Existing Local Metadata and Thumbnails (1 Viewer)

[mforte]

Hi,

i have been a MCE user and fan for many years, my father has been using mediaportal for the last few years, he constantly raves about mediaportal, if i do say myself, this HTPC front is amazing! the addons are amazing.

Anyway, to the point

I use a program called Media Centre Master, this amazing bit of software automatically handles all my downloading of tv shows and movies, once the media is finished, it will Automatically, fetch metadata including all media art. it stores it in two formats, one being .xml, the other .nfo. The .nfo's are created for each Tv Show, then each season, then every episode (including media/thumb art) i have also attached a photo of the way it places the media info.

Now, my main question, can MP-TVSeries search and only use "Local" metadata and media/thumbnail art? the only options i can find is that it will download all info again.

The Reason i ask, is because i have a 6TB media collection and 5 HTPC's. i ran a test and it grabs about 4.5GB of new media info . This is including Media Info for moving Pictures. ** Edit, Moving Pictures has now been sorted - found the settings for local .nfo (XMC) search

I then found "MP-Sync" which in theory works well, but seems to bring across the "watched/Unwatched" status to each client

 

[RoChess]

So you are all good to go then.

Enjoy MediaPortal.

 

[barneh]

Hi @mforte...
Nice to hear that you listen to you're father

Unfortunately you can't point the MP TV-Series to a place and pick up media info. Neither does it puck up *.nfo files that are stored in the same directory as the video files. MP TV-Series are build with the flow that it fetches what it need from thetvdb.com and then updating the database and putting the info and artwork in it's "special" folder.

So what you can do is to have one HTPC as master. This master HTPC's database and artwork are shared with the other four HTPC through MP-Sync.
This means that the master HTPC is fetching the info needed when you add a new series or episode, and the other get's this through MP-Sync.
This is the core functionality of how the MP-Sync works... for more details about the MP-Sync and how to configure MP-Sync, I recommend you to head over to the MP-Sync forum...

PS. There are many change request about doing backup on MP TV-Series db and artwork, but unfortunately no one has made the effort to do this in code yet DS.

 

[mforte]

Hi @barneh

thank you for the info, i have tried MP-Sync, i may wait a little longer and see what the updates bring
@RoChess so far MediaPortal has blown my socks off, Hat goes off to dad.

 

[RoChess]

@RoChess so far MediaPortal has blown my socks off, Hat goes off to dad.

The promotion of MediaPortal usually goes the other way around, though I guess it depends on the age of the people involved .

Since you are new to MePo, and you use Moving-Pictures, I will make a shameless plug for my IMDb+ plugin. It is a work-around to group movie series together by renaming their title during import. "Casino Royale" becomes "James Bond XXI: Casino Royale", and is then nicely listed alongside all the other James Bond movies (same goes for 2000+ other titles).

 

[mforte]

@RoChess so far MediaPortal has blown my socks off, Hat goes off to dad.

The promotion of MediaPortal usually goes the other way around, though I guess it depends on the age of the people involved .

Since you are new to MePo, and you use Moving-Pictures, I will make a shameless plug for my IMDb+ plugin. It is a work-around to group movie series together by renaming their title during import. "Casino Royale" becomes "James Bond XXI: Casino Royale", and is then nicely listed alongside all the other James Bond movies (same goes for 2000+ other titles).

OH, um, um don't hurt me!
HAT goes of to Team Media Portal and the wonderful third party developers for the amazing plugins... ok and the support
i just downloaded this plug last night. Was also going to make another thread about the movie naming for movie collections like this
Do you have a time frame for when this feature will be added to IMDB+?

 

[RoChess]

i just downloaded this plug last night. Was also going to make another thread about the movie naming for movie collections like this
Do you have a time frame for when this feature will be added to IMDB+?

That is already added.

It renames movies as I mentioned, and it has full support for Moving-Pictures seperate collection system with added custom ones for IMDb top 250, Oscars for best picture, etc.

But by default after you install it, it does not touch your existing movies. To make that work, open the IMDb+ plugin inside MediaPortal GUI, and use your skin button to open hidden menu (left arrow on most), and then use the "Force IMDb+..." option to allow IMDb+ control of all your existing movies (any movie that was imported with a valid IMDb tt-ID is accepted), and then use the same hidden menu to mass refresh your collection. To save time on a large collection you can update just the movies that are part of the default rename database for movie series.

You do need to restart MovingPictures (meaning restart MediaPortal) for the MovPic movie list to update, but when a movie is selected it will show the updated title.

If you want to use the IMDb+ support for filename tags, such as (Director's Cut), then you have to use MovPic config to send your movies back to the importer, as Moving-Pictures only allows me access to the filename during the search-node, not on a details-node refresh.

 

[barneh]

Regarding you're initial question... I think you can have *.nfo files in MovingPictures, so if that is something you have, then you place it in the same directory as the movie file(s)...

 

[mforte]

RoChess, thanks for the heads up, worked liked a charm
barneh, yes i soon found this after making my post , moving pictures has now been sorted and working a treat
thank you both so much for the help and support

 

[RoChess]

The MovPicNFO plugin can generate NFO files, as well as secure fanarts/covers after the fact as well, kinda like an off-line backup for when you need to copy them to another system, or restore a failure.

Of course backing up your database also helps on that. To that extend I actually wrote a simple batch file that does it fully automatic based on SQLite PRAGMA INTEGRITY scans, so it will auto-recover when database corruption sneaks in. This can happen quick on SQLite with improper shutdowns due to power loss/etc, or when you attempt to go for a multi-client configuration. Script is on the forum, just do a search for posts by me and u'll find it.