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First
Playing Movie
Files
To play movie files from Cinema Premiere's Movie Manager, you MUST use
the customized browser interface, CinemaPremiereOnline.exe.
Movie files can be played from either of the five different views on either
the Movies or Search screens.
In the Thumbnail, Summary and Detail view,
if the movie is a movie file, the help text "Play Movie" will
appear when your mouse moves over the image. When you click on the image,
the movie will play using your default movie player. (The free version
of BSplayer is
very good.)
In t he List and Text view, the titles
for movie files will be in bold and you can play the movie by clicking
on the title.
From a Local Hard Drive
Movie files can be played from the movie manager using the CP browser
if the movie files reside on the local hard drive and the paths associated
with the movies in the database are correct.
External
Movie files can be played from the movie manager using the CP browser
off an external hard drive. Be sure the path of the movie file is correct.
The drive letter for the external hard drive may vary depending on
the PC's drive mapping. For example, on your PC the external may
be drive E: and on your son's PC it may be drive J:.
If you plan on playing the movies on the external hard drive from different
computers with different drive mappings, you can either change
your drive mappings, have multiple user accounts on Cinema Premiere
or add multiple entries of the same movie with different paths in the
movie database.
Change drive mapping - To change your drive mapping
so that the each computer that will be playing movies from the external
hard drive will have the same drive letter assigned to the external
hard drive, right click on My Computer -> Manage -> under Storage,
select Disk Management. In the window on the right side, right click
any drive and select Change
Drive Letter and Paths. Select Change. In the drop down menu, view
your available drive letters. Cancel -> Cancel to get back to Disk
Management.
View your available drive letters for each PC and decide on a common
drive letter. Then on each PC, connect your external drive and follow
the directions above except this time in the Disk Management window,
right click your external drive and change its drive letter to the
new drive letter.
Now each movie file path in the movie database for the movies on the
external hard drive must have the new drive letter. If they do not,
you can use the batch edit for changing the old path to a new path.
Multiple user accounts on Cinema Premiere - By setting
up an account for each user's PC, each user would have their own database
and could easily add and play movies from any hard drive, including
the external, on their PC. The drawback is that you would have to add
the movies to each movie database from each PC. However, you could
export (backup) your first movie database
if it only contains the external HD's movies and then import them to
the other movie database then use the batch
edit for
changing the old path to the new path that corresponds to the correct
drive letter for the external HD.
If you first movie database does contain movies other than those from
the external, you may want to export and import them as well, if you
are using a local area network with fairly high speeds and would like
to be able play them from the other PC(s). See below on setting up
movies to play over a network.
Multiple entries of the same movie - You can add the
movies from your external HD when it is connected to one PC then add
the same movies again when it is connected to another PC. If the drive
mappings are different, the path for each movie will be different so
duplicate movies would be allowed. When adding the movies, you would
want to give the movies a different media type,for ex.' John's external',
so you could search for those movies when you want to play movies on
John's PC from the external HD. See Adding
Movies on how to add a specific
media type when importing a text file.
From a Network Drive
Movie files can be played from the movie manager using the CP browser
from any PC across a local area network if the speeds are fast enough.
I know 11 mbs is NOT fast enough. A direct connect through a router
plays flawlessly.
When adding movie files, the path for each movie file must be in the
format of \\System\data (e)\... where System is the computer name
and data(e) is the Share name. Movies with a network path can be
played from any PC on the network (with a fast enough connection)
including the PC the path is pointing to where the movies reside.
To add a single movie, you must be on a PC that is on the network but
not on the PC where the movie resides. From the Tools -> Add -> Single
screen, click on Browse. Select My Network Places from the lower left
panel on the Choose file screen. Select the network path then browse
to the movie file.
To import a text file, unfortunately
Widget Print Directory does not allow you to choose from directories
across a network, so you have three choices.
- 1. Use a different
print directory program that does allow you to create a
text file from network directories. Make sure the movie file path
is in the format of \\System\data (e)\... where System is the computer
name and data(e) is the Share name.
2. Run Widget Print Directory on the PC with the movies. Use your text
editor such as Word to find and replace the current path with the
new network path. Import the movies from the modified text file.
3. Run Widget Print Directory on the PC with the movies. Import the
movies from the text file. Use the batch edit screen to change the
old path to the new network path.
On the Personal Server, you can import
movies directly from the PC's hard drive on the network. You must
be on a PC that is on the network but not on the PC where the movies
resides. From the Tools -> Add -> Import HD screen,
click on Browse. Select My Network Places from the lower left
panel on the Choose file screen. Select the network path then
browse to any movie file in the directory you want to import
from. Continue as you would when importing movies from a local
hard drive.
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