W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 1 Windows 7 Media Center Customization Handbook Customize and Enhance W7MC RSVR85 Rich Robinson — Microsoft MVP http://mintywhite.com W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 1 © 2009 Windows Guides | mintywhite.com. All rights reserved. Windows 7 Media Center Customization Handbook If this guide is distributed it is furnished under license and may be used or copied only in accordance with the terms of such license. Except as permitted by any such license, no part of this guide may be reproduced. This guide may be stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise. Please note that the content in this guide is protected under copyright law. Mintywhite will not be responsible for damages to your computer, software, or data resulting from use of information contained in this document. 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About the Authors RSVR85 is a tech enthusiast with a passion for tweaking and improving PCs. RSVR85 is a moderator in Windows Forums and a writer for Windows Guides. Rich Robinson is the author and creator of Windows Guides, Windows Forums, and MyWindowsPC. Rich is a Microsoft MVP in the Desktop Experience category and authored Windows 7 –The Pocket Guide, Windows Vista – The Pocket Guide, Windows Vista – Customization Manual, the PC Security Handbook, and the PC Maintenance handbook. Download more free books. Contents Introduction 2 Notational Conventions 2 Customization 101 2 Required Downloads 3 Movie Organization 4 Join Two-Part Movies 5 Get MetaData for Your Movies 5 Configure Media Browser 9 Set up Actor Images 10 Add Media Browser to W7MC Start Menu 11 Change Media Browser Icon in Startup Menu 14 Add Custom Genre Icons to Media Browser 15 Speed Up Media Browser Using USB Flash Drive 15 Hide the Default Movie Strip 17 Change W7MC Background 18 What Next? 19 About this Handbook 19 W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 2 Introduction This handbook is compiled from numerous Windows Media Center tutorials written on mintywhite.com. Changes to system protected files are required to accomplish the entirety of the guide and should be approached cautiously. I strongly recommend you backup any system files you intend on changing to a "backup" folder for later restoration. Throughout this handbook, I'll refer to methods used for .avi movie files. Where amendments to the guide are needed for other movie files, this icon will be displayed. The purpose of this handbook is not to define the ultimate solution; its purpose is to give you simple, unbiased advice on what I’ve found to be the best options out there. If you have any questions about PC customization or PCs in general, you can head to Windows Forums where you’ll find friendly, knowledgeable members who are happy to assist in your learning. If you disagree with anything in this handbook, please join us also and share your solutions. It is not necessary to complete the handbook from start to finish. Please read through the contents page and decide what you want to do with your Windows Media Center. Please note: Windows Media Center is available in the Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate editions of Windows 7. Notational Conventions In this handbook, I use these notational conventions: Italic: Text from the current dialogue you are working with. Bold: the name of a keyboard key. Italic bold: something you type as shown, e.g., regedit . Unless otherwise specified, you can use uppercase or lowercase letters. Click: move the cursor to the referenced item and press the left mouse button. Press: press a keyboard key. Select: choose from a list. Blue Links: Links to external websites. Customization 101 Many terms in this handbook may be new to you; I make every effort to explain things in a simple manner that is easy to digest. Before we begin with solutions, I present some key terms and phrases that will assist you as you work your way through the rest of this handbook. These phrases are commonly used in conversation and in online discussion forums, but it’s hard to know exactly what they mean. Uninstall – To remove a program from your computer so that it no longer occupies space on your hard drive and cannot be used anymore. Uninstallation includes deletion of program files, registry entries, associations, supporting libraries, user data, plugins, extensions, and other features specific to a program. Registry – A control center for your computer. Windows settings, individual program settings, and other important configuration information are stored here. Now you have your jargon set straight, you can begin customizing Windows 7 Media Center. W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 3 A Taster of Things to Come! Here's a few screenshots of Windows 7 Media Center to “wet your whistle.” Required Downloads Before we start with this guide, you'll need to start a few downloads. 1. Media Browser - Media Browser (MB) is a free media aggregator plug-in for Media Centre that takes your recorded, digital, or ripped media and presents it in a simple, easy to use interface. This really is the best plug-in for W7MC (in my opinion). 2. Restorator 2007 (Free Version) - Restorator is an award- winning utility to edit windows resources in applications and their components, e.g. files with .exe, .dll, .res, .rc, .dcr, extensions 3. XML Notepad 2007 - XML Notepad 2007 provides a simple intuitive user interface for browsing and editing XML W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 4 documents. Notepad can be used as an alternative but I definitely recommend XML Notepad for the job. 4. meta <browser/> - meta<browser/> is an all-in-one solution to retrieve metadata for Movies and TV shows through the available APIs of themoviedb.org (TMDb) and thetvdb.com (TVDb). 5. WMCCC - This wizard can create new custom start menu strips for Windows Media Centre (Vista/Windows7) and populate them with registered extra programs. It's also possible to delete the strips. 6. Hide Strips - Hide Media Center Menu Strips has the ability to hide native & custom strips in the start menu area of W7MC. Note that this program hides them and does not delete them. 7. OABSoftware MCE Mail - With MCE Mail you can read your e- mails and write e-mails to others, on your Media Centre TV. MCE Mail supports POP3 servers for receiving e-mails and SMTP servers for sending e-mails. 8. Mencoder - With mencoder you can join two-part movies using a simple command line. 9. This Batch File - Rich wrote this batch file for us. If you have your movie files 'loose' then this file will put each movie into a folder and rename the folder according to the movies name. Please view the README file included in the zip file. Movie Organization First things first, let’s organise our movies. You’re going to need to have your movie collection regimented if this guide is to succeed. You can do it manually, or use this batch file. Either way, each movie must be in its own folder. So, the movie, Get Smart (2008) for example would need to look like: J:\DVD\Comedy\Get Smart (2008)\Get Smart (2008).avi I’ve found through trial and error that always stating the year in brackets (parenthesis) after the movie title helps metadata grabbers do the job efficiently. You’ll need to organise every single movie you want included in Media Browser (MB) in this way. If you have a large movie collection, it’s also worth putting the movie folders into genre categories. W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 5 Join Two-Part Movies If you have two part movie, you should join them as one. Grab the copy of Mencoder you downloaded earlier. Copy mencoder.exe into the folder with the movies you wish to ‘join’. Make sure that each part of the movie is correctly labelled “1” & “2”. Open a command prompt window in that folder (Shift & Right Click on the movie folder.) Type this command into the command prompt and press enter; mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy -noodml -o “joined.avi” “1.avi” “2.avi” Get MetaData for Your Movies There are a lot of tools out there for grabbing MetaData for movies. My favourite is meta<browser/>. Using meta<browser/> can take some getting used to and you’ll probably have to practice a little with it, the results are most definitely worth it though. meta<browser/> will download multiple DVD covers, backdrops, banners, episode thumbs, ratings, synopsis and actor images. You name it, meta<browser/> has it covered. To get started, open up meta<browser/> and click Options , at the bottom left of the window. W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 6 Click Add a new location at the top right of the new window & choose your movie folder. Be sure to press Enter after each choice. Click Save when all of the movie folders you need have been added. Under Search options you can set which folders and which file extensions are valid. It's recommended to have the FileSystemWatcher checked on under Folder Monitoring for file systems Windows 2000 and above. To start acquiring actor images, we must setup a temporary folder for them. Create a folder anywhere you like named ImagesByName . Copy the path of the ImagesByName folder into the ImagesByName folder location field in meta<browser/>. This temporary folder will remain so until Media Browser is installed. If you move the temporary ImagesByname folder, make sure you update the location field in meta<browser/> options. Be sure to click Save after any changes. At the bottom of the main windows click Refresh List and your movies will start to populate in the left hand pane. Entries marked red have missing or incomplete MetaData information. W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 7 Click on a movie you want to process and click on Fetch Movie MetaData . meta<browser/> will then begin to download all the information you need. You can choose from multiple backdrops, banners & DVD covers. W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 8 W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 9 Click Save MetaData when you're happy with the MetaData. Your film folder should look something similar to this once you’ve downloaded and saved the changes. (You may have to show hidden files/folders.) To show hidden files and folders: 1. Open Windows Explorer (Winkey+E.) 2. Press ALT, click Tools > Folder Options. 3. Click the View tab. 4. Scroll down and select Show hidden files and folders . As previously mentioned, meta <browser/> is a little tricky to get to grips with at first; I advise starting with small folders or individual movies. If you find you’ve messed up, don’t panic! Go to the movie folder on your HDD, delete everything apart from the actual movie and try again. There are several ways to process your movies and get MetaData with meta<browser/>. I’m giving the simplest example. You may wish to experiment, by copying a folder of movies to a different location and running through meta<browser/> to practice its different functions and find which way suits you best Configure Media Browser Now all of your movies have the correct MetaData and are nicely organised, it's time for the good bits! I'll assume you already have Media Browser (MB for short from now on!) downloaded and already installed. 1. Start the Media Browser Configuration Wizard . 2. Click advanced to open all of the extra option tabs. 3. Click Add to start browsing for folders to add to MB. After you’ve added your first folder, you’ll see that you can specify more than one location for that particular media. e.g. I’ve chosen my DVD collection which is on H:\ I may have another folder on C:\ that I also want to add to DVD to MB. Treat this as you would the new library function in Windows 7. [...]... > Next Name and Title your custom strip You won’t be able to name it Movies ; WMCCC returns an error if this is attempted Click Next W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 11 Select media browser from the list of available programs and click Next If you add more than one program to the strip, set the program order and click Next W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides... Explorer window) Cut or Copy the MediaBrowser folder to your Flash Drive Delete MediaBrowser from C:\ProgramData if you copied Open a command prompt (WinKey+R > cmd ) and type these commands in, hitting enter after each one; cd C:\ProgramData (Change C:\ to your ProgramData drive) mklink /j MediaBrowser X:\MediaBrowser (Change X to your Flash drive) W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com... into: C:\Program Files\MediaBrowser\MediaBrowser and rename it Application W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 14 Create a new folder in ImagesByName and name it the title of your genre (i.e Action , Comedy ) Put your genre icon into the folder and name it folder (not folder.jpg, just folder) That's it! Add Custom Genre Icons to Media Browser Earlier on I spoke about... you will soon find PC optimization is a habit and you are familiar enough with it to help friends and family with their PCs After you’ve done this, I encourage you to visit Windows Guides and learn other ways to improve your PC About this Handbook This handbook is delivered free by Windows Guides RSVR85 is a moderator in Windows Forums and a writer for Windows Guides Rich Robinson is a Microsoft MVP... temporary folder you created earlier? We're going to need it now Make sure that hidden file and folders are set to show before you go any further Navigate to: C:\ProgramData\MediaBrowser (or type % programdata% \MediaBrowser into any Explorer window) W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 10 and move the temporary ImagesByName folder to the MB folder Be sure to update this location... strip already installed, choose the start menu strip order and hit Next Click Finish to… well you know! W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 13 Change Media Browser Icon in Startup Menu This is a good one for those of you who aren’t too keen on MB’s default icon We’re going to change it to the default movie icon that W7MC displays You can of course change the icon to whatever... extracted and saved to desktop Navigate to: C:\Program Files\MediaBrowser\MediaBrowser (or type % programfiles% \MediaBrowser\MediaBrowser in any Windows Explorer window) Locate the PNG image called Application and rename it Application BACKUP Move the backup PNG into your backup folder you created earlier Finally, move the extracted default WMC movie icon from the desktop and into: C:\Program Files\MediaBrowser\MediaBrowser... “STARTMENU.QUICKLINK.MOVIES.FOCUS.PNG” and save the image to desktop Locate ehres.dll located in: C: \Windows\ ehome (or type % windir% \ehome into any Windows Explorer window.) When you have found it, take ownership of it, make a copy of it to the desktop and rename it ehres BACKUP.dll Place the backup in your backup folder Next, is to open ehres.dll with Restorator 20 07 In the left hand pane, expand RCData and find STARTMENU.QUICKLINK.MOVIES.FOCUS.PNG... is not affiliated with Microsoft Get more books Choose your preferred background which must be png Any resolution should be OK Save ehres.dll and close Restorator Now when you open up W7MC your new background should be displayed!! W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 19 ... MB strip! Install and run the Hide Strips program (#6 Required Downloads) Make sure you open up under the Per User tab Uncheck Movies and whatever else you want to hide Click Save Then move across to the All Users tab Uncheck the same options as last time You’ll notice under All Users your custom strip can be seen Click Save & Exit when you’re finished W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — . Customization Handbook Customize and Enhance W7MC RSVR85 Rich Robinson — Microsoft MVP http://mintywhite.com W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides. W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 1 Windows 7 Media Center Customization