[steve1977]

I don't want to be ban but, Media Companion is nice and they have already issue a patch for IMDB. So I guess I will use that for movies until EMM is fixed.

Thanks. How would you compare Media Companion with Media Elch? Appears that MC already has some form of trailer support, while Media Elch appears to have a better GUI and more active development?

[olympia]

Is XBMC itself really that bad at scraping that you don't even consider to use it even in case of major problems?

[Randall Lind]

I like XBMC but it doesn't save the nfo in my folders or am I doing it wrong? I don't want to have to re scrape movies if I need to re install XBMC. If I can make XBMC save all the scraping info to each movie folder I am all for it.

I didn't care for Media Elch was too slow for me. EMM in my eyes still is the best but Media Companion is just as fast and is a good replacement. There is a bit of a learning curve however once you follower the help guide for a bit it becomes just as easy as EMM.

[isamu.dragon]

I like XBMC but it doesn't save the nfo in my folders or am I doing it wrong? I don't want to have to re scrape movies if I need to re install XBMC. If I can make XBMC save all the scraping info to each movie folder I am all for it.

I didn't care for Media Elch was too slow for me. EMM in my eyes still is the best but Media Companion is just as fast and is a good replacement. There is a bit of a learning curve however once you follower the help guide for a bit it becomes just as easy as EMM.

Once you have the items scraped in XBMC, all you do is export library as seperate

[olympia]

I like XBMC but it doesn't save the nfo in my folders or am I doing it wrong? I don't want to have to re scrape movies if I need to re install XBMC. If I can make XBMC save all the scraping info to each movie folder I am all for it.

I didn't care for Media Elch was too slow for me. EMM in my eyes still is the best but Media Companion is just as fast and is a good replacement. There is a bit of a learning curve however once you follower the help guide for a bit it becomes just as easy as EMM.

Once you have the items scraped in XBMC, all you do is export library as seperate

Indeed. This will also handle a couple of things what Ember never did (like watched status).
It will not be instant saving of the nfos during the scraping, but if you do the export every once and a while then you will be safe.

[olympia]

I like XBMC but it doesn't save the nfo in my folders or am I doing it wrong? I don't want to have to re scrape movies if I need to re install XBMC. If I can make XBMC save all the scraping info to each movie folder I am all for it.

I didn't care for Media Elch was too slow for me. EMM in my eyes still is the best but Media Companion is just as fast and is a good replacement. There is a bit of a learning curve however once you follower the help guide for a bit it becomes just as easy as EMM.

Once you have the items scraped in XBMC, all you do is export library as seperate

Indeed. This will also handle a couple of thing which Ember never did (like watched status).
It will not be instant saving of the nfos during the scraping, but if you do the export once in a while then you will be safe.

[bblauritzen]

Is XBMC itself really that bad at scraping that you don't even consider to use it even in case of major problems?

XBMC does a fine job scraping. The only reason i still use EMM is because of it's bulk rename funktion.

[Pr.Sinister]

Indeed. This will also handle a couple of thing which Ember never did (like watched status).
It will not be instant saving of the nfos during the scraping, but if you do the export once in a while then you will be safe.

My reasons for not using XBMC to scrape are :

• I have a huge collection (4200+ Movies) and some are very obscure
  
• Because of the obscure movies, i get a lot of wrong scrapes i need to correct
  
• I like my French movies to have the plot written in French
  
• I like my foreign language movies to have the title written : English Title (Original Title)
  
• Lots of my movies have no plot info on IMDB or TMDB so i need to manually enter it from Allmovie, Wikipedia or Allocine
  
• I want to be able to pick my poster. I don't like the ones that have been cleaned to remove dates, cast and other info.
  
• I want to be able to pick my Fanart. I prefer a fanart that looks different than the poster
  
• I want extrathumbs
  
• I could go on and on....
  

Some can be done via XBMC but not as fast or easily as using a media manager. Most people who relied
solely on XBMC for scraping and then move to a media manager will tell you it is 100x better.

The way i have been setup for a while is Ember auto scrapes, creates extrathumbs, and downloads trailers.

Then i switch to Media Companion to change the Posters, Fanart, some titles and add missing plot/outline.

If a movie has been incorrectly scraped, i go back to EMM to change it so i can have the extrathumbs and trailer.

Yes i may be a bit anal about how i like my stuff setup or how i do it but who isn't? This is my hobby

What we need is someone to create a GUI Frontend for XBMC Scrapers. Instead of trying to create all these features
from scratch, you start with a frontend and most people will be happy. I know i am willing to donate to anyone
who comes up with that! No need for the extras! I can write scripts to generate the extrathumbs if i have to!

[olympia]

Some can be done via XBMC but not as fast or easily as using a media manager. Most people who relied
solely on XBMC for scraping and then move to a media manager will tell you it is 100x better.

Woopss... A media menager is 100x better than XBMC? That's a kind a slap on the face for me. In fact I did the opposite. I was amongst the original creators of EMM taking serious part in the GUI design, but now I find XBMC more easy, more flexible, and much faster.

• I have a huge collection (4200+ Movies) and some are very obscure
  
• Because of the obscure movies, i get a lot of wrong scrapes i need to correct
  
• Lots of my movies have no plot info on IMDB or TMDB so i need to manually enter it from Allmovie, Wikipedia or Allocine
  

If you already take the time to hunt down these plots, I think the community would appreciate if you were adding them to themoviedb. Then you can also scrape it any time in the future.

• I like my French movies to have the plot written in French
  
• I like my foreign language movies to have the title written : English Title (Original Title)
  
• I want to be able to pick my poster. I don't like the ones that have been cleaned to remove dates, cast and other info.
  
• I want to be able to pick my Fanart. I prefer a fanart that looks different than the poster
  

These I would say quite easy in xbmc?

• I want extrathumbs
  

Ok, I have to admit that this is not there.

Did you ever look at the Universal Scraper? NONE of the external media managers offers the feature set and flexibility of this scraper.

[kricker]

Universal Scraper is great. I use the built in scrapers for movies until I get a moment to use EMM to set it all. I also use EMM to do things in batches and use the rename feature a lot to add the (YEAR) to titles as well as creating the. nfo files. As far as media managers go, EMM has always been the easiest to use even with the few scraper hiccups along the way.

[Ecwfrk]

Some can be done via XBMC but not as fast or easily as using a media manager. Most people who relied
solely on XBMC for scraping and then move to a media manager will tell you it is 100x better.

Woopss... A media menager is 100x better than XBMC? That's a kind a slap on the face for me. In fact I did the opposite. I was amongst the original creators of EMM taking serious part in the GUI design, but now I find XBMC more easy, more flexible, and much faster.

Shouldn't take it as slap in the face. Everything you've done has made XBMC much better at managing media than it was (especially the Universal Scraper, which is just f'ing brilliant!) and anyone would be a fool to say otherwise. It's just that it's not quite able to do what a media manager like Ember can. At least at the moment.

For example, XBMC can't as efficiently tell me which of my movies is missing a trailer. With Ember, I just have click a button and it sorts the movies without trailers (or fanart, poster, nfo, etc) to the top.
I can't use XBMC via remote desktop. I maintain collections for family and friends as well and remote into their computers to do so.
XBMC can't bulk rename movies or clean up unneeded files.
And there's a number of other things it does that XBMC either can't do or can't do as well as Ember.

XBMC does a lot, and it does a lot more than it would without you, but it's just not built to be a media manager. It would likely take a lot of work to give it media management features as robust as Ember's.

Although, like Pr.Sinister alluded to, ideally I'd love to see a web interface port of Ember. XWMM is very close (although not yet Frodo ready, last I checked) but still lacks a few of Ember's features that continue to make it invaluable.

[TeKo]

It would be perfect to have a GUI to use Universal Scraper and being able to use addons like renamer and stuff.
Scraper itself are working good in XBMC now, but I just prefer a standalone program so I can use it from another PC and have things like a renamer.

[steve1977]

I agree that for the majority of users, the internal XBMC scrapers do a good job and it is much easier not to use an external software to achieve scraping. However, there is also the segment of users that has 1,000+ movies and for this segment, the XBMC internal scrapers are not really a workable solution. Among others because of the reasons below:

* If you add 50 movies, you may not even notice if one movies has not been identified and thus not added to the library (the exercise to find out, which movie has not been picked up is one of the most cumbersome experiences I went through in the past)

* Wrongly identified movies - again, it is about finding, which movie has not been identified correctly. If you add more than 20 movies, I cannot even see it in recently added movies. And even if I can see it there, it is painful to find the original movie folder name for comparison (otherwise, I may not even know whether this is the right or wrong movie)

* I agree with Pr.Sinister that many things such as "poster changing"/etc. may be possible with the internal scraper, but much less convenient

* I have 3 XBMCs running and I would need to do all changes 3 times...


I am fully aware that the majority of developers (not only olympia) is against creating a EMM-like GUI for the internal scrapers.

I still have some hope that this may change once the universal library is fully implemented (the new solution replacing mysql work-around). Once this has happened, this would be a logical next step.

Also, I really dislike Plex for the all of the history how it initially started, but they went exactly this way with a central library with a EMM-like GUI to edit the movie informational centrally. While with a different implementation, I hope that XBMC will close this gap one day in 2013 :-)

[strikegun]

I use XBMC a long time and one day I start using EMM. Since then I never tried the xmbc scraper again.
So, I will get it a try, but I like the offline Media Manager in EMM.
Does XBMC provide something like that or are there other nice tools with scrapers?

thx

[olympia]

Shouldn't take it as slap in the face. Everything you've done has made XBMC much better at managing media than it was (especially the Universal Scraper, which is just f'ing brilliant!) and anyone would be a fool to say otherwise. It's just that it's not quite able to do what a media manager like Ember can. At least at the moment.

For example, XBMC can't as efficiently tell me which of my movies is missing a trailer. With Ember, I just have click a button and it sorts the movies without trailers (or fanart, poster, nfo, etc) to the top.
I can't use XBMC via remote desktop. I maintain collections for family and friends as well and remote into their computers to do so.
XBMC can't bulk rename movies or clean up unneeded files.
And there's a number of other things it does that XBMC either can't do or can't do as well as Ember.

XBMC does a lot, and it does a lot more than it would without you, but it's just not built to be a media manager. It would likely take a lot of work to give it media management features as robust as Ember's.

Although, like Pr.Sinister alluded to, ideally I'd love to see a web interface port of Ember. XWMM is very close (although not yet Frodo ready, last I checked) but still lacks a few of Ember's features that continue to make it invaluable.

Thanks for the words. I understand this reasoning. This is not about scraping cababilities. In order to complete the above tasks you could still scrape with XBMC on a regular basis on an easy way, then go to Ember to sort up things.

Just to clarify: I am not against external media managers, hey I even took the time to provide an tmdb xml scraper to keep Ember going. However, in my opinion - on the scraping side - there are more problems with them then the gain they bring (Less, lower quality posters - depending on what version you use, some I think don't even notice this, no collection scraping, EMM destroys the watched status, and a couple of other things).

These days the only reason I am still firing up EMM from time to time is to check if I have duplicates.