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Release Video Explorer 3.0.0.61: Critical Bug Fixes
#1
Video 
I have been working on this app to manage my video library for some time now.

This app has taken months of hard work to get it to this point and I built it from scratch, but it's working very well now and I use it to manage my own library daily, so I though it was time to release it into the wild.

Get it from any one of the following locations:

32/64 Bit Unified Installer

The installer will automatically deploy the correct version depending on what operating system the app is being installed on.

VideoExplorer Full Install - Latest Version

App runs on .NET Framework 4.5

It will auto update itself whenever I release updates.

The Main Screen

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I wrote this app because I couldn't find any app that would do a MediaInfo type interrogation of a list of movies in one pass and then present that information to me in a neat way so that I could compare the properties of lots of different movies, or browse through my collection and instantly see all the properties of the video, audio and subtitle streams.

Feature List

1. CoverFlow view for your movies that honors the XBMC naming conventions for covers (cover.jpg, poster.jpg). View is optional.

2. All information presented on ONE form with tab controls and other UI features allowing rapid navigation between movies and between different information about a movie without ever leaving the main screen.

3. Powerful genre filter.

4. Powerful grids with grouping and sorting capability, column customization and persistent layouts.

5. Built in thumbnailing of posters and caching of movie information so that reloading the same movie more than once without changes results in massive speed improvements after the first time.

6. Leverages MKVToolNix to remux movies straight from the main grid, with stream selection from another grid. Also to do rapid removal of Header Stripping.

7. Built in file renamer for 3D movies that will rename your 3D movie files, and subsidiary files according to the accepted naming standards of XBMC and XBMC skins.

8. 3D movie recognition and 3D file name parsing with visual queues to show you that a movie is a 3D movie.

9. NFO file editor that allows you to rapidly edit Genres and Movies Sets and save changes back to the NFO file. This again adheres to the XBMC NFO file standard.

10. Automatically show your Poster and Fanart artwork if it exists in the same folder as your movie file as per XBMC standard folder per movie naming and structure conventions.

11. Supports drag n drop from a normal Windows explorer window straight onto the main grid.

And there are other cool things it does too.

Basic usage instructions

1. You can either Browse for a folder to load movies from using the button at the top of the screen, then click Refresh OR you can drag and drop movies or folders containing movies, or a combination of both onto the main grid.

2. Right click menu on the main grid exposes lots of functionality.

3. Right click grid column headers to activate Column Chooser and Grouping Box.

Audio and Video Streams

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Artwork Viewer

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NFO File Editor

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Remux movies directly from the main grid

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Credits

MediaInfo - Use their library to interrogate the movies and obtain all the stream information that I parse into C# objects using a C# parser that I wrote myself.

http://d3dal3.blogspot.com - I used his source code for the CoverFlow control I am now using. I've done a lot of enhancements to it but all the hard work was done by him.
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#2
2.0.0.2 released

Just released a patch to sort out an issue I picked up with the CoverFlow control and visual corruption that seems to only happen on my HTPC with an AMD APU running Catalyst video drivers.

I see no such problem on my main dev box with an NVidia Geforce GTX660.

Still haven't got to the bottom of what is actually going on there, but I've built in a serviceable workaround to force a visual refresh in the meantime.
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#3
Update on the ATI rendering issue.

After some research into this, it turns out that there are known issues with ATI video cards / chipsets and hardware acceleration with WPF controls.

The fault lies with the ATI video drivers and some dodgy stuff they seem to do if you let them override the 3D settings of your application.

The proper fix is very simple. You simply need to go into the Catalyst Control Center, go to the 3D Gaming Settings, and then turn off ALL 3D overrides and set everything to "Use App Settings".

That way, each app controls it's own rendering, games included, and the ATI drivers don't interfere and doing weird and wonderful things to your graphics for you.
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#4
Thanks for this! It's been something I've been after a while to compare various releases I have to new ones that come out.

Seeing missing subtitles at a glance is also a nice feature, any chance that you could integrate some sort of XBMC Subtitle addon like solution where missing subs could be downloaded?
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#5
@RXP91:

Thanks.

RE: Subtitle downloading. That is definitely something I can consider. I will need to look into which API I can hit for that, but I will put it on my list for consideration.
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#6
Great, currently all the solutions I have tried don't actually work at all. The only ones that work well are the XBMC Subtitle addon which only activates during playback.
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#7
@RXP91:

I've done a bit of research on the subtitle thing and there is a reason why there aren't any apps that handle that properly.

The API's available for Subtitle lookup and retrieval are thin on the ground to begin with, but the bigger issue is that it is VERY difficult to find and download the correct subtitles for the specific version / rip of the movie that someone has on their hard drive.

Some movies have over 100 different subtitle variants available for the same movie and each one is specific to a particular rip released by a particular group / crew.

Rips have different run times, so subtitles for one will not necessarily work with another in terms of timing.

Add to the that the fact that the APIs seem to only recognise IMDB IDs for explicit matching and don't recognise TheMovieDB IDs as far as I can tell, and you've got yourself a nice complicated mess of a situation that is incredibly difficult to automate with any reasonable degree of reliability.
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#8
2.0.0.3 released

1. Improved cross thread signalling involved in Drag n Drop folder processing.

2. The ATI Graphics Fix is now an option on the right-click menu on the main grid and is OFF by default, but can be enabled at any time and will persist once enabled.

The correct way to deal with ATI Graphics issues is to go into the Catalyst Control Center and DISABLE all Gaming / 3D overrides and set everything "Let Application Decide" or "Use Application Settings" in order to prevent the video driver from interfering with 3D rendering. Doing that will NOT disable Hardware Acceleration or negatively impact the performance of anything, it will merely turn off "enhancements" that the video driver is trying to force onto applications, which should be turned off anyway.
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#9
2.0.0.4 released
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1. Fixed a small bug in the navigation logic where the CoverFlow selection changed event was being fired twice unnecessarily. This will navigation response slightly faster now.

2. Added Audio Format Icons to give a graphical representation of the Audio Format of the "best" audio track for the currently selected movie.

This is analogous to the XBMC icons that show in the skin when you view movie information.

Icons support all common variants of Dolby and DTS audio as well as FLAC, OGG Vorbis, AAC, MPEG Audio and LPCM.
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#10
v2.0.0.5 released
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1. New icon added for Image Resolution. Appears next to the new Icon for Audio Format that was added in the previous release.

Supported resolutions are: 480p, 720p and 1080p.

This is to rapidly identify the resolution of the selected movie at a glance.

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#11
SiliconKid,

Well done on this. I've written a few PowerShell wrappers for MediaInfo for this exact purpose -- to gather media info on all files in one spot. This will definitely come in handy. Do you happen to have the source on GIT, SF, Google Code, etc? Reason I'm asking, is I like add a feature in, primarily WMV support. If no source, do mind adding my requests in?

Many Thanks,
Chuck

edit: removed duration as a column feature as it was there the whole timeSmile
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#12
@chuckyeager:

Thanks for the feedback.

I was about to point out that Duration is already there Smile

I will add support for WMV for you today. I should have actually just added it in the first place.
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#13
v2.0.0.6 - released
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1. Added support for WMV files. The WMV extension should now appear in the FIle Filter list top right.

2. Added a WMA audio format logo to the Audio Format images introduced in 2.0.0.4.

3. Videos with an image dimension of 852x480 are now recognised as 480p and the 480p logo image introduced in 2.0.0.5 will show correctly for that image size.

4. It is now possible to customise the list of image files that VideoExplorer searches for when it looks for Posters and Fanart.

There are 2 new user settings in the application config file of type STRING for this.

Both of those settings expect a comma delimited list of image file names that VideoExplorer should search for.

a. ValidPosterFileNames - The default search list for this is "poster.jpg,cover.jpg,folder.jpg"

b. ValidFanartFileNames - The default search list for this is "fanart.jpg"

By changing those search lists you can control what VideoExplorer searches for when it tries to find your artwork.

VideoExplorer will search for the files in the same order that they appear in the lists. The order of appearance in the lists dictates search priority.


5. The XBMC standard file naming convention that is used when you export artwork in XBMC is now supported by VideoExplorer.

XBMC always exports posters and fanart to files named as follows:

MovieName-poster.jpg

MovieName-fanart.jpg

VideoExplorer will now search for those files IF it does NOT find any of the files listed in the new ValidPosterFileNames and ValidFanartFileNames settings.

In other words, it will first try to find files with names that match any of the file names you've specified in those settings and if it did NOT find any of them, it will look for the XBMC export file names.


6. A new splitter has been added between the Search Filter area top left and the Genre Filter below it. You can now expand the Search Filter area and you can also collapse it completely.

7. Small bug fixes and enhancements to all the splitters on the screen. Some did not have hints and for some their state was not being saved properly.
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#14
SiliconKid,

Thank you for adding WMV support, its working very well.

Many Thanks,
Chuck
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#15
v2.0.0.7 - Released
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1. Fixed a serious bug where exception errors would be thrown if you moved files around within your folders and VE tried to load information for the file from the Object cache.

The problem was that VE was still looking at the old location for things like the metadata.

NB: This release will clear the Object Cache once off to clear old cached objects that my be corrupt. They will only be cleared once and then the cache will work properly again.


2. Did optimisations to the class library that handles parsing of media info. This helped with resolving point 1 above and reduces confusion in the code.


3. Fixed a bug where the CoverFlow control was not resetting properly if you selected "Clear Grid" from the right click menu on the main grid and then dragged and dropped more movies onto the grid.

Under certain conditions the CoverFlow control would not reset its focused position correctly and it would become impossible to navigate on the CoverFlow control anymore.
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Video Explorer 3.0.0.61: Critical Bug Fixes1