2009-04-02, 15:43
So I'm guessing a few people out there have or are making apps to support Aeon and Serenity's nascent media flagging features. A word of advice: these are experimental and volatile features that are subject to change. Still, if you're anything like me then no amount of warning will stop you, so here's a rough outline of where things are and what they're likely to become.
Now
Stream info flags: Aeon uses fekker's interim solution of injecting video and audio information into the studios tag of an nfo file. Media Info Plus handles this admirably and should be all anyone needs. The process takes just a few seconds and should be easy to reverse.
Source media flags: For things like Blu-ray and HD-DVD, Aeon draws the information from the filename itself. So if your movie's called 'The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The Eighth Dimension.Bluray.mkv', the Blu-ray flag will show.
HD posters: There are two methods: the old one by which additional thumbnails with '-big.png' suffixes are used, and new support for movie.tbn files stored within individual movie folders. The advantage of the latter method is that it avoids the need for a duplicate file. For those wishing to adopt this (imo superior) folder-level structure for their movies, this will only be of benefit in the long-run. There are plenty of posts with more info on the subject.
The future
Stream info flags: XBMC should eventually add support for pulling this info directly from the files itself. The big issue at the moment seems to be library performance, so I've no idea if and when it'll happen. At that point, the information stored using fekker's solution will become obsolete and Aeon will (overnight thanks to its code and assets being in place) switch to the XBMC solution. Pruning or replacing the info in your nfos should be an easy, automated task.
Source media flags: Only you can say where your files originally came from so this will never be a feature XBMC can handle automatically. In all likelihood, Aeon will continue to use the filename-based solution.
HD posters: The idea is that XBMC will one day have two thumbnail caches - one optimized for browsing and the other storing full-res thumbnails for larger views. There's no guarantee this will happen, though. Until it does, Aeon will continue to use the existing methods described above.
Hope that's of some help.
Now
Stream info flags: Aeon uses fekker's interim solution of injecting video and audio information into the studios tag of an nfo file. Media Info Plus handles this admirably and should be all anyone needs. The process takes just a few seconds and should be easy to reverse.
Source media flags: For things like Blu-ray and HD-DVD, Aeon draws the information from the filename itself. So if your movie's called 'The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The Eighth Dimension.Bluray.mkv', the Blu-ray flag will show.
HD posters: There are two methods: the old one by which additional thumbnails with '-big.png' suffixes are used, and new support for movie.tbn files stored within individual movie folders. The advantage of the latter method is that it avoids the need for a duplicate file. For those wishing to adopt this (imo superior) folder-level structure for their movies, this will only be of benefit in the long-run. There are plenty of posts with more info on the subject.
The future
Stream info flags: XBMC should eventually add support for pulling this info directly from the files itself. The big issue at the moment seems to be library performance, so I've no idea if and when it'll happen. At that point, the information stored using fekker's solution will become obsolete and Aeon will (overnight thanks to its code and assets being in place) switch to the XBMC solution. Pruning or replacing the info in your nfos should be an easy, automated task.
Source media flags: Only you can say where your files originally came from so this will never be a feature XBMC can handle automatically. In all likelihood, Aeon will continue to use the filename-based solution.
HD posters: The idea is that XBMC will one day have two thumbnail caches - one optimized for browsing and the other storing full-res thumbnails for larger views. There's no guarantee this will happen, though. Until it does, Aeon will continue to use the existing methods described above.
Hope that's of some help.
