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[justind]

I'm trying out the demo for Media Center and have had a few questions about some setup and an error:

I have 3 PC's in the house as follows:
NOTEBOOK
DESKTOP
MEDIACENTER

All are running Windows XP SP2. NOTEBOOK and DESKTOP are used as PC's with Media Center running in Standard view.
I'm trying to use MEDIACENTER strictly as an interface to play movies, it's always on as Theater view. It also serves as my Library server.

I've ran auto-import and populated my library.

Here's an example of my filesystem layout on MEDIACENTER:

Y:\SD\Movies\ChristmasParty2006\ChristmasParty2006-cd1.avi
Y:\SD\Movies\ChristmasParty2006\ChristmasParty2006-cd2.avi
Y:\SD\Movies\ChristmasParty2006\cover.jpg
Y:\SD\Movies\ChristmasParty2007\ChristmasParty2007.avi
Y:\SD\Movies\ChristmasParty2007\cover.jpg
Z:\SD\Movies\Cathys21Birthday\Cathys21Birthday.avi
Z:\SD\Movies\Cathys21Birthday\cover.jpg
z:\SD\TVShows\Hereos\Season1\HeroesS01E01.avi
z:\SD\TVShows\Hereos\Season1\HeroesS01E02.avi
Z:\SD\TVSHows\Scrubs\Season1\ScrubsS01E01.avi


On MEDIACENTER I have the views set to Genre/Album/Year for video.
For movies I populate the tags in following fashion:

Genre:Movies
Album:ChristmasParty2006
Year:2006

For tvshows I populate the tags:
Genre:TVShows
Album:Heroes
Year:Empty

This is just a small sampling, but gives enough detail for my questions as follows:

1) For the purposes of sorting the display of videos in theater view, is it possible to do any of the following?
   a) Change the Year field show that I can type text into it, so that sorting will happen properly
   b) Change my theater view option to a custom tag sorting order, other than the default options of All Files,Calender,Disk Location,File Type/Genre/Name,Genre/Album/Year
   c) any other suggestions that can allow me to sort things in theater view in a way that makes sense


2) My library server is running on MEDIACENTER, I can connect to it with "Search for Library Servers" from NOTEBOOK.
Is it possible for me to update tags from NOTEBOOK to the library server on MEDIACENTER? So far it only seems that tags I change remain local to NOTEBOOK.


3) I have the following problem when attempting to play any video from NOTEBOOK, all video plays on MEDIACENTER just fine:

m01p://192.168.10.102:80/Y:\SD\Movies\ChristmasParty2007\ChristmasParty2007.avi

Media Center encountered errors while trying to play the last several files. Please make sure that the path in your media library points to the right location.

Error details:

DirectShow: Unknown streaming error: 0x800c0006

[JONCAT]

You might want to try mapping drives instead of library server, you'l be able to seek with audio & video that way. I don't think streaming video works wll, if at all, with Library Server; that said it's great for audio of LAN or WAN. Search the forum for Glynor's scrit system. There are ways to setup MC to allow tagging on a client machine, but you'll be copying library files back and forth. It works well once you get it sorted out.

DC

[MrHaugen]

1. As Doctor Cilantro says, I would use local drives or "logical" drives only when you are mixing music and video.
Just go to explorer tools and map network drive, or something like that.
That way you can tag the videos and music on one of you standard view machines and you get the updated tags on your HTPC library. If the "update tags on external changes" are activated...

2. One question. Why do you use albums for videos? Would it not be better to use the field Series for the series title?

3. You have to make a new Theater View scheme, and select this in theater view. Navigate under video and add an new scheme. Make sure you select show in theater view.

4. When it comes to sorting and use of different types of video, I have made a simple guide here:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=44472.0

5. Maby you can find something there usefull

6. There is NO other Media Center app that can be compared to J River Media Center imo. I have tried quite a few. I would try it out for as long as it takes for you to fall in love. Eventually you will

[justind]

Thanks, for the feedback. I was beginning to get a bit worried. I always seem to ask the questions that nobody wants to answer

1) Just last night I found the "Add View Scheme" hidden away in the edit menu. That will allow me be build any sorting scheme based on tags:)

2 & 3) If I understand this correctly:
On each machine I want to:
a)set "update tags on external changes"
b)set up each machine to import it's media from mapped drives
c)have each machine have its own library

Since the tags will be updated on the media from whichever machine I'm doing the editing of tags from, the other library servers should find this do to the "update tags on external changes"? Also, since each machine has it's own library, it will attempt to access it via its own locally mapped drives and therefore I should be able to play anything from any of my machines?


I do have one more question now:

I see from the link MrHaugen provided that JRiver supports some expressions and decision making. Is there some documentation to these expressions somewhere?

What would be really nice is to be able to derive the tag population of auto-imported media from it's directory location and filename. This would be as ideal and automated as I could imagine.

[MrHaugen]

Since the tags will be updated on the media from whichever machine I'm doing the editing of tags from, the other library servers should find this do to the "update tags on external changes"? Also, since each machine has it's own library, it will attempt to access it via its own locally mapped drives and therefore I should be able to play anything from any of my machines?

Yes, you should. the only problem you should enter is the tags that are stored in the local library only. Examples are Number Plays, Number Skipped etc.
You might be able to set those fields as "Write to tags when possible" though. Then it should be no problem at all I belive.

I see from the link MrHaugen provided that JRiver supports some expressions and decision making. Is there some documentation to these expressions somewhere?

What would be really nice is to be able to derive the tag population of auto-imported media from it's directory location and filename. This would be as ideal and automated as I could imagine.

It's some documentation on this on the Wiki I belive. The link is on top of this forum. Search for some answers there. Also check the help in MC. Read up on some of the rules, and then try out some examples and modify them. It's not so hard as it seems. If you get into trouble, ask in the forum for help. There are some guys here that are really good at this.

I don't think it is possible to populate tags depending on directory structure and filename on import. What I do is to use Import playlist and use the "Rename from file name" tool once in a while.
Beive it would be really hard to make a fully automated tagging system. Best practise would be to have a naming standard for the files you import I guess.
Update tags from YADB is also an option for full music albums.