So I have an older DVR setup running Ubuntu and 13.2. All paths are in linux format and all media has locally scraped data saved with it.
I'm trying to migrate to a new DVR that will be running Windows. I can have the new system scrape all the static media meta data no problem, but what I'm trying to figure out how to preserve is the "watched" flag on all the media as this is a very large library of TV shows and Movies.
I've tried doing an export on the linux system, then changing the path from the /mnt/drive1/movies to c:/movies in the big XML file that is generated in the export. Then importing it into the windows system and putting my media in the c:/movies dir. This "seems" to work. It has the watched flags set properly and can play the media, but I can't go into the info for any of the movies or tv shows. It's not an option from the context menu.
If I manually add the path to the videos section in XBMC, it scrapes the media and will show the movie or tv show information, but then I lose the "watched" flag.
What am I missing? Is there a better way to do this?
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Joshua
You have multiple choices, either export your library as separate files then on the Windows system set your advancedsettings.xml to import the watched state when scraping.
The other choice is to setup the trakt.tv addon to sync the states to the Internet this also makes a good backup and could be two way if you ever end up with multiple systems.
For anyone reading:
Its this very reason I keep banging on about having a properly setup external library of media files in their own directories with corresponding Metadata in the first place. Then use an external metadata scraper such as MediaElch.
This becomes more important as the library get larger.
Also...
- the library is very portable
- watched states do not need to be worried about.
- library re-import is very quick
- on low powered devices navigating a large media library is a lot quicker.
There is also an add-on that may fit the purpose called surprisingly XBMC Backup:
http://kodi.wiki/view/Add-on:XBMC_Backup
It seems I have two distinct problems. If I export from linux, change the file path and then import it brings the "watched" state with it, but doesn't show the episode information. I feel like maybe there is some other value I'm not changing in the import that is causing this. If I do this into a complete fresh xbmc install, it doesn't show any values in the "Videos" section. I'm thinking it has something to do with that.
My alternative is to bring the media over by itself and have the new xbmc install scrape the media, except I have no idea how to migrate the "watched" data. I might try the trak.tv addon you mentioned, but I'm wondering if it would work since the media paths will be different....
(2014-12-18, 03:27)wrxtasy Wrote: [ -> ]For anyone reading:
Its this very reason I keep banging on about having a properly setup external library of media files in their own directories with corresponding Metadata in the first place. Then use an external metadata scraper such as MediaElch.
This becomes more important as the library get larger.
Also...
- the library is very portable
- watched states do not need to be worried about.
- library re-import is very quick
- on low powered devices navigating a large media library is a lot quicker.
There is also an add-on that may fit the purpose called surprisingly XBMC Backup:
http://kodi.wiki/view/Add-on:XBMC_Backup
To clarify, my media library of 1600+ movies and 6TB worth of TV shows is all meticulously organized and all metadata including trailers is scraped locally to the directories where the media lives. I have 7 other XBMC instances that are pointed at this media share and all are able to update by scraping the local media info and it all works great.
My challenge is how to migrate the watched state to a new box. All the file paths are changing, and moving from linux to windows. I just need to not lose the watched states for this local system as it's our main DVR where most of our TV watching occurs. All the remote xbmc instances will retain the same path so the migration will be invisible to them.
trakt.tv doesn't use file paths it just tracks the names of the movies and for TV down to season and episode numbers.
Question: are these separate directories for each movie and TV show series ?
I use to have two big directories setup, one for Movies with included metadata and one for TV Shows again with included metadata that I would scrape locally.
It turned out to be a royal PIA when I migrated platforms and added extra XBMC clients.
My library consists of over 4000+ video files and god knows how many TV show episodes.
Bite the bullet now and re-organise is my advice.
You will need some sort of folder program that takes all video filenames and corresponding metadata filenames and stuffs them into their own directories based on analysing the filenames:
eg. all this:
Gold.2014.DVDRip-fanart.jpg
Gold.2014.DVDRip-poster.jpg
Gold.2014.DVDRip.nfo
Gold.DVDRip.m4v
goes into directory:
Gold 2014
and so on....
On OSX I used an app called BigMeanFolderMachine.
The first step is to Export the Video Library and use the Seperate option.
Yes it takes a bit of work, but justified for the rewards this setup brings.
(2014-12-18, 03:47)wrxtasy Wrote: [ -> ]Question: are these separate directories for each movie and TV show series ?
I use to have two big directories setup, one for Movies and one for TV Shows that I would scrape locally.
It turned out to be a royal PIA when I migrated platforms and added extra XBMC clients.
My library consists of over 4000+ video files and god knows how many TV show episodes.
Bite the bullet now and re-organise is my advice.
You will need some sort of folder program that takes all video filenames and corresponding metadata filenames and stuffs them into their own directories based on analysing the filenames:
eg. all this:
Gold.2014.DVDRip-fanart.jpg
Gold.2014.DVDRip-poster.jpg
Gold.2014.DVDRip.nfo
Gold.DVDRip.m4v
goes into directory:
Gold 2014
On OSX I used an app called BigMeanFolderMachine.
Yes it take a bit of work, but the rewards are well justified.
Yes, everything is already organized that way. Each movie in it's own dir with all the various files. Each show is broken down into show and season. All metadata was scraped with EmberMM. So everything is good there. Just need to migrate the watched state which is not stored in the folders.
http://kodi.wiki/view/Import-export_library
Quote:Too keep your watched status when importing the library, add this to your advancedsettings.xml file in the userdata folder:
<advancedsettings>
<videolibrary>
<importwatchedstate>true</importwatchedstate>
</videolibrary>
</advancedsettings>
Put this into your advanced settings file on your new XBMC / Kodi / Windows machine.
However having looked at my .nfo files a bit more deeply I have noticed that <watched>false</watched> is incorrect on movies I have actually watched, and are marked as watched locally on a Kodi client. For some reason the external .nfo files are not being updated.
Maybe when you Export the Video Library and use the Seperate option this watched status will change as it gets overwritten.
EDIT: this may finally be what you are looking for:
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=164652
https://code.google.com/p/xbmc-addon-ser...dListHowTo