[stauf]

Is there a media manager that supports storing all actors in a single folder?  I.e. NOT the .actors directory within each movie?  I have my entire library setup so that my system does not need to reach out to the internet, except for the actors.  I can't find a manager that supports this.  They support downloding everything on a per-movie basis, but this seems very wasteful and unorganized.  This concept seems so simple to me, I feel like I am missing something.

I have proven that I can manually create a single directory and edit the .nfo files to have multiple movies point to the same actor info.  So, I know this "can" work, I am just very interested in having a manager do this work for me.  They do the rest of the work, seems silly that I would have to manually edit all .nfo files to accomplish this.  Why would anyone store .actor info on a per-movie basis?  I suppose it makes a little sense if a child actor is in movies their entire life, you may want different pictures, but I can live with that, I don't want to be storing data for the same actors over and over and over.

Single piece of data should be store in a single place.

Has anyone found a nice solution for this?  I've tried messing with Ember and Tiny Media Managers.  Maybe I am missing some settings, but I don't see either having this ability.

Thanks

[Klojum]

It's not a new question or feature, but there is one challenge: how do you handle actors/actresses when they .. are getting old(er)?
Most of them change in appearance over the years and if you want to be precise you should have thumbnails that are birthyear related.
The movie/tv service providers don't make any distinction in that regard.

It's just a thought.

[stauf]

It's not a new question or feature, but there is one challenge: how do you handle actors/actresses when they .. are getting old(er)?
Most of them change in appearance over the years and if you want to be precise you should have thumbnails that are birthyear related.
The movie/tv service providers don't make any distinction in that regard.

It's just a thought.

To be honest, in my case, I don't care, I just want one picture for each actor.  In my case, the media managers I have used (both Tiny and Ember) use single images for actors that are NOT specific to the movie being currently scraped.  If I look at the downloaded actors, some are older than the current movie, others are younger.  I really don't care.  I just want some info populated and the ability to click on that actor and see what other moves I have that they are in.  If they are older or younger than the current movie, no skin off my nose...

I can do this manually, I am just not interested in manually editing X movies times Y actors worth of information (and then worry about managers over-writing my work), especially when the media managers have all the info to do this automagically already.

[Klojum]

I'm not disagreeing with you. Storing actor thumbs multiple times next to each movie/tvshow is kinda pointless.
In hindsight it's one of those things that can use a major overhaul. Like some other ancient Kodi things.

If only we could open up a bunch of extra cans of Kodi developers.

[stauf]

I'm not disagreeing with you. Storing actor thumbs multiple times next to each movie/tvshow is kinda pointless.
In hindsight it's one of those things that can use a major overhaul. Like some other ancient Kodi things.

If only we could open up a bunch of extra cans of Kodi developers.

The frustrating part here is that this all works in Kodi.  I can manually edit the nfo files and get this to work.  Zero changes are needed in Kodi.  All we need is the manager to store the information in the correct place.  This should be a trivial change for anyone familiar with coding for the scraping programs.  They already have all the data except for where to store the actors, you would just need a way to configure that directory and this should just work.

Really, the most difficult part is deciding what to do if the scraper finds two different pictures for the same actor.  How do you reconcile the "tie"?  Again, I personally don't really care.  Last one found is the winner works for me and that should not require any coding either.  If people care to work on some algorithm that works for them...whatever, but this would solve the problem for most I would assume.

[Edworld]

Is there a media manager that supports storing all actors in a single folder?  I.e. NOT the .actors directory within each movie?  I have my entire library setup so that my system does not need to reach out to the internet, except for the actors.  I can't find a manager that supports this.  They support downloding everything on a per-movie basis, but this seems very wasteful and unorganized.  This concept seems so simple to me, I feel like I am missing something.

I have proven that I can manually create a single directory and edit the .nfo files to have multiple movies point to the same actor info.  So, I know this "can" work, I am just very interested in having a manager do this work for me.  They do the rest of the work, seems silly that I would have to manually edit all .nfo files to accomplish this.  Why would anyone store .actor info on a per-movie basis?  I suppose it makes a little sense if a child actor is in movies their entire life, you may want different pictures, but I can live with that, I don't want to be storing data for the same actors over and over and over.

Single piece of data should be store in a single place.

Has anyone found a nice solution for this?  I've tried messing with Ember and Tiny Media Managers.  Maybe I am missing some settings, but I don't see either having this ability.

Thanks

Media companion has the option of a centralized folder

[Klojum]

Media companion has the option of a centralized folder

Did you also know that you don't need to quote the entire post, but in this forum you can also highlight a portion of the text with your mouse, and subsequently you get a Reply button on the bottom left corner of that post? This button will copy that text portion into the reply section for you to reaction to.

Just a quick pro tip! :-)

[stauf]

Media companion has the option of a centralized folder

Sorry I disappeared but I tried Media Companion.  Thanks a lot for the tip.  It does exactly what I was looking for.

Ideally I would still like to figure out how not have no external links in the scraped .nfo files.  Not a total necessity, just seems so wasteful as I have all the info I want locally.  Actors are now gone, but there are still poster and thumbs.  Seems to me, these shouldn't be needed in the .nfo file at all, but if they have to be, would be nice to point to the local copies.  While Media Companion is great, man there are a lot of options to sift through.

[Edworld]

Media companion has the option of a centralized folder

Sorry I disappeared but I tried Media Companion.  Thanks a lot for the tip.  It does exactly what I was looking for.

Ideally I would still like to figure out how not have no external links in the scraped .nfo files.  Not a total necessity, just seems so wasteful as I have all the info I want locally.  Actors are now gone, but there are still poster and thumbs.  Seems to me, these shouldn't be needed in the .nfo file at all, but if they have to be, would be nice to point to the local copies.  While Media Companion is great, man there are a lot of options to sift through.

Media Companion does that. I have no external links...

[stauf]

Media Companion does that. I have no external links

Interesting, I have the following in movies:

<thumb aspect="poster">http://image.tmdb.org/<Fill in movie poster info here>.jpg</thumb>
<fanart url="">
        <thumb dim="" colors="" preview="http://image.tmdb.org/<Fill in fanart info here>.jpg</thumb>
    </fanart>

Also this in tv shows:

    <episodeguide>
        <url post="yes" cache="auth.json">https://api.thetvdb.com/<Login auth info here></url>
    </episodeguide>

I'll try turning off fanart, hopefully that will get rid of that section, but I want it to download posters.  It does download them locally, so not sure why it also needs this url pointing to tmdb in the .nfo file.  Any thoughts on getting rid of the tv show episode guide thetvdb login stuff?