[cw-kid]

The TV show scrapper is thetvdb.com. Movies have a few to choose from, I personally prefer the universal movie scrapper. It’s all personal preference really though.

I'm aware on mymovies.dk, as I have my 'online collection' page on there. I'm not a huge fan of the software from the experience I've had though. Prefer the scrappers to do their thing.

Now you said that, I've only just realized I haven't got the Universal Movie Scraper installed. I would have thought that scraper might have been a default one like the Universal Album and Artists scrapers. So you think the Universal Movie Scraper is better than TheMovieDB.org one?

I am beginning to wish I hadn't turned on the XBMC Movie metadata options in the MyMovies.dk system and just used one of the XBMC Movie scrapers to start with.

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That screen is looking better now.



On Blu-ray ISOs it can't read the mediainfo until after you have started playback of the movie, but I guess I can live with that.

[cw-kid]

I'm aware on mymovies.dk, as I have my 'online collection' page on there. I'm not a huge fan of the software from the experience I've had though. Prefer the scrappers to do their thing.

The My Movies system works well for disc titles, i.e. movies that have been released already on DVD or Blu-ray disc, its not so good for metadata for films that are still in the cinema e.g. pirate movies.

The TV Series support for DVD disc rips is excellent and MCE can directly play episodes, XBMC cannot do this yet! I wrote a whole thing about the limitations of TV Series on DVD rips in XBMC here

My Movies does other good things like the personal Online Collection website and the iOS / Android app. They are planning on updating the remote control on the mobile apps to be able to control XBMC as well as MCE. Which is good because I can then again pick a movie for my daughter and tell it to play in her room. which is what I used to do before I put an XBMC PC in her room. Maybe I can also do this with one of the XBMC remote control apps?

I still like using the Collection Management software for managing my titles but if I move to a XBMC scraper that kinda becomes somewhat redundant.

My Movies is also IMHO still the best automatic disc ripping / downloader of metadata, you need AnyDVD HD in the back ground and My Movies ripper does the rest. I haven't seen any solutions for a fully automated disc ripping service in XBMC but I haven't looked that hard.

I am really in two minds if to try and stick with some of the My Movies features or just cut the ties and move away completely.

[Samu-rai]

Yes I would recommend the universal scrapper. It's much more customisable and takes much of its data from IMDB.

It would probably take a while to scrape, but could you not do a mass delete of all of the nfo's (I believe mymovies has this function), and then rescrape with XBMC?

Edit: Sorry I didn't see your other post.

Yes the ios remote app for XBMC will let you choose select different titles for different systems on your network.

When it comes to actually ripping content XBMC has never really been developed to fuction in that way. It is purely a front end, but it is very good at obtain metadata from a limited file name. I just rip my movies & tv shows etc to an mkv file, use the correct naming convention, and that's it really.

[cw-kid]

Yes I would recommend the universal scrapper. It's much more customisable and takes much of its data from IMDB.

It would probably take a while to scrape, but could you not do a mass delete of all of the nfo's (I believe mymovies has this function), and then rescrape with XBMC?

Yes that's what I imagine I would have to do, I am not sure if My Movies has a mass delete option for .nfo files? I can ask Brian at My Movies. But can easily delete them all, from a *.nfo search in Windows Explorer. My Movies also creates a .tbn file in each movie folder so would probably need to get rid of them as well and then as you say re-scrape with one of the XBMC Movie scrapers.

Brian has suggested to me via our Skype conversations a full revamp of their XBMC integration and I said I would beta test it all for him but its not a high priority for them as XBMC clients are not where their business makes real money! But it is on their to-do list apparently.

I know a new version of the MAC OSX My Movies Collection Management program, which I don't use, is currently being tested and that has new XBMC Frodo metadata integration features. They just need to do the same for the Windows Server version of My Movies and update and improve the XBMC metadata integration.

Which is another reason why I am in two minds about what is the best way forward.

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When it comes to actually ripping content XBMC has never really been developed to fuction in that way. It is purely a front end, but it is very good at obtain metadata from a limited file name. I just rip my movies & tv shows etc to an mkv file, use the correct naming convention, and that's it really.

I need to find a working solution for converting existing TV Series DVD rips that are in VIDEO_TS folders to re-encode them to MKV files or AVIs. Probably using HandBrake, needs to be automated so I can push a big button and it goes off and batch converts them. I have not started looking in to this yet.

[cw-kid]

I think what I will do is test it on a small sub set of HD Kids movies we have. Take some screen shots of them now, delete all the My Movies metadata files and re-import them to XBMC with the Universal Movie Scraper. I can then compare them and see what I think the differences are.

[cw-kid]

Should the Universal Movie Scraper create new .nfo files in each movies folder ? It doesn't appear to have done.

Does the Universal Movie scraper also get the Trailers working? Because that was another thing I was missing in XBMC. I seem to have an option now at the top to play trailers that was not there before.

I turned off the options in the Universal Movie Scraper to download fanart Posters etc.

Below are a few examples, I seem to have allot more actors showing now with the Universal Movie Scraper. Also I can now see a movie rating in the top left corner e.g. PG for Parental Guidance. But I seem to have lost some media info icons.

My Movies metadata for Bolt




Universal Movie Scraper for Bolt



My Movies metadata for Wall-E



Universal Movie Scraper for Wall-E

Seem to have lost the MediaInfo icons here for some reason



My Movies metadata for Nemo



Universal Movie Scraper for Nemo



I don't what do you think ?

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Seems random some titles end up having the media info icons some titles lose them. All these titles are MKV files.

My Movies metadata for Madagascar 2



Universal Movie Scraper for Madagascar 2

[cw-kid]

If I play the movie Nemo the media info icons then appear OK.



From the screen shots its fair to say that the Universal Movie Scraper is displaying more information for me than the My Movies metadata.

If I can figure out this slight issue with the media info icons I think you have convinced me to switch to using the Universal Movie Scraper instead !

EDIT: Wall-E and all the other titles in the Kids HD folder are now showing media info icons, I have not played the Wall-E movie, the icons just re-appeared, maybe its just a refresh issue.

Think I will delete all the My Movies metadata and switch to the Universal Movie Scraper and rebuild the movie library in XBMC.

[Samu-rai]

Sorry I was on my way home from work.

No none of the scrappers will create nfo files, all the data is stored within XBMC. There is an option to export your library though, which essentially stores all of this information for you for safe keeping, or so that you can transfer it over to another system.

Trailers are also scrapped yes.

What is the issue with the media info icons?

[cw-kid]

I think the media icons are OK now, initially after I changed those movie titles from My Movies metadata to Universal Movie Scraper some of the movie titles were not showing the media icons. But after about 15 minutes the media icons are all showing OK now. Perhaps I wasn't patient enough, but it seems to be working now.

Will sleep on it but I think I am going to delete all the My Movies .nfo files and use the Universal Movie Scraper instead.

Thanks again for your invaluable information.

[Samu-rai]

You may want/need to rename your files for the skin to pick up the media tags. Blu-Ray, DVD etc.

In order for these to show correctly on the cases (I think) you need to have them in the file name.

For example my collection follows the naming convention: Gangster.Squad.2013.1080p.BluRay.mkv

Marcos explains it here:

Currently the skins Aeon MQ 3, Aeon MQ 4 and Ace, are using the following tags to display media cases:

bluray - blu-ray - bdrip = Bluray box
web = Web box
hdtv = HDTV box
dvd - .iso - .ifo = dvd box
3dbd = 3D box
All others contents = default box + codec

[cw-kid]

You may want/need to rename your files for the skin to pick up the media tags. Blu-Ray, DVD etc.

In order for these to show correctly on the cases (I think) you need to have them in the file name.

For example my collection follows the naming convention: Gangster.Squad.2013.1080p.BluRay.mkv

Marcos explains it here:

Currently the skins Aeon MQ 3, Aeon MQ 4 and Ace, are using the following tags to display media cases:

bluray - blu-ray - bdrip = Bluray box
web = Web box
hdtv = HDTV box
dvd - .iso - .ifo = dvd box
3dbd = 3D box
All others contents = default box + codec

Yes I have not done this and probably wont it would be too much work.

My files are just named

nameofmovie.mkv
nameofmovie.avi

I am not sure I even like the Case Covers I turned them off.

As long as it reads the video files themselves to ascertain the media info. Like if the file is 720p or 1080p or SD and the types of audio tracks they contain like 5.1 or 2.0 that should be enough for me!

[cw-kid]

This here should stir things up a bit, when worlds collide..

[Samu-rai]

Nice post.

A 'sort of' alternative to the mymovies online collection for XBMC is track. It works in a similar way, and integrates into XBMC as an add-on and automatically records what you have watched/are watching among other things. Maybe something to check out, if only for research purposes.

How do you find the skin copes with the mymovies covers? I use the 'custom' covers on themovedb which are 1500 x 1000, but mymovies use authentic covers so I wondered if you noticed and squashing or skewing of these at all.

I would also recommend having a look a Marcos' new skin ACE if you haven't already.

Finally I think I have found teh relevant line of code to allow you to allocate a button to scroll through the views, but I need to workout how to put this into the keyboard.xml successfully.

[cw-kid]

How do you find the skin copes with the mymovies covers? I use the 'custom' covers on themovedb which are 1500 x 1000, but mymovies use authentic covers so I wondered if you noticed and squashing or skewing of these at all.

I've only noticed on the My Movies Blu-ray covers that are usually wider than the standard DVD covers that they don't look quite right in XBMC.

[Samu-rai]

I thought it may have trouble using the bluray covers, with them being fatter.