Proposal/Discussion: How to add many movies which are on dvds? (1 Viewer)

[chefkoch]

Hi

Not sure if there is already a solutions for this, but i want to describe a usw case of mine anyway.

Let's take this post as a open discussion and not a closed/fixed feature request.
After getting some feedback and working out what is needed, what not and how it could be done, a new ticket in the issue tracker could be added.

Use case
I am having a few movies on my hdd, but more movies are on dvds.
Not sure if it's already possible to import data if a dvd inserted.
Even if, it much work to insert each dvd.

Idea for an implementation:
So what do i have in my mind?
It would be great if it would be possible to set up a directory, which contains movie definition files.

• There are different ways to define a collection of "Multi-Movie-Discs", DVDs, BlueRays, HD-DVD,.........
  • One definition file per movie.
    Each definition file is a kind of a simple text file (maybe xml)
  • One file which can contain many movie entries.
    It could be a comma separated file (*.csv), to be easily editable.
    Maybe it is also possible to create multiple CSV-Files, to seperate the movie by Genre.
    Example: I would separate the dvds containing fairy tales from snowboard videos, and those from "hollywood productions".
• A movie definition could contain the following infos:
  • MovieTitle: simple title for the movie, in db itself this will be overwritten, after an online update.
  • IMDB-ID: the imdb id for this movie, useful for fast import of movie details, for many other info resources, too, not only imdb.
  • TheMovieDB-ID: the movie-db id, useful for fast import, not every movie has an imdb id or is available on imdb. Since TMDB is user-driven it is possible to add the movie to the db, if it does not exists, yet.
  • A short description for the media label. Think about that you have numbered you discs from: Disc 1 to Disc 10.
    It is possible to show the message "You want to start MovieTitleXY. Please insert media "Disc 10". " in MediaPortal.

That's the stuff I think would be enough. Maybe for others more could be useful, but more the use cases in my mind these are enough.

And what is the benefit? Why is it useful?
This way it is possible to

1. create the files by hand once and
2. add the path to the directory in MovingPictures configuration.

Not more, the other tasks are done by the plugin.
It reads the files, handles the movie entries like dvds, which are not available at the moment and imports all necessary information for those.

This way it is easy to backup the definition and rebuild the moving pictures from the scratch if needed after a corrupt db or installing the system from the scratch.

Questions:
Are there any points against that proposal?
Which information should that definition file contain?
Which file format should it be?
Should those folders added as import paths?
If so, is there yet another switch (like the "removable") needed or is it a special "movie file" (so no config switch for import path needed)?


kind regards
chefkoch

 

[mojo_lo]

i think something like this would be an excellent feature.

but would we even need separate 'definition files'?

why not just a batch import from a .CSV file? A single CSV would would be even easier to create and manage for those of us who use disk cataloging software such as Whereisit.

fields for the CSV could simply be:

"TITLE", "MEDIA LABEL", "IMDB-ID", "THEMOVIEDB-ID"

If you fill in the IMDB-ID and THEMOVIEDB-ID fields for an entry, then MP could simply download the exact data for those ID's.

If you leave the IMDB-ID and THEMOVIEDB-ID fields blank, then MP would look up the TITLE online, just as if it were doing a regular import.

(What would be even better is if MP could create separate XML files of the detailed information it downloads for each movie - but perhaps this is another topic in itself.)

 

[chefkoch]

Hi mojo_lo

Thx for your input. Your idea is another to implement it, which I like more the more I think about it


Yet another thing:
What about the relative path to the video file so that the correct one is automatically started:

for VideoDVDs it could be: VIDEO_TS\VIDEO_TS.VOB
VideoDVDs are ignored and automatically detected as those and started.
for VideoFiles it could be useful choose the correct on from all files on that disc.

But maybe this is just too much to maintain for a simple and easy solution, because the filename, also could be parsed and then the best match can be started.

So the user only has to take care that the filenames, are not too cryptic.


chefkoch

 

[mojo_lo]

i'm sure it'd be easy enough to specify a filename when your files are all in the DVD's root directory. When you try to play "The Godfather", MP can pop up, asking you to insert "Disc 10". Once inserted, it can automatically play "The Godfather.mkv".

so the fields for the CSV could simply be:

"TITLE", "MEDIA LABEL", "FILENAME", "IMDB-ID", "THEMOVIEDB-ID"

probably not much harder to implement relative paths on the DVD (as you suggested) if you have several folders containing separate movies. You can then have:

"TITLE", "MEDIA LABEL", "LOCATION", "IMDB-ID", "THEMOVIEDB-ID"

Location could point to "\The Godfather\The Godfather.mkv"

 

[armandp]

I'm about to commit some major importer changes to the moving pictures SVN. This includes the ability to detect retail dvd's by disc id (when you insert them) and add them to the movie list. I know this would not solve the problem of adding a list of movies that are offline (because the discid is calculated from the dvd content). It does however make multiple same import paths possible as long as the discid/drive serial differ (which should be true for different disks) so Moving Pictures can respond correctly. This also includes archive dvd's that contain multiple movies.

To give the user an extra hint of what to insert when the request movie is online there will be an archive/label field added to each file that the user can fill in or can be automatically filled using the disc's volume name. This field will be presented as the user's identification when Moving Pictures prompts for an media that is offline.

The change makes flagging something removable obsolete because it the program can now distinct between removed and offline automatically. This flag will disappear from the Import Path configuration. It will also affect some of that is discussed here and might complicate it a little (how weird this may sound) - i do however support not forcing the user to disc swap his whole collection to fill the database but the serial (disk) and discid (dvd movie) can only be retrieved from the actual disk (serial) or video_ts folder (discid) .

Note that DiskId only works for retail dvd's or 1:1 backups, all customized stuff can't be identified with discid and there such an import method like this would come in handy. Serials work with all disc's and it's primarily used as part of the online/offline detection.

chefkoch:
I will be releasing a test dll to select people when i'm done with the import changes and i believe you are a perfect candidate.. if you like to test it out let me know

 

[ddlooping]

Hi all.

chefkoch: I like your idea very much, but I thought it was what the NFO Parser was meant to do?
If it is I can't get it to work unfortunately.

armandp: Couldn't this be accomplished using definition files, as chefkoch suggested?
I understand the process wouldn't be as automated and would require more "work" from the user, but it would work with any type of disc, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.

 

[chefkoch]

@Chefkoch:
I will be releasing a test dll to select people when i'm done with the import changes and i believe you are a perfect candidate.. if you like to test it out let me know

I would appreciate it, even if I am being busy with studies these weeks, I would give it a try and report back my experiences.

@chefkoch: I like your idea very much, but I thought it was what the NFO Parser was meant to do?
If it is I can't get it to work unfortunately.

I did not try the nfo parser yet, but if I understood it correct, it is for parsing the imdb id within the nfo and proceeded if the corresponding movie file is in the same directory.

 

[ddlooping]

I did not try the nfo parser yet, but if I understood it correct, it is for parsing the imdb id within the nfo and proceeded if the corresponding movie file is in the same directory.

Oh ok, thanks.

I guess a simple solution, in terms of the GUI anyway, would be to add the option:
"Process orphan NFO files: true/false".

 

[armandp]

NFO parser currently only picks IMDB's out of text-based files indeed. But this whole concept (topic) fits perfectly in the recently introduced (in svn) signature builder system. btw, I just committed the big importer changes which introduces disk serials and volume names (Media Labels).

As it looks now support for quickly adding offline media (like dvd's blurays) only needs 3 columns:

<Import Path>, <Media Label>, <IMDBID>

The disk serial and/or disc id could be grabbed on first playback. Before first playback these offline imported media will miss out the special available/offline checks (but this is no big problem really) .

 

[Kingmob]

I'd like to add that it would be great if there is at least some way of converting an ANT database to this new format. Since i already have a list of my dvd's in ANT for the my films plugin. I guess all we need is some converter program that can read ANT XML files. I've written code like that in C++, i imagine it is even easier in C#?

Good initiative! I think this feature is much needed.