Browsing your movies on Vista Media Center

With the MCE viewer that is included in the PRO edition of Movie Collector you can view your movie collection with Vista Media Center. You can even start playing movies if you have linked them to actual files with Movie Collector!

Before starting, make sure that your computer has Media Center installed. You can check this by opening the Windows Start menu: there should be an item called "Windows Media Center" present.

First, create a collection

I guess this step is obvious, in order to browse your collection on Vista Media Center, you should first actually have a collection. Use the Add Movies Automatically screen to add movies.

You can start the Vista Media Center viewer with the green button on the toolbar. If you don't see that button, alternatively you can start Vista Media Center with the menu
Tools | Start Media Center in Movie Collector.

Using Vista Media Center viewer

Using your remote control for Media Center, you can browse your movies easily. If you don't have a remote, any default keyboard will work as well.

To get to the onscreen keyboard you simply press the down-arrow on your remote, or hit the CTRL button on your keyboard. With the onscreen keyboard that comes up you can search your database in various ways, sort, browse and change views. Try it out, it's fun!

Playing movies from the Vista Media Center viewer

You can link to movie files using Movie Collector, and play them from the viewer.

Use the menu Edit | Edit Movie in Movie Collector first. On the links tab of the edit movie screen, add a movie file. You can drag and drop such a file onto the panel, or use the "add movie file" icon.

Once a movie entry is linked, start the Media Center viewer. When you view a movie's details, you will find a play button that will allow you to play the movie directly from the viewer.

If your movies are in the ISO format, you will have to install a program called Daemon Tools before you can play ISO files.

Customize the viewer

You can set quite some different options for the Vista MC Viewer to make it look and feel the way you want it to. In Movie Collector, go to Tools | Options and click on the Media Center tab to see all those options.

Try playing a bit with this screen. You can change the page the viewer will start on, change transitions (between pages), switch between several themes or even add your own background image.

If you'd like you can also change the sort order, and filter on which movies the viewer should show, and which it shouldn't. This could be handy if you only want to see movies in your Media Center Viewer where you have added a file link for instance!

Using an Extender

If you are using an extender, such as the Xbox360 to browse and play your movies through Media Center, you have to keep a few things in mind.

Make sure the following folders are set to "shared" on the Media Center PC :

• C:\Users\Your-Name\Documents\Movie Collector
• C:\Users\Your-Name\AppData\Local\Collectorz.com\Movie Collector\MCE

If you do not share these folders, your extender simply does not have access to files required to use the viewer from your extender. For support on extenders or the Vista Media Center viewer for Movie Collector in general, you can contact the developer Brian Baskerville directly. Just use the MCE forum.

If your answer is not already on the forum, do not hesitate to post your question.
Brian will be happy to assist you.