Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[grcassidy]

Hi, I've been using j.River for awhile for my music collection on my work PC and it has been really good. So now I want to set it up to play movies on my HTPC. I want to be able to launch DVD's and Bluray from hard drive folder structure. Similar to TMT (when it works??) or mpc-hc, i want to launch a movie by sending the parent folder as a command line parameter. I tried using "MC16 \DVDVideo {Parent Folder}" with no luck. Is there a way for this to work?
Cheers, Gary.

[JimH]

Try playing from within MC first.

[grcassidy]

Hi, thanks for your quick reply.

Yes I have been able to play dvd, Bluray, mkv, etc from within JRiver MC16. Playback is great, hence I want to use this as my movie player of choice on my HTPC. I use Windows7 Media Center with Media Browser plugin for launching movies. I want to stay with Windows7 Media Center for recorded TV and XBox extender capabilities (80% of use), and be able to launch movies with the remote control (wife and kids need to use) in MC16. As far as I can think there are two ways to do this:
1. Launch MC16 into theater mode and then choose a movie from there (I've done this with music in the past and worked well).
2. Launch MC16 to auto play movie in parent folder.

Option 2 is my preferred method. I had a quick go at option 1 but could not get theatre view configured as I would like.
Thanks.

[JimH]

There are some command line details on our Devzone page.  You'll find a link to it here:
http://www.jriver.com/support.html

If we need to add something we will.  Welcome.

[MrC]

Until a built-in solution is available, we can probably cobble together a script that will accept a folder name, enumerate the required files beneath, and then have it submit the appropriate MC or MCC commands necessary to launch the movie.

Can you share an example of the folder's contents, and which files you want MC to play?  We'll just assume an arbitrary folder named "Movie".

The command line info Matt referred to is here:

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/The_Command_Line
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Media_Center_Core_Commands

Note that the /DVDVideo parameter is specified via a forward slash, and it plays a physical disc in a DVD drive.

[grcassidy]

Yes a script would be great. Unfortunately I don't have the necessary skills to build such a script  . I have looked into the command line and MCC commands and this functionality is great - I've used some commands for custom functionality in the past.

I basically copy my DVD and blu-ray's as DVD and blu-ray folder structure - most as movie only copies, some retaining the menus. 
The DVD's are structured:
{Movie}\VIDEO_TS\

The Blu-Ray's are structured
{Movie}\BDMV\PLAYLIST, CLIPINF, STREAM, AUXDATA, META, BDJO, JAR, BACKUP

The Video Files are structured
{Movie}\<video file, .mkv, .avi, .mp4, etc>

I believe this is a pretty common way of storing a movie library?

DVD cover images, backdrops and metadata (as used by Media Browser) are also in the {Movie} Folder as <mymovies.xml, folder.jpg, backdrop1.jpg, backdrop2.jpg, etc>

It would also be great if the script could play a DVD or Blu-ray from the drive without having to differentiate between DVD or Blu-ray in the launch command.

Thanks very much for your support.

[grcassidy]

Hi,
Just wondering if there is any progress?
Thanks
Gary.

[MrC]

Sorry for the delay.  I was having trouble ripping a Blu-ray...

Here's a batch script.  See the comments at the top of the script.

It takes a single folder name, which is expected to be a path to where movies exist, or in the case of Blu-ray or DVD, the base folder below which would be BDMV or VIDEO_TS, respectively.  Examples:

   .\movie_launcher.bat "e:\DVD Movies\Sade Lovers Live"
   .\movie_launcher.bat "e:\Blu-ray Movies\Saving the Bay Disc 1"
   .\movie_launcher.bat "e:\Movies\Home Movies"

A DVD starts at the main menu - not sure how to get to a segment, and you'd have to decide which segment in any case.

Add to the file suffixes to include more file types - I did not bother listing all the movie types, as I think you'll take care of that as you need.

Currently the script echo's out what it is doing - comment out the echo lines you don't want enabled.

See my explanation here for how to make the batch script launch-able in a minimized window.  

Let me know how it works out...

[grcassidy]

Thanks mate, I'll give it a try tonight. Cheers.

[MrC]

Updated the script.  I'd left off some double quotes in a last minute change.