Does Diamond/SMM/BMT/Phoenix play well together?

[Biggen]

I absolutely LOVE the Diamond UI. But I just wish it could do what SMM does as far as DVD/Blu-Ray TV series was concerned. If you have a season of TV shows (in the Movie menu), Diamond has no way to "drill-down" like SMM can do and just display one fanart image instead of displaying fanart for every movie file.

So I was thinking about putting SMM back onto my machine but use BMT to do the poster/fanart fetches instead of My Movie collection. I just don't want to use the My Movie program again, but I don't see any alternative. Also, I also hate to give up the look of the Diamond UI in the Movie sections, but again, I don't see any alternative.

Anyone else using SMM and Diamond together? Also, anyone else using BMT to fetch the fanart/poster art instead of letting My Movie Collections do it? Have you had any problems with it if so?

I'd pay $40 for a plugin that could provide the look of the Diamond UI with the functionality of the SMM plugin SANS the My Movie Collection program...

[Gunserotti]

I initially felt that way about my movies. However, I eventually just broke down and paid for all its features. After using all its features I think its quite good and easy to use. I have a WHS so the fit is very nice. I use it with Diamond.

I used BMT phoenix for a couple of months. I think the fanart quality is better with my movies. Also when I used BMT and phoenix together the updates made by BMT wouldn't always take or sometimes the default fanart would revert back to a different image...like I had gremlins. Maybe I never had it setup or fully understood the way it worked. However, overall BMT was quite good....but my movies satisfied my OCD a little bit better.

However, I think Plucky has mentioned that you need my movies to work SMM. He will confirm of course.

[Biggen]

Originally Posted by Gunserotti

I initially felt that way about my movies. However, I eventually just broke down and paid for all its features. After using all its features I think its quite good and easy to use. I have a WHS so the fit is very nice. I use it with Diamond.

I used BMT phoenix for a couple of months. I think the fanart quality is better with my movies. Also when I used BMT and phoenix together the updates made bi BMT wouldn't always take or sometimes the default fanart would revert back to a different image...like I had gremlins. Maybe I never had it setup or fully understood the way it worked. However overall it was quite good....but my movies satisfied my OCD a little bit better.

However, I think Plucky has mentioned that you need my movies to work SMM. He will confirm of course.

Yeah, I re-installed My Movies and set it up again. I then told SMM to use BMT instead of My Movies to do the fanart downloads. But I'm not getting backgrounds loading in SMM. I know the backgrounds are there because they display perfectly with just Diamond/BMT.

I guess I just need to uninstall BMT and use My Movies to do everything again. Having BMT in seems to complicate things... I paid for the 720p backgrounds with MY Movies last year so I should be able to get everything from them. I just didn't want to use 3d party software. And I like the look of the Diamond UI!

[panteragstk]

I use smm, bmt, and diamond. I also have another metadata provider, but that isn't relevant. They will all play nice with each other just fine.

[Biggen]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

I use smm, bmt, and diamond. I also have another metadata provider, but that isn't relevant. They will all play nice with each other just fine.

So you let BMT handle all your fanart/poster art then correct? If you make a graphic change in BMT for a particular movie it shows up in SMM?

[stuckless]

I think that if want collection management, then why not take the $40 and pay for the features in MyMovies).

BMT, as a free tool, will never do what MyMovies does. And SMM was able to do what it could do because of how well organized the movies are in MyMovies collection manager.

BMT is not a collection manager at all. It simply gets metadata/fanart (of varying qualities) and then allows other plugins to use that information to build up views, etc.

Creating complex views is not easy to do without some sort of database back end or a structured way to query the content, etc.

Once Phoenix is released, you'll be able to do many of the complex views, but again, if the presentations are not to your liking, then you'll be relying on others to build the presentations.

BMT does play well with SMM... almost too nice. ie, Some of my BMT issues are people expecting BMT to update files, but it won't because MyMovies has already updated it, and BMT will not overwrite. Or I've seen lots of cases where BMT has updated the files, and then later sagetv reloads the metadata from an external .properties file and the "fanart goes away". In my setup with, with 1000s of movies and TV, I've never seen a case where bmt has lost metadata... but I don't have any other metadata plugins installed. I'd say that people trying to use more than one metadata plugin are probably the most frustrated users Personally I'd stick with one plugin to fetch your metadata/fanart and you'll be much happier in the long run.

If you like SMM, then I'd take the $40 and use it to get the features from MyMovies and then use SMM. Or, wait, and maybe once Phoenix is released, you may like it as well.

[Biggen]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I think that if want collection management, then why not take the $40 and pay for the features in MyMovies).

BMT, as a free tool, will never do what MyMovies does. And SMM was able to do what it could do because of how well organized the movies are in MyMovies collection manager.

BMT is not a collection manager at all. It simply gets metadata/fanart (of varying qualities) and then allows other plugins to use that information to build up views, etc.

Creating complex views is not easy to do without some sort of database back end or a structured way to query the content, etc.

Once Phoenix is released, you'll be able to do many of the complex views, but again, if the presentations are not to your liking, then you'll be relying on others to build the presentations.

BMT does play well with SMM... almost too nice. ie, Some of my BMT issues are people expecting BMT to update files, but it won't because MyMovies has already updated it, and BMT will not overwrite. Or I've seen lots of cases where BMT has updated the files, and then later sagetv reloads the metadata from an external .properties file and the "fanart goes away". In my setup with, with 1000s of movies and TV, I've never seen a case where bmt has lost metadata... but I don't have any other metadata plugins installed. I'd say that people trying to use more than one metadata plugin are probably the most frustrated users Personally I'd stick with one plugin to fetch your metadata/fanart and you'll be much happier in the long run.

If you like SMM, then I'd take the $40 and use it to get the features from MyMovies and then use SMM. Or, wait, and maybe once Phoenix is released, you may like it as well.

Yup, I agree with everything you said. I just like the UI look of Diamond in the Movies section as compared to SMM. But I like the functionality that SMM provides (i.e. drill down TV series) which is becoming more and more important as I add TV series rips.

I guess I just need to uninstall BMT and let My Movies do all the fanart fetching. That would simplify things...

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by Biggen

Yup, I agree with everything you said. I just like the UI look of Diamond in the Movies section as compared to SMM. But I like the functionality that SMM provides (i.e. drill down TV series) which is becoming more and more important as I add TV series rips.

I guess I just need to uninstall BMT and let My Movies do all the fanart fetching. That would simplify things...

Use the diamond theme of mymovies it gets it closer

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by Biggen

So you let BMT handle all your fanart/poster art then correct? If you make a graphic change in BMT for a particular movie it shows up in SMM?

Sorry no I don't use bmt for SMM, I use collection management. I like Collection management for movies because of the way I can have my wife add movies she wants from her phone and things like that. BMT is perfect for TV so I use it for that.

[Mailman74]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I think that if want collection management, then why not take the $40 and pay for the features in MyMovies).

Where do you pay $40 for mymovies and what features do you get?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Mailman74

Where do you pay $40 for mymovies and what features do you get?

Sorry, I don't want to confuse you on this point... but I have nothing to do with MyMovies... I know there is a paid component, but I don't use the product. Perhaps, Plucky, or another MyMovies user could shed some light on features, etc.

[SomeWhatLost]

I use BMT/Diamond & SMM (with diamond SMM theme) it is all pretty smooth/integrated...no real issues....

sometimes it takes days for fanart/etc to actually show up in SMM... but it usually gets there eventually...

sometimes (more than I like) you need to start up the BMT webUI and manually go through movies one by one and click the "update missing metadata" button... the annoying thing is most of the time the search comes back with just one option (the correct one)... aka it got the search 100% right, why couldn't BMT have just done that itself with out me needing to click him individually??!?!

if you have extenders, going through the SMM background cache folder and resizing everything and compressing everything (ie JPEG 50% compression) seems to work well at making things a bit zippier... and makes them much smaller... does make the images much softer though...

as for where to 'donate' the $40 (or is it $100 now?) just go to the MyMovies website... also, instead of 'donating' if you can find some movies that aren't in the MM database, you can add them and get credit for them...end results are the same...

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by SomeWhatLost

sometimes (more than I like) you need to start up the BMT webUI and manually go through movies one by one and click the "update missing metadata" button... the annoying thing is most of the time the search comes back with just one option (the correct one)... aka it got the search 100% right, why couldn't BMT have just done that itself with out me needing to click him individually??!?!

Um.. because you have MyMovies installed. I'm not sure if I'm just not making it clear, but, IF you have another metadata provider installed, then BMT will not update the files, since they were already updated by MyMovies. (It's the reason you installed MyMovies to begin with, right??)

I could change BMT to be more dominant and simply overwrite everything, no matter what, but then, what's the point of having MyMovies installed, since you'd only ever get the metadata from BMT??

BMT, when no other metadata provider is installed, will happily fetch fanart and metadata automatically for all items that you add to your collection. I can probably count one hand the number of items that I've had to manually update... all the rest just get updated automatically when I add them to Sage.

I hope this makes is clear as to why you have to manually update some items using BMT??

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Um.. because you have MyMovies installed. I'm not sure if I'm just not making it clear, but, IF you have another metadata provider installed, then BMT will not update the files, since they were already updated by MyMovies. (It's the reason you installed MyMovies to begin with, right??)

I could change BMT to be more dominant and simply overwrite everything, no matter what, but then, what's the point of having MyMovies installed, since you'd only ever get the metadata from BMT??

BMT, when no other metadata provider is installed, will happily fetch fanart and metadata automatically for all items that you add to your collection. I can probably count one hand the number of items that I've had to manually update... all the rest just get updated automatically when I add them to Sage.

I hope this makes is clear as to why you have to manually update some items using BMT??

Like stuckless said you should have mymovies collection manager writing property files then the info gets into the core by default. Also have it output folder.jpgs an the core will use those. Like said this is the way it should be so we can peacefully exist together

[SomeWhatLost]

if BMT was happily using all the MyMovies Metadata then why does it dump those entries into the "Missing Metadata" view on the webGUI?
and more to the point, why does it only do that on some movies?
if what stuckless is saying is what I am complaining about, I would think that behavior would be the case 100% of the time... not just the roughly 50-60% that I am seeing?
also the same thing happens with recorded TV... and TV episode DVD's ripped as episodes... neither of which use MM...

just curious, and in any case, BMT is great, even when it needs a little hand holding...

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by SomeWhatLost

if BMT was happily using all the MyMovies Metadata then why does it dump those entries into the "Missing Metadata" view on the webGUI?

Again. I'm not saying BMT is "happy"... it's just that you've elected to have another program, ie, MyMovies handle your metadata/fanart needs. So, as far as BMT is concerned, then those items are missing metadata, since BMT didn't scan them, and as a result it may be missing fields, such as the MediaType, MediaTitle, EpisodeNumber (which is what BMT generally querries on for "Missing metadata". BMT isn't aware of MyMovies, per se, I just knows that you've imported a media item with some existing metadata, so it assumes that you know what you are doing, and it will skip trying to do anything with that item.

and more to the point, why does it only do that on some movies?
if what stuckless is saying is what I am complaining about, I would think that behavior would be the case 100% of the time... not just the roughly 50-60% that I am seeing?
also the same thing happens with recorded TV... and TV episode DVD's ripped as episodes... neither of which use MM...

Just because you are using MyMovies doesn't mean that you are going to get a hit from MyMovies 100% of the time. If MyMovies didn't provide any metadata (ie, it didn't write out the .properties file for the media item), then as far as bmt is concerned, it's fair game for it to try and update it. ie, BMT is not aware of other metadata providers, such as MyMovies... it's only check is, "If this file has a .properties, then skip it". So that .properties could come from MyMovies, or you may have decided to hand bomb it. Either way, bmt skips it.

[panteragstk]

I use MyMovies for movies and BMT for TV. I also tell bmt where the my movies.xml is so it can get the my movies metadata from that as well as the .properties files. I don't have any issues with either.

[Biggen]

Just to throw in my .02¢ back into the thread, I love being able to use BMT to handle everything which is why I started this thread to begin with. But unfortunately, a database backend is required to use SMM which I understand. I didn't want to have BMT/My Movies fighting over metadata though which is where I was headed with using the both of them...

I have decided to go back to Diamond/BMT to handle my movies. While I love what Plucky has done with SMM, myself (and the wife) have just gotten to use to the Diamond UI and its "responsivness". Even with Java Heap set high, SMM just was not as "snappy" and "quick" as Diamond is when browsing movies and it didn't seem the resolution was as good with SMM as the Diamond UI.

This is no knock on SMM (or Plucky) at all. I was using SMM from many months until Diamond came along. It is just you guys made Diamond so damn well that we really enjoy it!

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by Biggen

This is no knock on SMM (or Plucky) at all. I was using SMM from many months until Diamond came along. It is just you guys made Diamond so damn well that we really enjoy it!

No offense but just FYI SMM is faster than diamond on all my clients and extenders by far. What exactly is "slower" in smm compared to diamond because I don't see it.

[Biggen]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

No offense but just FYI SMM is faster than diamond on all my clients and extenders by far. What exactly is "slower" in smm compared to diamond because I don't see it.

Not running the beta firmware (I can't run it. I get horrible combing on my TV's if running the beta) and just running the latest official HD-300 firmware, browsing the movie posters took some "time" with SMM. They wouldn't load immediately when going through the movie wall. They would populate after a few seconds when browsing.

Also, the resolution seemed lower (to me anyway) in the SMM when compared to Diamond when browsing the posters. Cover art looked "fuzzy".

Lastly in Diamond flow, I like how I can hit the down arrow key on the remote and skip to titles that start with different letters rather than having to pan through them all. Admittitly, I don't know if SMM can do this or not.

Again, I don't want you to think I am "hating" on SMM. It served me very well! And you do a great job with the Sage community here.