[Ximosoft]

Hi,
as I've seen on this forum, there are some proposals to embedding nfo and fanart into mkv streams, and I wonder why no to include images into xml, they can be embedded using Base64 CDATA node, this way it's easier to manage just one file.

Any thoughts about it?

PS: Sorry if I posted in the wrong place.

[rootyb]

Hi,
as I've seen on this forum, there are some proposals to embedding nfo and fanart into mkv streams, and I wonder why no to include images into xml, they can be embedded using Base64 CDATA node, this way it's easier to manage just one file.

Any thoughts about it?

PS: Sorry if I posted in the wrong place.

I'm not a developer, but I'd imagine that it would be for readability's sake. It's a lot easier to see what's going on in an XML file if it doesn't have encoded data in there.

[AnalogKid]

NO WAY!

Folks want to be able to play back their MKV's in other systems.... if it's wrapped in XML, it wouldn't be possible.
Enbedding the XML in the MKV is akin to proprietary meta data. This is a reasonable solution, but... not ideal if it's only for MKV containers. I'm not sure if you can place ANY format video inside an MKV. If you can, then it's a better solution still.
Ultimately though... I prefer the NFO side by side with the media. This is the technique Adobe use for some image files.... they call them 'sidecar' files..... they are XML files containing metadata for the image file. So XBMC's not the only folks to adopt such a system.

Oh, one final point.... Binary to base64 typically results in about 30-40% increase in size.

[Ximosoft]

I'm not a developer, but I'd imagine that it would be for readability's sake. It's a lot easier to see what's going on in an XML file if it doesn't have encoded data in there.

I know that lacks readability but, instead of having 3 or 4 files for extra information we could have only 1 file.

NO WAY!

Folks want to be able to play back their MKV's in other systems.... if it's wrapped in XML, it wouldn't be possible.Enbedding the XML in the MKV is akin to proprietary meta data.

May be I didn't explain my self right, as I read on this and other forums, there's a proposal (just a proposal) to embed xml in mkv, and like you I didn't like the proposal because that proposal it's only targeting mkv (matroska llows embedding anykind of data), my proposal wraps all kinds of media.

Oh, one final point.... Binary to base64 typically results in about 30-40% increase in size.

Yes, you're right. I know that may be not be the best perfomance, but they're in just on one file instead on several (easy to move/manage).


Thank you anyway for your thoughts

[rootyb]

I know that lacks readability but, instead of having 3 or 4 files for extra information we could have only 1 file.

Yes, you're right. I know that may be not be the best perfomance, but they're in just on one file instead on several (easy to move/manage).


Thank you anyway for your thoughts

Eh, I really don't think it's a big issue to have a few separate files if it makes things easier to read/etc.

I've got all of my movies, for example, organized like this:

Movies/
- Movie Title/
- Movie Title.avi (or whatever)
- Movie Title.nfo
- Movie Title-fanart.jpg
- Movie Title-poster.jpg


etc. It takes a little bit of setup any time I get a new movie, but once that's done, I just have to move a folder. If I really wanted to, I could RAR all of them, and just play RARs from XBMC. I prefer to keep them as folders though, personally (and I'm a little OCD, so normally, files floating around would drive me NUTS).

[Seegras]

Folks want to be able to play back their MKV's in other systems.... if it's wrapped in XML, it wouldn't be possible.
Enbedding the XML in the MKV is akin to proprietary meta data.

Actually, mkv metadata is already an XML, embedded within the mkv, and it's part of the standard. The only thing Kodi needs to do is read it.