Trent Scholl » Development

Compiling Open Media Library from source

Trent — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 01:09:27 +0000

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:

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.

Open Media Library for Vista Media Center

Trent — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 06:57:54 +0000

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

MyTheatre for Vista Media Center

Trent — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 06:17:40 +0000

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)