Comments on: Automatic Cover Art and Movie Details for Ripped DVDs in Windows Media Center

By: Deck Hazen

Deck Hazen — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 09:57:12 +0000

Yikes! – the board ate my XML markups!

#?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″ standalone=”yes”?>
#Item>
#ID>1#/ID>
#EpisodeID>360423#/EpisodeID>
#EpisodeName>Episode1Name#/EpisodeName>
#EpisodeNumber>1#/EpisodeNumber>
#FirstAired>2008-09-28#/FirstAired>
#Overview>DCI Jane Tennison (played by Mirren) gets her first chance to lead a major murder investigation while confronting DS Bill Otley (Tom Bell) and other sexist officers on her squad who attempt to get her replaced. The case involves the rape-murder of a young woman. She eventually gets the suspect, George Marlow (John Bowe), and earns the respect of her team.#/Overview>
#DVD_chapter>#/DVD_chapter>
#DVD_discid>#/DVD_discid>
#DVD_episodenumber>1.0#/DVD_episodenumber>
#DVD_season>#/DVD_season>
#Director>Cyndi Tang#/Director>
#GuestStars>Kat Foster|Meredith Baxter|Alex Breckenridge#/GuestStars>
#IMDB_ID>#/IMDB_ID>
#Language>en#/Language>
#ProductionCode>6ACX03#/ProductionCode>
#Rating>6.5#/Rating>
#Writer>Mike Henry#/Writer>
#SeasonNumber>1#/SeasonNumber>
#absolute_number>#/absolute_number>
#seasonid>32348#/seasonid>
#seriesid>75978#/seriesid>
#filename>/Picture1Name.jpg#/filename>
#/Item>

By: Deck Hazen

Deck Hazen — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 09:55:02 +0000

Well, as it turns out, I’ve just stumbled on a possible solution.

A Season folder is created (must be named “Season N” where N is a number. Each episode gets ripped into its own folder in the Season N folder and given it’s own episode name.

In addition, a folder named “metadata” is also included in the “Season N” folder, and within that folder are the xml files for each episode. Also included are the episode photos which are referenced in the XML files.

Here’s a bit of the structure:

File Structure:

TVshows\ShowName\Season N\Episode1Name\VIDEO_TS
TVshows\ShowName\Season N\Episode2Name\VIDEO_TS
TVshows\ShowName\Season N\Episode3Name\VIDEO_TS
TVshows\ShowName\Season N\Episode4Name\VIDEO_TS

TVshows\ShowName\Season N\metadata
TVshows\ShowName\Season N\metadata\Episode1Name.xml
TVshows\ShowName\Season N\metadata\Episode2Name.xml
TVshows\ShowName\Season N\metadata\Episode3Name.xml
TVshows\ShowName\Season N\metadata\Episode4Name.xml

TVshows\ShowName\Season N\metadata\Picture1Name.jpg
TVshows\ShowName\Season N\metadata\Picture2Name.jpg
TVshows\ShowName\Season N\metadata\Picture3Name.jpg
TVshows\ShowName\Season N\metadata\Picture4Name.jpg

Contents of Episode1Name.xml:

1
360423
Episode1Name
1
2008-09-28
DCI Jane Tennison (played by Mirren) gets her first chance to lead a major murder investigation while confronting DS Bill Otley (Tom Bell) and other sexist officers on her squad who attempt to get her replaced. The case involves the rape-murder of a young woman. She eventually gets the suspect, George Marlow (John Bowe), and earns the respect of her team.

1.0

Cyndi Tang
Kat Foster|Meredith Baxter|Alex Breckenridge

en
6ACX03
6.5
Mike Henry
1

32348
75978
/Picture1Name.jpg

The result of all this in mediabrowser (default theme) is a “Season” page where hovering over each season provides a “season photo” and a list of the episodes in that season.

Drilling down on a single season shows a list of episodes, hovering over each then provides (at this point) an episode photo (“Picture1Name.jpg”) and the episode description taken from the “overview” field of “Episode1Name.xml”

I haven’t discovered which fields in the xml files end up where, but I’m working on it and hope to have something to post, with screen shots, in a few days.

– Deck

By: Carlton Bale

Carlton Bale — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 08:39:33 +0000

That’s the one area I’ve found to be lacking. TV Shows that are stored as individual episodes work pretty well, but when backing up a disc containing multiple episodes, there is no good way to view episode-level details. My approach, which isn’t great, is to store discs in a /SeriesName/Season#/Disc#/ folder format. Then play the disc to see which episodes it contains.

MyMovies Collection Management can store episode-specific metadata for each disc, but the Media Center User Interface never implemented a way to view or launch the episode-specific information.

There is a paid TV Show application (can’t find the name right now) for browsing shows (rather than movies), but I think it is for file-for-each-episode, not episodes-on-disk.

Sorry I couldn’t offer a better solution. Hopefully something better exists and I just haven’t found it.

By: Deck Hazen

Deck Hazen — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 08:14:27 +0000

Perhaps its my remoteness from the heartland, but I found the whole experience very frustrating — in truth I use several other programs now to grab and manage metadata. At the moment I’m attempting to build a good library of TV series episodes using the “metadata” folder approach (as my episodes are ripped in VIDEO_TS format) – got any tips for me?

thanks for the reply.

– Deck (New Zealand)

By: Carlton Bale

Carlton Bale — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 08:05:58 +0000

Deck,

I’ve submitted many,many titles to MyMovies with no issues. Both corrections to existing titles and completely new titles as well. Sorry to hear you had problems.

I’ve used MetaBrowser some. Maybe it’s just because I’m used to MyMovies, but it didn’t seem to have the same initial accuracy. I also like the Windows Home Server integration of MyMovies, and the ability to automate tasks.

It’s great that there are several good alternatives now; much better than a couple of years ago.

By: Deck Hazen

Deck Hazen — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 07:21:23 +0000

Have you ever tried to submit a new DVD to MyMovies? I’ve tried 3 times and failed 3 times. I’ve found metabrowser to be a vastly superior product.

By: Allan

Allan — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:39:56 +0000

PS: if you dont find the DVD ID, on dvdxml.com, just go on dvd cover, save the pic as “folder”.jpg in the same directory of the movie.

By: Carlton Bale

Carlton Bale — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:57:23 +0000

Yes, it does.

By: GeoBlank

GeoBlank — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 05:15:10 +0000

How Does YAMMM fit into this conversation? Is this thread old and pre-dates YAMMM?

Thanks

By: Gary Morris

Gary Morris — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 23:52:11 +0000

After much struggles I finally figured it out.

I started using the ImagesByName stuff and realized that the save location for it was…

C:\ProgramData\MideaBrowser\ImagesByName\%artist%\folder.jpg

And that fixed my problem. I also located a zip file with over 4,000 actors photos in it and I downloaded it and put them in the ImagesByName folder and wow, what a great start!

So, now I am using Album Art Downloader, MyMovies 2, and Media Browser, ripping my movies with AnyDVD and am well on my way…with thanks to people like yourself.

Keep up the good work, it is appreciated.

By: Carlton Bale

Carlton Bale — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:56:38 +0000

I think the actor pictures only show if they are present in IMDb.com. Many actors are missing. MyMovies downloads everything and stores it in its own database. It also adds XML and jpeg images to the folder in which each movie is stored; be sure you have each movie in its own folder. I’m not sure of the capabilities of the different clients. You can use the MyMovies connector and the Video Library within Media Center, or the MyMovies client in Media Center, or Media Browser within Media Center. Each has their advantages and disadvantages.

By: Gary Morris

Gary Morris — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 17:28:58 +0000

Oops, I just realized that I mis-spoke about what it doesn’t do.

It doesn’t download the pictures of the Actors, and Album Art Downloader works sometimes for this, but not always.

I think what has happened is the defaul folder to where the pictures are being saved has changed and I have forgotten where it should be for WMC to find them.

Do you happen to know the “Save Image location?”

By: Carlton Bale

Carlton Bale — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 12:21:26 +0000

Gary, the available data available depends upon what is submitted to the MyMovies server by other users using the Collection Management tool. If the profile is complete (100%), you’ll have all of the actors, back and front covers, directors, etc. If something is missing, go into Collection Management, edit the movie, and submit the missing data to the server. http://www.mymovies.dk/

By: Gary Morris

Gary Morris — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 11:20:50 +0000

Carlton,

Thanks for the headsup on MyMovies Client, it is fantastic!

However, it does not download the actors, and Album Art Downloader works sometimes and not others.

When you say “all of the metadata to be sent” do you mean the actors as well?

Thanks,

Gary.

By: Carlton Bale

Carlton Bale — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 11:37:07 +0000

Gary, I recommend using the MyMovies client. The Collection Management application is fantastic and the software is free. And it now has a “connector” that allows for all of the metadata to be sent to the Windows DVD Library, as well as placing cover art and XML files in the directories containing the movies.

By: Gary Morris

Gary Morris — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 04:04:09 +0000

Do you know of a current link that I could use to download “DVD Library Manager”?

All of the links to this great looking “free” program seem to be broken.

Thanks for any help.

Gary.

By: Scott Mauvais

Scott Mauvais — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 20:17:35 +0000

Or you could just use the existing database at http://dvdxml.com/

By: Chip

Chip — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:34:05 +0000

We started a new website to generate DVDID.XML files. We don't have a huge database yet, but every dvdid uploaded helps. Website is: http://mcedvd.com

By: Eric A. Duncan

Eric A. Duncan — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:58:10 +0000

My Movies has been working hard on WHS integration, and doing so their background monitoring service actually auto-populates this information as well, which is quite nice.

If only I can get WMC to play my MKV files (that are indexed like DVDs, and show up in my DVD Library). They play in when going directly to them in the Videos section – but I want them in my DVD Library.

By: Carlton Bale

Carlton Bale — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:51:35 +0000

Chris Key contacted me to let me know of an open source program he created to read DVDIDs. The executable and source code are available here:

http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~cjk32/dvdid/