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Welcome, Amulet Beta Testers!
Here you'll find discussion of the latest Amulet Voice Remote beta software, as it moves towards general release. Please give us your feedback, bug reports, and comments on how you are getting on with beta testing, along with any feature requests you think may help improve the Amulet software.

Please only post here relating to issues with Amulet beta software releases; use the main forums for general discussion about Amulet.
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TOPIC: My Movies support

My Movies support 13 years 2 weeks ago #179

  • eddy
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This beta release includes new support for the My Movies Media Center add-on, probably one of our most requested features.

Here is a little background about how the feature works, and how it interacts with the existing Amulet software.

In release 2.17.50, Amulet indexed all media referenced by Windows Media Player, and Windows Media Center's monitored folders. Many users stored their My Movies collection somewhere else (typically on network drive) so by default, Amulet did not see it.

In release 2.18.14, Amulet now queries the My Movies database directly to find where your My Movies titles are stored. It does this before scanning for normal video media; if a title is in the My Movies database, it will be automatically ignored if it is subsequently found a second time during a normal Amulet media scan.

Titles from My Movies are treated slightly differently for playback, when using the command WATCH MOVIE or PLAY MOVIE. Amulet instructs My Movies to play titles directly, so you get the benefit of using any external player you have installed for use with My Movies; you also get auto-mounting of ISO images using Daemon Tools where needed.

In this initial release, Amulet does not let you choose between multiple discs associated with a single title; instead, it will default to always playing the main feature straight away. If you wish to access some of the other content on a title, use the SHOW MOVIE xxx command to locate the entry for that movie within the My Movies gallery, then click OK in the usual way to choose which content to play.

Several users have asked whether SHOW MOVIE could take you directly to the details page for the movie you request. We are looking at ways to do this; the issue is that we navigate within My Movies by typing the first four characters of the movie title (all that My Movies will recognize) to select the title, and if several titles share the same four start letters, then SHOW MOVIE may select a movie adjacent to the one you asked for, requiring a minor navigation correction with the remote. In this case, selecting the wrong movie would be rather annoying.

One possibility is to check whether the requested movie title's first four letters are unique; if so, we could select it immediately, otherwise remain on the gallery view.

(Hopefully, the My Movies API will be extended to give us more direct control over such things in future releases.)

Finally, the next Amulet beta release should include support for the new TV Series functionality of My Movies v4.

Please post your feedback and experiences using My Movies with Amulet in this thread.
Last Edit: 13 years 2 weeks ago by eddy.
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Re:My Movies support 13 years 5 days ago #265

  • MaazMansori
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My initial test was to just tell it "Play Movie" and the movie title. It seems to be working fine. I tried with 5 different movies. One movie I have on Blu Ray (Taken) that I ripped to the hard drive taken does not launch properly from the My Movies strip. It simply locks up. However, oddly enough, it launches fine with the Amulet voice command. I have the Blu Ray ones playing with VirtualCloneDrive and PowerDVD 10.

One suggestion is whenever a movie is added through Folder Monitoring via My Movies, Amulet should pick it up instead of having to manually tell it to Re-Index. It took me a little while to figure out how to get a new movie on there.

Maaz
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Re:My Movies support 13 years 4 days ago #268

  • eddy
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Yes, direct monitoring of movie & video folders is on our list of things for a future release -- unfortunately, didn't make it this time around.

It's a little trickier for My Movies, since we really need to monitor the My Movies database rather than the underlying filesystem, to ensure we catch movies that have been added by hand as well as automatically. I generally keep folder monitoring disabled on My Movies, since I find I end up with too many ghost entries if I copy a new file across and then manually rename it to a more appropriate title -- I then have to go into Collection Management anyway to remove the ghost entries, and if I'm going into Collection Management anyway, I may as well just do a manual scan.

Also worth noting that Amulet does an automatic full scan every night, so if things get out of sync, it won't be for long. On the other hand, the movies you're probably keenest to watch are those you've added most recently!

Thanks,

Eddy
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