[krustyreturns]

I'm still learning my way around xbmc. I am working on bringing the recorded tv files that WMC generates into xbmc, in the hopes of weaning my family off of WMC (except I will use WMC as my dvr backend). For most of the recorded tv files I bring in, I can get xbmc's scraper to successfully find the episode data, based on the metadata tags WMC embeds in the file.

However for about 15% of the files this doesn't work. These are typically old cartoons (like loony tunes or Tom and Jerry). WMC has no metadata for these shows stored in the recording file, other than a recording date-time. In WMC these are displayed just as generic shows, with the name of the episode set the same as the file name.

This doesn't happen in xbmc. Without any metadata the scraper fails and when that happens, xbmc just ignores these files. There seems to be no workaround for this - if I can't specify the season/episode number or at least the original airdate (and for a looney tune, that's a challenge), the scraper fails. The only option for my kids to find these shows in xbmc is file mode, which is far from ideal.

So my question: Why can't there be an OPTIONAL setting in xbmc that if the scraper fails, just use the file name as the episode name? The description, genre and other fields can be left as unknown. I guess am just asking for a an option to treat these episodes as "generic" shows, the same way wmc does.

[outatouch0]

actually there is... well sorta...
you have a few options:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Custom_Video_Nodes
I have not tried this yet but I plan to... This is in Frodo

there is another means for adding things like home movies etc where it simply uses the title... another newer development which i think is in Eden. If i remember correctly you have to create a small .nfo file.

you can create your own custom .nfo files which will then allow these (or any type of video file you want) into your library. in this thread i provided .nfo file templates you can use to add anything you like. http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=109101
Create a TV show called 'cartoons' and then make each of your cartoons s01e01, s01e02, etc in whatever order you chose. you can also search Google images for fanart, banners, etc.
There are several threads on doing this, most of them are related to documentaries, UFC, WWE, animated series...

[thrak76]

You can get these cartoons to scrape correctly if they are named correctly. Older cartoons like Tom & Jerry have to be named with a year for the season, e.g.:

Tom and Jerry.S1960E16.Is There A Doctor In The Mouse or
Tom and Jerry.1960x16.Is There A Doctor in the Mouse

Look up the cartoons that aren't scraping on TVDB and look at the way they are naming the seasons there.

[krustyreturns]

outatouch0,

Thanks so much for the nfo method! I tried it out and it works great. The embarrassing thing for me is that this was the first method I pursued but I could not get xbmc to read the nfo files. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong before, but the generic nfo file you provided in the other thread does work. I might be because I didn't have the dummy S*E* stuff in the titles, but I thought I tried that too. Oh well.

thanks again.