[eskro]

which build u got? the ($678) one?

and, what hints exactly?

[Alturick]

Eskro,

I went with the $678 build, after looking at reviews and benchmarks for all the components, I think that one will last me for a long time. Thanks again for the suggestion!

As for the hints I was looking for, and I know this is not the right forum, I have a decently large media collection, with naming conventions that do not match the xbmc expectation. Is there any less than fully manual way to start getting the names and directory structure for library mode?

Currently its something along the lines of

Movies
share//Movies/Box Sets/Movie Basename - Box Set/Movie 01
share//Movies/Box Sets/Movie Basename - Box Set/Movie 02
share//Movies/Movie1Name.xvid
share//Movies/Movie2Name.avi
share//Movies/Movie3Name.mp4

TV Shows
share//TV Shows/Show Name/Season 01/Show s01e01.avi
share//TV Shows/Show Name/Season 02/Show s02e01.avi
share//TV Shows/Show Name/Season 02/Show s02e02.avi

Music
AnotherShare//Music/Artist/Album/01 TrackName
AnotherShare//Music/Artist/Album/02 TrackName
AnotherShare//Music/Artist/Album/03 TrackName


So its relatively well organized for finding things manually (the way I had to do it), but xbmc scrapers don't like it much

[eskro]

this is the way i do it...

Movies
share//Movies/Star Wars - The Phantom Menace (1999)/Star Wars - The Phantom Menace (1999).mkv

TV Shows
share//TV Shows/X-MEN - The Animated Series/Season 01/S01E01.EpisodeName.mkv
share//TV Shows/X-MEN - The Animated Series/Season 02/S02E01.EpisodeName.mkv

Music
** music is easy because no matter with how you organize it,
XBMC uses ID3 tags to organize the music in the library...
so make sure all your MP3's are tagged correctly.... thats all....

[Waveknight]

A big tip for organising folder names is to use both thetvdb and themoviedb as gospel. If you've got some slightly uncommon TV show in your library, look it up first and make sure you name it correctly. For example, some shows use years instead of seasons (common for cartoons). In this case, you might end up with "Season 1949", etc.

This will make scraping your collection that much easier, and avoid headaches later on

[Alturick]

Thanks for the advice guys... guess I'll be leaning on Bulk Renamer to do the heavy lifting.

I was hoping there was some tool out there that would take the bare names, do a little bit of research on some of the online db's and fill in a lot of the data that I don't have (eg: years) that will make scraping more accurate.

[eskro]

yes there is, here --> http://www.therenamer.com/screenshots.html

i tried using TVSHOWS and it worked!!

[Alturick]

You are the man Esko, I was using MediaRenamer, which also seems to do a decent job just FYI.

But, I think this one is looking promising too!