[angel129116]

Hi,
I'm not sure if this is possible but I wanted to create a folder with all the Simpson's Halloween episodes in it on my PC. How would I go about scanning this into XBMC as say "Simpson's Halloween Special".?
I can't seem to find any idiot prove guides that would help for something like this (if this is even possible at all).
I'm running V 11 on a Win 7 machine.

[SiliconKid]

I've done something similar with MotoGP episodes.

What you need to do is use the NFO files for each episode to name and number the episodes as you want them.

The key to the whole thing is to use NFO files. That way it will NOT try to find those eps online when it scrapes, it will just use the local nfo files and name and number them exactly as you've specified in those NFO files.

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And you can have an NFO file at the top level too which you can effectively use to make it recognise your fake "series" as an actual series, and again named exactly as you want.

[angel129116]

Thanks for the quick reply. Anyway u can give me a step by step. I've never done an nfo file before so not sure where to start. Sorry if this is a blindingly obvious thing.

[SiliconKid]

It's cool. When XBMC imports Movies or TV Series (episodes) into its library it does what's called a "scrape". Scraping means that it attempts to identify the media item in question and then gathers together metadata and artwork specific to that item for you.

When it scrapes it will always first take what's on your local drive (unless you explicitly tell it not to) and if it can't find appropriate stuff locally it will run off to the internet if an internet connection is available and try to download what it needs.

If you want to supply the metadata (information about the item) and artwork yourself to control exactly what XBMC imports, which is exactly what you need to do for your custom scenario, you can put a text file with a .nfo extension in the same folder as each media file, with the SAME name as the media file, and in that .nfo file you can supply all kinds of information about the Movie / Episode.

You can also supply a .nfo file to describe a TV Series at the top level as well as per episode.

I don't have a .nfo file available right now for reference because I'm at work but you can find plenty of examples online, I'm sure.

If you go to Settings in XBMC and look in there you will find an "Export Library" option somewhere in there that allows you to export metdata and artwork for any Movies and Series you have already successfully imported and scraped. If you do that, and select the right options it will create .nfo files in the folders of all the TV Series you've already managed to import.

You can then just copy one of those .nfo files as a starting point and modify it for your custom series.

[davehx]

Here are a couple of links I made for you to get you started

Original NFO file for the first Treehouse of Horror (Series 2, Episode 3)
http://pastebin.com/UNH9fFhw

Modified NFO file for your purposes (Series 1, Episode 1 of a brand new show)
http://pastebin.com/d9PJBnbv

Notice the only fields I had to change were
Line 4 - Show Title
Line 9 - Season Number
Line 10 - Episode Number

The NFO must have exactly the same name as your video file and be in the same folder

eg

C:\Simpsons_Specials\Treehouse_of_Horror_1.avi
C:\Simpsons_Specials\Treehouse_of_Horror_1.nfo

or whatever you decide to call your files

You will also need a NFO in the Show folder

C:\Simpsons_Specials\tvshow.nfo
Here is an example of what it could look like
http://pastebin.com/UsYUZjza

I only edited three lines from the one for the original show
Line 3 - Show Title (originally just said "The Simpsons")
Line 4 - Show title - as above
Line 15 - details about the show - you'll certainly want to change this from the stuff I put

These can all be edited in notepad to fit your needs
For the second Treehouse episode, chane the details to Series 1, Episode 2 etc

I have the original nfo files for the first 4 specials. I can supply those too if you wish, just let me know. To find the plots for the others you can either scrape them and export .nfo files then edit them (this would be best as you would get correct ratings, cast, etc) or you can look at the link below to find the plots for each one and create each nfo separately (would likely end up show identical runtimes, ratings, cast, etc for all episodes unless you went through and changed every field in every .nfo which would take quite a while)

Link to Simpsons Plots
http://thetvdb.com/?tab=series&id=71663

[angel129116]

Thats brilliant. Thank u soooo much!

[IAmNotAUser]

I had to do this a while back for Documentaries. My thread is here: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=90850

Hope it provides some help.