[noeyebrows]

Greetings,

This is my first posting, so I hope that I posting in the right forum and the right topic area. If I am not, please advise.

My current setup is as follows:

1) Mac mini Server, late 2012, 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7, with 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, running OSX Mavericks 10.9.2.

2) Synology DiskStation DS1812+, which is an eight bay NAS with eight 4TB drives, yielding about 27TB of usable space. The NAS is directly connected to the Ethernet port of the Mac mini and also connecting to my ASUS RT-N66U via wireless. Had to do this type of setup because the router and NAS are not in the same location.

3) iMac, mid 2011, 3.1 GHz Intel Core i5, with 32GB of RAM, 2TB Hard Drive, running OSX Mavericks 10.9.2

4) Synology DiskStation DS413j, which is a four bay NAS with four 3TB drives, yielding about 8TB of usable space. The NAS is directly connected to the ASUS router and both the Mac Mini and the iMac connect to this device; Mac mini - wireless; iMac - Ethernet cable.

5) My media library for both TV Shows and Movies, and other items are stored on the DS1812+, and my downloads are stored on the DS413j. My thoughts are to install Frodo and/or Gotham onto the Mac mini. I believe you can have both of these different versions of the software installed at the same time if you have configure another user for each install. Are most people probably running Frodo and a good majority running Gotham as a test bed?

6) My current media library for TV Shows is named as follows: "Series Name - S01E01 - Episode Name.ext"


Here are my questions, as follows:

I have read and reread the following document, but I have some questions, if you do not mind:

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Video_management

A) Am I going to need to modify my naming structure, as listed above? I would hate to rename all of my files, since there are about 500 TV Shows to deal with. If so, please advise as to what I should change to.

B) I was reading about having "periods" in the file names, will I need to remove the periods in the Episode Name, or should I substitute with spaces and/or underscores? I do not have that many of those items, but I would have to go into each folder to find them.

C) How does updating of changes to the media library handled? Does XBMC perform this automatically, or do I have to perform this manually?

D) Currently, I have the following structure for my media library, which is as follows:

/Volumes/Media/TV Shows/Name of TV Show - all approximately 500 shows are in their own corresponding folder, separated by season folders and such.
/Volumes/Media/Movies/Name of Movie - each movie has it's own folder

I was thinking that I should manage my library more creatively, by creating separate folder names for each letter of the alphabet and of course numbers, so it would be A-Z and 0-9. Is that what most people are doing with their libraries?

E) Now, I have some shows, like "The Fall", "The Killing", etc. I have made the folders look like these" "Fall, The", "Killing, The" because I wanted to have the shows show up alphabetically. Are there any downsides to this particular method? Now, I have "Tomorrow People, The (1973)", "Tomorrow People, The (1992)", and "Tomorrow People, The (2013)". Do you see any particular problems with this setup. And whether I need to create a similar structure for The Tomorrow People as asked in Question F.

F) I have a question about placement of a given series of shows, lets just say it was Star Trek, so should I place the "Star Trek Series" folder name in "/Volumes/Media/TV Shows/Star Trek Series" or should I place it in the following directory, "/Volumes/Media/TV Shows/S/Star Trek Series". From the reading, I know I have to set the content on the specified folder, so I understand that point.

G) I have another question about placement. I have "Being Human (US)" and "Being Human (UK)". Should I directly place these two shows in "/Volumes/Media/TV Shows/B/" or should I create a "Being Human Series" folder and do the same with Question F?

H) Do a lot of you attempt to force a given show by using the tvshow.nfo method? Or am I going to need to check every single tvshow name on thetvdb.com and rename appropriately?

I) I definitely have not read all of the documentation yet, since there is quite a bit of it, but how does theme music get into the library and can we manage it? What about artwork, posters, banners, etc? I am trying to read as much documentation as humanly possible and still retain it to some extent, so please forgive my ignorance.

I have actually not installed the XBMC software yet, since I am attempting to get the media library in order. I do plan on installing this weekend as a test run to see how I do, and probably use just a couple of TV Shows I have instead of spending all of my time just changing everything.

I hope I have done a good job in presenting my material and questions. I hope to get some feedback, both positive and negative. I welcome any and/or all comments. I look forward in being part of this thriving community as my journey continues.

Many thanks in advance,

noeyebrows

[Ned Scott]

5) might as well hop onto Gotham so you don't have to learn changes between Frodo and Gotham. I've been using Gotham on my main HTPCs for a while now. Stable enough for most daily use.

A) it sounds like your naming structure is already good. XBMC handles most common patterns my default, and you should be read as-is.

B) periods, underscores, and spaces are completely interchangeable. You can even mix them in the same filename without issue.

C) by changes, do you mean additions of episodes/shows? XBMC by default only scans for new items when you tell it to, but you can easily set up different methods of automatic scanning, as mentioned in the wiki.

D) personally, I just do "TV shows/Show Name". I wouldn't bother with letters,

E) offhand, I'm not sure if this will be an issue.

F) you can do this, but you should scan sub folders before scanning the parent folder.

G) either way. XBMC should see them as two different shows regardless.

H) nope. It's either picked up, I correct the folder name, or I manually select it in XBMC. Most should be picked up just fine.

I) artwork is automatic when you scan something into the library. Music is automatic if you have the "TvTunes" add-on turned on and with skin support.

[noeyebrows]

Ned,

Thanks for responding, I was getting worried about nobody wanting to respond to a newbie. Thanks for taking the time with me.

C) Yes, I mean additions of episodes/shows. Thanks for the clarification.

E) I went back to the document I mentioned that I read, and it does state you should match up the folder names for better matching. From the text "The most common cause for this is that you haven't named the show's folder correctly. Check the site being scraped, and copy the title exactly as it is displayed, including anything in brackets. If that doesn't solve the issue, or you are unable to change the folder name, you can force a match by adding a tvshow.nfo with the url of the show's page on the scraped site." I will most likely pick out the obvious ones and check those against thetvdb.com.

F) Do you mean that I need to set "content" to "Star Trek Series" or the subfolder of the aforementioned directory. I am not understanding you on that portion, could you expand on that?

Once again, thanks for taking the time out of your busy day to help a newbie. I know I will most likely have a lot more questions, but I do like reading documentation a lot.

Thanks,

noeyebrows

[Ned Scott]

Yes, set content on the series folder first, which should trigger them being added to the library. That will prevent all episodes from being seen as a single Star Trek show, even when the parent is scanned later on.

[noeyebrows]

Ned,

That is what I thought and I went a reread that section on the naming guidelines document. You have successfully answered my questions so far. I am very happy camper.

Thanks,

noeyebrows

[wgstarks]

Just thought I'd add that if you do have videos that get scraped incorrectly, an NFO file (wiki) with the proper url (TVDB for TV shows and IMDB or TMDB for movies depending on which scraper you're using) will almost always correct the problem.