Naming Conventions - Folder Structure?
#1
Hello everybody!

During the last fews years I had all my movies set up for folder management and was using vlc as video player. But now I would like to setup a multimedia center, of course using kodi. I red the wiki and thanks to it had easily set up my system.
But I still have questions regarding movie and TV Shows folder management.
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This is my organisation which seems to work well in Kodi but I would like to have your expert opinion since I am not respecting the wiki naming convention Confused... I use filebot for naming purpose.
Movies: (separates folders)
Movies/Chappie (2015)/Chappie (2015).mkv

I am also using "Collection" management...
Movies/Jurassic Park (1993-2015)/Jurassic Park (1993)/Jurassic Park (1993).mkv
Movies/Jurassic Park (1993-2015)/Jurassic World (2015)/Jurassic World (2015).mkv

Is it fine to regroupe movies like that? I like it that way because I can quickly check if my collection is complete or not and. Also if a folder have (date-date) ending, that means that there is at least 2 movies in subfolders, so don´t need to tag it as a " Collection"! And just to say I have an almost complete 007 collection, it´s a lot of movies!! It will be a desaster having all of them under "Movies folder"...

For TV Shows:
TV Shows/The Wire/The Wire S01/The Wire - 1x01 - The target.mkv
TV Shows/The Wire/The Wire S02/........................................

Here I am not using the "Season x" subfolder as wiki says, I prefer to have "Serie name SX", because sometimes I copy only one season on my tablet, and prefer to have the serie name in it... I red that a lot of people prefer the SXEX format, what´s wrong with SxE format?
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Well, this is the way I like to set up my media, and seems that it´s working in kodi and also in Video Station (synology). What do you think about it? Am I missing something? How are you doing your organisation?

Thank you for your advice.
have a nice day!
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#2
It basically looks okay to me, but the season naming could be a problem during the scraping of your video collection. It's also possible that Kodi doesn't care about the season numbering and only looks at the episode files. I never changed Kodi settings for that myself.

If it works? There is only one way to find out. Smile
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#3
Naming files (wiki)

The movie folder name doesn't matter much as the scraper (at least the default themoviedb.com one) uses the file name (which should match the name in the database, plus the release year if required in brackets).

TV shows are much more strict, and folder basically should match the the database name again, with sub folders for series/seasons of you wish.

The key point for TV shows is to get the "selected folder contains a single show" flag set at the right folder level as that's the one which gets looked up in the database by the scraper.
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#4
I don't see the need for separate folders for each movie but maybe i'm missing something by not doing so Confused

Basically, on my PC, i rip the movie from my polycarbonate disks to /movies/ and then fetch metadata from the web using default themoviedb scraper.
I then export the library as individual files which saves the nfo and jpeg files inline with the mkv file itself.
Finally i move the movie rip along with the in-line metadata files from /movies/ to the HDD's i have connected to my RPi.

On these RPi connected HDD's, i use the following directory structure for my movies so that i get DVD and BluRay flags displayed on the confluence skin (the old default) when browsing the library.

HDD1/movies/BluRay/movie_file_names.mkv
HDD1/movies/DVD/movie_file_names.mkv

This structure is repeated for the three HDD i have plugged into my RPi USB port (yeah i need to pull the finger out and build a nas).
The sources are added to Kodi at the "BluRay" and "DVD" level and repeated for each HDD i have.

The main difference between PC and RPi is that the default scraper is set to "local information only" on my RPi...
It a little convoluted but this way i can very easily recreate the library and its metadata at any time without using my download allowance (limited) or loading themoviedb.com server (if in some unfortunate reason the uSD card and thus my library is corrupted by a failed upgrade).

Oddly the Estuary skin does not show BluRay and DVD flags in the same way which is an odd feature to drop... but again maybe i'm missing something... Tongue
I'm a XBMC novice :)
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#5
(2017-07-14, 17:43)captain_took Wrote: Is it fine to regroupe movies like that?
As long as it works, how you like to organise things is entirely up to you. However, with movie sets, if you enable the setting in Kodi to group movies in sets, Kodi will display them that way under your movies. They can be anywhere and Kodi will put them all together for you. So you can have the benefit of them all grouped together, without having to collate them into folders yourself.
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#6
Thank everyone for your replies!
To conclude:

1. For movies the important is the file name, that should be "moviename (year).mkv". So yes you can do collection folders!
2. For TV Shows the important is to have "each TV Shows in its own folder, and for each file to contain a pattern from which Kodi can determine the season and episode number (e.g. "S01E01").
Folder name = Show title
File name = Season/Episode number "
(from the wiki Naming video files/TV shows)

The sub-folder name doesn´t matter "Season 1" or "Name S01" should work well.

I like to have everything well organize so everyone, friends or family can find what they want with the program of their choice.

Thank you and have a great day!
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#7
Hello Everyone,

I have a doubt for naming different movie versions.
I am using for example Alien DIRECTORS CUT (1979)/Alien DIRECTORS CUT (1979).mkv

Same for UNRATED, etc... but seems that this not working well with scrappers... Should I put movie version after the date?
Like this? Alien (1979) DIRECTORS CUT/Alien (1979) DIRECTORS CUT.mkv

How do you manage it?
Thank you and have a nice day!
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#8
Kodi doesn't distinguish between versions of movies. The Extras addon is good for that though.
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#9
For the movie(s) I've got a "special edition" of, I just copied the normal nfo for the movie and added "special edition" to the title on the movie filename itself, and on the nfo and poster to go with it.
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#10
usually, everything after the date is ignored so you can add whatever you like to distinguish between movie versions. The scraper won't detect the difference however so you must either rename the movie in Kodi or use NFO files to include things like "director's cut".

It would be cool if Kodi could distinguish between these versions but that would mean adding an extra field to the database and is a major change.
I think all righthtinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that ordinary, decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired.
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#11
That is why the Extras addon is good for this.
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#12
(2017-09-11, 07:28)nickr Wrote: Kodi doesn't distinguish between versions of movies. The Extras addon is good for that though.

Thank you I will try this Addon!

(2017-09-12, 11:21)PH-SYM Wrote: usually, everything after the date is ignored so you can add whatever you like to distinguish between movie versions.

So for the file name I should put the DIRECTORS CUT after the date and not before as I am doing now...
I think i manage it that way:
(EC) Extended Cut
(FC) Final Cut
(TC) Theatrical Cut
(UR) Unrated Cut
(DC) Directors Cut
(OP) Original Print

For eg: Alien (1979) DC/Alien (1979) DC.mkv

To keep it clean Wink
Thank you for your advices!!
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#13
There are only a few things to consider for anything after the year:
  • some skins or addons look for phrases like "bluray", "HDTV" etc. to be able to assign a source to a movie.
  • Kodi checks for a few specific labels in case a movie is cut into two or more files.
As long as you don't use terms like that you should be OK.
I think all righthtinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that ordinary, decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired.
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