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What is the best video format for WMP?
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thebuff
Newbie
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19. October 2009 @ 08:51 |
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Wondered if anyone can help?
I'm looking to back up my DVD collection to my hard drive and view/play them using windows media player.
I currently have a few avi files and wmv files on there as a test, but neither does everything I want - I would like to be able to add genre, actor, director etc... values in windows explorer, which I can do to the wmv files but not to the avi files, but I'd also like to add DVD artwork to the file, so that within WMP it looks similar to my CD collection.
Any idea if this is possible (to a WMV file) or are there any alternative file formats that allow it all (and preferably viewable/playable in WMP)?
Many thanks,
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AfterDawn Addict
1 product review
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20. October 2009 @ 15:39 |
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Instead of WMP, I would get XBMC for windows, then you can automatically connect to IMDB and download all the info-actors, plot.../posters.... Then it would not matter what format the movie was, WMV, AVI, MKV...
 Piss me off, and I Will ignore You! |
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thebuff
Newbie
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22. October 2009 @ 06:36 |
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Thanks for the advice Cyprusrom, I had a look at XBMC yesterday and although it's a nice looking interface and as you say it doesn't matter what format the movie is in, I wasn't convinced.
Unlike WMP, it doesn't show the artwork for either movies or music until you go into the actual folder - I may have not found the setting to change this, as there does seem to be quite a bit you can alter.
And even so, I'm still quite keen to use WMP or WMC, partly as I like, and I'm used to, the interface and also I may get a Windows Media Extender at some point in the future to view/play things on my TV.
I have found a program called Tag&Rename, which does the job of editing the details; title, actor, genre etc... and will also add the artwork, but it's a bit hit and miss. It's really designed for music files, but does support wmv files as well. Unfortunately, quite often it will freeze and not complete adding the artwork to the file - but I can't find anything else to do the job.
It's such a shame that WMP doesn't have the same right-click options (paste artwork and advanced tag editor) for video files that it has for music files - that's all I want really!!
Oh well, I'll continue searching and I'll have another look at XBMC or I might look at the J River Media Center.
If anyone knows of a similar program to Tag&Rename (Audioshell, by the same company, doesn't work on Vista unfortunately) it would be great to hear about it?
Thanks again
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AfterDawn Addict
1 product review
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22. October 2009 @ 14:37 |
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I am not sure what do you mean by "only when you go into the folder"...It must be something with your settings.
I should look something like this, in library mode, or browsing file mode:
The movie information,cast, plot..., DVD covers... all is downloaded automatically(sometimes when there are movies with similar names, you have to make sure it gets the right data,if not, you have to manually edit it).
You must not have a large movie collection. Even if I had a good Tag+Rename program, unless it searched a database and gathered the info on it's own, then I would have to look for the right info, download the DVD covers/artwork, copy/paste; if you have 1000+ movies, that can become a bit tedious...
I have XBMC installed on an old XBOX I got off ebay. It is connected to my PC/internet through a router, and most movies I have them on a couple external USB drives connected to the PC. If your PC had an TV out connection, you could just use XBMC on your PC instead of XBOX.
Piss me off, and I Will ignore You!
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thebuff
Newbie
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26. October 2009 @ 13:29 |
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Thanks again for your advice Cyprusrom. I've had another look at XBMC based on your comments, and it seems to be that, as long as XBMC doesn't need to look further than one folder deep then it will show the album art, but if it does need to go more than one folder deep then it cannot see the art.
It may add the art and other info automatically , but it's been a bit hit and miss for me, it worked fine for Star Wars, Kill Bill etc... but it automatically chose the wrong Psycho (it chose the rubbish remake from a few years ago!) and with many others it can't find any art. I know there's an option to change databases, so I'll try that tonight.
I was going to paste a screen view showing my folder problem, but not sure how to? Basically, I've got all my movies in one folder (D:/My Movies) and a folder for each movie (e.g. D:/My Movies/Batman)- within that folder there is another folder (Main Movie) that the ripping software automatically creates and then the TS Audio and TS Video folders within that.
If I point XBMC to my My Movies folder to search for movies, it will recognise every movie, but will only show artwork for those folders that do not have any sub-folders. If I go into a folder it will then show the artwork. Presumably if I move the files to the parent folder it will work, which I'm quite happy to do.
My problem will come with music files - it has the same problem with folders and as I've got over 36,000 songs, I'm not going to be moving all of them in a hurry!
Pretty impressed with what it can play though. It even plays ISO files, which may be quite handy. And the interface is nice looking too, with a few skins online to choose from I beleive.
I have found a decent tag program that works - Tag Tuner - it seems to be the only program that properly works with wmv files. This will embed the artwork into the file, so whatever program I chose to use in the future (WMP included) will show the artwork.
You're right I haven't got a massive movie collection, about 150 I think, so I'm fairly happy to find the artwork myself, although I've been using a program called metabrowser, which is pretty good - it finds the plot, cast, director, poster and backdrop artwork and various other info. It's designed to work alongside mediabrowser which is a windows media center plugin.
Thanks for your input, I'll continue to play with XBMC and see if I can work it all out - I'm sure there'll be a way.
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