What are people doing for ...

[pat_smith1969]

Managing thier DVD collection?

A while ago I looked into some way of organizing my 600 or so ripped DVDs. Some people had been using DVDProfiler, but I didnt like that program.

I have read about some .my files, what are those for?

What method do most people use for organizing thier DVDs? Right now I am on "Folder View" and just browse by the folders.

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by pat_smith1969

Managing thier DVD collection?

A while ago I looked into some way of organizing my 600 or so ripped DVDs. Some people had been using DVDProfiler, but I didnt like that program.

I have read about some .my files, what are those for?

What method do most people use for organizing thier DVDs? Right now I am on "Folder View" and just browse by the folders.

I use DVD profiler, but I don't have most of mine in sage.

Are you ripping to avis or full DVDs? I don't have enough disk space to rip all my DVDs to sage yet.

[pat_smith1969]

Mostly ripping to avi, but I have some as ISOs. Git about 2T of space.

[BFisher]

I'm ripping my kids DVDs and controlling them through Sage. Our non-kids DVDs don't get watched over and over - so I just rip it before watching it as needed. My PC rips a DVD in about 10 minutes (about same time takes wife to get popcorn ready).

I use cloneDVD - and have been very happy. It allows you to rip just the movie itself... very nice feature for the kids movies (so you pick the movie and it starts... no waiting for 10 previews, etc.)

All movies are watched through MVPs (headless server)

[Addict]

Originally Posted by pat_smith1969

Managing thier DVD collection?

What method do most people use for organizing thier DVDs? Right now I am on "Folder View" and just browse by the folders.

I do the same thing. I rip the full DVD and have about 200 right now on my NAS. For me, the folder view does the job. I figure I'll end up building another NAS once I start to run out of space... I've tried a couple of programs but wasn't all that impressed with any of them.

What I'd really like is something that runs in the background, reads my movie directories, goes out and pull down images/descriptions, and plug them in the right place so Sage can use them. <smile>

[jdamore]

I always think to myself how I will regret not ripping the full dvd onto my HDD in the future so I'm not using AVI, DIVX, ect.. For the price being < 110$ for a 500 gig hd, why not?

Currenty I am using SageMC and using the IMDB in folder view. It works great and very high WAF. The only thing (for me) is I like a higher rez picture of the cover art so, I manually search (google images) for the image, rename it to folder.jpg and put it in the VIDEO_TS folder.

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by BFisher

I'm ripping my kids DVDs and controlling them through Sage. Our non-kids DVDs don't get watched over and over - so I just rip it before watching it as needed. My PC rips a DVD in about 10 minutes (about same time takes wife to get popcorn ready).

I use cloneDVD - and have been very happy. It allows you to rip just the movie itself... very nice feature for the kids movies (so you pick the movie and it starts... no waiting for 10 previews, etc.)

All movies are watched through MVPs (headless server)

Pretty much ditto. All my kid's stuff is ripped to avi's. Only DVDs I put on there are TV shows and I delete them as soon as I have a chance to watch them. (Like season 1 of heroes).

I use DVDFab Platinum to do my ripping. I personally don't watch many DVDs through the MVPs - it's still sometimes flaky for me. But watching them through sage on my PC connected in my media room is perfect.

[UFGrayMatter]

I use meedio and MovieNight ;-)

[heffe2001]

Originally Posted by UFGrayMatter

I use meedio and MovieNight ;-)

Now, if that were built into Sage, I'd definitely have to get a new NAS set up and rip all my DVD's .

[pat_smith1969]

So was the Meedio easy to set up? How, exactly, does it hook into Sage? is there some kind of STV/STVi for it, or does SageMC support it directly?

[UFGrayMatter]

Originally Posted by pat_smith1969

So was the Meedio easy to set up? How, exactly, does it hook into Sage? is there some kind of STV/STVi for it, or does SageMC support it directly?

I use Meedio for Movies, Music, online content and everything but recorded shows.

For TV series that i put on a server I use TVNight - http://www.meedios.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1380:



You could also use this for recorded stuff from sage using an importer that importers sage recordings into a meedio library.

From Meedio - pressing play launches Sage and plays the file ;-). Or from meedio you can have a button "View TV Guide" which will launch Sage's guide. So it is pretty seemless.

This is an old youtube clip I put up to show some stuff I did - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lkRd9C3Mng.

[pat_smith1969]

So from what I can tell you don't boot right into SageTV but rather you boot into Meedio's interface, then when you go to do Live TV, recordedTV, or some other thing in Sage the Meedio/TVNight interface kicks off the sage version of that? That sound about right?

[UFGrayMatter]

Originally Posted by pat_smith1969

So from what I can tell you don't boot right into SageTV but rather you boot into Meedio's interface, then when you go to do Live TV, recordedTV, or some other thing in Sage the Meedio/TVNight interface kicks off the sage version of that? That sound about right?

that's exactly right.

For system bootup (however infrequent that may be) I have sage start minimized, and meedio startup on a ten second delay to let sage finish.

Then in Meedio:
TV -> Archived TV (stuff on my server from ripped dvds) just play in Zoom Player
TV -> Recorded TV (stuff local from Sage) -> Play - brings up Sage and starts the file playing in Sage.

Then you can either have "Back" mapped to Alt+F4 to bring you back to meedio or just use "Standby" on the home screen to go back to meedio.

[Crashless]

Originally Posted by UFGrayMatter

I use Meedio for Movies, Music, online content and everything but recorded shows.

For TV series that i put on a server I use TVNight - http://www.meedios.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1380:

That's really interesting. So do you automatically recompress everything you record to divx or something to maintain entire series? Is this your primary interface for watching TV, or is it your archive, so you can separate recently recorded episodes to watch separately?

That interface is really nice, and I like how it allows you to view the Show list with their graphic as well as episodes at the same time. How does it handle different seasons?

[sixdoubleo]

Another vote for Meedio.

I use Meedio as the Main Menu to my HTPC and define custom functions with it. I don't necessarily use Meedio to PLAY content, but I use it as the means to get to it.

My main menu looks something like this...

Main Menu:
Watch TV - Launch SageTV
Watch DVD - Launch TheaterTek and play DVD in drive
Watch Movie from Library - Browse ripped DVD's using Meedio's browser. Launch Theatertek on ripped IFO file.
Listen to Music - Launch JRiver MediaCenter
ScreenSaver - Launch Fish

Then I have submenus, such as the utility menu...

Utiltiies:
Rip CD - Call Custom VBScript which creates folders, downloads art, and calls audiograbber
Rip DVD - Call Custom VBScript which creates folders, etc...launch DVDFab Decrypter
Reboot HTPC
Sleep HTPC
Backup HTPC - Run script which zips up and copies off all key areas of system.

If your HTPC is doing more than just Sage, I think Meedio is an excellent choice as a menu to tie it all together. Unfortunately the product was bought out by Yahoo some time ago, although the Meedio die-hards and plug-in developers are still very much active...and there is also an effort to develop an open source version called Meedios.

[UFGrayMatter]

Originally Posted by Crashless

That's really interesting. So do you automatically recompress everything you record to divx or something to maintain entire series? Is this your primary interface for watching TV, or is it your archive, so you can separate recently recorded episodes to watch separately?

That interface is really nice, and I like how it allows you to view the Show list with their graphic as well as episodes at the same time. How does it handle different seasons?

Here is a nice long list of how it looks using new meedioVintage theme....


Not Included are shots of a "Recent Recorded" View for quick access to stuff and a Season Selection shot


The Recent Recorded View uses a separate library for shows imported from SageTV. The Archive view uses a library and the TVNight Importer to grab all the details from www.thetvdb.com

[VikingCrown]

I have to say that I would absolutely LOVE something like this in SAGE. I know that SageMC has a nice look to it, but nothing like this. For me, the current way that DVD's are displayed and searched in both the core and SageMC is lacking. Is there any way to incorporate something like this into SAGE at all? I'm willing to learn how to use studio, but I want to know if its even possible to achieve something like this within SAGE.

[GbrNole]

i'd still give my left arm to have MCE my movies work properly in sage. that would be absolutely killer with the new extenders.

[VikingCrown]

That was my thinking exactly, currently I use my PS3 to watch my 720p .mp4 files because my PC and the SD extender can barely keep up, but with the new HD Extender doing all the transcoding natively having a killer imported videos section would be amazing!

I just want to know if its possible to incorporate something even remotely like the images in this thread or the MyMovies from MCE into SAGE. If its possible, how difficult would it be for a newbie in Studio to figure out?

[PLUCKYHD]

HOw are you doing this folder view with imdb? I store my movies in native vob format on at external locations how do i get this to show/play in sagetv?