newbie ...best practices..with Movie data? (1 Viewer)

[moviebug]

Hi
I have just installed Media Portal 1.1.0
with StreamedMP
and Moving Pictures

I have about 100 titles installed on a separate drive under a Movie folder
and scanned...by Moving Pictures
I have a few issues and questions...please bear with me if I ask dumb ones
its been a fast learning curve..setting up this new HTPC

In Media Portal setup...
Moving Pictures...
Movie Manager
When you dont get information from the import movie scan
is it okay to just manually input information under Movie Manager?

and is it best practice to setup each movie with its own folder???

Can I put coverart for a title within a movies individual folder?
This is assuming it hasnt found any when it scanned..
or is it better to put it somewhere else??

Does the Movie manager/scan area...
take notice of the title of the folder...or the title attached to the actual movie...or both??

If you delete a movie title under Movie Manager ..
does it just alter/update the Movie database in Moving pictures?
or does it actually delete the movie itself of the hard drive?

Is this the best way to delete incorrect movie titles?
ie ones that have scanned incorrectly or
a title I just want to remove??

I assume everyone just puts all their movies under a Movies folder
which is what I have done??

What happens if you want to put them into different genres?
I was thinking for the kids sake to have a category named kids
so they dont start watching some Horror film by mistake.

Do I do this in Moving Pictures?

 

[rekenaar]

Hi there

I can help with a few of your questions.
Are you using the latest beta version 1 or the stable 0.75?

In latest beta release, you can filter movies by category and genre as well as put a parental control on the horrors.

In my opinion, better to use a subfolder per movie, then you can store a folder.jpg (coverart) and a backdrop.jpg (fanart) in the same folder. Activate the setting to use it in the importer tab. See this post for a script that can help you move movies to subfolders.

There is also a setting to prefer folder name for matching.

You can also use a nfo or txt file to store the imdb movie number to assist with matching.

Not sure about the delete. Make a backup of one movie and test it. Let us know the result.

Anyone else with more answers?

 

[kiwijunglist]

As above

store each movie in it's own subfolder
folder name should be \movies\Batman Begins (2009)\moviefile.avi
if you use that method it should be fine.
if you don't get a match, check imdb for the correct movie title
you can put a .txt file in the folder and copy paste the imdb url into that txt file, then moving pictures will pickup the movie correctly.

 

[photopeter]

And if you also put a "backdrop.jpg" and a "folder.jpg" in this movie- folder moving pictures will have a backdrop and a cover even if your internet connection is "Gone with the wind" or there's nothing online at "normal" sources like impawards.com or themoviedb.com as happened to not so well known movies.

My structure looks like:
"...Movies\HD-Movies\Casablanca\Casablanca.mkv," "...Movies\HD-Movies\Casablanca\imdbid.txt" "...Movies\HD-Movies\Casablanca\backdrop.jpg" "...Movies\HD-Movies\Casablanca\folder.jpg" with imdbid.txt is a simple textfile only includes the imdb tt number (here "tt0034583") in it.

Or: "...Movies\SD-Movies\American Graffiti\American Graffiti.mkv," "...Movies\SD-Movies\American Graffiti\imdbid.txt" "...Movies\SD-Movies\American Graffiti\backdrop.jpg" "...Movies\SD-Movies\American Graffiti\folder.jpg" if it's no HD Movie (of course).

If i find the time I will write a scrapper script for "offline data sources" parsing a .xml file with all related infos in instead of searching imdb.com so I will be totally independent from internet sources on a new, fresh install.

 

[moviebug]

Hi Guys
Thanks for quick replies!
I am using ...MediaPortal 1.1.0_BETA-1_rev23491

I assume I cant just install the newer version(that has filter for genre and category) over the top?
..would it ruin all my work in Moving pictures and MPTv series?

thats good to know about using an NFO file with the IMDB no inside it...
is there a format you have to use for that?
answer....Okay so just put the IMDB no inside...gotya

I ended up for a few of them ..get a cover art jpg and
including inside the movie folder...and then pointing the cover art bit to that jpg

I did just delete and it didnt remove the actual movie...so that was good!

From now on I know how to set any new ones...so not as much work each time

 

[rekenaar]

I am using ...MediaPortal 1.1.0_BETA-1_rev23491

I assume I cant just install the newer version(that has filter for genre and category) over the top?
..would it ruin all my work in Moving pictures and MPTv series?

The upgrade you want for filter is Moving Pictures, not MediaPortal.
The install program will make a backup of your moving pictures database, so it should be safe.

 

[moviebug]

Yeah I installed StreamedMP ...which came with
MovingPictures v0.7.5.681

and the MP TVseries v2.3.3517.1

So how stable is the new 1.0 version of Moving pictures?
sounds good with new features!
..just worried about crashing..or causing issues

Not having done this before...
you say installing the new version backs up the database for Moving pictures...
so do I have to take some old database file and reload it somewhere in the new one??
...ie a directory??

 

[rekenaar]

For me, stable enough.
See other opinions here.

You will only need the backup if you are unhappy with the upgrade and want to revert to old version.
The upgrade process is totally automated.

 

[moviebug]

oh... okay
so when it installs it backs up the old database..

so I just run an exe and it knows what to do?
...well that sounds okay
and those features you mentioned would be very useful
especially when I get a few hundred films loaded
(only have 105 loaded so far)

I assume it takes categories from the genres shown in Moving Pictures ..Movie Manager ..movie details area??

and where does the parental control part occur?

 

[fforde]

I assume it takes categories from the genres shown in Moving Pictures ..Movie Manager ..movie details area??

and where does the parental control part occur?

One of the default categories is based on the genres of movies in your database. It's customizable though so you could set it up anyway you like really.

As for parental controls, this is turned off by default. In the config you need to set a PIN code and enable the feature. You then must define which movies are okay for the kids (our parental controls use a white list strategy). When defining your white list of kid friendly movies you can explicitly pick films or add rules suck as "all movies rated G or PG".