Quote:Quote: Originally Posted by digitalhigh View Post
1. I would recommend just moving the files into their own folder, and doing away with the subfolders. It might be a pain in the butt, but I'd wager that end result would be worth it.
Quote:1.) That won't be too annoying I guess. But will I end up with two identical entries then, or will MIP find info referring to each separate discs of a 2 disc DVD release? The only other place I imagine it being annoying is for TV shows on DVDs. Is the only way for MIP to deal with them to have each ISO in a separate folder?
Folder level options work the best and allow the most options for movies. For example, you can't use media images with file level options. (Media Images are the front, back, inlay, insert, and disc image).. these are also supported in DigitalHigh's skin and are in full high resolution thanks to Max at freecovers.net
Quote:2. If the title is recognized wrong in autopilot, all you'd need to do is select the movie in MIP, and put in the proper IMDB ID, then press the green button to update all the info.Quote:2.) Got it...thanks In the list of movies with "problems" what does it mean if "TBN" is missing? Which images do I need to make sure are there to make XBMC display the movie nicely. (Doing all my MIP work pre-install of XBMC so forgive the silly question!)
In addition, the newer builds of MIP includes the imdb selection dialog, allowing you to pick the correct movie and a change button that will allow you to change it to something else with one click. I'm planning on reworking the rename function (currently under it's own tab) to be part of that process, allowing you to rename and search on the fly. The rename function in MIP also renames the folder itself, no rescan is necessary as it's knows what your working on and where the data is.
Quote:3. I'd assume that if you have albumart embedded, then your stuff is probably tagged by iTunes? If that's the case, then you probably don't need to do anything to your music with MIP. However, if stuff is not being scanned into your music library properly, then MIP could help you clean things up a bit.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kiboy6 View Post
Thanks very much for the reply.Quote:3.) Yes, everything is already tagged to my liking in itunes too. But would MIP scrape fanart / artist pics that XBMC wouldn't get itself?
Music is still in the early stages, it does allow you to rename albums and inject artwork into mp3's as well as scraping fanart and media images for the albums, resizing of fanart as well as compression options. In the future, it will have more options and allow even more customization. There is something with itunes and compilation files, a setting in itunes to put them into there own area I believe. I know I got the details via pm, i'll have to locate those details.
Quote:Finally just a general question about MIP - what exactly is the breakdown of what occurs during auto-pilot and then pre-cache phases? Once both are complete has MIP done all the automated work it can do? What does the "load movies" button do then?
Thanks! - I'm still just in awe of this program - i never imagined my media collection could look so hot!
Let's start with the first items that occur when you load your movies.
- reads up all folder names, applying any filters you have setup in the configuration to strip out extra "stuff" from the name that's used to find the data (no changes to folder are made)
-- Scans to see if you have a VIDEO_TS folder in there and ensures the correct .nfo and images are in place if they where previously loaded
- file level items are then processed, there are file level filters in the configuration as well to strip out the "extra stuff" from the name that's used to find the data (no changes to files).
After it has read your movie names, the gui loads the list on the left side with those names, in memory is an object that contains all the details about where, what, the name of the movie.
Details on how it finds the movie information.
- searches in the folder (or for files, for the exact filename.nfo) and try's to load that data from the .nfo.
-- if that search doesn't have a full .nfo file, but it has an imdb id in it, MIP will grab that id from the file and use it to process your movie.
--- if there isn't an <moviename>.nfo it'll look for movie.nfo as well
----- if no nfo is found, it searches imdb for the data when an action occurs (like clicking on the name, running auto-pilot, or pre-cache)
Here's where pre-cache is different from clicking on the name of the movie, or using auto-pilot. Pre-cache does not prompt you to pick the correct movie, it will process it based on what it finds first. This is why auto-pilot first, with no image options, works best to allow you to pick the correct movie. (i'm open to changing that to prompt as well, if that's what folks prefer)
Now let's dive into auto-pilot
What is it?
- It's a way to automate the processing of movies, allowing you to re-assign images to a different type. (like going from posters to wide images, or box shots) as well as process fanart, impaward posters, movie information and media data updates.
It runs through a very similar process that just clicking on the movie name does, in a loop, with images limited to one of each type and automatic assignment.
Pre-cache is designed to download all the images for your collection. Initially this can be thousands, or even tens of thousands of images.. MIP tries to get everything it can for ya, all automated.. this is where no other app even comes close to the options you'll have for your images and backgrounds.. once images are cached, they are saved locally and you don't have to get them again. Sometimes images are changed for tv shows, the episodes is a recent example where they changed the filenames and folder locations for episodes. In that case it automatically grabs what it needs to during loading (for tv shows) or when running pre-cache on movies.
The HD Tag button, fanart resize and compression options in MIP all require image magick as that's what I use to process the images.. It's leaps and bounds better then what .net's build in image changes can do. And the compression really kicks butt. The resize does a scale and fill, so you don't end up with 11foot tall people or a 1foot by 6foot wide person. (there's an example on the first page of mip's thread).
When you first load tv shows, it goes out and gets the latest information for the show, based on your settings in the configuration for the number of days to check.. these files are small (usually 20k - 200k in size per tv show) 1 fanart image can be larger then all the tv show text information.
Hopefully that provides some insight to how mip works under the hood, it's actually way more complex on how things are cached and checked, threaded, saved and loaded, feel free to check out the source to see how I did things or for improvements.
Quote:How do you guys use MIP, to best support Aeon Stark?
I have all my movies ordered like this:
/Movies/Australia/Australia-cd1.avi
I just did an auto scan with MIP and it created an "Australia.tbn" (based on the folder name I guess?).
But doesn't Aeon Stark look for "Australia-cd1.tbn"?
And what about the "Australia-cd1.avi-big.png" that Stark looks for, how do you auto create those?
Thanks,
(the -big.png is not created by mip as it's a specific image size, there's a utility that will copy these from your movie.tbn file located in the Aeon thread "prepairing my media for aeon", it doesn't do auto-rescale and sizing, it's just a way to copy images)
In that case, the movie is considered part of a stacked set, so it strips out the -cd1 part.. the .nfo will load correctly with that removed as it's part of stacking, movie.nfo is checked first in the newer svn builds of xbmc (not in 8.04) and is the default for xbmc 9.04.. This leads me to the how stacking works and what to name multi-disc sets (part of the first question above)
Xbmc supports stacking, and MIP detects stacked data.
stacking can be described as a way to associate two files to one media item.
BlueStreak_cd1.avi
BlueStreak_cd2.avi
Xbmc and Mip know that this is one movie, Blue Streak, in two files.
The_Lord_of_the_mice-dvd1.iso
The_Lord_of_the_mice-dvd2.iso
Same idea, this is the movie The Lord of the mice, that has 2 discs.
TV Shows
House_s01e1e2e3e4.iso
House_s01e5e6e7e8.iso
This would be a two disk tv show in iso format.
House_s01e1e2e3e4.iso - means House, Season 1, Episodes 1, 2, 3, and 4
House_s01e5e6e7e8.iso - means House, Season 1, Episodes 5, 6, 7, and 8
More details on xbmc stacking is in the xbmc wiki, Mip uses the same stacking expression that is the default in xbmc for max. compatibility.
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Stacking