by wgilster » Thu Dec 15, 2011 5:46 am
Hi all, I'm a bit new to this thread so forgive me if I've already tromping on someone else work, but I'd like to share a bit about what I've done and see if it would be possible to integrate my work into this plugin since it seems like this would be the best place for it.
First, a bit of information for those that care to know a bit about how Windows Media Center's categorizes dvd info and discovers dvd artwork.
1. After ripping a DVD with software such as DVDfab or anyDVD, the software extracts the dvdid and it's self named title from the ISO and places it in a directory next to it's VIDEO_TS folder.
2. Windows Media Center perfectly recognizes and plays these ISO format ripped dvd/bds quite well as long as that dvdid file is available.
3. The format of the .dvdid.xml file is as follows:<Disc><Name>A_TAD_OF_CHRISTMAS_CHEER</Name><ID>86391718|1186f9b5</ID></Disc>
4. Windows Media Center scans it's list of video directories and finds all of these .dvdid.xml files and looks up the same MovieInfo from AMG and places it the following directory with the name of the file being it's dvdid: C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\eHome\DvdInfoCache\[dvdid].xml.
5. It also looks up the cover art for the DVD and places it in the following directory: C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\eHome\DvdCoverCache
So for those of us that have a Windows box with Windows Media Center, all we need to do is rip the dvd and open media center and all of our dvd's are indexed by genre, release date, rating, actors and cover art downloaded.
However, before I realized that there was a plugin that was already doing this, I went ahead and modified the HEAD version of PMS in my local workspace to show the cover art from the dvdcovercache. Works great! Later on, I've found this thread, and discovered that it would simply be better to utilize the "info gathering" plugin that you've created. So the question is, anyone interested in the patch that does this, or would this stuff be better utilized if it was integrated with this plugin. From what is sounds, you've created a rather extensible info/art gathering mechanism that could easily accommodate my code. Any interest?