Child friendly Media Management

[dannyboy]

Has anyone got any suggestions around making media (music and videos) child friendly?

I cannot see a way in Control 4 to only display certain movies or play lists on a certain Touchscreen or navigator/remote that is in the kids play room.

[ILoveC4]

I did this a little while back. Just create a share for kids music/movies, and a share for adults music/movies. Then hide the adults one from the kids rooms and play room.

Works great for me.

[dannyboy]

Dan,

You've lost me... You did this with separate 3rd party media players - OR - could you hide in control 4 somehow ?

[ILoveC4]

Dan,

You've lost me... You did this with separate 3rd party media players - OR - could you hide in control 4 somehow ?

Hide in Control4.

[dannyboy]

Dan,

You say that you can hide some media in the childrens rooms on children allocated navigators or touchscreens etc? How?

If this can be done I owe C4 an apology and will delete the spray above (or at least reword to another problem Im having

[ILoveC4]

dannyboy, that's correct. It's a little bit of work to setup, but not bad.

So, here's how it works. You have a Media Library that your dealer added. It's what you have Composer Scan to pull all the info your music, etc... What you need to do is create an additional media library (easy for your dealer to do remotely). Have one that is adult music, and have on that is kids music. The reason it is a little bit of work is because you also need to separate the music where it's stored. So, on my NAS, I have it setup like this: \\NAS\Movies\Adult Movies and \\NAS\Movies\Kids Movies. Same for music: \\NAS\Music\Adult Music and \\NAS\Music\Kids Music. Then, you scan each of those files shares and populate the respective media libraries. Then, in Composer, you go in to the kids rooms and hide the Adult Movies and Adult Music sources from the room.

It works great, because in the rooms where all the directories are visible it appears like one big library....you can't tell you have it broken out in to different shares. But, in the kids rooms, they'll only see what is in the KIDS folders.

Does that make sense dannyboy?

[chicagoskiguy]

The Netgear NTV550 integrates into C4 and can be configured to require a PIN by typed in at the share level or for any movie with a rating greater than whatever you specify.

It doesn't translate into the Control4 interface, but it's an option for you.

[chicagoskiguy]

Also looks like Control has an app that may help called Movie Guardian. I've never used it, but more info below:

http://www.greenwavecontrol.com/sol/control4-apps

[CFUG]

dannyboy, that's correct. It's a little bit of work to setup, but not bad.

So, here's how it works. You have a Media Library that your dealer added. It's what you have Composer Scan to pull all the info your music, etc... What you need to do is create an additional media library (easy for your dealer to do remotely). Have one that is adult music, and have on that is kids music. The reason it is a little bit of work is because you also need to separate the music where it's stored. So, on my NAS, I have it setup like this: \\NAS\Movies\Adult Movies and \\NAS\Movies\Kids Movies. Same for music: \\NAS\Music\Adult Music and \\NAS\Music\Kids Music. Then, you scan each of those files shares and populate the respective media libraries. Then, in Composer, you go in to the kids rooms and hide the Adult Movies and Adult Music sources from the room.

It works great, because in the rooms where all the directories are visible it appears like one big library....you can't tell you have it broken out in to different shares. But, in the kids rooms, they'll only see what is in the KIDS folders.

Does that make sense dannyboy?

I have not needed nor executed anything like this in the past so just asking a question, Control4 displays only one MOVIE icon. Within that is ALL MOVIES, GENRES, etc.. How would two shares scanned translate into two distinct libraries?

[pharmdsmith]

You can hide shares (network storage drivers) within composer on a per room basis. So if you hide the adult driver in a room then the movies on it won't show up in that room. In a room with all shares not hidden then all the movies will show up. It's still under one movie icon but depending on what room you are in and what shares are hidden determines what movies show up.

[CFUG]

OK, that was easy. Thanks Paul. Kids are pretty good about keeping to their own devices but this is nice to have. Less work for me as I was scanning then manually removing after we watch.

[dannyboy]

Great guys, Big Thank-you!

I think it makes sense

Looking forward to giving this a go. And apologies to C4 for assuming this could not be done, although it would be nice if it was based on tags some how.... (something to put on the to do list maybe?)

[ILoveC4]

Hey, pharmdsmith deserves the credit for this one. He's the one that told me about it, in another thread on this forum!

Thanks Paul!

[dannyboy]

Dan/Paul,

This does not appear to work for me.

I have two shares on the one ReadyNAS

Then I have two C4 drivers to the two shares

One share has everything, the other only has kids stuff.

when I scan the media (appart from it taking for ever) it only populates the everything share/driver

I tick the kids share only in the media scan options on the C4 media tab and it still does not work...

Any idea - the only thing I can think of is maybe one share cannot be a subset of another?

Im on V2.2

[pharmdsmith]

Mine are 2 separate folders on my nas and my 2 storage drivers point to their one folder. The shares aren't a subset.

[ILoveC4]

Dan/Paul,

This does not appear to work for me.

I have two shares on the one ReadyNAS

Then I have two C4 drivers to the two shares

One share has everything, the other only has kids stuff.

when I scan the media (appart from it taking for ever) it only populates the everything share/driver

I tick the kids share only in the media scan options on the C4 media tab and it still does not work...

Any idea - the only thing I can think of is maybe one share cannot be a subset of another?

Im on V2.2

My shares are sub shares. \\IP of NAS\Movies\Kids Movies and \\IP of NAS\Movies\Adult Movies.

The share, if obviously movies. Just make sure in the NFS drivers settings you specify the folder within the share. Works great for me.

[dannyboy]

This is going to be a lot of work for me to delete and seperate, including recreating playlists and associated programming, wakeuo scenes etc.. At least a weekend of work.

Before I do this effort I might reboot and try again, I feel like its not behaving like it should.. can I confirm you can scan individual shares without it scanning everything? If I could do this, I'd be very happy and would speed up my scans when I add a few kids movies

Also did scanning behavior change in 2.1 or 2.2? It use to max out the processor and kill control cmds, now it seems to go very slow , but don't max out processor, so can still use c4 whilst scanning. If this was deliberately coded, good idea, but I think the throttling has gone to far for my configuration...

[ILoveC4]

This is going to be a lot of work for me to delete and seperate, including recreating playlists and associated programming, wakeuo scenes etc.. At least a weekend of work.

Before I do this effort I might reboot and try again, I feel like its not behaving like it should.. can I confirm you can scan individual shares without it scanning everything? If I could do this, I'd be very happy and would speed up my scans when I add a few kids movies

Also did scanning behavior change in 2.1 or 2.2? It use to max out the processor and kill control cmds, now it seems to go very slow , but don't max out processor, so can still use c4 whilst scanning. If this was deliberately coded, good idea, but I think the throttling has gone to far for my configuration...

It will scan whatever shares you have it set to scan. Under Media, the first item is Media Scanning. You can select what shares to scan, hit apply, then hit scan now.

It scans my library EXTREMELY quickly when I add a movie or two. I have over 800 titles and it takes ~10 seconds.

[dannyboy]

Thanks Dan, what you've said is what I expected, but mine is just not behaving that way.

I'll assume its is because I have one share that includes my whole NAS, and therefore that the sub shares will not scan for some reason.

Looks like I need invest the time and reconfigure.

WARNING/LEARNING for OTHERS : don't have one share for the whole of your NAS!

[turls]

Old thread, but good info...and no mention of My Movies driver ("Collection Management").

 

Am I on the right track with how this would work?

 

Even though you setup a network share with this driver...it isn't really going to limit you because it is going to look at My Movies for the locations, right?

 

Would you have to have 2 separate My Movies databases, and then use 2 different Network File Storage My Moves drivers?

 

I'm not even sure that would actually show movies from both databases (in the rooms you don't want any limits) if you set it up this way.

 

Going to be a lot of work and might be a waste if my dealer isn't familiar with it.

 

Anybody with any experience good or bad please post... 

[Cyknight]

Would you have to have 2 separate My Movies databases, and then use 2 different Network File Storage My Moves drivers?

Yes.

 

I'm not even sure that would actually show movies from both databases (in the rooms you don't want any limits) if you set it up this way.

 

 

It will.

 

 

Going to be a lot of work and might be a waste if my dealer isn't familiar with it.

 

 

You're on the mark there too.

 

This is pretty easy within a basic C4 system as described.

using MyMovies however this gets a lot more hairy.

 

Where we've done it, there's two separate full servers with two different MyMovie programs.

This is more expensive - but it works flawlessly.  Servers themselves clearly marked (custom engraved front panel on one) and it remains fully drop-in and forget.

[turls]

Where we've done it, there's two separate full servers with two different MyMovie programs.

This is more expensive - but it works flawlessly.  Servers themselves clearly marked (custom engraved front panel on one) and it remains fully drop-in and forget.

 

Thanks as usual Cy.  I found a post on the My Movies support forum that mentions that having multiple different collections isn't supported.  It looks like maybe your experience bears that out if you did it this way because you had to, not just to be cleaner.

 

Multiple collections seems like something they should add.  Should just be another SQL database.

[Cyknight]

I suggested that method myself simply because I couldn't see how to make it easy for the client to manage anything. Those were the sort that just wants you to set it all up so that they drop-in and forget - not wanting to manage anything.

 

I'm not too surprised though - but I never looked into it myself.

[turls]

In that case, I'm going to continue on this topic in the My Movies forum to see if there is any hope in doing this with one install.  It isn't looking good so far.

[turls]

This is from the support forum--ends up being a limitation of the EV MyMovies driver and/or C4 Media Management it sounds like--the software could do more.

 

There is no way to have multiple databases, no.

The My Movies software operates with both categories, and parental controls that can be blocked to parental levels and specific categories, but these features are not available in the Control4 driver.

The API does support maximum parental levels and such functions, but it is not used in the Control4 driver.

Having multiple databases is a workaround that you are looking for because of limitations with what the driver and the Control4 system provides, but it is not how My Movies operate, and it will not be in the future either.

There is one database, with options to separate it using the meta-data.