Could the plugin store pictures in movie folder? (1 Viewer)

[e_razor]

I really like storing the images for each movie in its folder (the backdrop.jpg and folder.jpg) Would it be possible to get an option in moving pictures to store the images it downloads in each movies folder?

Its one hell of a manual task for 100's of movies. Not beeing any skilled in programming i dont know how hard this is to implement for developers, but it would be a really nice feature. There could of course be complications with it downloading multiple covers and fanarts.

If the plugin somehow could store backdrop.jpg and folder.jpg in the movie folder, it would make rebuilds take a lot less time. Additionaly it would lighten the load on the sites that host the images in the long run i guess. Most of the images that the plugin picks by default are fine, the task of replacing the very few you are not happy with is not such a huge task. This behavior should ofcourse be selectable by the user as not everyone stores movies in dedicated folder with images there.

 

[migube]

try as well Covercollector

 

[ryan20021982]

You could just backup the image folders before a rebuild also thats what most do I think.

I do that for movingpictures and tv series to make rescan faster

 

[Omen]

i would quite like to see this option added as well, i just finished going through my thumbs folder and manually copying and renaming everything, fortunately i've only got 500gig of movies, but it still took the best part of a whole afternoon.

how hard would it be to make fanart save in the thumbs folder, but also as backdrop.jpg and folder.jpg in the movie folder, only way i see this being a problem is if people don't store all their movies in individual folders.

 

[fforde]

So is the goal here for the image files to be reused by other programs? Or to just retain this info when rebuilding your database? If it is the later, ryan is right, old covers are picked up from the cover art folder.

 

[Omen]

well i only just recently found out about the thumbs folder in app data, so i've redownloaded everything everytime i've done a re build, i'm sure some of my friends are the same, and countless others out there too.

i wouldn't use it so much for other programs, but when i'm browsing through my movies in explorer, it'd be much easier to see which had fanart and which didn't if i had fanart in the respective folder.

i'm just looking for even easier use (sorry i'm so lazy) and a possible way to lighten the load on fanart hosts. would it be a major to try implement?

 

[fforde]

Well backdrops and covers are not redownloaded unless you specifically delete your artwork folders. If you are doing a reinstall of everything, then yes things would be redownloaded, but I think this is not an incredibly common occurrence. At least not common enough to worry about the added strain on sites like themoviedb.org (TMDb) | The open movie database.

You do make an excellent point about usability with backdrops though. It is difficult to skim through your movies and see which still need backdrops, same for covers. And obviously we still have the single backdrop limitation right now. These are all things we plan on fixing, but I suspect they will not be in place until 0.9. We are actually overhauling the guts of our artwork system right now though to pave the way for these enhancements, so rest assured, work is being done on this.

 

[e_razor]

So is the goal here for the image files to be reused by other programs? Or to just retain this info when rebuilding your database? If it is the later, ryan is right, old covers are picked up from the cover art folder.

On my behalf there are multiple goals, to sum them up:

I'm lazy... or rather, i belive in coding something to do a task rather than doing it manually. I have around 4 TB of movies stored up, for various reasons including a raid breakdown i've had to straighten out my movie collection 3 times and getting kinda fed up with it. (of course this is my problem and not moving pictures developers) Just remembering from previous mediaportal installs, that i agree with around roughly 90% of the covers and backdrops the plugin picks up. So in essence thats 90% less work for me

People like to copy from my rather extensive movie collection, then its really nice that the images come with the movie in its folder. (These beeing handpicked images of best resolution and such. Again with the 90% of the covers the plugin picks up are totally fine)

I bet a lot of people dont know how to or forget to back up the images where the plugin stores them in application data. Then you have another failsafe. And other programs can make use of the images aswell, wich is a nice biproduct.

Additionally, having the folder.jpg in the movie folder lets you browse the files in the default video plugin comming with mediaportal without having to build a database there. I use them both, moving pictures and the regular plugin, not building a movie database in the later plugin, more for a quick browse. Its nice to see the covers there without having to build a database.

It speeds up rebuilds, saves bandwith and reduces load on the sites hosting the images. My personal bandwith usage is not a problem since i have no limitations, but not everyone is this fortunate. A full rebuild with image re-downloads takes hours when your collection starts to build up to 500+ movies, wich i'm sure quite many users have by now.

This behavior should not be default for the plugin of course, but if its not like a huge amount of coding it would be a really neat feature.

And please, you moving pictures developers really do an awesome job, dont get me wrong, not demanding anything. You are also really good at keeping in touch with the users and listen to feature requests. So all the glory in the world to you!

 

[fforde]

Well we are planning on implementing an NFO writing system (basically movie details would be written to a text file for later reuse), and I think it would be good to optionally save cover and backdrop art during the same export process. I made a note about it over in the issue so that we do not forget or overlook this.

Issue 121 - moving-pictures - write NFO files that help with future rescans - Google Code