some useful fashion in Theatre View.
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: )p( on April 18, 2008, 01:13:30 pm: Quote from: Matt on April 17, 2008, 08:31:05 pm
Currently there's no way to add long metadata text to the item caption. Maybe in a future version.

Anyone else interested?

Sure. See the first post of this thread for great mockup of what I would like to add to the line up view.

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=43947.msg300692#msg300692

peter
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: thurston on April 18, 2008, 02:48:47 pm: I am definitely interested in this. As far as a data source goes, where are submitted cover art stored? I have no idea how that system works, but it works well. Could some of the information (synopsis or description for instance) be shared similarily?
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: gappie on April 18, 2008, 04:20:00 pm: Quote from: Matt on April 18, 2008, 08:54:37 am
It seems like there are really two parts to this problem:

1) A "zoomed in" view of a single file. This might be nice for audio, images, and video. What if at the file level, you could "View in Detail" along with play, add, etc.?

2) A data source for all the good video information. I'm less sure how to solve this one.
for me, the first option would be to late in the line when talking about audio. i pick albums. but when using wonderfull line up view, there is so much empty space underneath, that it could be nice if it would be possible to add some extra lines there in a smaller font. ( a way to not sort these view alphabetic but user defined would also be appreciated very much :) )

besides that, i think the breadcrumbs could works in a way that they make a bit more sence in giving information. i posted somewhere a first thing that would help IMHO.

for the second option.. a web side could be nice for some people, but i already think it is hard to display the information that a user might have put into the library when using theaterview. not only to 'preview' a movie, i have director and actors in my database (one day maybe i finished it 8) ), but also the info for the song that is playing now, song text (for those interested), band members, instrumentation, etc, or the people that are on the image and where it is taken.

im using theaterview for 99,9% of the time, and i like it, especially because the db behind it. just wished i could have some more influence on what i get back in Theater View.

:)
gab
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: raym on April 18, 2008, 06:07:53 pm: Quote from: Matt on April 18, 2008, 08:54:37 am
It seems like there are really two parts to this problem:

1) A "zoomed in" view of a single file. This might be nice for audio, images, and video. What if at the file level, you could "View in Detail" along with play, add, etc.?

2) A data source for all the good video information. I'm less sure how to solve this one.

Indeed you are right and the "View in Detail" sounds perfect for all media types.

Datasource? Let us manually retrieve it as an interim step. Perhaps it could get more fancy later.

The "View in Detail" concept would be fantastic in addition to the ability of doing this sort of thing for lineup view (thanks Peter) :-

(http://www.leifus.com/dvdView_desired.gif)
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: gappie on April 18, 2008, 06:13:57 pm: one other thing.. i dont know, but i think the 3D browsing (ctrl&shift&T, for those who dont know what i talk about) is a interesting way to brows, but in its commen state it feels like just a toy, beautifull, but not practical, at least not with a big (?) library. would it not be nice to find some way to incorperate 3 d browsing in thv?

dont know if i agree with myself.. just a thought

:)
gab
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: JimH on April 18, 2008, 06:21:30 pm: Quote from: gappie on April 18, 2008, 06:13:57 pm
dont know if i agree with myself.. just a thought
We are conflicted.
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: gappie on April 18, 2008, 06:37:36 pm: Quote from: JimH on April 18, 2008, 06:21:30 pm
We are conflicted.
me to.
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: ThoBar on April 19, 2008, 06:01:58 am: Quote
one other thing.. i dont know, but i think the 3D browsing (ctrl&shift&T, for those who dont know what i talk about) is a interesting way to brows, but in its commen state it feels like just a toy, beautifull, but not practical, at least not with a big (?) library. would it not be nice to find some way to incorperate 3 d browsing in Theater View?

If nodes are allowed to have designated images or videos, then this should be very nicely do-able. This way, with a heirarchical structure (as already exists in in MC), it should be easy to navigate your way via the 3d interface. ... I wish I was good with photoshop, so I could make some pretty picutres to demonstrate :(

This would be a nice way to give the features that have been requested (ie the nodes with images) and integrate them into an advanced navigation system. Of course, if you were to improve the Theater View skinning system (expand the capabilities at least) to accomodate the 3d browsing, or some derivative thereof, to allow a bit more flexible, then that would be even better ;)

hmmm... a bit of an incoherent ramble, sorry ;)

[edit] I just tried the 3D view with my main library, roughly 110,000 files.... I dont reccommend doing so 8)
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: gappie on April 21, 2008, 03:09:35 am: Quote from: Matt on April 18, 2008, 08:54:37 am
1) A "zoomed in" view of a single file. This might be nice for audio, images, and video. What if at the file level, you could "View in Detail" along with play, add, etc.?

i like this idea. especially when you get some influence on what information you get back. and that it also works on the file that is playing now. who are the people on the picture. where was it taken. who are the actors, the musicians etc.. stuff i putted in my database.
at this moment Thv feels a bit like a one way street. it is easy to find files using the info you put in there, but hard to see all the info attached to a file.

one idea. how about a screen you can switch on/of between thv or fullscreen. when for instance a movie is playing, it still shows the movie in a corner but also shows the actors etc involved, the same for pics and audio.
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: fitbrit on April 21, 2008, 09:48:30 am: This little program (released by an AVSforum member) will automatically download subtitles, IMDB details and rename files to your method of choice. It could be useful to some of us if the requested feature is ever implemented.
The current version doesn't support the .mkv extension, but this has been promised in the next version. For now, people are temporarily changing the extension to .avi, getting the details they need, and then changing back to .mkv. Of course, MC makes these steps easy.

http://vrokolos.blogspot.com/2008/03/vroksub-released.html (http://vrokolos.blogspot.com/2008/03/vroksub-released.html)
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: tgrounds on April 24, 2008, 01:57:11 pm: Please forgive me for just catching up but I would DEFINITELY be interested in the additional information in Theatre View. I'm nearing the halfway point through ripping and cataloging my collection (about 700 DVD's left!). I added several custom fields to capture data that is important to me (Actors, Directors, Movie Genre - allowing multiple genres to be selected, Plot, Reviews, Movie Rating - with a dropdown of the ratings for consistency, Year, Running time in minutes).

It would be great to be able to see these items in the Theatre View (and be able to search by some of them rather than only title) I really like the appearence of the one presented above that has the buttons on the left that let you select plot, actors, etc. That would be a great feature.

Just my 2 cents... ::)
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: tgrounds on April 24, 2008, 02:26:54 pm: Quote from: gappie on April 18, 2008, 04:20:00 pm

i have director and actors in my database (one day maybe i finished it 8) )

That has been the biggest part for me too... but I came up with a process that allows me to update all of the tag data completely for 100 movies in about an hour. I have always used the Collectorz movie collector software and published a web site of my movies (for friends who borrow them). It grabs the data from IMDB as well as Amazon.com. I adjusted the format of the web site it creates to present my collection in the order of my tags in MC12 including a large sized cover image. It already puts the ; between multiple actors and directors so, it is a simple cut & paste job.

This is what the site looks like:

(http://www.cabtex.net/Event%20Pictures/MovieLibrary.jpg)

and this is how I put in the tag data:

(http://www.cabtex.net/Event%20Pictures/MediaCenter.jpg)
Just a suggestion...
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: gappie on April 24, 2008, 03:04:25 pm: thanks a lot tgrounds. your description sounds promissing. ill check that out. maybe i will finish it sooner than i expected. :) the pics dont show up though (copy and paste the link from the properties also not). just so you know. 8)

thanks also for the other post in this thread. i think (hope) that mc is thinking something out to bring THV to the next level.

:)
gab
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: HTPC4ME on April 28, 2008, 09:41:54 am: ive used a software based proggy for years for my 400 disc dvd changers. The software had a database proggy in it called profiler. Which worked WONDERS!... All you had to do was type in the movie title and it would download all the info of the movie, from the actors, to overview, to cover arts, and even trivia. It took me a couple hours to do all my discs at the time over 900 and when done it was Beautiful!

I could view all my dvd's by genres, select a dvd, then click on a overview button and it would give you pages of info on the movie, and similiar movies and other movies those actors played in.

Ive recently sold my changers due to hdtv coming out and my players not being able to output 1080. I am almost completelly all HDD based now and I would love for JRiver to implement this into there KICK ___ Software.

The link for the program i use to use is here. http://www.cinemaronline.com/dvdlobbypro.html

and personally i dont think it would be impossible for you guys to do it. being that that company had used YOUR CODE in there software. I have used a plugin of there's for there music lobby which plugged into J RIVERS MEDIA CENTER. So if they can use your code then there should be no reason. J river can't use there's to implement the dvd info structure. But then again i'm not a programmer and am not sure what it takes to implement features from one proggy into another.

I'd pay for this to be a feature!
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: glynor on April 28, 2008, 10:17:35 am: I just thought I'd post my STRONG support for this plan. I agree with the others above that a way to have a "zoomed in view" of a single item would be superb. However... some points:

1) Don't limit our ability to access this "zoomed in view" to single-file items only. For example, say the feature was called "Get Info" (ala OSX). It'd, of course, be nice to be able to "Get Info" on Movies or TV Episodes showing the [Comment] field (or something similar) to display a short description of the file. However, it'd be equally nice to be able to "Get Info" on Artists (showing Bios), TV Series (showing a general show description), and at other points in the view hierarchy.

2) A simple (from the user's perspective anyhow) way to do this would be to simply map the fields that are likely to be used as View Scheme panes to "templates" which display different additional fields in the Get Info view. For example:
[Album] template contains: [Artist], [Album], [Year], cover art image, [Comment], track listing
[Artist] template contains instead: [Bios], listing of albums, and artist picture
Image File template contains: [Name], [Artist], [Album], [Date], [Comment], [People], [Places], [Keywords], and medium thumbnail
Movie (based on Media Sub Type) Template contains: [Comment], [Genre], [Year], [Director], and thumbnail
TV Show Template contains: [Series], [Season], [Episode], [Name], [Comment], [Year], and thumbnail

3) The above wouldn't need really to be perfect. Define the 99.9% "most used" items, and then define a catch-all template that would be displayed for everything else (would probably contain [Artist], [Name], [Date], [Comment], and [Image]). We'll tell you if you need more. ;)

Lastly... I wholeheartedly agree with others that it'd be better to have this and have to manually fill the data than to not have it at all. However... I KNOW there has to be a way to auto-pull data out of IMDB. Other, free and open-source, applications do this (so it must not cost much if anything at all). For example, MythTV does this: http://mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/MythVideo#Metadata_Lookup

Ideally, this info could eventually end up in YADB (perhaps with auto-submission) and be based on file hashes just like the other data lookups in MC. However, it should be able to also pull from at least IMDB. Amazon and TV.com might be nice too.
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: fitbrit on April 28, 2008, 10:44:11 am: Bah! glynor takes the fun out of wishing for stuff by posting how it might actually be done. :P
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: HTPC4ME on April 28, 2008, 10:47:27 am: well fitbrit. I'll keep wishing so Glynor can keep coming up with ideas for J river to implement it :P
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: damian_pentney on June 23, 2008, 10:04:28 am: Yes please.
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: HTPC4ME on June 23, 2008, 10:14:32 am: please please please :)

jusr recently got rid of my dvd changers and have switched over to computer based, am now using collectorz, still crosssing fingers for Jrivers implementation though :)
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: tgrounds on June 23, 2008, 10:27:10 am: Congrats on that and best of luck! I'm now 600 DVD's into my collection and I have slowed down significantly in ripping my collection... I have about 600 left and I ran out of steam! :) (ok... I really ran out of time)... need to get back in the swing of it again!
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: ronron on July 26, 2008, 07:51:26 pm: Gappie, how did you get the Movie tags such as Plot, Director ect to display in MC?
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: tgrounds on August 06, 2008, 04:55:55 pm: ronron -

I added them as custom fields that appear for Movies only - See my posting http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=44333.msg311233#msg311233 for the changes that I made.

To make them show up on the tag screen click on the upper left hand corner of the 'TAG' screen and a drop-down will appear - click on the 'Also Show' and it will show all of the fields that are being displayed. Select the new fields you want to show.

Also an update - I'm up to 867 movies ripped. Just picked up another 1TB drive... getting there!

Hope this helps -
Tom.
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: gappie on August 07, 2008, 04:19:08 am: Quote from: ronron on July 26, 2008, 07:51:26 pm
Gappie, how did you get the Movie tags such as Plot, Director ect to display in MC?
im sorry, missed the question. but it is as tgrounds says. i think some nicer way to view those fields would be great. especially in theaterview. i did manage to get the actuers etc showing on my second screen, when playing a movie. but that is rather complicated, sending events to girder in the sdk, and letting girder make a form that shows it. but this not make sense for the plot....

:)
gab

btw, tgrounds, i managed to get all the data for my movies in mc in just a view hours. thanks to this thread: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=47538.0
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: tgrounds on October 20, 2008, 10:13:18 am: Thanks Gappie - I will read it over and hopefully it will help me out. I'm WAY BEHIND on my updating of my movide TAG data - as expected! Life got really busy and I got way ahead on my ripping, and way behind on my data. Hopefully this will help me out!

Thanks for the link!
Tom.
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: htpcenthusiast on October 20, 2008, 06:37:23 pm: Getting some way to have your DVD / Movie collection summarised nicely would be a great idea... What I am playing with is using a catalogue software like movie manager pro, that does this automatically and generates an internal website with a link to play in your player, with IMdb info that was automatically taken off the web...

Only thing is how would you integrate the website it generates...

I'm not that technical so happy to settle with J River starting with the website and a scroll through that... Any ideas on how that could be done gents?
Title: Re: Theatre view item display question
Post by: htpcenthusiast on October 20, 2008, 06:40:04 pm: Getting some way to have your DVD / Movie collection summarised nicely would be a great idea... What I am playing with is using a catalogue software like movie manager pro, that does this automatically and generates an internal website with a link to play in your player, with IMdb info that was automatically taken off the web...

Only thing is how would you integrate the website it generates...

I'm not that technical so happy to settle with J River starting with the website and a scroll through that... Any ideas on how that could be done gents?

I forgot to mention:
Also happy to start with Standard View, a logitech mini keyboard does a great job as a versatile remote control - ish...