3rd vote for additional file type support

prospero

2nd vote for .avi, .mp4, etc. support.

martinmcd

I second interest in that. (or forth if i count correctly!)

And thank you for sharing this fine app with us... i hope you have stock in HD companies.

KevODundas

@mr_oshodi: I see. Right now it's made to work only with DVD rips (if you used DVD Rip to make the rips, they will be compressed to around 4GB, but that's understandably still rather large). I suppose I could update the program to work with other video filetypes as well, if there was enough interest in that.

Adam Pash

@mr_oshodi: I have the same concern - I'd love to have all my movies on media center with a useful interface, but there's no way I'll be getting enough storage space for all those entire DVDs, I rip everything to AVI so that despite lower quality I can atleast access my videos...

Fierock

@Adam Pash: lol @ your comment to eeefresh. As for my ?, i meant those .avi, .bin,.cui, etc.

mr_oshodi

@mr_oshodi: If they're straight rips with the VIDEO_TS AND AUDIO_TS folders, it should still be able to work with them.

Adam Pash

@eeefresh: Ha, well, to be honest, most of those were faked because I thought it was funny. Clearly, though, I do have the Magnum DVD, but that's sort of a lark in itself.

Ok, now I'll be really honest. I'm a 72 year old grandmother. My Golden Girls DVDs were at the cleaners.

Adam Pash

Any idea if this can also be used for movies swiped on bittorrent? you know to have same user-friendly GUI that will play the movies? You know in a folder like view. I care less about cover arts....

mr_oshodi

@eeefresh: I second your comment. Only if imagination can tell me or give me a better sense of Adam...lol

mr_oshodi

You know, Adam, I always pictured you as a hip, young techie, but your video collection makes me think you are actually an elderly woman.

Now if you'll excuse me, Matlock is on....

eeefresh

and .iso files!!!!

raymondh

@Adam Pash: I'm down with that. Most of my .avis are already in separate clearly titled folders for easy organizing and viewing.

Archdukey

@rogerkaplan: I'm not sure what's disingenuous about it. It's free and open code, and many of the AutoHotkey scripts/apps we release on Lifehacker grow into much more than just very simple scripts.

Add to that the fact that most of the programs are updated semi-regularly with significant feature changes and I'm not sure what the problem with releasing updates with version numbers is.

Adam Pash

To accommodate this sexy interface, yes i would!

Would be brilliant for less technically minded (read: the wife) to browse and launch divx files. I would happily build a structure like the one you have already support for!

KevODundas

@all: Okay okay okay, other filetypes will definitely be supported in next release. Here's a question, though... will anyone actually be willing to place all of the .avi/etc. files into separate folders the same way that the DVDs are organized (which will allow for thumbnails and minimal code restructuring)?

Adam Pash

Am I the only one who thinks that releasing AutoHotKey scripts as GPL'd software complete with version numbers is a bit disingenuous?

rogerkaplan

oh yeah, MP4's too please

huey148

Another vote for other video types, I typically rip a DVD using DVD Shrink and then convert the folders into a 700 - 800 AVI file to put on my laptop or 2.5" portable external drive. On my SPS' 14" screen the reduced resolution of the AVI is not really that noticable.

Cool program by the way!!

huey148

5th Vote. This would be invaluable to me. I didn't see this in the feature list, but if the program also scarped IMDB plot summary, that would make it even more amazing. But I'm humble. Support for non-DVD files would make this a must have for me. Thanks

plasticsolder

Meant to add, that this will play all parts of the film is they have been ripped into two 700MB files for example

Fairy Princess

4th Vote for additional file type support, do a test for the Video_TS folder, if its present load as normal, if not load vlc with that whole folder, VLCINSTALL\VLC.exe "FOLDER LOCATION"

Fairy Princess

What about supporting DVDs ripped in .ISO format? The program doesn't seem to work with .ISO images now.

farramat

Great start, i would like.

1. Support for image file and auto mounting in daemon tools or similar.
2. Support for multiple folders!

There is a tool for the Windows Media Center called MyMovies that do something like this, but it is way to much administration in that one. I love the idea to just have a cover image and a iso file and be able to play without the hustle of mounting and stuff ..

Stuck

Seems to work great with ISOs. However, it stretches all of my cover art horizontally (no space between images). Also, it's catching a desktop.ini file in the folder, which Windows seems to put in every folder (?), so perhaps an exception needs to be made for that file.

One option I would like to see is a VLC startup volume customization. 112 seems to be a bit overkill for my tastes.

Thanks for the neat program, Adam! Been looking for something like this for a while.

Stravos

@brackenthebox: huh, I guess I should take a second look at My Movies plugin - I just uninstalled it since it didn't appear to do anything useful for me... what you said is exactly what I think I want to do...

@Adam Pash: I wouldn't have any problems with organizing avi's into their own folders, in fact it would work well for avi's with separate subtitle files as well (my wife loves hindi movies). The only reason I currently keep all my movie AVIs in one folder is because it gives slightly more useful appearance in Windows Media Center (which I would swiftly abandon if something better were available for free)

Fierock

.. i mean i tried Griffith! duh.

KevODundas

@Scott Wegner: Scott I just tried your Wegner, and while it'snice for organizing one's dvds, it does not play any media.

KevODundas

Yes my films are already in per film folders and i'm sure anyone else wanting to use this functionality will be more than happy to create the folder structure required as this is a very useful application from anybody who has films ripped from dvds

Fairy Princess

@Adam Pash: I just set up my avi library into a folder structure like this for use with the My Movies plugin for MCE, and it really didn't take too long.

Add my name to the list of people who would appreciate support for more formats.

brackenthebox

A similar cross-platform, Ubuntu-friendly, application is called Griffith:
[griffith.berlios.de]

Although it's not quite as "automated" as this, it has a few nice features, including:
-- Search IMDB or other sources to fill in plot, genre, and many more details about your movies.
-- Add your own DVD artwork, or import cover art from IMDB or others
-- "Loaning" system, to keep track of your physical DVDs
-- Print out sleeves for your DVD cases automatically.

Easy to use, and a really nice interface. They've got Windows binaries on the website, but if you use Ubuntu:

sudo aptitude install griffith

-- Scott
[www.automaticable.com]

Scott Wegner

@brackenthebox: What is this "My Movies" plugin for MCE. I've been looking for something like this for my computer rather than playing the dvds from the My Videos folder on XP.

bbobjoe

Oh - forgot to mention. I get the DVD cover art and information with a tool called DVD Library, not to be confused with the DVD Library in WMC.

jtimberman

Adam, any plans to integrate this into Windows Media Center?

I use Vista with Windows Media Center on my Home Theater PC, rip movies to the hard drive with DVD shrink and then play them directly from the DVD Library in WMC.

To enable nable DVD Library/Gallery in Vista, see this link, from Microsoft no less.

[support.microsoft.com]

I don't download digital movies from iTunes, or anywhere else for that matter (ie, "bittorrent"), so I really don't care about other formats, though I have ffdshow installed, which can handle a bajillion formats and options, and makes DVD playback better when used instead of the default Windows DVD MPEG2 codec.

jtimberman

This is getting off the purpose of the original program, but the file structure that is imposed upon me by XBMC means that I have filname.avi (or .mpg, whatever) and filename.tbn (which is a PNG of the coverart) and all of these files are in the same folder. I don't know if you use XMBC Adam, but I know Gina does- would your program be suitable for this?

(or does anyone else know of a different way to organise video files for XBMC?)

simonjp

@Fierock: It took a little tweaking to get things working well for my avi's. By default, each movie is associated with a folder (where it puts the artwork, for example), and each disc in the movie is associated with the same folder. From the "disc" menu of each movie, however, you can change things such that discs are associated with a file instead of a folder.

This is useful if, for example, you have multiple files that belong to the same movie (you can label them as separate parts), or if you have multiple shows that belong to the same collection (TV episodes, for example). In all cases, I just created a new disc and named it in a clean way to map up to the file I wanted. It took half of a Saturday to get my ~200 movie collection into the DB in a way with which I was happy, but it's been great since then.

For a more automated method, if you only have one file associated with a movie, just make sure it's the only file in a folder, then associate that folder with the movie in the collection manager, and you're set (this also works with the autoscan feature once you've set up the DB).

brackenthebox

My ripped DVDs show up on DVDPlay, but when I try and play them it simply opens VLC media player. From there I have to go to file - open directory and choose where the DVD is then hit play. What do I have setup wrong?

scubahiker

You're gonna get in trouble for putting magnum in the video...

jeffeb3

Umpteenth vote for additional format support. Namely Divx/Xvid AVIs. If it were possible for this prog to pull movie data from IMDB just by the name of the file that would RULE.

ACQ

Neat, but I'm one of those freaks who burns and prints their own cover art.

smitty1123

Adam,
Not working for me. My vlc.exe is in Program Files/VideoLan (no extra directory for VLC) At first run, I point it directly to the executable, but the DVDPlay ini file still shows it with the extra directory.

So I exited the script and edited the ini file to reflect the correct path. DVDPlay then fails at line 116 because it's still looking for the assumed path to VLC.

Looks like you're:
1. Not accepting the given path when originally setting the ini.
2. Ignoring the ini once it's corrected.

btw... It IS reading changes to the ini as far as SavePath is concerned.

cycloscott

@bbobjoe: Courtesy of lifehacker (#5 on the list): [lifehacker.com]

I think you need media center for this to act as a launcher (collection management should work either way, as it's just based on SQL and .net, i believe), so you might be better off with the solution in the current post anyway.

brackenthebox

I just figured out how to do it for avi's. All you have to do is put it in the first folder. No need for video_ts or whatever just have a "movies" folder then inside that a "Superbad(or movie of choice)" folder and directly in that folder have the avi and cover art. It works for me.

joer14

@Adam Pash: Yeah, they alreadey are for me. I rip all of my dvds using dvd::rip (Ubuntu) and put them on an external hard drive. There they are all in different folders as .avi. The program looks great but sadly it won't do the job until you add support for me. It looks really nice so far though.
Thanks for everything man.
ur the best!

joer14

Hey - not working for me. It will show all of my DVD's with cover art, but will not open in VLC. VLC Gives me error message Unable to open ".
I am running it in Vista.

Rossage

@joer14: I am trying that but still no luck

Darkmatter91

@Archdukey: I just figured out how to do it for avi's (or any other format that vlc plays). All you have to do is put it in the first folder. No need for video_ts or whatever just have a "movies" folder then inside that a "Superbad(or movie of choice)" folder and directly in that folder have the avi and cover art. It works for me.
Thanks
Joe

joer14

@Adam Pash: Add me to the growing list of people who would like to see support for additional formats. I am in the process of converting all my DVDs to avi format so I can keep my collection on my notebook at all times. I don't mind spending a few hours reorganizing the folder structure if it means I can use this sweet-looking program.

eeefresh

@KevODundas: You're correct in that Griffith doesn't have an option to directly play the DVDs. However, it's my understanding that this program doesn't either-- it just has a convenient link to VLC.

Another GNOME program with similar functionality is called GCStar:
[www.gcstar.org]

I found Griffith's interface to be a little nicer, but in this program you can also setup direct links to your media. It's more of a universal "collection" organizer, good for ebooks or music as well. If you're using Ubuntu, you can install it by using:
sudo aptitude install gcstar

-- Scott
[www.automaticable.com]

Scott Wegner

@Darkmatter91: It sort of works with non DVD media, but not all non-dvd media. Can't put my finger on why. It never works for MPGs and it works for some AVIs, but not all AVIs. I'm sure with a bit of tuning it will be fine.

KevODundas

...I meant to say root folder, not root menu, by the way (i.e. what joer14 said).

Chino

@Rossage: Try copying the album art as instructed above. Is it just me or is the cover art a requirement to be able to play the dvd rips?

@everyone-looking for iso support: Also, .iso is supported if you put it in a folder in the root menu then, get cover art for it.

Chino

@Darkmatter91: I have it working for mp4, avi's with divx codec and other random one. Ok your root folder for the program is say
C:\Documents and Settings\yournamehere\My Documents\My Videos
(it does not matter what folder the program goes too, this is just an example.)
create a new folder inside your root folder for each movie.
C:\Documents and Settings\yournamehere\My Documents\My Videos\SuperBad-movie
inside that folder (in this case "superbad-movie") place the picture and the avi file. It should work.
good luck.
btw I am running xp media center.
thanks
joe

joer14

@Adam Pash: Hey Adam, someone here mentioned support for divx/xvid. is it possible to tweak the code for DVDRip to work with a divx/xvid ripper/builder?

personally i don't care i rip to all my movies to .iso

btw does anybody know if this will work with puppy or dsl?

B1663R

Oh by the way... THANKS, ADAM!

Chino

@Chino: Thanks Chino. I was having to same problem as Rossage.

jim817

Another great program! If you manage to work this in with Imgburn, you are God.

tehblacksheep234

Hey Adam, thanks for the cool program, I think that its awesome. I've been up way past my bedtime (3:30am est) just moving my avi's into folders and looking for movie covers...

I have a couple questions:

Is there anyway to get the covers not to stretch?

Is there a way for us to change settings for when vlc opens the file? like volume and stuff.

And one more thing, after you close vlc you have to start up dvdplay again, could you make it so that it goes back to your movie collection instead?

Thanks again, I really like this little program!

PDRIFT

Unable to open ''

^^
I get this error

Wait What the... You MUST have album art to make it work... ok what ever I still like the interface so ill use it - I don't care to have every last bit of info about the move (ie: date, cast, etc) It would be nice to pull run time and rating(G-PG-R AND the rating that IMDB gives it 1-10) from IMDB

Darkmatter91

I love this app, right now im using it with my avi's and mkv's.

I just wish there was a way to add sub folders, for example, maybe you have a movie series, like the James Bond collection, i would have a folder for James Bond Collection and then several folders for each movie...

ohh and the ability to handle tv series, maybe on open give the option for TV or Movies and then list all of them (for TV the subfolder option would be critical)

Thats just dreaming though, what you have so far is excellent.

CYG

Cool idea! I tried the One click rip the other day and was very impressed.

Now if there was some way to tie this in with XP MCE so that I could assign album art, etc that would rock!

I eventually want to get everything set up in MCE so that I have the complete library there, both downloaded files and ripped movies.

kinksville

Wow, a lot of requests- the scope is growning and growing! I think though the most requested is the simplest - if we put an AVI in a folder with the art, we'd love it to behave the same as a ripped DVD. Cheers!

KevODundas

Oh and I also forgot, the problems occurs for every ripped DVD.

skeeek

I have a problem with DVD play. How come when I click on a "disc" in DVD Play, VLC pops up and says "unable to open" as an error? How can I fix it?

skeeek

I'd like to see DVD Rip keep uncompressed .VOB files instead of compressed .AVI's. I just prefer the lesser compression.

rabidmonkey1

Another vote for other file types: *.mkv would be great.
Also is there a way to launch other players, like Windows Media player Basic?

tim_chase01

@KevODundas:

Actually i think it already does, i have been using it with mkvs and it worked fine

CYG

I have a question about VLC playback , how does it compare in quality to WMC or Cyberlink Power dvd ? I have TB's of dvd's backed up on my HP mediasmart server and i'm tried of using VOB2MPG to convert them to watch on 360 as extender (does anyone know a better way to do it , im looking for quality , not worried about file size) .. im tempted to just hook my PC up to my tv but i have the 60"sony xbr2 sxrd and it says not to use HDMI to my PC , i wonder if anyone has tried it ? i dont want to mess up my tv (anyreason it will mess it up ) ? Thanks

jonthomasdesigns

Another vote for .avi

jackquack

Nice app! I have no problem getting it to work with DivX/Xvid files.

My guess on the stretched thumbnails is because the lifted Amazon art has white space to the left and right of the cover. I hate stretched images! :(

I concur with the suggestions for:
- DVD Play staying open after launching a title
- Subfolder support

I also noticed that the app is placing a INI called dvdrip.ini.

Finally, is the only way to launch a movie to double click on the art? I'd love to be able to select and launch with arrows/enter. Or even have the title highlight on click with a PLAY button somewhere.

Thanks for the work on this, Adam. It's a killer app for me, since it makes my video library "Mrs. Dataguy-friendly."

dataguy

@skeeek: Make sure you have the albut art in the folder, I had the same problem and adding album art fixes it.

jim817

i've been trying all afternoon to get this to work. i've been using vlc for well over a year but when this program cannot seem to 'locate' it. i've pointed it to the .exe dozens of times and each time it says 'Dvd Play did not find VLC. also, holding shift when i start up the application does not let take me to any settings.

tools44

Adam,

Nice little App,good idea, but does not work if someone does not have the standard path for VLC... It looks like you hardcoded the path to run vlc in your app, regardless what the ini file says (even if I "locate" vlc, it will not use the path located but puts the c:\program files\videolan\vlc\vlc.exe path into the ini file). Moreover, if someone hand edit the ini, the program ignores the corrected path in the ini file, making the idea of the ini file pointless...

Viktor

lakicsv

Ugh... ignore both above posts... I thought you meant drag and drop onto the image unavailable icon and not into the folder itself.

Working fine now (though it would be nice if you could remove the requirement for cover art to be added before it will work).

inbetweener

Also I can't seem to get the cover art to copy across by drag and drop as Adam suggests (from Amazon, IMDB or anywhere)... any ideas anyone?

inbetweener

@jim817: Could you clarify?

I'm having exactly the same problem as Skeeek (all DVDs ripped using Adam's DVD Rip 0.2 via DVD shrink). The resources folder is in the same directory as DVD play...

Every single ripped DVD pops up an error:

Unable to open "

inbetweener

Does anyone else have the problem that for many of the films you pick, it only plays the FIRST one on the list? Honestly, if it kicks off "A Fish Called Wanda" one more time...!!!

KevODundas

another feature request that i'd love to see is a category/type feature. Currently I have two versions of DVD Play - one points to my Movies and another points to my TV DVDs. It would be nice if there was some sort of tree/directory feature to show only movies or tv or all "tom selleck" related items, etc...

Thanks (also as lakicsv pointed out the vlc location is hardcoded somewhere besides in the .ini file)

ratt2581

and that requirement shouldn't be so.

jim817

@inbetweener: lol, ok. So to clarify for everyone, you need the album art picture in the folder of the DVD in order for VLC to play it from DVDPlay.

jim817

@KevODundas: Same problem here.

martinmcd

Hey! Through a bit of research I found Libre [www.getlibra.com] which can both get your art, description, etc automatically from Amazon, but you can map VLC player to the AVI or whatever you like. Although I've not tried it with a DVD ripped file yet, this looks pretty cool - you can even use your webcam as a barcode scanner to add stuff... which you wouldn't do if you added an AVI....

KevODundas

Another cool idea, we can work on interface options too. This way we could have a black background or something, and options like keyboard controlling (remote controlling, use arrow keys to select DVD, enter to start - think apple tv/front row-esque), maybe full screen option also. That would be awesome, because then you can really use this as a entertainment computer type program.

stevenem

I'm having the same problem as KevODundas .. I have loaded all my cover art but no matter what movie I click on, the movie 300 loads every time.. If I hear "Spartans.. UNITE!" again, I'll go crazy. Would love to see options for subfolders i.e. TV seasons or movies with sequels. Can anyone help so I can use this to watch other movies besides 300?? Feels like the program wants me to turn gay or something :)

guitarguru11

@KevODundas...same problem here.
Also, had to move VNC to the directory that this program expects, no amount of telling it where VNC was would work.

johnniewalker

How can I view the lines of code for this program? See if I can fix it myself..

guitarguru11

Like many others I ran into the issue of vlc not being installed in the default location (I run it from a USB drive) so I pulled the code and made one small change which seems to have solved it for me.

At line 116 replace:
Run "%PROGRAMFILES%\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" "%DVDChoice%" --fullscreen

with:
Run "%VLC%" "%DVDChoice%" --fullscreen

I've tested it a number of times and it works the all my file formats (DVDRip, ISO, AVI) as long as the cover art is in the appropriate directory.

Scot Newbury