What is Media Browser?

Media Browser is a free media aggregator plugin for Media Center that takes your recorded, digital, or ripped media and presents it in a simple, easy to use interface. Media Browser prides itself on delivering a fast, intuitive, media rich experience for the whole family.

Highlights

• Automatic metadata retrieval
• Streaming latest online trailers
• Media bookmarking (resume play)
• Support for external players
• Vodcast support (video rss feeds)
• Third party plug-in architecture
• Automatic updates
• Custom view layouts
• Multiple themes
• Create random / full folder playlists

Click the read link to learn how to install and use Media Browser

Installation

You need the following:

1. a version of Windows Vista or Windows 7 that includes the Media Center
2. the Microsoft .Net 3.5 Framework
3. and of course the MediaBrowser Plugin itself.

Configuration Wizard

The Configuration Wizard will start automatically after MediaBrowser installation. It allows you to:

1. configure your ‘Media Collections’
2. configure Transcode360 and add extender formats ( I don’t use this feature as my extenders play everything natively)
3. configure Daemon Tools to play your .iso files.(I don’t use this feature as I rip everything to AVI/XVID or MKV/H.264 to save drive space)

Media Collection

• a link to a folder, or to a list of folders containing video files which are located on local, network or external storage devices.
• Media Collections are the folders that appear in Media Browser’s initial screen
• the Collections are links stored as .vf (virtual folder) files
• they are most easily created and maintained using the Configuration Wizard.

If you’ve never run it before and if this is your first MediaBrowser installation, the Configuration Wizard will initially be filled with links to all the folders and shortcuts found in Windows’ “My Videos” folder (wherever that is on your PC). What actually happened in the background, is that MediaBrowser automatically created .vf files (virtual folder files) pointing to each of these subfolders or folder shortcuts.

You can remove any unnecessary items here (only the .vf file gets deleted, the original files and shorcuts won’t be touched). As from that moment, the default location in which MediaBrowser looks for .vf files and shortcuts will be: “%ProgramData%\MediaBrowser\StartupFolder” (e.g. “C:\ProgramData\MediaBrowser\StartupFolder”).
Each Collection can be linked to one or more folders. Those folders can be local folders, folders on network shares or even on external drives. This allows you to create a collection with items on different systems or network disks. This is quite convenient with Blu-ray rips, as those are very large and several hard disks are often needed to store them all.

You could create a Collection named “Movies” which points to the following folders:

• e:\My Movies
• f:\George\Old Movies
• \\HomeServer\Media\Movies

Each collection can have its own folder image. There are some very nice images in the Fan Artwork section of our forums.

Initial Configuration

When MediaBrowser is started for the first time, it will first prompt you to set some configuration options. These include:

• Tracking: Assume Watched if Older: any video older than this date will automatically be flagged as “Watched” (checkmark)
• Allow Internet Based Providers: Allows MediaBrowser to download MetaData information, Posters, Banners and Backdrops from third party providers such as TheTVDB.com and TheMovieDB.com. Should be left enabled for most users.
• Automatic Updates: Will prompt to install new major releases of MediaBrowser. Disable this if you intend to regularly compile your own SVNs.

After you click “OK” and “Continue”, MediaBrowser will quit automatically. Click its icon again.

Next, you’ll be told that MediaBrowser needs to scan your media locations. It is best to let it complete this task before continuing.

When done, you can start enjoying MediaBrowser, or go to the Configuration menu (the “Wrench” or “Spanner” icon) to further customize the program to your needs.

Basic Usage

Open one of your Collections to display the contents. If MediaBrowser still needs to download some metadata, or to read some metadata or images into the cache, some “flickering” of the posters may occur. In some cases, you won’t see changes (e.g. new posters) until you move back “up” to the parent folder and enter this folder again.

If you don’t like the View used to display the current folder or Collection, use the menus or press the Star key on the remote to change to another view. Some views allow you to increase or decrease the thumbnail size, to display vertically instead of horizontally, and/or to display banners instead of thumbs (note: as many series don’t have banners this may not produce satisfactory results, unless you manage to find more banners for the series you have on disk).

You can also change how items are sorted (e.g. Name, Date, Watched/Unwatched, …). Finally, you can filter the list by many items: genre, actor, director, year… With the Vanilla theme, you can also switch the backdrop display on or off.

Browsing and watching Series

When you open a Series folder, you always enter the list of seasons. Even if there is only one season, all episodes have to be put inside a “Season 1″ folder, else the Metadata won’t be fetched, the episodes won’t be recognized, and they won’t display correctly in MediaBrowser. Select a season and open it to display the available episodes. Note that whatever naming convention you’ve used for your video files on disk, MediaBrowser will always use the numbering and naming used in the Metadata.

So you may have e.g. called your file “BattleStar Galactica (2003) 4×19 – Daybreak Part I”, MediaBrowser will display “19 – Daybreak (1)” because that’s how it’s been entered at TheTVDB.com. The Breadcrumb at the top of the screen show that you’re in “BattleStar Galactica – Season 1″ (in case you fell asleep and forgot where you were ;-) ).

Depending on the selected view, you’ll see a poster or thumbnail for that episode, but you may also see an episode summary, codec and aspect ratio information (if you’ve installed MediaInfo: see the [Advanced Features] section) and ratings. Installing MediaInfo has the additional benefit of allowing a “720″ or “1080″ logo to be placed at the bottom right of all HD episodes.

If you press the OK button on the remote while a series episode is selected, the playback will start. If you stop playback, you may need to press the Back button on the remote to return to the file list. If you start playback again at a later time, it should resume at the point where you left it, although this is known to fail from time to time, depending on you configuration.

Browsing and watching Movies

While browsing the “root” collection folder containing your movies, you’ll again see some additional information, depending on the selected Theme and View.

Apart from the obvious Cover or Poster, this may be as little as just the name and rating (Cover Flow view), or may include a summary, codec and aspect ration information (Details view).

Select a movie cover and press the OK button on the remote to display the Movie Details screen. This screen, again, is quite different depending on which Theme you’ve selected, but you should always see a “play” button, and if you’ve already played this movie and interrupted playback, you’ll also have a “Resume” button.

There will also be buttons or tabs to display additional information such as Actors, Genres and Directors. These items are selectable (using the directional keys on the remote), and if you press OK while one of them is selected, you’ll filter the current folder or collection to display only matching items (i.e., videos with the same genre, actor, director or year).

Remote Control & Keyboard Shortcuts

There a number of remote control shortcuts supported by MediaBrowser. We’re not going to explain the obvious buttons that have the same function as in Media Center, but you may not know about the following special ones :

Media Center ‘*’ (Star) key

• Changes the current View

Media Center Clear (CTRL + W) keys

• Toggles the watched / unwatched status for the selected item

Media Center Record (Ctrl+R) key

• Refreshes metadata, etc. for the currently selected item (collection, folder, episode or movie)

Remote Controllers

Media Browser should work with any or all remote controllers as long as they are setup correctly.

• Microsoft Windows Media Center (MCE) Remotes
• Logitech Harmony Remotes

Configuration Menu

Most of the program’s options can be configured through the Configuration menu, which appears as a wrench (or spanner) icon, either at the top left (when using the Default theme) or at the bottom left of the screen (using the Vanilla theme).

Most of these options are stored in the MediaBrowser.config file, located in %programdata%\MediaBrowser. To reset all options, simply delete that file and restart MediaBrowser. You’ll have to redo all initial configuration steps.

© 2009, Technoramblings of the digitally insane. All rights reserved.