[royw]

...I heard that GTK is awful,

I've found that GTK under ruby-gnome2 (ruby wrapper) quite elegant. Most of the rough edges are in the documentation area.

[althekiller]

Can you name it "YAFNE" ? I'll leave you to figure out the acronym. IMO, we need to concentrate on improving XBMC's apparent short comings in this area, judging by the number of these apps that are springing up.

[Nicezia]

I'd be happy to get in on this
I'm currently working on a library for the xbmc scraper.xml which I'm going to open source as soon as i get it up and running properly

it runs on the .NET framework and i am currently using monodevelop to code it, so it would slip right into this project no problem, i was going to create my own media manager using this format, and have in fact already completed the movie portion of it, save for scrapers (one of the reasons i became so interested in the XBMC scraper format, its a simple way to make a virtual plugin without having to learn to program, that way anyone can make a scraper for the program)

[rwparris2]

Maybe you guys should discuss what you hope to achieve with this before tackling what widget library you will use.

Namely, if it will be using existing XBMC scrapers, in what way does it add to what XBMC already does?

[mafis90]

XBMC Scrapers only download the infos, you can't edit it easy and you haven't a good overview about all of your media.

@Nicezia nice, that`s really intresting

[Gamester17]

XBMC Scrapers only download the infos, you can't edit it easy and you haven't a good overview about all of your media

Spot on! ...and a media management tool like this is created for use on a desktop computer to be used with keyboard and mouse so have a '2-feet-interface' to suit that, (while XBMC has a 10-feet-interface that is designed to be controlled with a remote from the couch/sofa in your living-room, and a media player like XBMC should never modify any files, while a desktop media management tool should be designed to have the power to rename and move your files, to sort and structure them logically on the harddrive, and allow editing of the embedded metadata tags).

I wrote this previously in the Boxee forum trying explain this 'separation concept' that I have in my head:

Simply put; XBMC Media Center (which Boxee is based upon) is a media player that is on purposely designed as with a 10-foot user interface to be used in the living-room couch/sofa with a remote control, running on a dedicated set-top-box type computer connected to your large-screen TV. XBMC Media Center is not designed to be a desktop media management application, so not an application that is controller via keyboard and mouse, (a.k.a. a 2-foot interface).

I highly recommend you read Team-XBMC's 'manifesto' that is available here => http://xbmc.org/about/vision/

I think a good comparison to explain this is iTunes verses Front Row; Apple have with those purposely separated the desktop media management function that iTunes takes care of, from the living-room media center GUI part that Front Row is designed for. Microsoft does the same with Windows Media Player verses Windows Media Center, (Windows Media Player serves a a media management application, and Windows Media Center serves as a dedicated living-room media center GUI). Yes it is true that both iTunes Windows Media Player have both audio and video playback capabilities, but their interface is purposely design for desktop computers, and not as a 10-feet GUI for you living-room TV. The idea behind this is that you would not want to sit in your living-room couch/sofa editing and sorting metadata tags and your file-structure hierarchy with a remote control 10-feet (approximately 3-metres) from the display. So IMHO for all such media management that you want instead to sit at a proper desk with a desktop application running on a computer.

Again, a smart compromise would be to make Boxee's Web-Interface be the media management part of this "Boxee Media Companion", only have the GUI for it as a ASP/PHP/AJAX/JavaScript based application that is always accessed via a web browser running on any computer. This would be an easy way to make the media management part platform-independent, and accessible not only on the local network but also via the internet if Boxee's website offered a DynDNS type service, and perhaps also make the Web GUI scale to the web browser on portable devices such as the iPhone.

as well as this:

My thinking is that a 'Media Manager' software like this should be cross-platform, and design for usage on desktop computers with keyboard and mouse, preferably the application interface should be similar to iTunes with the ability to edit and write tags to each file, but it should also have a built-in media server that can share all those files and the meta data collected to Boxee over a network, (as well as sharing to XBMC Media Center and other stand-alone player software/devices).

I think best would probably be if the user-interface was web-based so that it can also be accessed remotely, and make it easy to embed this application into storage headless units such as NAS (Networked Attached Storage) devices and stand-alone media-players, with the interface accessible over the network/internet from any web-browser, from anywhere in the world.

Using this 'Media Manager' software on a desktop computer it would be easy to organize and sort all your local audio/video/picture files, mass tag and rename them, then share to Boxee (or XBMC Media Center) over a network, also make it easy to manage online audio/video/picture services and sources via this 'Media Manager' software, like for example subscribe to podcasts, RSS feeds, and TV shows via BitTorrent, etc.

By the way, I am not a programmer myself, but I do think that as such 'Media Manager' software (with a built-in UPnP MediaServer) could be made into a great community open source project if it is developed in a program-language that both Team-Boxee and Team-XBMC developers can code in as well to assist, like C++ or C, and a web design language like AJAX, PHP, or JavaScript for the GUI interface. So which program-language(s) or web-coding are you skilled at? Smartest is also not to try to reinvent the wheel, but instead borrow/copy code from several other active open source projects to build something new that is based on their existing source code.

Sorry for these rants, just exited and thus like to make these points clear

[EMK0]

just wondering why people like to use the .net ? i never had to use it before i don't even have it installed and i use many programs on my windows computer.

[zitroneneis]

well there is an open-source implementation of .net which runs on linux, windows and mac (Mono) [cross-platform without much trouble]
and it's very easy to develop stable programs [managed environment],
furthermore you can combine various programming languages [c#,vb,java]....

for more information:
http://mono-project.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework

[rwparris2]

XBMC Scrapers only download the infos, you can't edit it easy and you haven't a good overview about all of your media

Ok, so easily edit the nfo. Rename and organize files like Gamester mentioned? Anything else?

I'm not trying to be sarcastic about the project, I just want to make sure you guys have a good idea of what you want to achieve & why before you start coding it... something I think most other "media managers" for xbmc forgot to do....

[Nicezia]

Well for my part i back the idea of coding a somewhat base GUI, and the ability to 'plugin' new options, sort of the premise of XBMC in a different scope...

You're right Gamster17 you don't want to be sitting on your couch managing your media with a remote, i already find it a pain in the ass sometimes when i have to use my remote to manually input search titles for mismatched scraper titles (which rarely happens at the moment)

But when you have a full keyboard and mouse at your disposal, its nice to have all the options you want to manage things available.


---mafis
The idea behind my scraper.xml library (an idea Gamester17 and Spiff are directly responsible for) is to make the XBMC Scraper format easier to integrate into other programs that manage media, and need to get information from a non-api source.

Likewise, i think a unified manager of media information that is usuable with any of the (as Gamester17 put it) 10-ft Inteface programs would be a good idea.

I'm interested in this idea, and will definately get behind it.

I would like to however think about something more goal oriented than the actual interface (I found with my current project that sometimes you can get more wrapped up in how you want to present your idea than what you you want to acheive with it.)

So what is your intent with a project like this.. Are you targeting just the XBMC users or is the scope broader than that? What's the seperation of this from all the others writing media managers? (not that i'm kicking at any of them) ...

[mafis90]

So what is your intent with a project like this..

My intent is to focus the programming power of all the media manager programmers to one programm.

Are you targeting just the XBMC users or is the scope broader than that?

At the start we focus XBMC, but we programming it modular so it`s easy to expand for other media software.

What's the seperation of this from all the others writing media managers? (not that i'm kicking at any of them) ...

I think the seperation are focus crossplattform and that each programmer from a other media manager brings the best of the other media manager to this programm.



mafis90

[Gamester17]

Ok, so easily edit the nfo. Rename and organize files like Gamester mentioned? Anything else?

Other than being cross-platform, I think that looking at commercial offerings like My Movies 2 and DVD Profiler might be a good source of ideas to start with.

Are you targeting just the XBMC users or is the scope broader than that?

I suggest to begin with XBMC, Plex, and Boxee as they share XBMC's XML scrapers, then add MediaPortal and MeediOS support if developers who user those join this project. Since XBMC is the 'mother' of the scraper API use that as the reference media player to manage the media for as it is right now.

[Rand Al Thor]

Hey guys! This is a great idea you have here. There are lots of good media managers atm, but each have their advantages over the other. I will be interesting to see what you guys come up with. Here is an idea. You should talk to wstewert who is in the process of working on support for a common database over the network. It would be pretty awesome to have your media manager sit on top of the "master database" which could be stored anywhere on the network. Then when you make changes with your application you wouldn't have to refresh the library on each XBMC machine. They would all be reading from the master database, so any changes would automatically be reflected. I really like gamester's idea of basing it on mediatomb. It has a built in webinterface that could do a couple things for the project:

1) If your "master database" is running on a server that is not easy/comfortable to work on (ie in a server closet or without a monitor), you could have a user/pass for the webinterface and manage the library from any computer.

2) Mediatomb has built in transcoding. It would be awesome to incorporate something like this into the XBMC web interface so you can either control your XBMC host or listen to music right from the webinterface, similar to Mythweb.

Just some thoughts.

Cheers,
Rand

[fekker]

Here are some things that I find very handy in MIP or that I think would be good to have in a media manager.

The media itself
Name Filters - (ignore %something% from file/foldername, regex and standard string replacement)
Renaming of movie files - (example was.2007.junk..avi to something a human will understand)

Usability
Filters - what's missing (i.e. missing backgrounds, missing nfo), what's new, etc
Auto Pilot - automatically grab and create images and nfo for media
Update Media Information - get the latest ratings, add some custom data to fields based on media data (i.e. skin based flagging support, custom group logos, other skin specific options)
Tie in to the xbmc database (if xbmc is closed, the database will be unlocked)

Images
Manual Resizing of images
Manual Compression of images
Automatic resize and compression of images to x resolution and y compression (image magick is cross platform and kicks butt)
Crop adjust rotate, without being a photo editor guru
Simple gui interface to pick different images, to me this is more important then the actual information about the movie.

Caching
Cache scraped images, this one is key as new sources go up and old sources go down or vanish completely
Cache data for speed, imdb list files with a full parser to get all the data that's permitted, update itself from imdb ftp site, there are restrictions and other issues that i'm sure will come up with that
Cacheing is also needed for those that have the media frontends on an enclave network or are on metered internet plans. It allows someone to zip up the cache folder and share images and information that's already downloaded.

Database
I think a database is good for some areas and not so much for others. I really like XML files myself. A mix of both would prob result in the best overall usability. Cached images/data and information about those images/data, XML.. specifics about just the media itself, database.

Specific things i've run into
File naming on images is going to be random when returned from api's or just site scrapes, and alot of times it's the same name for different images.

Appending to the image name would work, parsing out the appended data would return the original name so that it can be checked against the api results to see if it's already cached, this would also allow files with the same name to be in the same location, making it easier to display them in the gui. Instead of going back through all the api calls, display all images from x folder.

Reading from the file is faster then going back through the scrapers, however as new images are added the scrapers need to be run to get those new items. That's why mip has download and display mode, with different things that happen. Basically Online / Offline modes.

Movie Specific
Folder and file level support, at the same time.. MIP and xbmc both can do this already.

TV Show Specific
Since most tvdb data comes back from the api, it's easy to show what episodes are missing, when the next one comes out, and if the show is already canceled or is active.

Links to tvdb, the network website, and others is very handy

Interaction / scripting / process automation
Example:
Missing an episode, do something based off what we already know. I.e. open google and search for it on the shows website, search netflix and add to the queue, etc.. open tvdb and find out when the next episode is playing or when new season starts

Just watched your movie, the director / actor was awesome, find other movies associated with them and do some action based off that. i.e. find x on y and do z with that. Like search ebay for it.

Must be legit
No actions can be built into the app that circumvent or allow illegal actions to take place. What users do with addon's or customizations to it is up to them, but it's gotta be legit if it's built in.

[mafis90]

There only one thing, that i have to add and that is seperating the core from the interface. So it runs great into the background and you can programming a create a webinterface, windows form interface, but all seperating from the core.
Somebody write something about this in this thread.

@fekker greate overview

mafis90