How to organize movies and tv shows? (1 Viewer)

[jrn]

Even though I am fairly new to MediaPortal I am already loving it. Before I started using MediaPortal I was a happy user of a boxee box and liked its simplicity, however it had some major downfalls.

With my boxee box I just needed to follow some naming convention for movies and tv shows and the boxee box would pick up the info from IMDB.

I know that MediaPortal has way better and more powerful plugins such as MP-TV-Series, MovingPictures and My Films.

This brings me to my question: What is the easiest way to organize my movie and TV show library within MediaPortal?
Can I keep using boxee box's naming conventions or do I need to follow a new pattern?

Will MediaPortal find newly added movies and/or TV shows on its own or do I have to tell the plugins to rescan every time I add a new movie/show?

Thanks,

jrn

 

[emphatic]

This is what I do:

Movies - I have them in two root folders* (due to available space on my hard drives) Movies and Movies 2 - add the path to these folders in Moving Pictures and you're done - Moving Pictures will import everything (some movies are inside their own folders, some are just in there, Moving Pictures doesn't disciminate)
Movies for kids - I use My Videos for this as I don't want my kids to browse around the Alien trilogy etc - I put all of these movies in a root folder called Kids and setup a path there in My Videos
TV Series - Use a root folder for all shows and MP TV-Series is very nice about whatever you have inside the chosen path, just one recent pilot you wanna check out, or complete seasons. Run out of space on that drive, just add another path to a root folder and put more shows in there

root folders* (in bold) = For example:
F:\Movies 1 (DVD rips)\
Pulp Fiction\Pulp Fiction.mkv
Fight Club\VIDEO_TS, AUDIO_TS

F:\Kids\
Spy Kids\
Spy Kids.iso
Spy Kids 2.iso
Spy Kids 3.iso
Spy Kids 4.iso
The Croods\The Croods.mkv


H:\Movies 2 (HD movies)\
Much Ado About Nothing.mkv
The Avengers.mkv
Etc

I don't care what my folders' contents look like (except the Kids folder), as the only thing my family can see using MediaPortal is what the plugins display.

Emph

 

[jrn]

Thanks a bunch. I pretty much copied your folder structure and plugin usage. It works like a charm! Lovin' it

 

[axlt2002]

Another possibility, the one that I use, is to organize movies by catagories in Moving Pictures (I have created the Cortoon one) and for the ones that are "not" Cartoons I have set a password to access.

Cheers!

 

[emphatic]

Another possibility, the one that I use, is to organize movies by catagories in Moving Pictures (I have created the Cortoon one) and for the ones that are "not" Cartoons I have set a password to access.

Cheers!

Yes, this is the "right" way if you only have feature films. I have a mix of TV-shows and Movies for my kids in the same directory, as they prefer this. Of course, I've made a category in Moving Pictures for them as well as a category in MP TV-Series for Spongebob, Tintin etc, but they never use this nor do their mom.

Emph

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.

Can I keep using boxee box's naming conventions or do I need to follow a new pattern?

After a short look I'm pretty sure you can leave all as it is now. You nly need to adjust the naming scheme inside TVSeries config unter "Parsing Expressions". When you need help to find the expressions to fit your (or boxees) scheme feel free to ask for help in TVSeries forum...

Will MediaPortal find newly added movies and/or TV shows on its own or do I have to tell the plugins to rescan every time I add a new movie/show?

You can choose if you want Mp to do so or not. It's completely up to you. I prefer to trigger this manually but it's possible to have this automatic also...