Overview

Which Movie plugin to use to create your Movies database with covers, fanart, info and more?

Movies

There are several options to organize, display and play your movies:

Videos (My Videos)

The Videos feature included in MediaPortal has been significantly improved in v 1.3.0. It now offers many new features for your movies:

• More info:
  • Watched percentage, played count, media info and DVD/Blu-Ray (BD) folder indicators
  • New movie database fields added together with media info icons and some useful info like Last update of movie data, Watched count and Video Runtime/Duration.
• Enhanced actors info - actors (cast) list are now "live" with actor image and you can directly jump to actor info from here.
  • Update selected actor info (Name, role, movies list) in GUI
  • Actor filmography (showing which movies you already have) with refresh/update options
• More Actions:
  • Update/set default/internal movie grabbers directly from GUI (no need to exit MP and do that from Configuration)
  • Scan new movies with one simple command from main menu
  • Rename movie title directly in GUI now.
  • Update movie grabbers scripts and set default movie grabber
  • Update Fanart for displayed movie
• NFO file support
• New Views - Title/Actors/Directors indexed Views - groups movies/actors/directors according to first letter from movie/actor/director title/name
• User Groups - to group your movies however you wish, e.g. Box Sets, Series, etc.
• Enhanced Searching - By Movie title, Director name, Actor name, Actor role, Year, Certification (MPAA Rating)
• Sort Actor/Director views by Full Name 

Setup

See the Movies Setup tutorial to learn how to create a database of your movies using MediaPortal/s Videos feature.

Moving Pictures

The popular Moving Pictures extension is designed especially for movies and focuses on ease of use and flexibility. Simply point it to your movies collection and Moving Pictures will automatically load media rich details about your movies as quickly as possible with as little user interaction as possible. Once imported you can browse your collection via an easy to use but highly customizable interface.

Moving Pictures offers the easiest way to create a movie database for MediaPortal. However, the Videos plugin provided with MediaPortal now offers the same functions, plus more, with even greater flexibility for customization.

• Download
• Wiki

My Films

My Films allows you to use your existing movie catalog if you have one already, without needing to rescan or create a new database

Eight different movie catalog apps are supported 'out of the box': 

• Ant Movie Catalog (4.1 new!)
• EAX Movie Catalog
• Ember Media Manager (EMM) (new!)
• Personal Video Database
• DVD Profiler
• Extreme Movie Manager (XMM)
• My Movies
• Movie Collector

Or you may also create a movie catalog/database using My Films and use any of the above catalogs as a 'backend' to manage or update your movies which offers a significantly better user interface than other movie plugins, with many more features.

Unique Features

My Films is unique from other MediaPortal plugins - it uses an XML database which offers much more flexibility and many features not supported by Videos or Moving Pictures:

• Easy Setup - My Films is one of the few plugins that offers a Setup Wizard
• Advanced and Batch/Global Updates to your data by record/group of records or by field or group of fields
• Network Support - all clients can use the same database located wherever you wish such as on a NAS
• Performance - designed for large movie collections and tested on 10K movies
• Multiple Databases - as many as you wish - easily switchable within My Films GUI
• Multiple Configurations (e.g. User profiles) for the same database you can select different settings for each user
• Multi-user - track watched status, date watched, user ratings (and thus favorites) per user
• Fanart and Cover options - to download and select the images you prefer to use
• Views and Views Menu - create, filter, customize views however you wish even within My Films 
• Advanced Search - including 'context' searches to find related films by person, or any field for that matter!
• Local Trailers - you can link locally stored trailers with your movie and even play them back in 'cinema' mode
• Custom Display - select which fields you wish to display and where (5 on main screen, 6 others on Details)
• Settings In GUI - most options can be selected or changed easily without needing to use Setup/Configuration

My Films is the choice of major film buffs with an extensive movie collection who want total control and customization of their collection.

• Download
• Wiki

Related

Tutorials

• Movies Setup (Beginner)