Trent

Now that Open Media Library is coming closer and closer to a functional application people are starting to ask “Where can I download this from!?”, the answer – Because it’s open source you can download the source and compile and use at your discretion. “Source? Compile? What?” Are just some of the questions people are left with when told to do that. So here goes some step by step instructions on what you need to do to get Open Media Library up and running on Vista Media Center.

First things first – you will need the following applications:

• Microsoft Visual C# 2008 Express Edition
• Windows Media Center Software Development Kit
• TortoiseSVN

I’m not going to go into how to install them, but i’m sure you can figure that out for yourself.

Create a new folder where you would like to store the source for Open Media Library (you can delete this later if you want).

Right click on the folder, highlight TortoiseSVN and then click Checkout...

The TortoiseSVN prompt will then ask for the URL of the repository (which you can find out at http://code.google.com/p/open-media-library/source/checkout), put in http://open-media-library.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ and then click OK.

TortoiseSVN will then download the latest revision of the source and prompt you once it has been completed.

Now browse to the directory where you saved the source to and double click on OML.sln to open the Open Media Library solution in Visual C# Express. While the solution is opening you may be prompted with a few errors stating that Solution folders are not supported in this version of Visual Studio, just click OK and ignore these.

Usually you could then just click on Build -> Build Solution (or press F6), however due to constant changes to the repository you may get errors and a failed build. To avoid this you can build the OMLEngine and Library projects individually by right clicking on OMLEngine in the Solution Explorer (on the right), click Build and then do the same thing for Library.

Next step is to register the application. This step is likely to cause most people problems depending on whether they’re using Vista 64bit or 32bit.

To note: OMLEngine.dll will register itself when it’s built in Visual Studio.

To register the application with MediaCenter first open up a command prompt and cd to the directory where you saved the source and then cd to \Library.

Type DevInstall.cmd /debug and then press enter. You should get an output much like this:

Provided all has gone well, if you open up Media Center you should be greeted with the Open Media Library menu strip icon.

Next up, importing your Movies.

I’ve decided to put the resources and knowledge I gained from working on MyTheatre to use by joining the Development team of Open Media Library. Since it seems we all share a common goal, we should be able to get something functional out the door much quicker than what I could do myself.

Finally, an open source solution to viewing and organizing your dvd library with media center. This add-in allows users to browse their movie library all in one location. The titles have associated actor, producers, summaries, runtime displayed. The main layout of the project was designed to work through an extender such as the xbox360.

Here’s a preview of what’s to expect in the first functional release:

Got a suggestion, addition or just want to request a feature? Head over to the forums http://www.ornskov.dk/forum/index.php

Vista Media Center does a great job for displaying and organizing your DVD’s with the DVD library, but unfortunately lacks the ability to do the same thing with other media files. This is where MyTheatre comes in.

Here’s a bit of a preview of what I’ve been working on.

Planned features include:

• Multi file support (e.g. Movie CD1.avi, Movie CD2.avi)
• Multiple file locations (You can have several locations where files are stored, and they will all show up on the one screen)
• Metadata support for at least
  • Title
  • Release Year
  • Cover
  • Genre
  • Plot
  • Cast
  • Runtime
  • Rating
• Ability to flag movie as watched
• Offline media (You can have files on CD/DVD that will still show in the movies list. When selected you will be prompted to insert the appropriate media)

Another downside to the included drivers/software for the VFD/Volume knob that comes with the ANTEC Fusion is that the volume knob will not work for SPDIF output in Vista. However, there is a fix! 

1. Download this updated SMCA.dll
2. Rename the existing SMCA.dll in C:\Program Files (x86)\ANTEC\VFD\ to SMCA.dll.old
3. Copy the new SMCA.dll to C:\Program Files (x86)\ANTEC\VFD\
4. Restart the ANTEC VFD software

If you’re using 32bit Vista the file will be in C:\Program Files\ANTEC\VFD\

I recently purchased an ANTEC Fusion home theatre PC enclosure to replace my old noisey media center PC only to discover that the included IR functionality was complete rubbish (you can’t even use the PC on/off button on an MCE remote without connecting an additional cable). Initially this didn’t phase me as I already had a MCE IR reciever, however – after much searching I realised there was no way to disable the included IR functionality without also disabling the VFD (which works beautifully with Vista Media Center after a bit of configuration).

After a bit of googling it appeared there were 3 solutions:

1. The easiest, use another application to utilize the VFD (e.g. LCD Smartie)
2. ANTEC’s suggestion, Remove the front panel of the case, unscrew the VFD module and then cover up the IR receiver module.
3. or, disable the VFD all together.

The first solution sounded ok, but I could not find a single application that would work with Vista Media Center. Either the applications didn’t work at all, or they just didnt support Media Center. Second solution, huh!? Sounds a bit ghetto – surely there’s got to be something better than that. Third solution, well yeah – defeats the purpose of the VFD in the enclosure.

Out comes PE Explorer and WinDbg, time to write a dummy SG_RC.dll to trick the ANTEC software into thinking the RC was working when infact the requests just get ignored. Before I did that I thought I’d check out the file structure of the ANTEC application and see if there was a hidden setting to disable the IR module.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ANTEC\VFD\RCPlugin

Set it to 0, the remote stopped working! But the VFD would then only display the time. No good.

Vista:
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\ANTEC\VFD\Setup\MCE remote\

XP (can anybody confirm this is correct?):
%USERPROFILE%\Application Data\ANTEC\VFD\Setup\MCE remote\

This folder appears to contain configuration/key mapping data for the MCE remote. So the simple solution?

1. Set all permissions to Deny for Everyone on the MCE remote folder.
2. Restart the ANTEC software.
3. Plug in your MCE IR Receiver.
4. Problem Solved!

Stay tuned for a replacement for the ANTEC software, that fully supports Vista Media Center right out of the box

Update: Another solution of disabling the driver from device manager has been suggested. I found that this had the same result as setting the RCPlugin registry value to 0. The ANTEC VFD software says that the VFD H/W is not connected and will not display anything on the VFD. Doing this will however disable the IR functionality.

Update: You can now use the iMon software to control the VFD/IR Sensor in the Antec case. The latest version of the iMon software has an option to disable the IR Sensor all together.

Recently I was given the task of creating some custom Web Parts for a newly implemented Microsoft Sharepoint 2007 site. Not knowing anything much about Sharepoint, the first step was to figure out how to create a basic Web Part and then figuring out how to publish it for use.

Web Parts in SharePoint 2007 are based on the ASP.NET 2.0 Framework so you can use your choice of .NET languages to create your custom Web Parts. My .NET language of choice is C#, so i’ll be using that for this example.

The first thing you need to do is create a new Class Library project in Visual Studio 2005. Once created, add a reference for System.Web as it contains the Web Part controls. You then need to add an override for Render() and for testing use Write to output some text eg. writter.Write(”Hello Trent!”); - See the below code for an example:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;

namespace SampleWebPart
{
  public class SampleWebPart : WebPart
  {
    protected override void Render(System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter writer)
    {
      writer.Write("Hello Trent!");
    }
  }
}

Before building the Web Part the assembly needs to be strongly named, you can do this in Visual Studio by opening the project properties and then going to the Signing tab. Tick on the Sign the assembly check box and then click on the drop down list and select New. Give the key a name and choose a strong password. Click Ok and you’re done. Additionaly you will need to open AssemblyInfo.cs and add [assembly: AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers()] on a new line. You can now build the Web Part assembly.

There are 2 ways that I found to deploy the Web Part assembly, Global Assembly Cache (GAC) or bin – I first tried using the GAC as it was the recommended way but was unsuccessful. Using the bin method worked without a hitch, so I will explain that method.

First copy your compiled assembly to the _app_bin directory (You’ll find it in your SharePoint installation directory – In my case it was at C:\Inetpub\intranet\_app_bin\).

For the next step you’ll need to get the Public Key Token for your assembly, see Strong Name Tool (Sn.exe).

Open the web.config file found in the SharePoint installation folder and add the following line to the SafeControls section (You’ll need to replace the PublicKeyToken with the Public Key Token of your assembly):

<SafeControl Assembly="SampleWebPart, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" Namespace="SampleWebPart" TypeName="*" Safe="True" />

Now open your SharePoint site, go to Site Actions, Site Settings, and select Web Parts (It’s underneath Galleries). Click on New, put a tick next to your Web Part in the list and the click on Populate Gallery.

You can now add your custom Web Part to any of the pages in your SharePoint site.

Happy Birthday to me!

Although this was the token ‘Hello World’ WordPress post, i’ve edited it and kept it here as an indication of how long ago I set this up and never used it.