Search and display movies

[jlreich]

I have six data drives in my media server totaling 13TB. Looking for an application, batch file, something, to search all the drives quickly and display all movies in one window. And the files are clickable.

Windows search almost does it. The biggest issue is I don't want to search the C drive. I can enter a search like such:

search for = .iso .mkv .mp4

Can list each drive manually = f:\;g:\;h:\; etc

and all comes out good. View as list, sort by name and it works fine.

I can save the search and have it on the desktop and it saves what I am looking for (.iso etc) but it defaults to "all local drives" including C. Not a huge deal honestly, but there is nothing on the C drive I want and it slows the search looking through windows and program files. And although I have a KB hooked to the machine it sits on top of the tower behind the TV and I only get it out when I really need it. So typing the drives every time is a no go and my wife certainly won't do it.

I have Power DVD 12 Ultra and it can do this in a very nice format, but it doesn't pick up ISO files, which 99%+ of the 900 movies are ISO files.

Is there a way to edit the registry to set default search parameters for specific locations? And it would be really nice if it can default the view and sort to list and name. That way, my wife and kids can click the saved search, wait a few seconds and everything on all drives is displayed in an alphabetical list.

Or is there a program out there someone can point me to that already does this? I searched but all I could find is database apps that don't scan, they only take manual entries and the files are not clickable.

Is there a simple batch file that can do this and pump it out to explorer in the requested format? Again, I searched but could only find a way to send it to a simple text list. Maybe it is as simple as redirecting the output to explorer?

Any help would be appreciated.

[azzey]

Are you using XP (as your sig suggests) or Windows 7?

I'm going to fool around with this today and let you know if I have any luck.

[jlreich]

It is not the system in my sig. This is my media server running XP 64.

[Cuc Tu]

I'd use a batch to create an HTML list of file types, then modify the resulting file by adding some HTML markup.

I don't speak dos, but it seems a fairly simple task.

You can read in a file line-by-line (the dir command results) and set that string to a value, then rewrite the string as:

echo "<a href "string">string</a>"

next line

echo "



I found a couple code blocks I was trying to figure out, the firs one creates the menu listing with path and file name,

The second block adds a blank line. I was trying to figure out how to replace the blank line with some markup, like at least a line break.

The third block is supposed to find/replace a string with a new string.


dir *.pdf /-p /b /s /on >Menu.htm


@ECHO OFF
SET origfile=Menu.htm
SET tempfile=temp.txt
SET insertbefore=2

FOR /F %%C IN ('FIND /C /V "" ^<%origfile%') DO SET totallines=%%C

<%origfile% (FOR /L %%i IN (1,1,%totallines%) DO (
SETLOCAL EnableDelayedExpansion
SET /P L=
IF %%i==%insertbefore% ECHO(
ECHO(!L!
ENDLOCAL
)

) >%tempfile%
COPY /Y %tempfile% %origfile% >NUL
DEL %tempfile%



@echo off
REM -- Prepare the Command Processor --
SETLOCAL ENABLEEXTENSIONS
SETLOCAL DISABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION

::BatchSubstitude - parses a File line by line and replaces a substring"
::syntax: BatchSubstitude.bat OldStr NewStr File
:: OldStr [in] - string to be replaced
:: NewStr [in] - string to replace with
:: File [in] - file to be parsed
:$changed 20100115
:$source http://www.dostips.com
if "%~1"=="" findstr "^::" "%~f0"&GOTO:EOF
for /f "tokens=1,* delims=]" %%A in ('"type %3|find /n /v """') do (
set "line=%%B"
if defined line (
call set "line=echo.%%line:%~1=%~2%%"
for /f "delims=" %%X in ('"echo."%%line%%""') do %%~X
) ELSE echo.
)

[Cuc Tu]

Never mind that stuff up there. This seems to almost work. It at least produces a text list of pdf files and a html file of links to those files.

The only problem is that the visible link text just says "Link" for every file. I cannot figure out how to duplicate the file name in place of the Link text...

dir *.pdf /-p /b /s /on  >files.txt
del Menu.htm

echo "<a href=" >Menu.htm

@echo off
setlocal 
set addtext=">Link</a><br><a href="
for /f "delims=" %%a in (files.txt) do (echo/|set /p =%%a%addtext% & echo/) >>Menu.htm

[Cuc Tu]

OK, this makes a slightly messy html menu, but it seems to work:

dir *.pdf /-p /b /s /on  >files.txt
del Menu.htm

echo "<a href=" >Menu.htm

@echo off
setlocal 
set addtext1=">"
set addtext2="</a><br><a href="
for /f "delims=" %%a in (files.txt) do (echo/|set /p =%%a%addtext1% & echo/|set /p =%%a%addtext2% & echo/) >>Menu.htm

You could play with the file types that it collects. I just had a lot of PDF files here to play with.

[jlreich]

Thanks CT. I will play around with it.

I found this VBS script and it works fine, but when I try put multiple drive letters in "ParseName("D:\")" it comes up with an error. Need to figure out how to add multiple drive letters. And possibly add search terms (.iso .mkv .mp4).

Set objShell = CreateObject("Shell.Application")
Set objFolder = objShell.Namespace(&H11&)
Set objFolderItem = objFolder.ParseName("D:\")
objFolderItem.InvokeVerb("find")