Beyond Media FAQ (pre-release)

[rakeshagrawal]

DVD player:

Does it come with a codec that can play DVDs?

It's most likely that Beyond Media will require a pre-existing DVD decoder on your system. The reasoning behind this is that most every system that comes with a DVD drive also comes with a software DVD player (ie a Cyberlink, Intervideo, Sonic, etc). Accordingly, in most cases, we think people already have a DVD decoder. For people that don't have a DVD decoder, we will probably point them somewhere where they can buy one (for example, http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win.../buypacks.aspx). There is also an outside chance that we will bundle a DVD decoder with Beyond Media, but we're leaning against it.

Music player

What media types does it support?

Beyond Media should handle a pretty wide range of music formats. The product isn't far enough along to say exactly what it will and will not support. If you have requests for us to support a specific format, let us know.

Album art?

Yes, we intend to support a number of models for album art -- including the "folder.jpg" model (which is used by Windows Media Player) as well as album art embedded in ID3 tags (which I believe is used by software like MusicMatch).

Ripping?

We are investigating this feature -- the first release of Beyond Media may support CD ripping from its full-screen interface.

Video player:

What will it be like?

The video player will feature a file browser similar to the one you see in the screenshots for the photos module. The actual player will be similar in its look and feel to the Beyond TV video player. It will handle playback of all the formats that Beyond TV supports right now (which is pretty much anything that Windows Player supports for playback on your particular box).

Integration with Beyond TV

Will Beyond Media integrate really well with Beyond TV? (fast loading, etc.)

YES. Part of the Beyond Media setup wizard will give you the option of automatically adding Beyond TV (if you have it installed) to the Beyond Media main menu. We are working on addressing the load time of Beyond TV so that jumping from one to the other is faster / easier.

General

Does Beyond Media allow the user to add or remove menu items?

Absolutely. There will be a very rich and simple system for building menus, views on the local file system (ie file browser with certain filters applied -- ie only view files with certain extensions, or certain type, etc.) and other things that will make Beyond Media everything you'll ever need in a 10-ft shell.

Will there be/is there a plug-in architecture to allow users to create modules that can be added?

Yes, as rkuo mentioned in a previous post: Beyond Media will feature a fully extensible framework. New screens and menu options can be added and Beyond Media can load custom modules/screens on startup or even dynamically compile new modules on startup. Modules are scripted/compiled using C# + .NET framework along with some classes provided by SnapStream.

Pricing?

We haven't finalized the pricing for Beyond Media.

Will there be a trial version?

Yes, there will be a trial version.

[rakeshagrawal]

I broke this pre-release FAQ out of the other Beyond Media thread (here: http://209.151.81.67/vb/showthread.p...threadid=11908) to make it easier to find.

If you have any other questions, just post them here!

[wetdagger]

How about a ETA of the new products.

Thanks,
wd

[rakeshagrawal]

ETA is one that we're going to avoid answering until we're really close to release.

[SHS]

rakeshagrawalherea better option to album art embedded in ID3 tags Mp3 Tag Tools.

[kamiller42]

Originally posted by rakeshagrawal
DVD player:

It's most likely that Beyond Media will require a pre-existing DVD decoder on your system.

Thank you, because I like my PowerDVD decoder w/ DD and DTS support. A lot of decoders don't even offer DTS. :-(

Music player

What media types does it support?

Beyond Media should handle a pretty wide range of music formats. ... If you have requests for us to support a specific format, let us know.

RealAudio and RealVideo version 10.

[gimdo]

Will you be able to browse through all of the folders on your computer if you want and when you click on something it will open up the right program to play it or start the app you just selected?
EX: I browse through my D: drive to the folder Games and select the game I want to play and the game will start up and I'll be all happy playing and when I'm done playing I exit the game and go back to browsing my computer with Beyond Media and play some QuickTime Movie trailers.
If it's going to work something like that I'm sold.
Also will there be any web surfing capabilities that would also be great.

[gblinckmann]

How about the ability to copy recorded BTV MPGs to DVD or VCD? That would be a great way to keep shows that you want to save. Doing this manually is a bit of a pain right now, and certainly not for novices. Making Beyond Media, BTV, and the Hauppague MVP work with a consistant user interface would be a much more powerful combination than Windows Media Center Edition!

[Brett]

BeyondTV has the ability to have the a selection option be "Archive To CD/DVD" within the fullscreen interface already. To turn it on you have to go in the web interface and define a thirdparty application that is actually responsible for the burning part, if you search the forums for DVD, and filter out the ones that are the opposite (rip DVDs) you will see what I am talking about...

-Brett

[gblinckmann]

I'd still like to see an easy-to-use interface for this. I did look at a lot of the threads. People are having even more problems with this than I am!

[Brett]

...well thats probably why its not a documented feature

-Brett

[grillcheese]

I think whats missing is an easier way to edit out commercials. I know its been discussed time after time...but really it would help.

Sure I can load up <not putting name cause program sucks> but I'd think it would make sense, to have BTV have a built in mpg editor that just takes the commercial breaks one step forward by actually applying them to the video. While they aren't always right on, they are close. What you could do then, is have a way to manually adjust the Time In/Out of the commercial breaks, then apply it, then it would provide you with a show without commercials. Right now, using the Archive feature to burn a show to cd/dvd would still have the commercials...and the point of that would be?

There has to be an easier way to edit mpgs, without a 3rd party app's (that dont work) Spending $extra money$$ for utilities that do this seems a little unfair since IMO it should be apart of the BTV App. Theres too many programs out there that do it that Snapstream could license from...or learn from to create their own.

This has been my biggest issue. Currently I have to copy my show over my .b network (for-ev-er) to my desktop pc, edit out commercials, then copy back over to my mediapc (cause it has the dvd burner), then I burn it with about a 60% success rate (due to the authoring software I use).

Is it really that big of a deal to include a stripped down simple editing tool? Im not talking about recreating Adobe Premiere, just something that can do simple mpg edits. Surely if some programmer with some free time out there can do it you guys can do it as well (with a better gui too).

Thanks

[Brett]

Originally posted by grillcheese
I think whats missing is an easier way to edit out commercials.

I am like 99.7% sure this will never happen. Its just too risky, and the guys at SS realize this fact. Cutting the commericals automatically has been proven by Television Stations as infringing on copyrights (as your modifiying the original aired show). Now ofcourse SS would enjoy having the feature, and it would be easy to implement, or atleast autoskipping would be, but I just do not see it happening.

There is a program on here called CutAds I am not sure if that is what your talking about that I think scripts and cuts the files automatically.

-Brett

[grillcheese]

Im not suggesting that they 'automatically' cut commercials. Just include a simple to use, integrated mpeg editor...which could use the smartchapter info.

If the user does the editing I think that releases SS from all copyright infringement.

[gblinckmann]

Even without the commercial editing, it would still be useful to have the archive feature.

Just burning it to a DVD would allow you to save shows that you want to keep for a long time. This is no more or less functional than a VCR, so networks shouldn't have any problems with it. I'd be real happy to see that in 3.5 and wait until 3.6 or later for some simple editing.