[wadie_bs]

Hi,

I need to know if there is any way to put in place a DVD Collection manager, something like :

XBMC video source that enables you to browse your DVD collection through XBMC, without having it on a directly accessible hard drive or network share. This will allow me to see all my DVDs content in the list with the rest of my videos, view IMDB information and all of the other benefits that XBMC normally provides. Attempting to play the video will display a short "Please insert the disc." or "Please insert the disc number 234" or "Please insert the disc The legend of the seeker place in row i column j".

thanks for replay

best regards

[Mr. Orange]

I've been thinking about using XBMC to catalogue my collection of disks as well. I think this would work: create a short (dummy) video file that displays your desired message; name this file as if it were the actual movie; let XMBC do it's magic.

If you're running Linux you could create a hardlink to the same dummy video for all your DVDs to save space.

btw: I think this thread belongs in the General help section.

[procrastinator]

If you want your DVDs included inside your regular movie library then the dummy file seems like a good idea. If you'd rather keep your DVD library separate from your files library I know that there used to be a script which for XBMC which used a library set up in DVD Profiler. Do a search for it. I've got to admit that although it worked fine when I used it about a year ago I haven't really used it since and have no idea whether its been kept up to date

[wadie_bs]

Thanks for your replies, I googled for the dummy file or dvd profiler for xbmc, this looks a good idea, but the my need is a little bit different :

- first a need to build my catalog of all my dvds contain (movies, tv show, music...)
- second I want that in my catalog I store some informations about dvd location (dvd number, shelf, rack...)
- in xbmc I can see media, media infos...
- when selecting and launching the media, a message will be displayed : "please insert dvd number 345"
- after inserted the dvd 345 in the dvd player, the media starts immediately

My understanding of the dummy file or the nfo / dvd profiler import, I can't do that, is this true ?!

Thanks for your help

[aaronb]

I have a script I used to use to create dummy files with "Insert Disc #123", I can try to find it and post it here later. If you search my posts I might have posted it here already.

[Mr. Orange]

I doubt that there's a pre-made solution that covers your needs. However, here's a proposed workflow.

- first a need to build my catalog of all my dvds contain (movies, tv show, music...)
- second I want that in my catalog I store some informations about dvd location (dvd number, shelf, rack...)

Use this link to get you started on building your catalog (on Linux). GCstar looks promising. No doubt there are Windows/Mac alternatives to be found as well.

- in xbmc I can see media, media infos...
- when selecting and launching the media, a message will be displayed : "please insert dvd number 345"

Sticking with my earlier suggestion of creating dummy video files: from your catalogue, create jpeg images containing title and disk numbers. Use Imagemagick for this

http://www.void.gr/kargig/blog/2007/08/0...agemagick/
http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php

Next, create a video file from each image. Use ffmpeg/mencoder for this

http://electron.mit.edu/~gsteele/ffmpeg/

Put all video files in one directory, naming them like "Toy Story (1995).avi" and have XBMC index the files.

These actions could be scripted of course, ideally converting the catalogue db into avi files in one go.

- after inserted the dvd 345 in the dvd player, the media starts immediately

For retail dvd's, there's an autoplay setting in the menu. If we're talking archive disks containing (multiple) rips, I think you're out of luck unless someone with serious talent creates a script for it.

edit: interested in that script aaronb, hope you find it.

[aaronb]

edit: interested in that script aaronb, hope you find it.

I found a PM I'd sent to someone a few years back with the details. It was a bit more involved than I wanted it to be, but it worked for me at the time. If you can figure out a way to make PDFCreator create the jpegs just right on the first go it gets much simpler. There might also be a much easier way to create the jpegs than the way I did it.

First off I use this Excel spreadsheet:
http://www.aaronblackshear.com/movies.xls
In that file you can list all of the movies you have in column A, column B will just replace any spaces in the filenames with underscores, and in column C you can type the disc number. All of my movies are listed in there, just replace with your own and clear the rest. There is a macro called "CreateFiles" that will create a jpeg for each one that says "Insert Disc #xxx". Basically the macro just loops through and writes each value in the other sheet that has the black background and then prints that to a jpeg. For this to work you will need to install PDFCreator, a free open source program for printing PDF's. Strangely, PDFCreator also prints to jpeg so it was the easiest way I found to create them in a batch like this. You can get that here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
Before you run the macro make sure you create a folder named c:\movies since that is where the output files will go.

The next step is the one messy part I haven't been able to make any easier yet. The jpegs all get printed rotated 90 degrees and with an extra white space on the side and top, so you need to rotate and crop them all first. I use Irfanview, which makes it really easy to do all of them at once.

Once they're all rotated and cropped just run this mencoder script at the command line and it will create a 10 second avi out of each jpeg. I'm not sure how the script will show up in the message, but all of the text after "cd c:\movies\" should be one line. You can copy all of that into a batch file and run it if you don't want to do it at the command line.

cd c:\movies\
for %%X in (*) do c:\mplayer\mencoder mf://%%X -mf w=800:h=600:fps=0.1:type=jpg -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:mbd=2:trell -oac copy -o %%X.avi

Hopefully that was not too confusing, feel free to ask questions. The only messy part is having to manipulate all of the jpegs after creating them, you might be able to play around with the spreadsheet or with PDFCreator to get them to print right the first time and then the whole thing gets much easier.

[wadie_bs]

thanks everybody, I found your suggestions very interesting, ans it gives me ideas to put in place my need.

the spreadsheet and the dummy file method is awesome, I developed a small application in c# that generate images using images compositing, I am thinking to use the same thing to generate the video files, I will share the code later.

But my problem now is that my dvds contains a lot of rips, so how did I launch my media automatically after playing it in XBMC ?

I have one suggestion (after reading offline posts on this forum ) :

1 - create files catalog (list of my medias with infos about dvd number, location...) using XBNE of Ember, dvd number information can be placed in the "plot" field of the nfo file

2 - generate dummy files (I am working in a c# app that will do it) , they will have this structure <title><type><dvd number>.avi, like the legend of the seeker.series.345.avi

3 - the dummy file will be a symbolic link to the real file placed in the dvd player.

4 - put the right dvd on the dvd player, and launch the file

what do you think ?

[Mr. Orange]

Thanks for digging through your archive Aaron, I like the approach you took. Using Imagemagick instead of PDFCreator could help streamline it a bit I think.

thanks everybody, I found your suggestions very interesting, ans it gives me ideas to put in place my need.

the spreadsheet and the dummy file method is awesome, I developed a small application in c# that generate images using images compositing, I am thinking to use the same thing to generate the video files, I will share the code later.

But my problem now is that my dvds contains a lot of rips, so how did I launch my media automatically after playing it in XBMC ?

I have one suggestion (after reading offline posts on this forum ) :

1 - create files catalog (list of my medias with infos about dvd number, location...) using XBNE of Ember, dvd number information can be placed in the "plot" field of the nfo file

2 - generate dummy files (I am working in a c# app that will do it) , they will have this structure <title><type><dvd number>.avi, like the legend of the seeker.series.345.avi

3 - the dummy file will be a symbolic link to the real file placed in the dvd player.

4 - put the right dvd on the dvd player, and launch the file

what do you think ?

Auto-launching the file on the dvd may be possible using a script that you would invoke through the context menu. Opensubtitles_OSD does something similar: it searches online for subs for the currently playing file. Your script would have to translate the currently playing (dummy) file's path (or library details) into the path for the archived (real) file and call xbmc's play command on that.

TBH I'm interested in this from a theoretical standpoint. Practically, I have a stack of DVD-R's gathering dust because I think they're too much trouble. When my USB drive fills up, it will be replaced by a proper NAS.

[supertom44]

You might want to check out media companion, that has a section to add offline media, ie dvds, and it says it creates a short clip from the fanart I think that asks you to insert the relevant disc, never actually tried it myself but might be worth a look.

[Nero81]

I was thinking about a way to manage offline library a couple months ago...
More or less my ideas are similar, but, what do you think about to scrape the original content copied in the location where the dummy where be placed? Just to have also info about resolution and audio, and (if you use them) some screenshot from the movie.

Or maybe better: scrape the content from the disc (dvd, cd, usb or whatever), then prepare a disc (or usb memory...) full of dummy file (in a compliant folder structure) and keep it usually inside the drive: as you try to play the content from the library, xbmc plays the dummy with the "please insert bla bla bla", so you can remove the dummy disc, insert the requested one, and hit play again, having this time your wanted movie on screen!

Other ways to manage an offline library should be hard-code assisted, like a "dummy-file folder" where xbmc could search if a file is missing from the standard path, and maybe with the addiction of an advanced option like "scrape this source as removable", to let xbmc does the dirty job for you creating the dummy and placing a "flag" somewhere in the library to tag the scraped contents as offline.