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MetaNow 2

A Movie Details/Cast Overview for Movies and TV Shows in popular Video Players
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About

General

MetaNow is an utility Application to assist you while watching a Movie or TV Show on your Computer, is it in a supported Video Player or simply in your Browser. It attempts to provide extended Informations about the currently playing Movie, its Cast, Trailers & more.

And if you are watching a TV Show Episode, you can get instant descriptions about this Episode, its Title and even its guest Stars if available

MetaNow 2 appears as a sliding out sidebar on the left side of the Screen providing all its Informations in Sections, so you are seeing only the Section you are interested it, starting with a general Overview, additionally, you can choose to use the classic whole Screen Overlay that has support for iTunes and Hot Corner Activation but it is deprecated and no longer in development.

While MetaNow uses just the Space you asked for, you can still keep watching or listening to the Content without pausing if you like to.

Behaviour & Usage

MetaNow 2 slides out fro the left side of the Screen once activated and just automatically into the general Info Section, it is designed to be either navigated with your Mouse of Keyboard, use the Arrow Keys to navigate, the Enter Key to select, the Back or ESC Key to return to main list or to dismiss current Info Panel.

If you are watching a Related Links Section like Wikipedia,you can click any link, to navigate back and froth, simply swipe left or right on your Magic Mouse or Trackpad.

MetaNow, once activated attempts to detect the currently playing Video by its Title to know if it is ether a Movie or TV Show and starts looking it up automatically, but while it might get the wrong Result at first time, it provides a manual search at the top left corner, that will auto populate with Alternative Results, e.g. if you lookup Avatar, there might be not just the Result from 2009 but also all the other Releases up to 2027, so choose one, click it and MetaNow will display the selected Result.

If MetaNow fails to get any starting Information or fails to find a Movie based on its title, it will auto display the search panel as short-cut.



Also, if you activate MetaNow from an unsupported Player, MetaNow will start with the currently used Window Title, this should work for most Players, if it doesn't, there will always be a fallback to the manual Search, the only requirement is that this Video is played in Fullscreen Mode, for any other cases, MetaNow will start with the manual Search Panel, this is handy if you want to lookup a Title from Scratch without the need to play a video first, like getting Movie Informations just for informative purposes.

MetaNow can be activated either by a fixed Shortcut: CMD + OPT+ M or simply by hitting the Eject Key (needs to be enabled from the Setting Panel).

Especially the Eject Key is very handy, while useless modern Macs due to lack of a DVD Drive, it is close to the Enter or Back Keys for faster Navigation & Volume control, as usability tip…

TheMovieDB Integration

The List Managemnt starts with Version 2.1+ !

MetaNow 2 can be linked with your TheMovieDB.com Account to manage Lists, create them, delete them, check their Content and of course add Items to them, this will also allow you to add/removing Movies and TV Shows to/from your Watchlist and rate them.
 
The purpose or idea for the Watchlist Feature is to have a quick Info about: “Have I seen this Movie already?” This may sound irrelevant for your PLEX Movies or any other Collections you already have and use, but imagine as described earlier, you simply lookup a Movie with MetaNow by manual search or by 3rd Party Actions (mentioned below), in this case you may find such Informations handy. Also with ratings you can support TheMovieDB’s Community…
 
Regarding Watchlist:
 
The initial purpose of TheMovieDB’s Watchlist feature works with the idea: “I want to watch this Movie e.g.”, so by default after you rated a Movie, it shifts from your Watchlist to the “Reviews and Ratings” Section, but for MetaNow idea, these Items shall remain in the Watchlist if you want it to use it as this idea was supposed to be from my side, therefor you have 2 options:
 
You change your “Sharing Preferences” in your TheMovieDB Account Settings to keep rated Movies on Watchlist
 
2. Enable MetaNow in the Settings Window to re-add a Movie / TV Show to the wWatchlist after rating.
 
As an Alternative, MetaNow has an Option to auto add rated Items to a specific List after rating, so e.g. you create a new List called "My watched Movies" and after you rated them, they can be auto added to the List if you like, this allows you to keep the default Watchlist as intended by theMovieDB.com and see only upcomming Movies.
 
Lists:
Once you connect with theMovieDB you can see all your Lists in a separate PopUp Window like this:

 
Additinal Notice: Ratings are only available for already released Movies / TV Shows, if a Movie e.g needs to be released yet, the Ratings Panel is not available!
A List Example:

to revel additinal Actions, simply swipe to right on a List Entry to see its Content, edit directly on theMovieDB.com Website or delete the whole List.

If you swipe to the left you can remove an Item from a List

You add an Item to a List by simply clicking the Entry, that's all, once it is done, the Image should change to the latest Entry Backdrop and the selected List is now yellow, the swipe left Action works only if an Item is added to this list you want to interact with

Creating a List:

You can create new Lists with ease, set a Title, a Description, that's all!
Important Notice: MetaNow creates only public Lists, y+if you want to use private Lists, you need to config them from theMovieDB Website

Other Essentials

Supported Players:


MetaNow supports these Media Players as flawless Support:

VLC Media Player
PLEX Media Player

Safari Brwser
Google Chrome

Browser Streaming Services (Amazon Prime)



Important Notice for any other Player /Browser
MetaNow 2 should work with any Application or Browser you use, the only difference is, that is is not garanteed, the Result you get matches the Media you are playing.

In Detail:
For any other Player / Browser MetaNow uses the currently displayed Application Title you see at the top center of your Screen.
This works in most cases out of the Box, because the most Players use the File Name as a Title Value, so until you have named your Movies correctly, it should work.

Side-Note: This works only for Movies, TV Shows need some more extra Informations to be retrieved correctly, that's why there are some "Supported Players" and others are not.
But in any case, you have always the opportunity to search manually or if a Match does not match, to correct it.
Each time you lookup a Movie, there might be various possible Results, MetaNow picks the first that is most popular, but if you open the Search Panel, it should auto populate with all the other Alternative Results.

TV Shows:


MetaNow's TV Show support has some extras:
In PLEX, MetaNow will show you just the currently playing Episode, because PLEX provides such informations.
In Streaming Services or manual Search,, there is an Episode Picker which groups by Seasons, fromhere you can select the Episode you are interested in.
Furthermore, MetaNow will provide you Informations about Guest Stars, an additinal Entrry below "Cast" will appear in the main Sidebar on the left, but only if any available.
This Values are provided by the theTVDB Database and are mostely available for passed Episodes, so very new Episodes donÄt have these Values in most cases.

Why only these Players?


MetaNow relies on some conditions a Player needs to provide to work out of the box by itself, therefor it has its supported Players on the one hand and its generic manual Search for all the other Option.

PLEX Related Informations:


MetaNow was build with deep support for PLEX Media Player, therefore it talks with PLEX and asks it things like “What are you playing right now?” But in order to do this, you need to sign in with your PLEX Account in the Setting Panel to allow MetaNow these communications.

Streaming Services:


Why just Amazon Prime and no other, well as mentioned before: there are some criteria required for MetaNow to automate various Steps and while there are so many Streaming Services right now each one does it in its own way and it is hard to find a way to determine some basics: Is it a Movie or TV Show etc…

The Panels:

Info Panel:

The Move / TV Episode Panel: The Movie Info Panel provides a generic Overview about the most relevant aspects of a Movie. If the Movie has Trailer these Section will appear in the MetaNow List of Sections, choose it to watch the Trailer right at the place you are, hit the Back Key or dismiss MetaNow to stop it, click to toggle playback…

If you enter the Info Panel for e.g Amazon Prime TV Show, you get at start an overview of the Show itself, it there is the Episode Selector Button which provides all episodes for all Seasons, choose one and get extended Information about this particular Episode including Guest Stars if available. This Episode Process automates itself for PLEX fully, while PLEX provides all the required Informations MetaNow needs, so it can auto select the right Episode for you.

Cast Panel:

The Cast / Guest Star Section appears as aList at the Start, choose on Person the get Details about Her/Him, you can also simply click a “known for Movie or TV Show” Item to jump right into it and see all theInformations about it right here, as mentioned before, MetaNow is all about deep linking. Alternative you can simply click the Wikipedia Button to get full Article about this Person for extended Bio Pics etc…

Related Links:

Any time you look up a Movie in MetaNow, you should get an additional Section under the Related Links Section for Recommendations.

This Section will list some other Movies that are suggested as similar recommendations based on the currently displayed Movie, like:
"If you like this, you may like that too!"


For PLEX Exclusive:
Looking up a Movie in PLEX adds one additional Section to the List:

Meta: Meta will show you detailed Informations about his Video File like Format,Video and Audio Codecs and more

Related Links

Wikipedia deep linking:

Every-time you open a Cast Panel, MetaNow will check if there might be a Wikipedia article related to this Name of Actress / Actor, if it finds one, it will display a Wikipedia Button allowing you to revisit extended Bio and backgrounds for a Person. Important: The language of the Wikipedia Article is ALWAYS the System Language of your Computer, so no settings required.

Other Sources:

For any kind and any Player MetaNow will show a Wikipedia Deep link to a possible article, if an iMDB.com reference is known, a direct Link to the official iMDB Website, at least theMovieDB Link, that should always work and if the Media is a TV Show a deep link to theTVDB Website.

3rd Party Interactions

MetaNow 2 supports activation from other Apps or by yourself via an URL Scheme to invoke a direct search.
While MateNow can be used as a stand-alone Application to quickly lookup a Movie or TV Show, this is a core feature.

To call MetaNow directly you can use use the following syntax:
metaNow://title=Whatever

As a sample Usage, here is a PopClip Extension that can be used to quickly lookup any Title with MetaNow simply by using the currently selected Text, e.g. in a Browser, try it out:

Download

This can be used from anywhere or any Application or Script that can perform an URL call.

Live Preview

MetaNow offers you an optiona Feature called Live Preview.
Once enabled from the Settings Pane, MetaNow will pop up an Information Bnner wheever you enter a Fullscreen Application that is a Video Player at the bottom of the Screen.

This Info HUD will tell you what MetaNow guesses is currently playing with Informations about Title, >ear and some main Cast Members for Movies or Season and Episode Informations for TV Shows.

Why guess? Well, in Plex or Browser (Amazon Prome) MetaNow can narrow the results down, but in a Player like VLC things cannot be so easy,especially if a Movie with the same Titlewas release multiple times over the decades, so the Reult you see is the most popular based on TheMovieDB.com.

The Info Hud pops up once and auto hides after a sew second,but can be retriggered at any time again simply ba hitting the SHIFT Key once to show and again to close

MacOS 10.15 Catalina and above

In order to work flawlessly without nasty popups and user Interactions,MetaNow uses the current frontmost Applications window title to determine what you are watching right now to prepare handy Informations you may be inerested in, till MacOS Cataina this was not an issue, MetaNow could ask MacOS for these Informations, but now in MacOS 10.15 Catlina things changed due to Security and Privacy Purposes so MetaNow is not able to retrieve these Informations without a Users explicit Permission.
The required Permission is called "Screen Recording" in MacOS Catalina, and even if MetaNow has no intentions or abilites to record the Screen,it needs these Permissions to obtain basic Informations about an Applications window Title like: Wb´hat is the Title of Apple's TVApplications we can use to find requested Metadata about a Movie you are currently watching?

THIS IS AN OPTIONAL STEP!!!


If you do not intend to grant MetaNow such privieges, you don't need to, you will be asked for such anyway the next time you trigger MetaNow in a fullscreen Applicaiton that may play a Video, once for each Application, if you want to bypass this, you can grant MetaNow these Permissions from the System Prevferences -> Security -> Screen Recording -> add and enable NetaNow to/in the List of Applications.


As mentioned before, a window's title has nothing to do with Screen Recording and MetaNow doesn't need such stuff,but to obtain it, MetaNow relies on these Information to work as inteneded.

If MetaNow couldn't use and Informations like a Window's Title it means it cannot suggest any Informations out of the box and this means you have to search for it manually from the search box over and over, this may be an accptable solution for some, but a usability nightbare for the most others and makes Metanow useless where it could explore its full potential...

In other words, if you have to do it maually over and over each time, you could a Search Engine on the Web as you did it before, so what's the point here?! ^^