movie library

Currently, there is no way to replace the native movie library in the Movies start menu strip. Also, Windows 7 Media Center doesn’t allow for the addition of extra plug-ins to the default strips. What can we do to replace the default movie library menu strip then? We’ll remove the movie strip and simply replace it with a strip of our own creation which includes the Media Browser plug-in.

To get this done a few files have been created which can be downloaded here. The first one is a patch that will enable turning the default movies strip on and off through a registry setting. This patch has only been tested under the official Windows 7 beta 1 (build 7000) at this point but should work under any version. As always, it’s highly recommended that you backup your files (in this case C:\Windows\ehome\ehres.dll) before modifying any system files.

Also included are a number of registry files for altering the start menu strip setup. Two of the files allow for the turning on and off of the default movies strip and another set of files for turning on and off the new Media Browser movies strip. The last registry file will remove the default strip and add the new Media Browser strip at once.

To enable using these registry files you’ll need to download and apply this patch. For the patch to be installed it’s also necessary to take ownership of the (C:\Windows\ehome\ehres.dll) file. If you haven’t already, install the “Take Ownership” registry fix by double-clicking “take ownership.reg” included in the download zip. Then you will need to right-click the ehres.dll file and select “Take Ownership”.

Once you’ve successfully taken ownership of the ehres.dll file and applied the patch file included in the download zip you can now use the registry files included in the options folder of the zip to modify whether or not the movies strip is enabled. As well as turn on or off the new Media Browser Movies strip. To both enable the new movies strip and disable the old native movies strip apply the “Add Media Browser Strip and Remove Movies.reg” file to your registry.

Unfortunately, at this time it’s not possible to transfer the default movie trailers, play DVD or other movies strip entries to the new strip. But you can follow these directions to include other plug-ins in your new movies strip. The category for this new strip in the registry is “Media Browser”.

That’s all there is to it, now just sit back and relax knowing you’ll never need to explain to anyone why they “shouldn’t use that movie library use that one” and then where to find it.

So you forgot to include subtitles while ripping your movie collection, what do you do now? Luckily, the solution isn’t to go back through the entire process and do it over again. You will need to break those DVDs back out of storage, however. Today we’ll use a program called SubRip to analyze the subtitles of each movie and save them as a text based file called an SRT. This SRT file is readable by most decoders including FFDShow and DirectVobSub.

Before we get started we need to have a few tools ready. First off you’ll need to have a way around any disk encryption present. The easiest and most expedient way to do this without having to rip the entire disk over again is to use AnyDVD. AnyDVD is a tool that any Media Center enthusiast should have available and is well worth the price. We’ll cover this tool more in-depth at a later time.

For now, we’ll obviously also need to have SubRip downloaded and installed. Download the latest version of SubRip and extract the files to your hard drive. Upon launching SubRip you’ll quickly notice that the interface is somewhat less than intuitive.

Sometimes we might need to find out exactly what set of tools was used to encode a video file. Maybe you would like to double-check the output bitrate of your encoding tools or the output resolution. Perhaps a friend did your encoding and you’d like to double check his workmanship. Could be that you stumbled upon the file among the flotsam and jetsam of the internet. No matter the case MediaInfo can give you more information than you’re likely to ever need.

Using MediaInfo is as simple as can be, first download and install the program for your particular platform. Upon first launching MediaInfo you’ll be presented with a few options including how to display the information gathered. Each output format has it’s advantages but you can easily change the format from inside the program so there’s no need to speed to much time worrying about it now.

One of the most popular movie library plug-ins for Media Center recently added a new theme to it’s default install called Vanilla. Hidden inside this new theme is the ability to add movie trailers to the information screen for each movie. It’s not very simple and you’ll need to download the trailers manually but this is definitely a nice feature to have. Be sure to have one of the recent betas (2.0.10.0+) and turn on the Vanilla theme.

So you want to have HD movie trailers available for your entire movie collection? Well, downloading them all by hand, one by one, can be quite the hassle. Thankfully, a new program, Get Trailers has the solution. Get Trailers will allow you to set a preferred resolution and movie folder then go out and grab all the available trailers for you!

To get started just download Get Trailers to your hard disk and run the program. The interface couldn’t get much simpler, though at this time some of the settings under the “Settings” and “Auto Download” tab are unavailable. Hopefully, these features will be enabled in the near future but for now they aren’t entirely necessary.

Can’t get enough of those high resolution movie trailers on Apple.com or Yahoo? If you’re running Media Browser there may be a cure. A simple program called HD Movie Trailer Downloader will give you a complete list of movie trailers available and give you the option to download them in any number of resolutions. The app is fairly handy for anyone looking to download recent movie trailers in HD to their box without sifting through the Apple or Yahoo websites.

To get started download the program from the HD Movie Trailer Downloader site and extract the files into a new folder on your hard drive. After that just run the GUI.exe file to launch the download utility. On the first run you’ll be presented with some options to fill in including the default folder in which to place downloaded trailers.

You’ll also notice an option for creating a MyMovies.xml file containing synopsis information, however, this option didn’t work properly with Media Browser beta 11 and should probably just be turned off.

Need to convert a video or two into a different format? Have some MKV files you’d like to play on an extender as MP4 files? Handbrake has the solution for you. Handbrake is a free, open-source program with more features for converting and encoding video than you’ll likely ever need. The interface, however, is easy enough to for basic users to jump right in.

To get started you’ll need to download and install a copy of Handbrake. It’s available for a number of platforms including Windows, OS X and Linux. Command line versions are available as well but for this we will be using the Windows GUI version. Once you’ve got Handbrake installed open up the GUI by selecting HandBrake from the programs menu.

Once inside the first thing we need to do is select the source video. To do this press the “Source” button in the toolbar then select “video file” from the drop down menu. Next set the output file in the Destination File input, you may either select the output type in the Save as type drop down box in the file save window or select the type in the main window.