Where the DVD's of TV-shows belong.
#1
Hi fellow media center users

Maybe this have been discussed earlier, I have only one month of experience with this, but I have participated in adding data to the moviedb and tvdb and because of that wants to know the opinions and or solutions from you guys.

The thing is that I have a lot of DVD's/iso's which primarily is movies, but also a lot of TV-shows. In xbmc there is a big difference to those. TV shows need to be added as one file per episode, which conflicts with the DVD's that often does not even contain episodes that is comparable with a season of a TV-show.

Other people like me does not want to have the iso's replaced by the separated episode files. What happens is that the moviedb is filled up with data about the DVD's of TV-shows even though they maybe cannot be considered as movies. Would it be better that the tvdb were able to contain data about both the seasons and the DVD's of the TV-shows and xbmc were able to change its view accordingly?

Or maybe a DVD/blu-ray db is needed instead even though it could possibly make the moviedb somewhat obsolete.

I guess the bottom-line question is where the DVD's of TV-shows should belong, or feel free to propose completely different ideas or maybe you don't even consider it a problem...
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#2
I'm not sure what you're asking here. Are you looking for file organization or database specific information. I can't speak to database but I can talk about file organization.

Basically in order for the media library to differentiate between tv shows and movies, they need to be in separate folder trees. The average setup will look similar to this:
Code:
Media
  --Movies
    --Movie 1
    --Movie x
  --TV Shows
    --Series 1
      --Season 1
    --Series x
      --Season 1
  --Music
  --Pictures

If you don't want to rip your tv show dvds to individual files make sure there is a good reason for it. There is functionality that will allow xbmc to bookmark episodes within a dvd iso, but you will still have a per episode entry into the Library database. If you're worried about the size of the database, put your fears to rest, many users here have massive collections containing both Movies and TV shows and the library databases handle them just fine.

That being said, based on your post it seems to me that you're trying to store TV Shows and Movies within the same directory and have them all show up in the movies library. If that's the case you need to separate them, it will make things much easier for you and xbmc to manage.
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#3
I have some avi tv-shows in a tv directory (works nicely) together with one dvd/iso tv-show (does not work, can't play it, episodes or iso file does not show) and then several directories for mkv, dvd, & avi movies. But you are right still the rest of my tv-show dvd's is within the dvd directory, because they simply work there and some scrapes nicely beacause people apparently does the same and adds the tv-show dvd's to themoviedb.org. There seems to be a vague definition of tv or movie out there.

But I did not know about the episode bookmarking within dvd's that you mention. Is this functionality able to make me select an episode in any season, just like I am used to with my avi's, and then start the correct dvd and play that episode right away? Also when the dvd's order of episodes does not match the seasons at all?

And I must admit that even though this is possible, fans of a tv-show would still think it were cool to have the dvd's shown in the mediacenter with all the dvd fanart and other dvd info.
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#4
Why do people like DVD's i've never liked them...much less when XBMC acts as a giant DVD

The DVD experience is lost on me...let go of the past individual episodes is the future...

my tuppence worth Smile
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#5
That's an opinion, keep it comming!

Maybe the answer to that question, why do people like dvd's, comes with the same reason that the mkv container exists or maybe it is the fact that some people likes to own the tangible object that the dvd is, with all the artwork that comes with it, even if it's only kind of virtual within the gui of a mediacenter.
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#6
You could try giving your DVD/ISO files the naming convention used for multi-episode video files:

foo.s01e01-02-03-04.*
or
foo_[s01]_[e01-02-03-04]_*
or
foo.1x01.1x02.1x03.1x04.*

you'll need to figure out the episode numbers for each DVD/ISO on your own but a season guide should do the trick. Also, it may get tricky when the DVD episode order is different from the original broadcast order, but you should be able to compensate.
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#7
Thanks nice way to deal with it, I will use it, allthough it's kind of a symptomatic solution. I can at least make shure that the correct tv data gets added to the tvdb, rather than the moviedb. But just maybe it is more work than just accepting blackadaberry's opinion and create episode files.

In a thread at the tvdb about the same topic I were told that a future version of the tvdb would have the capability of dvd info and I guess in an implementation that has less redundant data than the present dvd info solution, where the dvd number is added at every episode of that dvd.

So far xbmc shows seasons as dvd's with cover art on them (at least the transparency theme does) this cover art/posters from the tvdb are often the dvd covers of dvd's which content does not match the seasons at all. I am looking forward to the new version of the tvdb and the following update of xbmc.
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