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[yannis]

Hi all,

I have a lot of DVD/BRs I haven't managed to rip yet, but I'd like them to appear in my video library in MC. What is the best strategy to maintain "ghost" entries for films with no physical file on a local disk?

And next: before deciding to use MC for my vids too, I'd been maintaining an extensive db in another program. I can export a CSV from there, with a lot of info scraped in; how would I import this info in MC? (For now I don't care about correlation with physical file addresses.) I'm also looking into the possibility of exporting NFOs, would that be preferable?

Thanks in advance.

[AndrewFG]

Just create a dummy .VOB file for each of your DVD's..

• Create a new file (say) Avatar.txt with some guff text inside it so it is not zero length.
• Rename that file as Avatar.VOB
• Import the VOB into MC's library
• In MCs tagging window, set its media Sub Type to Movie
• Right click on the file in MC and select the menu command Get Movie & TV Info

[yannis]

The dummy vob is a great idea I wouldn't have thought.

But the disks are too many to rename one by one, and more importantly, the films too rare for the current MC Get Info tool to locate properly en mass (I did try a few selections already, too many blanks to say the least). So, given I do have this info available, isn't there any other way ti import it?

[AndrewFG]

But the disks are too many to rename one by one..

I wrote myself a small application (for Windows) that takes as input a list of titles, and creates a dummy VOB for each title. If you want a copy of that app, please send me a PM with your email address.

[yannis]

Thank you, I will, if no alternative is found. But let's wait and see if someone can enlighten us about importing a complete CSV.

[jachin99]

Can you have these ghost entries launch external video programs such as vudu

[AndrewFG]

Can you have these ghost entries launch external video programs such as vudu

Maybe. In MC Settings, File Associations, you can select a "Play Back Method" for each file type; in which you could (for example) select "External program (custom)" for playing the file type VOB. However that would then apply to all files of type VOB, be they real or dummy ones. In any case, you would need to experiment with the command line arguments, I think..

[jpu018]

Ok, but what happens if you click on the icon / folder you've retrieved ?
Will MC display some warning, like "go to your (physical) Library and get the (relevant) disc" ?

[AndrewFG]

^

No. It will simply report "play back error"...

[thecrow]

There was a similar discussion a while ago:-

 http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=102843.msg714564#msg714564

Which said you can go to File>Import Playlist then select a format including things like MyMovies, XBMC etc and it would import them into your MC library but personally I never understood how it was supposed to work and failed to get anywhere with it.

[AndrewFG]

There was a similar discussion a while ago:-

 http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=102843.msg714564#msg714564

Which said you can go to File>Import Playlist then select a format including things like MyMovies, XBMC etc and it would import them into your MC library but personally I never understood how it was supposed to work and failed to get anywhere with it.

Yeah. I was the OP for that other thread. And I couldn't work out how to load from an external playlist or database either. Which is why I posted my own solution here instead. Because at least it is understandable. And it works too..

[yannis]

Truth is I did import a test mpl file made by MC itself; the import dialog said "xxx new files", but then I could only find the mpl imported and no new entries in my video pane. I now notice that you have to have the Media Network on, maybe I hadn't.

[jpu018]

^

No. It will simply report "play back error"...

Thank you
Not that surprising :-)
So, next question is : how can I achieve that ? Or is it a requirement to put in the "requirements" thread ?

[AndrewFG]

^

I expect that people may suggest that you rip your DVDs to hard disk, and then play them in the normal way using MC...

[jpu018]

... Sounds logical, however, you could have answered that to Yannis from scratch. The thing is, we both want a trick to manage disks we have not ripped yet.
Your suggestion is a good start anyway.

[yannis]

In my case, I just need to remember that I do have a certain film on DVD.

Anyway, I found this in another thread:

"Importing mpl works on the filename as the key... if the file does not exist at the location in filename, nothing is imported...  You would find a way to replace the filenames in the import file to match the locations in your library BEFORE importing the mpl file. "

So, if I understand correctly, I need to create the dummy vobs, correlate them to the entries in the other program, then hopefully convert a csv to mpl (how?), and then import that one in MC? 

[jachin99]

Creating a .vob file as described above isn't working for me.  I double checked my file type associations and they are good.  MC will not import the files, and the files aren't visible in file explorer within MC.  What could I be doing wrong.

[yannis]

Gotcha!

I found a very old hack that still works: filenames beginning with "http://" aren't ARE ignored when imported. So:

Create an mpl list
Prepend http:// to all filenames
Import the mpl in MC

Now, how to convert the CSV to MPL?...

[ferday]

Data fiddler

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=102906.0;wap2

[yannis]

ferday saves the day! I will need to check this more later, but combined with the old hack, it seems to do the trick.

[AndrewFG]

Creating a .vob file as described above isn't working for me.  I double checked my file type associations and they are good.  MC will not import the files, and the files aren't visible in file explorer within MC.  What could I be doing wrong.

The dummy .VOB file must have a non zero file size. Create the dummy file using (say) a text editor, and type in some (say) 20-30 characters of text; then save the file as NAME_OF_YOUR_MOVIE.TXT; and finally rename that to NAME_OF_YOUR_MOVIE.VOB

[yannis]

I edited a typo to a post above.

And yes, I can confirm that Data Fiddler works as promised (at least in this case) - it took a tab delimited txt and brought all info in MC, even custom tags. So, thanks again.

BTW, the new entries are Blank under Media Type and SubMedia Type. To Get Info you'll need to set them properly.

[jachin99]

I have this working for the most part but, when I launch vudu through a batch file, I end up at the vudu site.  I would like to add some way to launch click on a TV show, and end up at my TV shows menu on Vudu, or better yet, I would like to be able to click on different icons in theater view, and end up at that movies page within vudu, instead of a generic screen if that makes any sense.  I'm thinking I could do this with command line arguments but I don't know where to start in order to accomplish this.

[jachin99]

I have created "Ghost" files so I can include cover art in my library for movies I have purchased from VUDU.  They are just text files renamed with a .vob extension.  In media center, I associated .vob files with a batch script that launches a web browser, and points it to vudu.  When I click on my files in theater view, MC just flickers and slows down without launching the files.  I'm thinking the slow flicker might be because it thinks it should be changing my refresh rate but it doesn't even launch a web browser in the background like it should.  When I navigate to the .vob file locations within MC and click on them, they work.  In standard view under the video tab clicking on them does nothing

[jmone]

I'm not sure if this helps, but I just created a Entry as follows in MC using Data Fiddler from a Spreadsheet

Code: [Select]

Filename Name Media Type Description Media Sub Type
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,105737.msg735820.html#msg735820 Test Link Video Test Link Test Clip
It shows up in my Video Media Type and as the Filename is a URL, when I "play it" it opens the webpage

[jachin99]

Thanks for all of the help.  I ended up deleting all of MC's links and tag info for the files, and recreating them.  This fixed my problem.  I'm not sure what the datafiddler is though, what does that do ?

[jmone]

DataFiddler info here:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,102906.0.html

[jachin99]

It looks like that's better than what I have setup.  When I get the time, i'll have to learn how to use it.  For now, I don't have enough streaming media to make it a priority. I think that would work great for VUDU, where its entirely browser based, and I can see a web address but for things like Netflix or micorosoft movies and tv, I'm not sure how you would retrieve the URL for just one move, then point the app to it.  I know apps like Netflix, and MS movies and TV can be opened in the Edge browser but I don't know how you would kind of inject the correct URL for any given movie to get Edge to bring it up. 

[bdmacl]

I have several discs that I probably won't rip, but still want to reference. I simply (relative term) document the disc itself in this way:
 1. put the disc in the drive,
 2. go to the Drives & Devices section of JR
 3. select the drive with the disc I just inserted
 4. hit the "Get Movie & TV Info" button to retrieve the appropriate metadata
 5. grab the thumbnail and drag and drop to the Video area on the left. You should see a + sign on your cursor as you drag over.
 6. go to the movie/disc in the Video area and edit the appropriate tag.

I enabled a field called Disc Location where I designate which storage box, bookshelf, or binder has that specific disc. I then made that field visible in the Theater View so that when I select a movie, it tells me there if I need to go get the disc. For my ripped movies, the Filename (path) tells me which harddrive to mount since I use a SATA toaster to swap out the specific hard drives. I could use that disc location field for that as well, which I may have to do in the future when my hard drives outnumber available drive letters in Windows.