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Page Revision: 2009/12/19 09:30

1. What are the requirements to install "My Movies"?

My Movies 3 for Windows Media Center requires either Windows 7 Home Premium, Ultimate or Profesional (x86 and x64 architectures), or Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate (x86 and x64 architectures).

My Movies 2 for Windows Media Center is available for Microsoft Media Center 2005 Rollup 2.

My Movies 3 Collection Management, without the Media Center parts can be installed on any Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP or Windows Server 2003.

You can also install the My Movies for Windows Home Server on any Windows Home Server.

You should always ensure that you have all updates installed through Windows Update.

2. What version of "My Movies" should I install?

Windows Home Server users must install "My Movies for Windows Home Server"

Windows Media Center users using Windows 7 or Windows Vista must install "My Movies for Windows Media Center".

Media Center 2005 users must install "My Movies 2". If you are running a standalone (single zone) environment, you must install the Server/Client edition. Notice My Movies 2 exists in seperate editions for X64 and X86.

Users who do not use Windows Media Center or Windows Home Server must install "My Movies Collection Management".

3. How do I best upgrade "My Movies" from one version to another?

To upgrade "My Movies", simply run the installer for the new version, which will automatically take care of uninstalling your prior version. During this process, all your data will be kept intact.

The only exception to this is when you want to upgrade from My Movies 2 to My Movies 3, in which case you must uninstall My Movies 2 before installing My Movies 3. Your data will also during this process be kept intact.

4. What is the license and cost of the "My Movies" application?

The software is available for free download for personal use only. The software packages may not be redistributed in any way, commercially, or non-commercially. If you whish to redistribute "My Movies" along with a magazine or similar, please contact us to be granted the rights to do so.

System Builders and System Integrators can pre-install "My Movies" by joining the System Builder program, which requires specific licensing files. If a System Builder is found to be pre-installing My Movies without being signed up to the System Builder program, the signup free will be doubled, and the System Builder will be required to pay for all installations made. My Movies is not freely available for commercial use, and we will persue our rights.

Some non-essential features of the product requires a specific amount of contribution or donation points to function, which a user can get by contributing data to our WebService, or by donating to the project.

5. After donating, the points are not added to my account?

When you make a donation to My Movies, the information about the donation is sent from PayPal to our system, but in some situations there can be a problem with this data transfer. Should this be the case, you can manually registrer the donation by entering the transaction id or receipt id on the Payment Registration page.

6. I have donated using a different e-mail. Can I move the points to my current account?

Yes, if you at any time during the lifetime of My Movies have donated to the project, you can registrer the points to your current account by entering your transaction id or receipt id on the Payment Registration page.

7. I would like to try the features that require points before donating. Can I do that?

Yes, you can request a 21 days trial of the maximum requires 2,500 donation points by logging on to your account, and request the trial from the on the Request Trial page.

8. How do I add movies to my collection?

Movies can be added to your collection either manually by using the Collection Management program, or automatically by enabling the folder monitoring feature.

While My Movies within Media Center is the main front-end to My Movies, the program Collection Management found outside your Media Center is the main application for managing your collection, allowing you to add titles or edit and improve the titles in your collection.

9. I already have an SQL Server installed, can My Movies use that?

My Movies currently requires it's own SQL instance, that is installed seperately to any other SQL Server instance. My Movies can only operate on this specific instance of SQL Server.

10. What is required to play HD DVD and Blu-ray titles with My Movies?

My Movies and/or Microsoft Media Center cannot internally play HD DVD or Blu-ray titles. My Movies is however automatically able to integrate PowerDVD 7.3 Ultra into Media Center and My Movies, to allow easy playback of HD DVD or Blu-ray titles.

HD DVD and Blu-ray titles can be played either as offline titles, or as online titles stores as ISO files and mounted via. Daemon Tools. After you install My Movies and PowerDVD 7.3 Ultra, My Movies will automatically detect the PowerDVD installation and ask if you would like to integrate it as player of HD DVD and Blu-ray titles. See section below on how to configure "Daemon Tools" for playback of ISO files.

11. My movies titles is stored in ISO format, how can I play these?

"My Movies" can use the program "Daemon Tools" to mount ISO files containing DVD, HD DVD or Blu-ray titles, meaning that if a ISO image file is stored in the folder for the movie title you are trying to play, "My Movies" will use "Daemon Tools" to mount this ISO file.

To use Daemon Tools, after installing Daemon Tools, you must configure it's location within My Movies, by opening the program Collection Management, and select the menu item "Configure", "Daemon Tools" to select the Daemon Tools executeable. After installing Daemon Tools, you must right click the Daemon Tools tray icon, select "Options" and disable "Secure Mode" - otherwise "My Movies" will be unable to automatically mount ISO images with Daemon Tools.

File extensions that are detected as ISO images are: ".img", ".iso", ".nrg", ".cue", ".ccd",".cdi" or ".pdi". You can download "Daemon Tools" at http://www.daemon-tools.cc/.

12. How do I get my own Online Collection?

If you from the Collection Management program, open the menu item "Configure/Sync Online Collection" from the WebService menu, you can syncronize your collection to be shown in an online collection. From the dialog, there is a link to your collection, which you can leave open for anyone, or password protect to family and friends.

13. Why do some titles differ or not exists on my Online Collection?

The Online Collection is created by displaying data directly from the WebService, based on the titles you have in your collection. When you syncronize your Online Collection, you are not uploading all the data from your local collection to the WebService, but only a list of titles available in your collection.

This approch means that there can be differences between your local data, and the data in your Online Collection, if you have locally changed data that have not been contributed to the WebService.

Also, if you have titles that are not added from the My Movies WebService, such as manually added titles, titles imported from other sources or similar, these will also not show in your Online Collection.

14. How and where should my movie titles be stored?

Each movie title should be stored in its own folder, and can either be stored locally, on a attached network drive, or on a storage server directly with the UNC path (\\servername\path). There should only be one movie in each folder because of the handling of movie titles with multiple files.

15. How should I store a DivX, Xvid or other movie title that consists of more than one file?

Put all the files into a single folder, and add this folder as a movie title to "My Movies". This way, "My Movies" will automatically create a play list for the multiple files, and play these as if they were one movie title. Be sure that the named alphabetically correct, as the files are added by their alphabetically sorting.

16. I would like to backup my movie collection, how do I do that?

From within the Collection Management program, you can choose "File", "Backup Database", which will automatically create a full database backup, that you can restore later on, or after a reinstall of your Media Center machine. Backups can also be used to move a collection from one machine to another.

17. Can I use the same movie collection on more than one Media Center PC?

Yes, "My Movies" is specifically created to be used in a family setup where more Media Center PC's is connected to the movie database. How to set this up is described in the "Multizone" document found in the "Documentation" section.

18. Can I manage my movie collection from my workstation PC instead of my Media Center PC?

Yes, similar to using the same database on more than one Media Center PC, you can also manage your collection from a workstation PC instead of on your Media Center PC. How to set this up is described in the "Multizone" document found in the "Documentation" section.

19. Can I enable "Parental Controls" within "My Movies"?

"My Movies" follows the parental control settings that are configured in Media Center. If you configure Media Centers parental controls to block movies from rating PG and up, "My Movies" will also block these titles, so that you can only open the movie info page for titles above this rating by inputting your pin #. Notice that "My Movies" will block the movies based on the data stored for the movie in its database, while Media Center blocks movies based on a setting stored on the DVD medium.

20. How can I completely hide the movie covers with "Parental Controls"?

By default, "Parental Controls" ensures that your children or others who do not know your pin # cannot open a movie title, but they can still see the movie cover in the overviews. By enabling "Parental Control Restrictions", you can fully restrict movie titles from being shown, until you unrestrict the viewing with your pin #, by clicking on lock shown in the top left of the screen. You can enable this from "Settings" and "Parental Control Restrictions", by setting a maximum allowed rating for either your main Media Center box, or each of your Media Center extenders individually, or you can restrict to a created personal category of movies, or a combination of maximum allowed rating and personal category.

21. Why am I sometimes prompted for pin # twice when enabling "Parental Controls"?

"My Movies" handles parental controls based on the movie title Meta data stored in its database, while Media Center handle parental controls based on information stored psychically on the DVD disc. This means that with some DVD titles you may be prompted for your pin # when opening the movie information page in "My Movies", and again when playing the title. Notice that DVD's copied to hard drives, or DVD's copied to writeable DVD discs typically has the psychically parental restriction level removed, and only some DVD's has this information available, which has no effect on the parental controls in "My Movies".

22. Why can’t I play my movie title on the Media Center extender, when it plays fine on my Media Center box?

Media Center extenders only supports a limited type of video formats (MPEG, MPEG2 and WMV, but not DVDs), which "My Movies" also detects. This means that you can be prompted "Could not find any compatible video files in the folder" when you try to play your movie title, or you can get a playback error on the extender. This is not because there is anything wrong with your movie title, but simply because the playback of this movie title is not supported on the extender.

23. Can I assign a button on my remote to launch "My Movies" like the ones I have for "My Videos", "My Music", ect.?

The original Media Center remote is shipped with buttons to directly launch "My Photos", "My Music", "My Videos", ect. Unfortunately none of these buttons cannot be re-assigned to launch "My Movies", and you cannot assign other buttons on this remote to launch "My Movies" either. If you are using a universal remote control of another brand, and you can configure this to invoke key strokes, you can assign a shortcut key to the "My Movies" shortcut in your Windows start menu to e.g. "CTRL+ALT+F10", and assign a button on your universal remote to invoke this key press, which will then cause "My Movies" to launch at any time this button is pressed.

24. My DVD's is stored in ISO files, can "My Movies" play these?

"My Movies" can invoke the program "Daemon Tools" to mount ISO files as a DVD drive, meaning that if a ISO image file is stored in the folder for the movie title you are trying to play, "My Movies" will use "Daemon Tools" to mount this ISO file.

To use Daemon Tools, after installing Daemon Tools, you must configure it's location within My Movies, by opening the program Collection Management, and select the menu item "Configure", "Daemon Tools" to select the Daemon Tools executeable. After installing Daemon Tools, you must right click the Daemon Tools tray icon, select "Options" and disable "Secure Mode" - otherwise "My Movies" will be unable to automatically mount ISO images with Daemon Tools.

File extensions that are detected as ISO images are: ".img", ".iso", ".nrg", ".cue", ".ccd",".cdi" or ".pdi". You can download "Daemon Tools" at http://www.daemon-tools.cc/.

25. Which video formats does "My Movies" support for playback?

In general, "My Movies" support the same movie formats as Media Center does, and as an addition, it also supports mounting ISO image files with "Daemon Tools" for playback. These movie formats include ripped DVD's in VIDEO_TS folder format, Media Center recorded TV titles (.dvr-ms and .dvr files), and all video formats with the required codec’s installed, and a file extension registered in Windows registry as being a video file type. Notice that only some of these video formats are supported by Media Center extenders. Also notice that playing content such as DivX, XVid, QuickTime, RealVideo, ect. requires codecs that needs to be installed on your machine, just as these formats do to be played by Media Center.

26. Why does "My Movies" not show up in the Media Center start menu?

After installing My Movies, you must open Media Center, and within a few minutes "My Movies" will ask you how you would like to access "My Movies" within Media Center. Select the item you prefer, and restart Media Center for "My Movies" to appear.

If you would like to change how you access "My Movies" in Media Center, you can open the Collection Management program, and from the menu item "Configure", "Media Center Interface" press the "Reset" button in the "Program Menu Access" section. Next time you start Media Center, you will once again be asked to you would like to access "My Movies".

Media Center 2005 users should notice that only two slots are available in the Media Center start menu, and these slots can already be used by other programs, or you can install other programs that takes over the slot "My Movies" is using - if this is the case, you must either uninstall this other program, or if possible ask it to remove it's start menu item. In some cases, such other software can also have messed up some entries in the registry, or you could by mistake have select "My Movies" not to be allowed to display in the start page; to clean this up you can go to Media Center's Settings, General, Media Center Setup and run "Restore Start Page Defaults".

27. Why is the text smaller or not very easy to read in "My Movies" compared to the rest of Media Center?

"My Movies" is a third party application for Media Center, and third party applications are created with another interface technology than the one Microsoft uses, called "Hosted HTML". "Hosted HTML" is displayed in Media Center within the IE renderer (Internet Explorer), and uses style sheet technology to scale the screen to the users screen resolution - unfortunately this scaling is not as exact as the scaling that is used by Media Center internally, and as an example, a font size of 7.4 pixels are displayed as 7 pixels, and because of this, the fonts can look a bit smaller and not as easy readable as the fonts in Media Center in general. This issue is typically seen on clients with a low screen resolution, such as Media Center extenders.

28. Why do the copy fail each time I try to copy a DVD to my hard drive within "My Movies"?

Most DVD titles are copy protected by a copy protection system called CSS, which in most countries are illegal to break. Because of that, "My Movies" does not remove CSS copy protection, and copying CSS protected discs will fail within the first percentages of the copy. If you live in a country where breaking CSS copy protection is legal, or if you whish to copy your DVD despite what the law says, you can run a tool that removes copy protection at driver level, and lets "My Movies" and other programs access the DVD as if it was not copy protected. SlySoft AnyDVD is used by many users to remove copy protection.

29. When I add a movie titles from an UNC path (\\servername\path), why is the path stored as being on my local drive?

When using "Manage Collection" to add your online movie titles, you might in some cases see that when you browse for UNC paths that are on the local machine, they are replaced by their equally local drive locations. This is something the "Browse folder" dialogue does automatically when browsing in a specific way. To avoid this replacement, you must add your titles by browsing "Network/Entire Network/Microsoft Windows Network/WORKGROUP/MACHINE_NAME/SHARE/MOVIE_LOCATION", instead of the by Windows auto generated paths; "Network/SHARE on COMMENT (MACHINE_NAME)/MOVIE_NAME", as these actually refer to the local path.

30. When using "My Movies", my screen flickers, and it does not flick in the rest of Media Center, why is that?

This issue has been reported by some users, and seems to be caused by the handling of "Hosted HTML" used for third party applications and "Online Spotlight" entries in Media Center Rollup 2 combined with a specific screen configuration setting and/or graphics type, display driver or screen type. Currently it has not been resolved exactly what causes this, and if you are having this issue, please contact the "My Movies" author to report your settings, graphics adapter/driver and screen type.

31. Why does "My Movies" not work on my Media Center extender, I get an ActiveX error?

Prior to "My Movies" version 1.55, the program had to be installed to "Everyone" in the installer to work on Media Center extenders, but from version 1.55, this is no longer required (the option has been removed from the installer, and defaults to "Everyone"), if you are running a prior version than 1.55, this can be the cause of your problem. Another cause can also be that you did not uninstall a prior version of "My Movies" when upgrading, which can give access rights issues in the registry, causing this problem. If you are having this problem please create a post on the forum for help on how to resolve it.

32. I would like to remove some features from the interface, can I do that?

Some advanced configuration of the "My Movies" interface can be configured trough the registry. These options are only for system builders and advanced users with knowledge on how to edit items in the registry. A document on how to configure these advanced settings will soon be available in the "Documentation" section of the "My Movies" website at .

33. I have a request for a feature in a program, how do I report that?

Your feature request is always welcome, and highly appreciated. To make sure that the feature that you would like to request has not been requested and noticed previously, please see the "Requests" document in the "Documentation" of the "My Movies" website (). If your request is not included in this document, please post your request in the "Feature Requests / Suggestions" section of the forum at the "My Movies" website ().

34. I would like another data loader to be added to the program, what do I do?

External data providers is no longer being added to the program. It is recommended to add titles from, and contribute titles to the My Movies WebService instead.

35. I would like another language to be featured in the program, what do I do?

"My Movies" is available in many languages, and additional languages are always appreciated, however they are only added when users volunteer to do the translation by themselves. If you would like to translate "My Movies" into another language, or are in contact with someone who will, please see the following page: http://wiki.mymovies.dk/Improving%20Translation.ashx

36. Is TheaterTek DVD Player required to use "My Movies"?

No, TheaterTek is an option, not a requirement. By default, "My Movies" uses Media Center's internal player, and therefore playbacks the exact same types of media that Media Center does without any difference in functionality. Some enthusiasts find Media Center's internal player insufficiant and therefore "My Movies" has the option to use TheaterTek DVD Player as playback device instead. If you are using Media Center extenders, these will at all times be using Media Center's internal player as launching other programs on these devices is not allowed. In the documents section of is a document on how to configure TheaterTek for use in "My Movies".

37. The scroll buttons on the main My Movies screen are hidden behind the buttons that control movie playback, what do I do?

You can change the position of the scroll buttons in either Collection Management or Media Center.

In Collection Management click on the "Configure" menu and select "Media Center Interface" then, in the first tab labeled "Interface" check the box that says, "Interface is optimized for usage with mouse or touch screen".

In Media Center click on "Setting" on the main screen and when the next page comes up click on "User interface" the check the box that says, "Optimize interface for mouse or touch screen" and save your settings.