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W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com Windows 7 Media Center Customization Handbook Customize and Enhance W7MC RSVR85 Rich Robinson — Microsoft MVP... Wi

W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com

Windows 7 Media Center Customization Handbook

Customize and Enhance W7MC

RSVR85 Rich Robinson — Microsoft MVP

© 2009 Windows Guides | mintywhite.com All rights reserved

Windows 7 Media Center Customization Handbook

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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

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

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

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,

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-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

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

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

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

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

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

Once you have all of your folders added, you’ll probably want

to apply images to them Go here for an excellent collection of

Movie Genre icons deviantart.com is also one of my favourite

places to visit for icons

Click on the folder you wish to change, click on Change Image,

navigate to the image of your choice and click Open

MB will automatically save any changes made to the

configuration wizard

Media Browser supports podcasts, multiple plugins, the ability

to play a movie from a mounted ISO, and additions of media types for external players Have a play around with the display tab in particular

Set up Actor Images

By default, MB doesn't add an ImagesByName folder to its directory (in C:\ProgramData) Remember that 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)

and move the temporary ImagesByName folder to the MB

folder

Be sure to update this location in the options menu in

meta<browser/>

Double check the ImagesByName folder by going through a few

folders inside and making sure that the actors name is the

folder name and the actor image inside is name folder

Add Media Browser to W7MC Start Menu

If the MB icon doesn't appear in a new strip in the start menu in Media Centre, (with some builds of MB it doesn't) you'll have to create a new strip To do this, run the WMCCC program mentioned in Required Downloads and click on Create a new start menu strip > 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

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

If you have more than one strip already installed, choose the

start menu strip order and hit Next Click Finish to… well you know!

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 you

like

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 2007

In the left hand pane, expand RCData and find

STARTMENU.QUICKLINK.MOVIES.FOCUS.PNG you should see the

same icon as I have below

Right click on STARTMENU.QUICKLINK.MOVIES.FOCUS.PNG, go

to Extract… > Extract as

“STARTMENU.QUICKLINK.MOVIES.FOCUS.PNG” and save the image to desktop

Now we have our default movie image 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 and rename it Application