How To: Movie Collectorz.com Database In GameEX

[Stu1983]

This is probably not much use to anyone other than myself but I'll post it here just in case

I have quite an extensive DVD collection, almost 2000 to be exact, and I use a tool called 'Movie Collector Pro' to catalogue and index all my films. The flight cases that I store all my films in is right beside my arcade so I thought it would be nice to be able to look through my films on my arcade and through GameEx's interface would be even better.

Movie Collector Pro has the ability to export your collection as an XML file so I set about creating a tool that would read the XML and make 'emulator' files, so to speak.

So it works through the XML and creates empty 'rom' files named with each films name, it then copies the front and back cover from your Movie Collector folder and renames it to the same as the film, it then takes a MDB and goes through populating it with the film details eg. release date, studio, plot, genre, IMDB rating

You can then use all these files as an emulator in GameEx and browse your collection, view your the covers and it can all be sorted by name, studio, year or genre

Like I said I don't expect many people to get any use from this but it might be handy to someone

Stu

UPDATE: v1.0.7

Now create's a map file as well as a MDB, I always thought the purpose of the Name column in the MDB was for GameEx to display and the GoodName was what it used to match the entry with the filename but it appears as though it doesn't do anything with the Name column at all, well on my system it doesn't

Changed the output format so it's more compatible with GameEx, seems there's a few bugs in GameEx when it comes to reading data from an MDB, it doesn't like 'The' and the start of a name when using 'Change sort order for game starting with the' and it doesn't like extra .'s in the middle of a name.

Stu

DVDXMLReader.zip

[chriss]

sounds like a nice setup! thanks for the share!

i'm always interested in how people extend their gameex setup though i don't have a lot of dvds ...

[DamageCase]

Cheers for that Stu... Yeah, I use Collectorz to catalog my movies too.

The only thing is, I lost my recent DB after a HDD crash

Now I gotta go through and re-add everything from the last 6 months... or start afresh.

Anyway, I'll definitely make use of this when I get my DB sorted

[Stu1983]

Cheers for that Stu... Yeah, I use Collectorz to catalog my movies too.

The only thing is, I lost my recent DB after a HDD crash

Now I gotta go through and re-add everything from the last 6 months... or start afresh.

Anyway, I'll definitely make use of this when I get my DB sorted

That's not so good, I have 3 copies of my database on different computers

Having everything catalogued is great in the long run but it's a real pain adding everything, some of the results their search returns are just nuts, when I first found Collectorz I already had 1000 DVDs took me 2 weeks of working at it to sort through all the results

Stu

[DamageCase]

Yeah, I have been running it for a while... But I had been using a program called Antz Movie catalog before that so could import my old db... Its always been pretty gradual update, add maybe 50 movies in one go... just an hour every few to six months

I cannot remember all my recent movies... so I may just start from scratch... fresh start...

Been looking at possibly downloading / ripping trailers for each movie as well so now could be the time to do it.

Any idea if that could possibly be worked into this plugin? So Gameex would also be able to show the trailer

[Stu1983]

Yeah, I have been running it for a while... But I had been using a program called Antz Movie catalog before that so could import my old db... Its always been pretty gradual update, add maybe 50 movies in one go... just an hour every few to six months

I cannot remember all my recent movies... so I may just start from scratch... fresh start...

Been looking at possibly downloading / ripping trailers for each movie as well so now could be the time to do it.

Any idea if that could possibly be worked into this plugin? So Gameex would also be able to show the trailer

I haven't tried it myself but there's an option in Movie Collector to add a file to each movie so if you linked the trailer to the movie in you database I'm sure I could extract it from the XML file and save it to a separate folder just like I do with the covers

Stu

[Tom Speirs]

I may personally get some use out of this. Im going to check it out. I have sone Sony Media changers and have wrote a script to copy all my discs to the hard drive. I plan to copy all my discs to a NAS box I just bought. All 800 of them. Timing is good for this. I also just discovered Win DVD 9. The uspacaling is awesome. It also has this motion detection feature, which has literally got to be seen to be believed. Try watching a Matrix film with it. I suggest anyone who uses and HTPC setup to check it out. So I was planning on enhancing the DVD on Discs feature to use an external player, ie Win DVD 9. It would be cool to have database support in GameEx for my DVDs though, and win dvd could be run as an emulator.

So basically are there any features you would like from me to enhance a DVDs on Disk setup? Or anything I can do to enhance in built support for this kind of thing (topic post).

[Stu1983]

I may personally get some use out of this. Im going to check it out. I have sone Sony Media changers and have wrote a script to copy all my discs to the hard drive. I plan to copy all my discs to a NAS box I just bought. All 800 of them. Timing is good for this. I also just discovered Win DVD 9. The uspacaling is awesome. It also has this motion detection feature, which has literally got to be seen to be believed. Try watching a Matrix film with it. I suggest anyone who uses and HTPC setup to check it out. So I was planning on enhancing the DVD on Discs feature to use an external player, ie Win DVD 9. It would be cool to have database support in GameEx for my DVDs though, and win dvd could be run as an emulator.

So basically are there any features you would like from me to enhance a DVDs on Disk setup? Or anything I can do to enhance in built support for this kind of thing (topic post).

Because this has to be set up in the emulator section, when using GameEx's search feature it now returns results for films as well as games, it would be nice to be able to have a separate search for films.

I'm thinking there's a few ways to do this:

One would be that each emulator section has an option that says this is to be included in the games, media or jukebox search, this would always default to games but it would mean you have the option to change it and it would also mean that people that have KaraFun setup as an emulator could then have it searchable by the jukebox search

The other way would be under the MultiMedia/HTPC section have a couple of emulator slots so custom media software could be setup, the big advantage here would be that it would then appear under the Multimedia section rather than Emulated Games

Or add database support with snap shots support to the DVD On Disk feature that currently exists

Some more fields in the standard MDBs wouldn't go a miss either, is there anyway you could support all columns in an MDB? Just read the columns header and add a view by whatever the header is option where you currently have the Name, Year, Category... that way all future ideas are catered for you could insist on have a FileName header that must be in every MDB but everything else is optional

Stu

[neverminder]

gotta try something like that but then does a folder structure be usable? I mean even if I take WinDVD as the "emulator" and point toward a folder will it work?

[TalkingBull]

I have been using Collectorz products since they hit the net and have been looking for a way to integrate with GameEx. I have most of my movies on my HDD in AVI format and would like to do what you have done but also to link to the movie files. I can play them via GameEx in the media section but I think it would be cool to have all the Movie Collectorz data integrated. Is this possible with this setup?