Chad Dyess’ Blog

When we’re entertaining guests, gathering everyone in my theater for a demo is always a crowd-pleaser.  But before I built my home theater PC, I would have to dig out a DVD, load it into the player, then get it cued up to the right chapter.  Not only was this tedious, but it tended to bore everyone.

One of the primary reasons I built my HTPC was for watching movies.  I wanted to have my movie library available online, with a nice interface for exploring my collection, without the need to shuffle through shelves of DVD cases trying to find a movie to watch.  That’s how I found My Movies.   The interface is great, and it has all the features I wanted, and then some.

Once I ripped my DVD collection to disk, my next step was to set up a quick and easy way to show off my home theater by playing specific movie scenes using My Movies.  What I ended up with worked great, and has been a huge success, so I’m outlining the steps here for anyone who may be looking for a similar solution.

Before You Begin

These instructions assume that you’re already using Windows Media Center, and have installed the My Movies plugin.

Pick Your Demo Scenes

The first step, and maybe the most difficult, will be to decide which movie scenes you’ll want to choose for your demos.  When choosing a scene, it goes without saying that you’ll want to use scenes that will really show off your home theater equipment, so start with your favorite action flicks.  Find a great sequence with lots of action and sound, but try to avoid choosing that final battle scene at the climax of the movie.  If someone in your audience hasn’t seen the movie yet, you don’t want to ruin the ending for them.  Instead, try to find a scene toward the beginning of the movie that won’t give away too much of the story.  For the demo in this post, I’ll be using the scene from Iron Man, where Tony Stark escapes from his captors in the Mark I suit.

Isolate the Movie Clip

1. Once you’ve chosen a scene to use, you’ll need to rip just that section of the movie to your hard drive.  This is how you’ll be able to play just the part that you want, without having to start the entire movie and locate the right chapter. For this, I use a program called DVDShrink.  It’s free, and it lets you pick the exact starting and ending point of the movie.
2. Start up DVDShrink, then click the Re-author button in the toolbar.
3. Next, in the DVD Browser tab, open the dropdown, and select the folder where your movie is located.  (Or, if you don’t have the entire movie on disk, and just want to rip the demo scene, you can put in the original DVD and select it.)
4. After you’ve selected the movie, you will see a list of all the contents of the folder or disc.
5. Select the item listed under “Main Movie” and drag it over into the DVD Structure window on the left.
6. On the left side of the program, enter a name for the scene.  I used “Iron Man Demo.”
7. Click the icon that looks like this:
8. Now drag the sliders around until you have your start and end frames selected.  While you’re making your selection, keep an eye on the total duration of your sequence.  You don’t want to make it too long.  Five or six minutes is usually about right.
9. Click the play button and use the preview window to make sure you’ve picked a good starting and ending point.  Try to find natural beginnings and endings for scenes, so they don’t appear to start or stop too abruptly.
10. Click the Backup button in the toolbar.
11. In the backup target dropdown, select Hard Disk Folder, then choose the location to store the movie clip.  I store mine in the same folder as the main movie, under a subfolder called Demo.
12. Check the box to Create VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS subfolders, then click the OK button.

Add Demo to My Movies Collection Management

Now that you’ve got the movie clip onto hard drive, you’ll need to get it added to My Movies in a way that will make it easy to find and play back, in an intuitive way.  To do that, I’ll walk you through the steps to add the clip as a movie trailer, set up a new Demo category, then create a filter to display only movies that have demo clips attached.

1. Open My Movies Collection Management.
2. Find and select the movie you’ve created a clip for in the list of movies.
3. On the details page of the movie, find the field for “Local Trailer,” and click the button beside it to select the trailer location.
4. When prompted to choose a file or a folder for the trailer, click the Folder button, then browse to and select the folder where you saved the clip.
5. Next, click the Categories button.  It should be located directly above the Local Trailer field.
6. When the Categories window appears, click the Create Category button, and add a new category named Demo.
7. Select the Demo category, and click Add Category button.  This will associate the new Demo category to your movie.
8. Close the Category window, then click the Save Title button on the main details page.
9. Now click the button beside the Filter dropdown, which appears just above the list of movies.
10. When the Edit Filters window appears, click the Add Filter button, which appears in the lower left corner.
11. Name the new filter Demos.
12. Scroll down to the bottom of the filter selections, to the Categories options.
13. For Categories, select “Some,” then check the category named Demo.
14. Close the Edit Filters window.

View Demos from Media Center

Now that you have your demo clips set up, let’s give it a trial run.

1. Start Media Center, then go into My Movies.
2. From the menus on the left, select Filters.
3. From the list of filters displayed, select Demos.
4. Now you will only see the DVD’s that you have added to the Demo category.
5. Select one of the movies to bring up the details for it.
6. From the menu on the left, select Cast & More.
7. Next, select Movie Trailer from the menu.
8. Your movie clip will start to play in a smaller window within My Movies.  To make the clip play in full screen, just use the remote to highlight the clip, and press the Select button.
9. When the clip is finished playing, click the Previous button on the remote to return to My Movies.

Impress Your Friends

After I got my HTPC set up and working well, I spent several hours setting up my favorite demo scenes, in anticipation of our next party.  As you might expect from looking at the screenshots, the My Movies interface is pretty slick, and being able to interactively shuffle through an online DVD collection and play demo scenes on demand proved to be just as impressive, if not more, than the actual demos themselves.  Needless to say, once your demo is over, be prepared to answer a lot of questions about how you just did that.

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2. SecondRun.tv Lets You Watch Hulu from Media Center