I have all of my DVDs backed up to XVid AVI files, and stored on a Drobo connected to my Vista Ultimate x64 machine. The two TVs in the house connect to this library using Linksys Media Extenders (one DMA2100, another DMA2200). After a while, the sheer number of videos I had started making the Extender’s UI sluggish, so I began organizing the movies alphabetically into folders. The problem with this is that its an extra step for me when importing a file, and it is very easy to forget what movies you have put in recently — so I made a “New Releases” folder and added shortcuts. Again, an extra step.

I figured this morning…why not create a simple AIR app that will list all of my AVIs, allow me to maintain the “New Releases”, and respond to a Drop event by properly storing the AVI in the right directory (e.g. d:\Movies\A\Anger Management.avi).

So, I did it in a couple of hours and was it ever fun :-)

Here is a picture:

mediamanager500w

Next I’d like to add a special tab for TV Shows… maybe I’ll do that now.

In building this, I did find a couple problems with AIR that I’m sure will get better over time:

  • No system.exec style capability. I’d wanted to be able to inspect the video files to get some metadata from them, as well as capture a screen to make the display a bit nicer. To do so I’d hoped to call a command line program that could give me that. Not really an option.
  • The File class can’t create symbolic links/shortcuts… it can only detect and handle them. This means my new releases are basically copies of the file. The media extenders read shortcuts, so having symlink creation capability would be very slick.