therealjoeblow
7th October 2004, 18:50
I've been looking for a very simple movie cataloger and launcher. I do NOT want a comprehensive database like MovieCollector or eXtreme Movie Manager.
What would suffice would be just a simple interface that can show a thumbnail collection of movie cover scans, where each cover is linked to the actual media file, and when clicked, it launches the video file in the default system player. A simple launching interface.
Reason - I have a directory for my daughters with a whold bunch of their kid's movies in subdirectories, and each sub-directory contains: the movie, a text file with info exported from g-spot, a saved copy of the iMDB page in .mht format, and the front cover either scanned from the original DVD or from amazon.com. The intent was for them to be able to watch whatver they want whenever they wat without swapping discs or VHS tapes.
But, the kids still want to go and get the original DVD's and play them instead of the encodes I made for them because they can't read or navigate the directory structure (they're only 2 and 5 years old).
So, as a stopgap, I made a HTML page in which I display a thumbnail of the cover scans, and used <a href="file://..."></a> to link to the fullsized cover scan and the actual video file. However, this has 2 drawbacks:
1) it's a pain to update, I've got to manually edit the html file every time I add a movie; a drag and drop or at least point and click interface in a properly developed application would be a lot easier, and
2) when you click on a link to a local video file in an html page, there's a 5 to 10 second delay while the system does whatever it does, and before windows actually interfaces with the click and launches the file. Kids won't wait 5 to 10 seconds without freaking out. Again, a properly designed interface application would launch the video immediately, without the inherent delay in processing the html click.
So - does anyone know of such an application/interface/launcher exists?
Many thanks.
What would suffice would be just a simple interface that can show a thumbnail collection of movie cover scans, where each cover is linked to the actual media file, and when clicked, it launches the video file in the default system player. A simple launching interface.
Reason - I have a directory for my daughters with a whold bunch of their kid's movies in subdirectories, and each sub-directory contains: the movie, a text file with info exported from g-spot, a saved copy of the iMDB page in .mht format, and the front cover either scanned from the original DVD or from amazon.com. The intent was for them to be able to watch whatver they want whenever they wat without swapping discs or VHS tapes.
But, the kids still want to go and get the original DVD's and play them instead of the encodes I made for them because they can't read or navigate the directory structure (they're only 2 and 5 years old).
So, as a stopgap, I made a HTML page in which I display a thumbnail of the cover scans, and used <a href="file://..."></a> to link to the fullsized cover scan and the actual video file. However, this has 2 drawbacks:
1) it's a pain to update, I've got to manually edit the html file every time I add a movie; a drag and drop or at least point and click interface in a properly developed application would be a lot easier, and
2) when you click on a link to a local video file in an html page, there's a 5 to 10 second delay while the system does whatever it does, and before windows actually interfaces with the click and launches the file. Kids won't wait 5 to 10 seconds without freaking out. Again, a properly designed interface application would launch the video immediately, without the inherent delay in processing the html click.
So - does anyone know of such an application/interface/launcher exists?
Many thanks.