***** AC RYAN USER WARNING:

THIS IS WRITTEN BY A NETWORKED MEDIA TANK/POPCORN HOUR YAMJ USER, I UNDERSTAND THERE ARE SOME DIFFERENCES AND THERE MIGHT BE REFERENCES TO FEATURES NOT AVAILABLE ON THE ACRYAN PLATFORM OR SOON COMING. IT IS A QUICK EDIT TO GET IT ONLINE SINCE IT DOES COVER A LITTLE BIT OF EVERYTHING YOU WILL NEED TO KNOW

I UNDERSTAND THERE IS A WIKI WHICH I WILL LOCATE AND ADD THIS TOO AS I CAN VERFIY WHAT INFORMATION IS CORRECT

*****


Topics covered in this guide:
1: How to change yamj settings and speed up yamj a little.
3: How to upgrade YAMJ.
4: How to fix movies and tv shows that were detected wrong. (and how to get source to not say unknown).
5: How to combine movies into a "BOX SET" with only 1 poster in the list of movies.
6: How to change artwork (movies posters, backgrounds, set images) that you don't like or are missing.
7: How to get the HD list to show 720 and 1080 movies seperately.
8: Extras: Trailers (including auto-downloading), dvd extras, etc.
10: How often do I need to run YAMJ? (day to day usage)

Let's get started.

1: How to change yamj settings and speed up yamj a little.

A recent change to YAMJ is to help make upgrading yamj really fast and easy. On a simple default install you probably ran the gui and made a jukebox. Many parts of this guide will be about changing settings to YAMJ, so lets go over changing a couple settings. One great place to start is speeding up YAMJ.

- How to change a setting?

The first thing you want to do it get your properties file ready to add settings into it. In your YAMJ folder (the one with the program), you'll see a properties folder. Take the moviejukebox.properties file and move it into the base folder (the folder with categories.xml in it). This is going to be the file you add your settings into. Those settings can be found in the moviejukebox-default.properties file. Resist just changing the settings there it will make upgrading a pain.

- Speeding up YAMJ, your first properties change.

A recent modification to YAMJ is an option called threading. What threading does is allow yamj to do multiple things at the same time. by default to make sure everyone can run it successfully, yamj only does 1 thing at a time.

The first thing we need to do is copy the settings to our properties file. Open up moviejukebox-default.properties and find the below section:


Just copy that and past it into your moviejukebox.properties file that you moved in the last step. You'll notice there is a third option in that section we didn't touch. unless you know what your doing I strongly recommend you never touch that third download slots line.

- What settings should I use?

There is no default perfect setting and its hard to guess exactly what will work best for your computer but here is my recommendation that has worked great for me:

If you have a low end cpu (like the atom processor models of WHS), or only 512M of memory I recommend you do not change these settings you can actually cause it to run slower and make your computer barely usable while yamj is running.

If you have a single core cpu, I recommend 2 scanning threads and 1 processing threads.

For every 512M of memory, add 2 scanning threads and 1 processing thread up to 10 scanning and 4 processing. For example if you have 2 gigs of memory thats 4x512 so you want 8 and 4 as your settings.

Assuming you have 2Gigs of memory, this is what your settings in moviejukebox.properties should look like:



- Why can't I just raise them really high and run even faster?

Some setups this theory does work but every thread means more memory that YAMJ needs. When you run out of memory windows slows down because it starts to use the hard drive as memory, this can actually result in yamj taking longer. also if you may need to use your computer at the same time, your using up all your memory and processing power for YAMJ making it really hard to do anything else.

- If your running it directly from a Windows home server, you might want even lower settings.

Your WHS server is doing other things in the background, for instance it might be moving files around, virus scanning, defraging, you may be remotely connected to it, or a computer running a backup and its probably where the videos your watching are stored. setting it too high can actually cause video playback to stutter while yamj is running. If your automatically running yamj once or twice a day you may want to lower the settings to make sure the WAF (wife approval factor) of your recent popcorn hour purchase stays as high as possible so when your ready to buy more for other rooms or that next gadget its a little easier to get budget approval.


4: How to fix movies and tv shows that were detected wrong. (and how to get source to not say unknown).

As you probably noticed, YAMJ couldn't guess the names for all of your movies and tv shows. This is common, YAMJ tries to use the filename to guess and depending on how your files are named that can make a big difference to your success the first time you run YAMJ. however this doesn't mean you need to change the filenames to fix it.

Not too long ago, a program called YANFOE came out. This program is a gui interface to look at your video files and help YAMJ find the information and artwork. Because its an interface you can interact with, its really easy to fix incorrect video files or change artwork. Another feature it has is to download all the artwork for YAMJ, on a new library it can take some time to use YANFOE but it really speeds up YAMJ. Another feature it has is a simple way to make box sets (you'll learn about this later). To be honest, for 99% of the YAMJ users out there, I strongly recommend using this program to setup your library for YAMJ.

You can download YANFOE here: http://www.networkedmediatank.com/showt ... ?tid=23630

NOTE: I recommend you rename tv shows anyway even if you use yanfoe, there are other reasons for this that I will explain below.

- Manual methods:

- changing the filenames

When naming files, avoid using - or [] (brackets). These have special meanings to YAMJ.

MOVIES:
There is a lot of information you can put into a filename to help YAMJ out. If you were to go all out the format for a movie is: Moviename.(year).source.info.language.ext

example: The Terminator (1984).BLURAY.X264.DTS.GERMAN.mkv

If you have a movie that is in many parts (several files), you can add [cd1], [cd2], [cd3] near the end of the name. DISC# and PART# also work, I just like cd# because its shorter.

example:
The Terminator (1984).BLURAY.X264.DTS.GERMAN.[CD1].mkv
The Terminator (1984).BLURAY.X264.DTS.GERMAN.[CD2].mkv

you can also leave out a lot of information, the only thing really required is the Name of the movie but adding year can be helpful if the movie is detected wrong or when there are several movies with the name name released in different years

If your renaming a movie because it was detected wrong, make sure you match the name to what www.imdb.com calls it. for example Terminator 2 is really called: Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Now the : is not a valid character in windows filenames so just remove it (in fact windows will remove it when you rename the file for you, just cut and paste).. Adding the year again is help so terminator 2 should be called Terminator.2.Judgment.Day.(1991).avi

Remember, -'s aren't good to use in a name so if you have a movie with a - in the name change it to a period. example: Mary-Kate and Ashley in Action! should be Mary.Kate.and.Ashley.in.Action!.(2001).mp4

(SPECIAL NOTE: I recommend using .'s instead of spaces. While 99.9% of the time spaces are ok, there are a couple times they might cause problems. I wouldn't go over your entire library to fix the spaces but if you have trouble with just 1 movie, keep this in mind.).

BDMW/STREAMS and video_ts rips still need folders with those names for the PCH to play them correctly. In that case you want to make a folder for the RIPPED disc and name the folder correctly for the movie/tv show.

Example: Terminator.(1984)/VIDEO_TS/files

TVSHOWS:

Just like movies the same applies but you need to tell it what episode. With all the possible information added the format I find to be the most reliable is tvshowname.(year).S##E##.source.info.languge-episodename.ext

You'll notice the dash. This is where YAMJ has special meaning for it. If you add the episode name it should be on the end after the dash (-). anything after a dash is considered an episode name even if its a movie file.

TV shows the year might actually be bad. Your tv show name should exactly match what www.thetvdb.com calls it. A great example of why is Battlestar Galactica. The original version is called Battlestar Galactica, the recently on syfy version is actually called Battlestar.Galactica.(2003) everyone seems to follow the same format that when a tv show is remade you use the year it first aired so even the 2009 episodes are called 2003. Doctor Who is another great example of this.

There is a way to override the filename we are about to get into however when YAMJ groups together tv shows, it takes all the same names so in the above example if you have both versions of battlestar galactica, YAMJ thinks they are all the same show and tries to make 1 nice looking page per season. You really want to fix all your tv show filenames so there is no overlap in this area. Also keep this in mind when you make box sets below, I recent interesting problem I ran into was my original star trek episodes were added to the box set for star trek movies because the tv show name matched the box set name.

Use www.thetvdb.com to find the season and episode numbers.

Special episodes. Some tv shows has many special episodes. www.thetvdb.com will show these epsiodes in both the special season and the season it aired. The special season is season 0 to yamj, and the episode number needs to match thetvdb.com. For example if you have the fan documentary Firefly, you'll see its a special episode number 3 So you'll name that video file Firefly.S00E03-Done.The.Impossible.avi (a side note, theres also an episode for Serenity so if your a firefly fan and you want firefly and the post series serenity movie in the same box set, call serenity Firefly.S00E02-Serentiy.mkv).. Firefly is also an excellent example of making sure episodes line up. www.thetvdb.com has firefly in Aired order, if your a fan you know thats wrong but to get YAMJ to find the correct information it needs to match. (note you can use nfo files to fix this order)

For more information on naming files and all the options see: YAMJ WIKI: FILENAME SECTION

- Overriding the filename: NFO files.

If your using YANFOE, it can make the nfo files for you.

NFO files are quick ways to help YAMJ find the cover art (dvd cover/movie poster) or tell it what movie/tv show a file is. There are 2 formats these can be in.

All NFO files should match the name of the video file they are for except have .nfo at the end. (terminator.(1984).nfo for example).

If you have a folder with the name of the movie or tv show (for blu/dvd rips) name it the same as the folder with .nfo at the end but put the file in the folder.

example: Terminator.(1984)/VIDEO_TS the Terminator.(1984).nfo file should be in the same place as teh video_ts folder.

You can also name it the same as the folder and with tv shows I highly recommend this method..

example:
.. Firefly/Season1/videos
.. fireFly/Season1/Season1.nfo

For tv shows, you just need an nfo file for the lowest episode number in that folder (so S00E01 is lower than S01E12 for example). I still recommend the above foldername because it can fix issues that might pop up later with tv shows and nfo files.

Format 1: The Flat NFO File.

Somewhere in the nfo file, if you have the url to imdb, thetvdb and/or a jpg image yamj will use those urls to figure out what the file is. they are just a simple txt file.

Examples:
If you want to change Terminator to a non-english poster you found on the internet


If Terminator 2 was not detected correctly:



If the TV Show battlestar galactica (the newer series) was detected wrong



An example isn't given but you can have both the url to imdb and the image in the same file. ditto for tv shows and their poster.

FORMAT 2: The extended XBMC xml format.

There are actually 2 versions of these files, tv shows are slightly different than movies so you need to get the correct template from the wiki. again Yanfoe will make these files for you, this is if you want to manually do it.

The full format will allow you to change anything on the screen that YAMJ may have found. If your using box sets (below) you may have to use this format if you want to supply the ID of the movie also. you can't mix flat and xmbc format.

When making a full format nfo file, you only need the parts your changing in the file. Below is an example of the common needs I personally use them.

Renaming a movie to the english name (example is disney's ponyo which is not the original name, the original is in japanese: Gake no ue no Ponyo)


The only other time I use an nfo file personally is for box sets which we'll cover in a moment. however, there are people with dvd rips who use it to change the duration, source and resolutions. In fact for bluray isos, at the time of this guide you need to use nfo files for resolution and duration.

TV SHOW NFO NOTE: The nfo file is for the tv series/season combined. There is no place to put the episode name that MUST be in the filename. also to make sure they are grouped together correctly I recommend just changing the tv show names even if you overide them with nfo files.

For more information on NFO files and the full set of options, see: YAMJ WIKI: NFO FILES

5: How to combine movies into a "BOX SET" with only 1 poster in the list of movies.

As anyone who buys movies knows, the triliogys or series come combined in box set for the movie. YAMJ can also be used like this and very helpful when the titles may not be similar. movies can also be in more than 1 box set if you desire (and handy if you want a holiday movie box set but may still want trilogies combined like the home alone series of movies)

You can make sets in the filenames and there is information on the wiki about this however I strongly recommend avoiding this and just going to full format nfo files. If you ever have both an nfo and filename the filename sets do not work as expected

Again, Yanfoe has a tool to quickly group together movies into a box set. If your using yanfoe, you don't have to follow these instructions.

Since we went over NFO files already, lets give some real life examples.

Example 1: 2 movies detected correctly, just need to box set them.

movie 1, The.Terminator.(1984).avi
movie 2, Terminator.2.Judgement.Day.(1991).avi

Both NFO files are identical:


When YAMJ makes the box set index, it sorts the order by name (omertron this really should be year). You can order the movies:

movie 1, The.Terminator.(1984).avi
movie 2, Terminator.2.Judgement.Day.(1991).avi

Movie 1 NFO code:


Movie 2 NFO code:


If a movie is detected wrong and you want to provide the IMDB ID: Terminator.2.Judgement.Day.(1991).nfo



If you want to put a movie into 2 different sets: home.alone.(1990).nfo

note in the above example order does not have to be used in every set even when part of multiple sets. You can add more than 2 and with all nfo files, if you needed ID or wanted to change the title or anything else you can put into an nfo file just keep adding those options. I recommend not having blank options so trim down the blank template. After about the 50th nfo file you make you wont even need the template.

SPECIAL NOTE: TV shows with seasons are already in a box set. At this time you cannot add box sets into another box. If you also want this option, please complain at the feature request on the YAMJ ISSUE WIKI

REMEMBER: If you read this whole guide, I have run into a problem where tv show seasons were mixed with a movie box set (not the box in box but a dozen movies and then the individual seasons). Try to name your box set names unique (star trek the originial season and the star trek movies is the one i ran into). Also if you name the box set identical to one of the movie names, when your in the alphabet index the set will appear with the individual movie (Terminator the box set and Terminator the movie for example).

For more information and all options with Boxed sets see: YAMJ WIKI: BOKED SETS

6: How to change artwork (movies posters, backgrounds, set images) that you don't like or are missing.

Time to time YAMJ can't find artwork or maybe you don't like what it found or want to change it anyway. You can supply your own artwork and supplying your own artwork actually speeds up YAMJ, especially on new libraries when you change skins or something that requires you to rescan everything. Not to sound like a broken record but this is one of the features of YANFOE.

Types of artwork used by YAMJ:
- Poster: This is the image of the box cover for movies/tv shows
- Banner: Some skins can use banners for movies/tv shows.
- Fanart: this is the background (image) behind the details that some skins can use. There is also some skins that can use 2 different images but yamj will only find 1 for you.
- Video Image: This is the single frame image used by some skins in the tv show episode information
- Set image: Same as poster but a different image for a boxed set.

Just like nfo files or extras (see below), all you need to do is name the image correctly by using the filename of the video and add the appropriate ending to teh file. Set images have a slightly different name. you same the image in the same location as the video file.

An example of Terminator with all image types:


An example of Firefly using the foldername


You'll notice in the above each episode got its own videoimage, but the show itself (the folder) got the rest of the. This is because a tv show can have a video image per episode but a tv show can only have other images PER SEASON. Seperating your tv shows into seperate folders per season will help you get all different artwork.

The below is an example of a set image. Set images are named Set_setname_1.jpg (note: I am not sure but fanart might also be supported by yamj and some skins) Set images are saved next to one of the videos in the set. these are the image you'll see in the movie list where the box set appears.



There are options to change the "token" in the filename for each image type for those upgrading from another jukebox. There are also options for those with Folder images, etc. See YAMJ WIKI: ARTWORK for more information.

7: How to get the HD list to show 720 and 1080 movies seperately.

While day to day you probably don't care what HD resolution a movie or TV show is saved at, but there are times when you want to show off your home theater or PCH/YAMJ Setup. For those times, you may want to quickly find your best videos. By default, YAMJ has a category called HD but you can change this to be 720 and 1080 (2 seperate options).

In your skins folder, edit the file skin.properties and edit the following setting: highdef.differentiate=false It should be: highdef.differentiate=true

After you change the setting, just run YAMJ for the setting to take effect and the new indexes to be created.

8: Extras: Trailers (including auto-downloading), dvd extras, etc.

Extras will allow you to add items like trailers and extras found on a dvd into your library. while there is some ability in the nfo file, you'll find naming the video file for the extra correctly to be the best option.

SKIN NOTE: Trailers generally work in every skin but not all support extras. Most skins with updates last summer/fall should support extras.

By default, YAMJ supports trailer,bonus,extra as an extra. You can add more types/names by adding more to the filename.extras.keywords=trailer,bonus,extra in your moviejukebox.properties file.

For YAMJ to find and use an extra, you name the extra exactly the name of the file and add .[trailer-trailer name]. or .[bonus-bonus title], etc etc etc.

examples:
Terminator.(1984).[trailer-Theatrical Trailer].mov
Terminator.(1984).[bonus-Making of.avi

YAMJ can also download trailers from apple.com for you. It will see if there is a trailer for your movie and put it next to your video correctly named to work with YAMJ.

To active this feature add the below section to your moviejukebox.properties file:


You will need to uncomment the resolution option and set the options to your desire. At the time of this guide there was changes to apple.com that will not allow a PCH to stream a trailer from their website, you MUST allow it to download the trailer. 480p (dvd resolution) trailers are generally about 40 megs, hd trailers are much larger. You also need to dl them before YAMJ can finish running so keep your internet speed in mind when setting up.

I also find that most skins work best with trailer. I personally dont like clips or teaser trailers or 30sec movie previews. Below are the settings I personally use which will give me 1 DVD or SD Quality trailer but no clips, previews or teaser trailers. My view, the trailer should never be better quality than the movie file and dvd is my lowest quality movie.

1/29/2010 UPDATE: Below you'll see trl added to appletrailers.trailertypes and tlr removed. clips, previews, and teaser trailers will download but trailers will not without it. Even if you use the defaults, you must add trl to them. ALSO 720p+ trailers are usually larger than the movie itself taking up too much room.

AC RYAN NOTE: DUE TO A LIMITATION POPCORN HOUR USERS CAN NO LONGER STREAM TRAILERS, I AM NOT SURE IF TEH AC RYAN PLATFORM CAN.



NOTE: Recent changes to apple trailers website require YAMJ version r1317 or higher for trailer downloading to work

AC RYAN USER NOTE:

10: How often do I need to run YAMJ? (day to day usage)

YAMJ only needs to be run if you make a change to your video library OR you changed a setting. If nothing changed, no need to run it.

For those with computers on all the time (like a Windows home server) may want to automatically run it once or twice a day timed to finish just before you would sit down to enjoy some videos. For windows, the WHS+AEON GUIDE has an example of this, for mac or unix users you'll do the same with a daily or twice daily cron job.

Something i'm getting ready to add to the guide at the NMT website which I just learned..

MULTIPLE NFO FILES:

YAMJ will use multiple nfo files if found. This can be handy to help you keep tv seasons and box sets under control depending on how you save them. This is best explained with an example:

TV SHOW:
- heroes <-- folder name
--- heroes.nfo <--- see below for contents
---Season1
------video files
---Season2
------video files
---Season3
-------video files

heroes.nfo contents:


The above example you'll see that the NFO file is stored with the season folders. YAMJ will actually look for an NFO file named the same as the folder in this location. If this was a TV show that was detected wrong, instead of several nfo files which you need to name correctly and remember when the next season starts to include you can take 1 nfo file and give YAMJ the information it needs no matter how the files change.

MOVIE:

- American.Pie (folder)
---Amercan.Pie.nfo (contents below)
---American.Pie.1.avi
---American.Pie.2 (folder)
------VIDEO_TS
---American.Pie.3 (folder)
------VIDEO_TS

American.Pie.nfo Contents:


If all of your movies were single files, then the folder option for nfo files is a valid name. however in this example you'll see a mix of video_ts folders and regular video files. You can make an nfo for each one but if YAMJ is detecting the movies correctly and all you want to do is combine them. Staying within 1 folder of all the videos with an NFO file named after the folder does the trick. In the future when the next movie comes out just put it into the folder named correct and it will automatically go into the bex set with no additional effort on your part.

Thanks for the useful tips. Especially the thread tip.

Really clear instructions, thanks! You want to get ACRyan to sticky this on the forum. The link to Yanfoe (http://www.yanfoef.com/) is partifularly useful. I was using XMBC on my Mac to create the NFOs and then bashing MusicJukebox.sh to create my YAMJ file, but this can at times have issues with TV Shows as well (BSG/2003 is again a great example; and one I determined to get working given it's the greatest SF show ever made!!)

When you create your YAMJ index.htm, do you create on in the root of the HDD you're using on POHD (I use a 2TB internal on mine) and have it scan fir everything (movies and TV Shows) in one file, or do you create 2 index.htm files, one for movies, one for TV?

I ask becasue when I've created the single index.htm and put it on POHD, I find the load time everytime you go into the Jukebox (not even after a reboot, but every time!) it's so horribly slow that as my files are named clearly, it take about 50% of the time to just use the built in Browser and find the file itself.

Why can't they find a way to simply port over the self contained XMBC for Linux/Media Centre (http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=XBMC_for_Linux)? Maybe it's due to limitations in the processing power of the POHD to actually crunch the interface, which can certainly be very graphically, but stunning to look at and very useable on a TV.

Seems to me that if ACRyan can just focus on that one thing, 99% of customers would be more than happy. What I really want is my Mac Mini with the ability to perform the POHD upscaling and 1080/24p resolution

Sorry. Must disagree. It's Firefly.
As to YANFOE, that's personal taste. My BSG series work fine with NO nfo or other trickery to get the correct names and details.


Considering the speed of the index load at the moment, I'd go for 2 indexes and that will help the speed of the loading.


Because the processor that is used in the PoHD and other similar boxes is not optimised for the kind of graphics manipulation and processing that is used for jukeboxes. If you want that sort of interface, I would suggest one of the new nettop devices, but you'll be spending a lot more for little more functionality

I also agree, firefly is high on my chart.. even the side josh projects where they pull out the old costumes and such for the characters are great..

A lot of people are using ember lately which is an xbmc jukebox program but works really well with YAMJ and even ahs YAMJ options so it saves compatible formats and file layouts

Great guide to setting up YAMJ and I hadn't come across YANFOE before either, just downloaded the freebie version to check it out before deciding on donating to get the latest build.
Just one query, I've done all the stuff with YANFOE and then run YAMJ to create the index file which works fine. If I open the index file from my Windows laptop then it all looks pretty good but when it opens on the Playon mini then it doesn't quite look as good (as far as the layout goes).

Are there any settings in YAMJ or on the Playon which might help?