[vbat99]

This woke me up ;-)

Can someone explain how for XBMC I could avoid many actor folders and JPGs? If all my movies are in X:\Videos\Movies\MovieTitle_{Year}\ format... where do I place the "common" Actor folder?

I'm a bit rusty on the setup but here goes.

I would create a folder like: X:\Videos\actors

In Media Companion, Go to Movie Preferences -> Advanced, and check the box for Enable Save Actor Thumbs

Next, Set the local path to: X:\Videos\actors

Now, the tricky bit. XBMC Path. How ever XBMC access your \Videos\Movies\ folder, is how you need to set this path. Is it a mapped network drive? (with a drive letter) or via smb

Example: Network drive on PC mapped to X:, but XBMC is mapped to Z: Then set XBMC Path as Z:\Videos\actors

Exampe 2: Network drive on PC mapped to X:, but XBMC is mapped to smb:\\192.168.1.10\Volume1\Videos etc, then Then set XBMC Path as smb:\\192.168.1.10\Volume1\Videos\actors (may have gotten the backslash wrong)

Now Media Companion will save into X:\Videos\actors every actor. If the actor image exists, it's either skipped or overwritten.

Last piece of the puzzle is XBMC. You need to edit advancedsettings.xml file in your userdata folder. If the file does not exist, you need to create it.
These lines need to be added so XBMC searches the correct location for actor images

Code:

<advancedsettings>
  <pathsubstitution>
    <substitute>
        <from>W:\</from>
        <to>SMB://192.168.0.14/My_Music/</to>
    </substitute>
  </pathsubstitution>
</advancedsettings>

Now the above code I could be waaayy off, as I haven't personally done this...yet (more I think about it, more I might need to play with this function myself).
Here's some reference for Path Substitution.

Hopefully another user of Media Companion can chine in and correct me where I've gone wrong.

It may also be that Path substitution doesn't need to be added, as we store the smb path for the thumbnail in the movie's nfo.

Play, test, let us know how you get on.

Rob