Windows 7 Media Center Customization Handbook

Customize and Enhance W7MC

RSVR85 Rich Robinson — MVP W7MC Customization Handbook http://mintywhite.com — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 1

© 2009 Windows Guides | mintywhite.com. All rights reserved. Media Center Customization Handbook Contents

If this guide is distributed it is furnished under license and may be used or copied only in accordance with the terms of such license. Except as permitted by any such license, no part of this guide may be reproduced. This guide may be stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, Introduction ...... 2 electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise. Please note that the content in this guide is protected under copyright law. Notational Conventions ...... 2 Mintywhite will not be responsible for damages to your computer, software, or data resulting from use of information contained in this document. Customization 101 ...... 2 The content of this guide is furnished for informational use only, is subject to change without notice, and should not be construed as a commitment by Windows Guides. Neither Windows Guides nor Microsoft Required Downloads ...... 3 Corp. assume responsibility or liability for any errors or inaccuracies that may appear in the informational content contained in this guide nor for any damages resulting from use of the information contained Movie Organization ...... 4 herein. Please remember that existing artwork or images that you may want to include in your project may be protected under copyright law. The unauthorized incorporation of such material into your new work could Join Two-Part Movies ...... 5 be a violation of the rights of the copyright owner. Please be sure to obtain any permission required from the copyright owner. Get MetaData for Your Movies ...... 5 mintywhite, Windows Guides, and the Windows Guides logo are trademarks of mintywhite.com Microsoft, Windows and Office are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. All other trademarks are the Configure Media Browser ...... 9 property of their respective owners. Set up Actor Images ...... 10

Add Media Browser to W7MC ...... 11

Change Media Browser Icon in Startup Menu ...... 14 About the Authors Add Custom Genre Icons to Media Browser ...... 15

Speed Up Media Browser Using USB Flash Drive ...... 15 RSVR85 is a tech enthusiast with a passion for tweaking and improving PCs. RSVR85 is a moderator in Windows Forums and Hide the Default Movie Strip ...... 17 a writer for Windows Guides. Change W7MC Background ...... 18

What Next? ...... 19

Rich Robinson is the author and creator of Windows Guides, About this Handbook ...... 19 Windows Forums, and MyWindowsPC. Rich is a Microsoft MVP in the Desktop Experience category and authored Windows 7 –The Pocket Guide, – The Pocket Guide, Windows Vista – Customization Manual, the PC Security Handbook, and the PC Maintenance handbook.

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W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 1 Introduction Bold: the name of a keyboard key. Italic bold: something you type as shown, e.g., regedit. Unless otherwise specified, you can use uppercase or lowercase This handbook is compiled from numerous letters. Center tutorials written on mintywhite.com. Changes to system protected files are required to accomplish the entirety of the Click: move the to the referenced item and press the left mouse button. guide and should be approached cautiously. Press: press a keyboard key. I strongly recommend you backup any system files you intend on changing to a "backup" folder for later restoration. Select: choose from a list.

Throughout this handbook, I'll refer to methods used for .avi Blue Links: Links to external websites. movie files. Where amendments to the guide are needed for other movie files, this icon will be displayed. Customization 101 The purpose of this handbook is not to define the ultimate Many terms in this handbook may be new to you; I make every solution; its purpose is to give you simple, unbiased advice on effort to explain things in a simple manner that is easy to what I’ve found to be the best options out there. If you have digest. Before we begin with solutions, I present some key any questions about PC customization or PCs in general, you terms and phrases that will assist you as you work your way can head to Windows Forums where you’ll find friendly, through the rest of this handbook. These phrases are knowledgeable members who are happy to assist in your commonly used in conversation and in online discussion learning. If you disagree with anything in this handbook, please forums, but it’s hard to know exactly what they mean. join us also and share your solutions. Uninstall – To remove a program from your computer so that it It is not necessary to complete the handbook from start to no longer occupies space on your hard drive and cannot be finish. Please read through the contents page and decide what used anymore. Uninstallation includes deletion of program you want to do with your . files, registry entries, associations, supporting libraries, user data, plugins, extensions, and other features specific to a Please note: Windows Media Center is available in the Home program. Premium, Professional, and Ultimate editions of Windows 7. Registry – A control center for your computer. Windows , individual program settings, and other important Notational Conventions configuration information are stored here. In this handbook, I use these notational conventions: you have your jargon set straight, you can begin Italic: Text from the current dialogue you are working with. customizing Windows 7 Media Center.

W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 2 A Taster of Things to Come!

Here's a few screenshots of Windows 7 Media Center to “wet your whistle.”

Required Downloads

Before we start with this guide, you'll need to start a few downloads.

1. Media Browser - Media Browser (MB) is a free media aggregator plug-in for Media Centre that takes your recorded, digital, or ripped media and presents it in a simple, easy to use interface. This really is the best plug-in for W7MC (in my opinion).

2. Restorator 2007 (Free Version) - Restorator is an award- winning utility to edit windows resources in applications and their components, e.g. files with .exe, .dll, .res, .rc, .dcr, extensions

3. XML Notepad 2007 - XML Notepad 2007 provides a simple intuitive for browsing and editing XML

W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 3 documents. Notepad can be used as an alternative but I definitely recommend XML Notepad for the job. Movie Organization

4. meta - meta is an all-in-one First things first, let’s organise our movies. You’re going to solution to retrieve metadata for Movies and TV shows through need to have your movie collection regimented if this guide is the available of themoviedb.org (TMDb) and .com to succeed. You can do it manually, or use this batch file. Either (TVDb). way, each movie must be in its own folder. 5. WMCCC - This wizard can create new custom start menu So, the movie, Get Smart (2008) for example would need to strips for Windows Media Centre (Vista/Windows7) and look like: populate them with registered extra programs. It's also possible to delete the strips. J:\DVD\Comedy\Get Smart (2008)\Get Smart (2008).avi

6. Hide Strips - Hide Media Center Menu Strips has the ability to hide native & custom strips in the start menu area of W7MC. Note that this program hides them and does not delete them.

7. OABSoftware MCE - With MCE Mail you can read your e- mails and write e-mails to others, on your Media Centre TV.

MCE Mail supports POP3 servers for receiving e-mails and SMTP servers for sending e-mails.

8. Mencoder - With mencoder you can join two-part movies using a simple command line.

9. This Batch File - Rich wrote this batch file for us. If you have your movie files 'loose' then this file will put each movie into a I’ve found through trial and error that always stating the year in folder and rename the folder according to the movies name. brackets (parenthesis) after the movie title helps metadata Please view the README file included in the zip file. grabbers do the job efficiently.

You’ll need to organise every single movie you want included in Media Browser (MB) in this way. If you have a large movie collection, it’s also worth putting the movie folders into genre categories.

W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 4 mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy -noodml -o “joined.avi” “1.avi” Join Two-Part Movies “2.avi” If you have two part movie, you should join them as one. Grab the copy of Mencoder you downloaded earlier.

Copy mencoder.exe into the folder with the movies you wish to ‘join’. Make sure that each part of the movie is correctly labelled “1” & “2”. Open a command prompt in that folder (Shift & Right Click on the movie folder.)

Get MetaData for Your Movies There are a lot of tools out there for grabbing MetaData for movies. My favourite is meta. Using meta can take some getting used to and you’ll probably have to practice a little with it, the results are most definitely worth it though. meta will download multiple DVD covers, backdrops, banners, episode thumbs, ratings, synopsis and actor images. You name it, meta has it covered.

To get started, open up meta and click Options, at the bottom left of the window.

Type this command into the command prompt and press enter;

W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 5

Click Add a new location at the top right of the new window & choose your movie folder. Be sure to press Enter after each choice. Click Save when all of the movie folders you need have been added.

Under Search options you can set which folders and which file extensions are valid.

It's recommended to have the FileSystemWatcher checked on under Folder Monitoring for file systems Windows 2000 and above.

To start acquiring actor images, we must setup a temporary folder for them. At the bottom of the main windows click Refresh List and your movies will start to populate in the left hand pane. Create a folder anywhere you like named ImagesByName. Copy the path of the ImagesByName folder into the ImagesByName Entries marked red have missing or incomplete MetaData folder location field in meta. This temporary folder information. will remain so until Media Browser is installed. If you move the temporary ImagesByname folder, make sure you update the location field in meta options.

Be sure to click Save after any changes. W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 6

Click on a movie you want to process and click on Fetch Movie MetaData. meta will then begin to download all the information you need. You can choose from multiple backdrops, banners & DVD covers.

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W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 8 Click Save MetaData when you're happy with the MetaData. meta to practice its different functions and find Your folder should look something similar to this once which way suits you best you’ve downloaded and saved the changes. (You may have to show hidden files/folders.) Configure Media Browser To show hidden files and folders:

1. Open Windows Explorer (Winkey+E.) Now all of your movies have the correct MetaData and are 2. Press ALT, click Tools > Folder Options. nicely organised, it's time for the good bits! 3. Click the View tab. 4. Scroll down and select Show hidden files and folders. I'll assume you already have Media Browser (MB for short from now on!) downloaded and already installed.

1. Start the Media Browser Configuration Wizard. 2. Click advanced to open all of the extra option tabs. 3. Click Add to start browsing for folders to add to MB.

After you’ve added your first folder, you’ll see that you can specify more than one location for that particular media. e.g. I’ve chosen my DVD collection which is on H:\ I may have another folder on C:\ that I also want to add to DVD to MB. Treat this as you would the new library function in Windows 7.

As previously mentioned, meta is a little tricky to get to grips with at first; I advise starting with small folders or individual movies. If you find you’ve messed up, don’t panic!

Go to the movie folder on your HDD, delete everything apart from the actual movie and try again.

There are several ways to process your movies and get MetaData with meta. I’m giving the simplest example. You may wish to experiment, by copying a folder of movies to a different location and running through

W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 9

Media Browser supports , multiple plugins, the ability

to play a movie from a mounted ISO, and additions of media Once you have all of your folders added, you’ll probably want types for external players. Have a play around with the display to apply images to them. Go here for an excellent collection of tab in particular. Movie Genre icons. deviantart.com is also one of my favourite places to visit for icons. Set up Actor Images Click on the folder you wish to change, click on Change Image, By default, MB doesn't add an ImagesByName folder to its navigate to the image of your choice and click Open. directory (in C:\ProgramData). Remember that temporary folder you created earlier? We're going to need it now. Make sure that MB will automatically save any changes made to the hidden file and folders are set to show before you go any configuration wizard. further.

Navigate to:

C:\ProgramData\MediaBrowser (or type %programdata%\MediaBrowser into any Explorer window)

W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 10 and move the temporary ImagesByName folder to the MB Add Media Browser to W7MC Start Menu folder.

Be sure to update this location in the options menu in meta If the MB icon doesn't appear in a new strip in the start menu in Media Centre, (with some builds of MB it doesn't) you'll have to Double check the ImagesByName folder by going through a few create a new strip. To do this, run the WMCCC program folders inside and making sure that the actors name is the mentioned in Required Downloads and click on Create a new folder name and the actor image inside is name folder. start menu strip > Next.

Name and Title your custom strip. You won’t be able to name it Movies; WMCCC returns an error if this is attempted. Click Next.

W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 11

Select media browser from the list of available programs and If you add more than one program to the strip, set the program click Next. order and click Next.

W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 12

If you have more than one strip already installed, choose the Click Finish to…..well.....you know! start menu strip order and hit Next.

W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 13 Change Media Browser Icon in Startup Menu Right click on STARTMENU.QUICKLINK.MOVIES.FOCUS.PNG, go to Extract… > Extract as This is a good one for those of you who aren’t too keen on “STARTMENU.QUICKLINK.MOVIES.FOCUS.PNG” and save the MB’s default icon. image to desktop. We’re going to change it to the default movie icon that W7MC displays. You can of course change the icon to whatever you like.

Locate ehres.dll located in:

C:\Windows\ehome (or type %windir%\ehome into any Windows Explorer window.)

When you have found it, take ownership of it, make a copy of it to the desktop and rename it ehres BACKUP.dll .

Place the backup in your backup folder.

Next, is to open ehres.dll with Restorator 2007. Now we have our default movie image extracted and saved to desktop. Navigate to: In the left hand pane, expand RCData and find STARTMENU.QUICKLINK.MOVIES.FOCUS.PNG you should see the C:\Program Files\MediaBrowser\MediaBrowser same icon as I have below. (or type %programfiles%\MediaBrowser\MediaBrowser in any Windows Explorer window)

Locate the PNG image called Application and rename it Application BACKUP. Move the backup PNG into your backup folder you created earlier.

Finally, move the extracted default WMC movie icon from the desktop and into:

C:\Program Files\MediaBrowser\MediaBrowser

and rename it Application.

W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 14 Create a new folder in ImagesByName and name it the title of your genre. (i.e. Action, Comedy)

Put your genre icon into the folder and name it folder. (not folder.jpg, just folder)

That's it!

Add Custom Genre Icons to Media Browser Earlier on I spoke about how important it was to organise your movies. If you have a large collection of movies, it's also worth putting them into genre categories. Here you'll learn how to add custom icons to those genres in MB.

All we have to do is mod the ImagesByName folder slightly. Speed Up Media Browser Using USB Flash Drive Open up an Explorer Window and navigate to I find that MB can take a while to load all of the DVD covers & C:\ProgramData\MediaBrowser\ImagesByName backdrops for the entire movie library. (or type %programdata%\MediaBrowser\ImagesByName in any Windows Explorer window). Using a USB Flash Drive should eliminate this problem as they’re generally a lot quicker than your hard drive. Anything

W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 15 that’s considered fast enough for ReadyBoost should suffice for this.

Start by formatting your USB Flash Drive to FAT32. (You can do this by right clicking the USB Drive and clicking Format... Choose FAT32 from the drop down menu in the next window.)

You need to make sure that Hidden Files & Folders are set to show.

Then navigate to C:\ProgramData (or type %programdata% into any Explorer window)

Cut or Copy the MediaBrowser folder to your Flash Drive.

Delete MediaBrowser from C:\ProgramData if you copied.

Open a command prompt (WinKey+R > cmd) and type these commands in, hitting enter after each one;

cd C:\ProgramData (Change C:\ to your ProgramData drive)

mklink /j MediaBrowser X:\MediaBrowser (Change X to your Flash drive)

W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 16 You’ll see a message after it’s finished; Junction created for MediaBrowser <<===>> X:\MediaBrowser

Close the command prompt.

If you navigate back to C:\ProgramData you’ll see that a MediaBrowser folder is present with a shortcut overlay arrow on it. Don’t delete this folder.

Hide the Default Movie Strip

Now you have MB installed and probably fell in love with it, there's little need for the default movie strip in W7MC. Here you'll learn how to hide the default strip so you just have the MB strip!

Install and run the Hide Strips program (#6. Required Downloads) Uncheck the same options as last time. You’ll notice under All Make sure you open up under the Per User tab. Users your custom strip can be seen. Click Save & Exit when you’re finished. Uncheck Movies and whatever else you want to hide. Click Save. Then move across to the All Users tab.

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Go here to convert your jpg images into png (png must be used for this guide)

First up you’ll need to take ownership of ehres.dll under C:\Windows\ehome (or type %windir%\ehome in any Explorer window)

Open up ehres.dll in Restorator 2007, in the left pane navigate to; RCData\COMMON.ANIMATED.BACKGROUND.PNG

In the right pane you'll see the default background W7MC displays.

Right click on COMMON.ANIMATED.BACKGROUND.PNG and go to extract…>extract as “COMMON.ANIMATED.BACKGROUND.PNG”

Using this program does not delete the strip, it hides it. To show the default strip re-check movies.

Change W7MC Background

One of the most obvious changes you’ll notice from "A Taster Of Things To Come" is the changes in the background W7MC displays.

Rich has made a huge collection of wallpapers. Have a browse through them and pick new wallpaper for Media Centre.

W7MC Customization Handbook — Windows Guides — http://mintywhite.com 18 Save the .png to the desktop. What Next? Right click COMMON.ANIMATED.BACKGROUND.PNG again, but this time, go to Assign…>Assign To… Now you’ve read this book, I recommend you ensure you’ve made changes to ensure your system is optimized. Refer to this book frequently for reminders of what to do when cleaning your PC; you will soon find PC optimization is a habit and you are familiar enough with it to help friends and family with their PCs. After you’ve done this, I encourage you to visit Windows Guides and learn other ways to improve your PC.

About this Handbook

This handbook is delivered free by Windows Guides.

RSVR85 is a moderator in Windows Forums and a writer for Windows Guides.

Rich Robinson is a Microsoft MVP in the Desktop Experience category; this book is not affiliated with Microsoft. Get more books.

Choose your preferred background which must be .png. Any resolution should be OK.

Save ehres.dll and close Restorator.

Now when you open up W7MC your new background should be displayed!!

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