[akhlaq768]

I've made a big mess with my first installation of xbmc, so i'm starting fresh again... but this time getting the directories correct in the first instance...

Before scrapping the movie folder, what is the correct way in storing the movies?

E:\Movies\.....

Should the movies be placed within folders... so

E:\Movies\Toy Story\Toy Story.xvid

With films which contains 2 split, how should they be named?

Should I include the date of release of the film?

Should I include .nfo files within the individual movie folder?

Hope you guys can help me out, don't want to make the same mistake as before...

The issues I had previously was that I had duplicate movie covers in my library... this was caused because the movie was split (in 2 parts)... And the second major issue was that the library was picking up wrong cover arts for films...

[rocketpants]

E:\Movies\Toy Story\Toy Story.xvid

It is not necessary to do this but it is cleaner

With films which contains 2 split, how should they be named?

Look up movie stacking in the wiki. In summary you can add an extension to the files names (e.g. toy Story.cd1.xvid, Toy Story.cd2.xvid) and XBMC will treat the multi part files as one video. You just need to name the extension correctly.

Should I include the date of release of the film?

It helps with scraping of the movie if you have the year such as E:\Movies\Toy Story (2001)\Toy Story.xvid

Should I include .nfo files within the individual movie folder?

It is not necessary to do this but it can help if you have a stubborn file that wont scrape normally or if you want to use custom information. Search the XBMC wiki for details on how to format the .nfo file or use an external program like Ember to create XBMC compliant .nfo

Hope that helps

[akhlaq768]

with over 1000 films, is there a program that will create folders and add the correct extentions to split movies

[>>X<<]

Your two part movies must already be named in some way to define the two parts so how are they named as XBMC already supports a few names plus you can add more ? give us an example using the full file name

Ember Media Manager can sort files into folders or there's a windows app I think its called filetofolder

You could use flexible renamer to change the tags but you shouldn't really have to if they already have some kind of tag

Really everything else you asked about in the first post is optional if XBMC chose the wrong version of a movie then refreshing that movie and choosing the correct one sounds a lot easier than changing your whole set up having said that organising your library is never a bad thing and only has to be done once

[akhlaq768]

renaming the correct cover to the movies is fine, takes a bit of time... but bareable...

but the problem i have a number of films are split...

for example

300 - cd1.xvid
300 - cd2.xvid
300 - cd3.xvid

This film has been split to 3 files because of the quality of the video...

but this is scrapped, i get 3 cover arts for a single film, some how xbmc doesn't combined all 3 file type to a single cover

[>>X<<]

That should work and so I just tried that exact naming and it worked perfectly for me ?

cd1 cd2 cd3 aren't in separate folders are they if there not I cant understand why its not working ?

[akhlaq768]

definately not in seperate folders, they all in one single folder currently,

E:\Movies\300 - cd1.xvid
E:\Movies\300 - cd2.xvid
E:\Movies\300 - cd3.xvid
E:\Movies\A Better Tomorrow.xvid

I think my xbmc, is not removing them and putting them back in as a single film

[>>X<<]

I think my xbmc, is not removing them and putting them back in as a single film

I have no idea what you mean by that XBMC wont remove anything

If you really want to start from scratch go into your userdata folder and delete the "Thumbnail" and "Database" folder and "sources.xml" then its like starting from scratch but be warned it will delete everything including music

Then if I was you I would add a source just for testing containing only

300 - cd1.xvid
300 - cd2.xvid
300 - cd3.xvid

Then Scan them in and see if it works if it doesn't then I'm out of ideas because it should work :confused2:

Turn on Debug before you scan then post the log to pastebin.com put the link to it on here then we can see if it sees them as a stack

[akhlaq768]

good idea of just testing it with that film only...

firstly how do i turn on the debug log mode?

[>>X<<]

firstly how do i turn on the debug log mode?

Settings > System > Debugging, "Enable debug logging"

[outatouch0]

You could also try 300.(2006).cd1.xvid etc.

I remember reading something somewhere about anything after a "-" being ignored. No idea where I read it, what exactly it pertained to, or if this was a setting that could be enabled/disabled or what it was.
Even though I don't remember the specifics, I avoid using dashes "-" now just in case.

Also, I have read several posts just like in this thread that cd1, part1, etc. works just fine for people. However this did not work for me. After trying a couple of variations I simply gave up and joined the files. Mkv Merge works great. I also use another .avi file joiner of which I can't remember the name (have to wait until I get home). Anyway, not all .avi joiners are created equally. I tried four of them and the other 3 were terrible and slow. Maybe it is called Fast Avi Joiner?

EDIT: Program is called "Fast AVI MPEG Joiner" and it does the job quickly

[>>X<<]

I tested his exact naming convention and it worked perfectly as I said previously

If you want to join avi's then VirtualDubMod does this fine it will do it in minutes or seconds sounds like you were encoding them again if it took a long time

[isamu.dragon]

1st. I'd recommend that you name your files thus.

Code:

<movie name> (Year).<source>.<ext>

< source> means that you put DVD, BLURAY or what medium that the rip came from.
<ext> means the file extension like AVI, MKV, or M4V.

For multipart movies try this scheme

Code:

<Movie name> (Year).<source>.Part <#>.<ext>

<#> means the part number

For your folder naming sceme (and I Doo recommend that you place each movie in it's own folder)

Code:

<movie name> (Year)

Pretty simple huh?

[&gt;&gt;X&lt;&lt;]

Yeah it wouldn't take long only over a 1000 movies

I personally think scanning your movies as they are and then refreshing those that have the wrong movie wrong year is the easier route considering the amount of movies its not like there are hundreds of movies with the same title and at end of the day the result will be exactly the same with the least amount of effort and you can always export the nfo's so you only ever have to do it once

You could always start a new source and use any methods that have been mention here, a new source wouldn't be a bad idea anyway as you could exclude those 1000 movies from scanning which will make adding movies much faster

I personally prefer each movie in its own folder but I wouldn't bother if I had a thousand to move and rename

[outatouch0]

I tested his exact naming convention and it worked perfectly as I said previously

If you want to join avi's then VirtualDubMod does this fine it will do it in minutes or seconds sounds like you were encoding them again if it took a long time

Yea X I knew you multiparts work for you from prior threads. You inspired me to keep trying - until I gave up
I wonder if some of the reported variations in functionality is due to different skins? Another example is trailers. I've read posts tdaoy that say they don't work yet mine work just fine?

Exactly on the reencoding! Why do they call the program a "joiner" when it wants to do all that extra stuff I never asked for?