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No it's not a silly question, the Windows start up folder is in your start bar, if you click on 'start > programs' then you should see it there, you just copy the program's shortcut into that folder and it will start when Windows does. If you are not sure what a shortcut is then let me know and I'll give you a bit more info.
That sounds like you've missed the 'event triggers' part out. For EventGhost to perform an action it needs something to trigger it. In the example in this tutorial the trigger is the file appearing in the 'unsorted media' folder.
hey mate. You mentioned in the article that the Renamer program can do movies but a better program was available for that. What program do you recommend ? Thanks
Ember Media Manager is the app I suggest for movies, it does a great job, there is a tutorial for Ember further down in this article :)
which version of windows are you using for this? i'm not sure if I'd rather set this up on XP, Vista, or 7. I've got a slightly older computer, and I think I've read that boxee requires fewer hardware requirements on XP, if that makes any sense.
I've actually set it up on Windows 7 at home but I've set the same thing up for a friend on XP and it was the same.
Hi Alex,
Thank you so much for this guide. I think you single handedly motivated me to get a new HTPC and setup a media center rather than just stream videos. I followed your guide exactly, except that I use the utorrent RSS feed instead of TED to automatically download shows.
Everything works remarkably well except for one little hitch (there always is one, right?) It appears that whenever a new show gets downloaded, it gets correctly placed in the unsorted folder but only sometimes gets renamed and moved to the show folder. I think, but am not sure that it has to do with the time of day and whether my computer is idling or not. I attemped to self diagnose this problem. If I create a random file in the unsorted folder, it activates the trigger mechanism and all the files get properly moved, so it appears the ghost script is working fine. As far as i know, the ghostsript is always active as it is sitting in my system tray. I don't understand why this program seems to fall asleep while the utorrent RSS feeder is working just fine even when the computer is idling. I am running win7. Any thoughts? thanks again.
I have actually had the exact same issue myself and I'm sorry to tell you I've not found a fix for it yet.
I'm glad to hear I've managed to talk you into going down the HTPC route, you'll not regret it :) I plan to test the merits of Boxee this month and post my opinions and any tips I manage to find so keep an eye out for that :)
Hi Alex,
Thank you so much for this guide. I think you single handedly motivated me to get a new HTPC and setup a media center rather than just stream videos. I followed your guide exactly, except that I use the utorrent RSS feed instead of TED to automatically download shows.
Everything works remarkably well except for one little hitch (there always is one, right?) It appears that whenever a new show gets downloaded, it gets correctly placed in the unsorted folder but only sometimes gets renamed and moved to the show folder. I think, but am not sure that it has to do with the time of day and whether my computer is idling or not. I attemped to self diagnose this problem. If I create a random file in the unsorted folder, it activates the trigger mechanism and all the files get properly moved, so it appears the ghost script is working fine. As far as i know, the ghostsript is always active as it is sitting in my system tray. I don't understand why this program seems to fall asleep while the utorrent RSS feeder is working just fine even when the computer is idling. I am running win7. Any thoughts? thanks again.
I'm proud to announce that not only did Lifehacker feature this article a few months ago but it's version of it has just passed a quarter of a million views! :)
Great article! I've followed your steps and have everything working except one hitch.. When uTorrent moves my completed download, triggering EventGhost to run TheRenamer, TheRenamer is unable to actually move the new file because the file is still in use by uTorrent (seeding). I'm surprised nobody else had the same problem, so I thought perhaps I'm missing a setting in Vista, but I'm not able to fix this without manually removing the torrent from my uTorrent que, which kills the automation.
How did you get past this?
Thanks!
I found your article on Lifehacker and it inspired me to stop being lazy and set my media center up. The automation works great. Good job on explaining everything from EventGhost to Ember. Bravo!I have two questions though. 1. Should I put EventGhost in the startup folder as eventghost needs to be running to see triggering events? and 2. I am running xbmc with the aeon skin. This skin allows for the backdrops to be fanart of movies i have in my library. However, these backdrops must be in a backdrop folder in the skin directory and also they are recommended to be in .bmp format. How difficult would it be to make an eventghost macro to monitor the movies directory and use infranview to convert the image to bmp and move it to the appropriate backdrop folder (movies, tv)?
also, side note TED's minimized/tray options as far as I know are only supported in 32bit Windows. Apparently there is no support for those options for people like me running windows 7 64bit. so if you are driving yourself nuts trying to figure out how to ungray those options you are OOL. also alex - would you mind showing a screenshot of your eventghost window after you have all of your macros set up for those who might be questioning if they did it right? that was the only thing I thought would have been more helpful in your original article...
Hello Alex,
This is a great article that is helping me to get my media center started. I know I am a little late in responding to this but I just came across it and am using this article as my guide. I have downloaded all the recommended programs with the exception of the Ember Media Manager. I can't seem to find it anywhere and have it download properly. Is there a possible replacement for this program? Please let me know,
Thank you in advance for your time :)
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Wednesday, 31 Mar 2010
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Hello,
thanks for the great tutorial to automate it, but i have a problem. At the end of the part in EventGhost, you say that we have to create shortcuts to uTorrent and TED in ourWindows start-up folder to make sure it is all automated. I donùt really know what you mean by this (might be a silly question).
My automation also does not work. The EventGhost log just shows that it starts, and then the plugins show up, but nothing happens next. Could this be related to the above problem?
Thanks in advance.