Media Companion - Manage Icons, Posters, FanArt, .NFO's & more for Movies & TV Shows [Archive]

billyad2000

2008-06-10, 21:31

Time for a new program from me, I've been working on it for a while now and am happy with the functionality included in this initial release.

The idea was to create a standalone windows program capable of cataloging and browsing movies, with the addition of built in scraper functionality. Hopefully faster than the XBMC scraper

The Program Title is: "Media Companion" (formerly "XBMC Media Companion")

It allows you to select the icon for the thumbnail posters/covers as well as the FanArt (http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=FanArt) image. Movie and TV Show metadata can be modified and edited from the user interface. It also uses API's from a lot of the same sites as XBMC, including the community driven and wiki basedthemoviedb.org (a.k.a. TMDb) (http://www.themoviedb.org) and TheTVDB.com (http://www.thetvdb.com) (which yourselves can contribute to directly), with images from mediaicons.org and impawards.com as well as meta data from IMDb.com

And now for a look at the interface.

http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/9366/mainwindoway3.jpg

This is the main page, when you first run the program most of this screen will be blank - use the "Add Folder" Button to add a folder containing movies, any folders you add will be saved to a config file located in the program root folder. The program will then scan the added folder (and subfolders) for nfo files. If your movies already have nfo files then these movies will be listed to browse. Likewise the the tbn files you have will be displayed. If you have no nfo files then the list will remain blank. You will have to scan your movies first.

To add your unscanned movies you will need to press the Scan Folders for new movies button - this is the 4th button across the top - the one with a + on it. Doin this will start automatically scraping each movie from IMDB and creating nfo and tbn files which it will place with the movie file.
http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/9044/scanandscrapece2.jpg

With this option the First choice in an IMDB search is the one scraped. These IMDB searches appear to be pretty accurate, but mistakes are made and the wrong movie is scraped. in these cases there is quite an easy way to fix it. The 2nd button across brings up the Editor.
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/559/editorgh2.jpg

As you can see there is a button labeled "Search for a different title" select this to bring up the manual search window shown below:-
http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/432/imdbmanualsearchhc6.jpg
The above shows a simple browser with the page set to an IMDB search for the movie title - it's just a case of navigating to the correct movie and pressing the "Go" button, simple as that.

The editor window also offers additional options, as its title suggests if you make changes to the info in this mode and save it this will replace your current nfo file with a new one. Like wise the Cover thumbnail can be altered by inputting a url for the jpeg.
The Re-Scrape can be used to scrape the same movie from IMDB. This option also gets the first page of thumbnails from IMDB - this is usually 8 thumbs - any one can be selected - or can be added to by entering a jpeg url. - The chosen thumb will be saved along with the nfo.

The Scraper Speed is definately much faster than XBMC and seems to be limited by IMDB, during testing I was timing the scraper and it seemed to vary greatly between 2 and 10 movies per minute. The average seemed to be about 4.

It is my belief that this could go much further - I am currently thinking about where to go next, but the following is my shortlist of things to do.

1, Fix any bugs
2, Add support for TV shows
3, Add Standalone SQL DB support

This program outputs nfo files to a specific format, and only has the following entries.

<movie>
<title></title>
<rating></rating>
<year></year>
<top250></top250>
<votes></votes>
<outline></outline>
<plot></tagline>
<runtime></runtime>
<thumb></thumb>
<mpaa></mpaa>
<watched></watched>
<id></id>
<genre></genre>
<credits></credits>
<director></director>
<premiered></premiered>
<studio></studio>
<actor>
<name></name>
<role></role>
<thumb></thumb>
</actor>
</movie>

As many actors as is displayed on the IMDB movie page will be saved- usually 15

Download it here (http://www.billyad2000.co.uk)
p.s - this program was written with Visual Basic 2008, so make sure you have the latest .net framework installed

p.p.s. And let me know what you think, feedback is appreciated.

Gamester17

2008-06-10, 21:52

Very cool!, it reminds me of MeD's Movie Manager (http://xmm.sourceforge.net), ...come to think of it, why not use that as a base and expand on it?, it is because iits code is in Java?

http://xmm.sourceforge.net
http://xmm.sourceforge.net/index.php?menu=screenshots

Both this and MeD's Movie Manager (http://xmm.sourceforge.net) kind of also reminds me of TwonkyMedia (http://www.twonkyvision.de/Products/TwonkyMedia/index.html) without the UPnP MediaServer.

nate12o6

2008-06-10, 23:44

Would it be possible to connect this up to your xbox by using sql connection to sql light?

Rand Al Thor

2008-06-11, 01:10

Wow! This is great. Just the thing I was looking for. I can manage all of my movies and even add custom genres all from the desktop. One thing I would suggest is better handling of thumbs. Perhaps show the alternate thumbs as well(ie impaawards) and let the user choose between them. Perhaps a croping tool for thumbs with white space as well. These are just suggestions. This thing is great!

Bram77

2008-06-11, 01:30

I'm getting the following error with every movie I select...

See the end of this message for details on invoking
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************** Exception Text **************
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at XBMC_Media_Companion.Form1.loadinfofile()
at XBMC_Media_Companion.Form1.ComboBox1_TextChanged(O bject sender, EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.OnTextChanged(EventAr gs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.ComboBox.OnTextChanged(EventA rgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.set_Text(String value)
at System.Windows.Forms.ComboBox.set_Text(String value)
at System.Windows.Forms.ComboBox.UpdateText()
at System.Windows.Forms.ComboBox.WmReflectCommand(Mes sage& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ComboBox.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.O nMessage(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.W ndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

************** Loaded Assemblies **************
mscorlib
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.1433 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.NET/Framework/v2.0.50727/mscorlib.dll
----------------------------------------
XBMC Media Companion
Assembly Version: 1.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 1.0.0.0
CodeBase: file:///E:/Bestanden/XBMC/XBMC%20Media%20Companion%201.0/XBMC%20Media%20Companion%201.0.exe
----------------------------------------
Microsoft.VisualBasic
Assembly Version: 8.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 8.0.50727.1433 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/Microsoft.VisualBasic/8.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll
----------------------------------------
System
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.1433 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Windows.Forms
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.1433 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Windows.Forms/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Windows.Forms.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Drawing
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.1433 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Drawing/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Drawing.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Runtime.Remoting
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.1433 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Runtime.Remoting/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Runtime.Remoting.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Xml
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.1433 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Xml/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Xml.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Configuration
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.1433 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Configuration/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Configuration.dll
----------------------------------------

************** JIT Debugging **************
To enable just-in-time (JIT) debugging, the .config file for this
application or computer (machine.config) must have the
jitDebugging value set in the system.windows.forms section.
The application must also be compiled with debugging
enabled.

For example:

<configuration>
<system.windows.forms jitDebugging="true" />
</configuration>

When JIT debugging is enabled, any unhandled exception
will be sent to the JIT debugger registered on the computer
rather than be handled by this dialog box.

I've got the latest .NET installed (Windows XP SP3). The movie files are on a mapped network drive.
Does this program add the scraped info to the XBMC movie database somehow? Or does XBMC read the tbn file before it starts looking for the info in IMDB?

Aenima99x

2008-06-11, 02:58

:eek2: :cool2:
Great work! I've been waiting for something like this. Thanks for your time putting it together!

flipped cracker

2008-06-11, 03:04

i get the same error.

flipped cracker

2008-06-11, 03:23

i find that the error happens with the movies that already had an existing nfo file.

i have a few other issues that i'll post about after playing around with it more.

flamez

2008-06-11, 03:37

.. Great Program! it does crash on certain movies like the sample provided above.
Keep up the good work!!!

Aenima99x

2008-06-11, 03:42

Getting the same error as well

billyad2000

2008-06-11, 10:37

I'm looking into the reason for the crash - It would help me track this if someone would paste a copy of an .nfo file that causes the crash

billyad2000

2008-06-11, 11:13

lingenfr_xbmc

2008-06-11, 13:51

Has anyone tried this with wine under linux?

Gamester17

2008-06-11, 17:00

Both this and MeD's Movie Manager (http://xmm.sourceforge.net) kind of also reminds me of TwonkyMedia (http://www.twonkyvision.de/Products/TwonkyMedia/index.html) without the UPnP MediaServer.MediaTomb (http://mediatomb.cc) is also very cool piece of open source software that is similar to TwonkyMedia (http://www.twonkyvision.de/Products/TwonkyMedia/index.html), it is just a too bad that MediaTomb (http://mediatomb.cc) is currently only available for Linux (though it could probably be ported to Microsoft Windows operating-system using MinGW/MSYS).

I am rambling, aren't I? I get that way when I can see so much potential.

Anyway, thanks billyad2000 for a great software! :cool:

flipped cracker

2008-06-11, 17:45

The error is occuring within the "loadinfofile" routine.

I've went through it and tightened up error checking and exception handling.

Would people who have encountered this issue please test out the following version.
Download Link (http://www.datafilehost.com/download-fbf32799.html)

I'm not making this an actual release until the error is verified as fixed.

I would still appreciate help tracking down the exact cause of the bug, as I said in the post below, the best way would be if a couple of people were to post the xml nfo from a couple of files that caused the crash.

the nfo files i already have don't have xml in them. they're usually just plain text.

it would also be nice if you could have the option of scanning recursively. i keep all my movies in it's own separate folder inside my main "movies" folder, and would like to just add the movies folder and have it find all my movies. it doesn't find them if they're not in the exact folder you add to the program.

flipped cracker

2008-06-11, 17:57

i also get this error sometimes when scraping for new movies. the info window doesn't go away and i can't do anything else in the program without closing it and opening it back up.

this is what it looks like when it happens:
http://flippedcracker.net/screen.jpg

billyad2000

2008-06-11, 20:43

Download version 1.02 here (http://www.datafilehost.com/download-5b909e49.html)

Ok - for those of you encountering crashes I think i've got it fixed.

The program searches for nfo files with the movies, which I assumed would be xbmc formatted xml files. I didn't take into account nfo files which are not formatted correctly.
The Crash should now be fixed and such movies will just show as blank. To get the movie nfo just edit this movie and do a manual search from the edit form via the "change movie" button

i also get this error sometimes when scraping for new movies. the info window doesn't go away and i can't do anything else in the program without closing it and opening it back up.

The reason for this error was IMDB returning zero results for the search, renaming the file from
"3 10 to Yuma[2007]DvDrip[Eng]"
to
"310 to Yuma"
would fix this.
For those who don't want to do this a blank nfo will be saved and a manual search will have to be done as above. The program should not freeze anymore.

it would also be nice if you could have the option of scanning recursively. i keep all my movies in it's own separate folder inside my main "movies" folder, and would like to just add the movies folder and have it find all my movies. it doesn't find them if they're not in the exact folder you add to the program.
This was the planned behaviour and has now been fixed

Perhaps a croping tool for thumbs with white space as well. These are just suggestions. This thing is great!
Simple cropping is now possible

Download version 1.02 here (http://www.datafilehost.com/download-5b909e49.html)

Bram77

2008-06-11, 21:51

Great! It's working nicely now.
Would it be possible to implement an option to handle the folder names in the selected directory as movie names and save the data in that folder?

That would result in many more initial matches in my case. I use one directory per movie and leave the movie names as they are so I can find subtitles easier based on the original name afterwards. That way also other files wouldn't be listed.

Bram77

2008-06-11, 21:53

In addition to my previous post. Maybe the coverart can be saved in the movie directory to, optionally.

terminalx

2008-06-11, 23:07

I just downloaded 1.02 and running it on a vista machine scanning my movies on a server. It crashes every time:

http://pastebin.com/m2612b068

It locks just like flipped cracker shows his post

flipped cracker

2008-06-12, 00:11

working a lot better. another issue i came across, some of my movies are split into 2 files, and the program is finding both of them and doing a search for each of them, and then making an nfo file for both of them. is there a way to see the files as one if they have some sort of naming convention (i.e. movie_name_cd1.avi and movie_name_cd2.avi).

one more thing... for the movies that already have an nfo file, that file is getting added as a movie, as well as the program writing it's own nfo, which creates 2 entries for the same movie. maybe you can ask if you want to delete the old nfo, or overwrite it or something.

and i noticed that in the xml that gets written to the nfo file, there isn't an "imdbnumber" field, but instead it's "id". not sure if it makes a difference, but that's how it is in the xbmc manual (http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=Import_-_Export_Library#Video_File_nfo_as_an_XML_file).

in response to Bram, i'm set up similar to you, and the new version is keeping everything in each movie's folder like you want. doesn't use the folder names as the movies though, and that would be a good option.

flipped cracker

2008-06-12, 00:16

oh, one more thing i just found, if a movie has an empty nfo, it shows the actor thumb, file and path from the last movie that had a completed nfo.

terminalx

2008-06-12, 19:20

It would be great if the program also saves next to the .tbn, folder.jpg (I think renaming the .tbn does the trick). Then I also see folders with a picture when browsing.

great program!!

terminalx

2008-06-12, 19:34

I would be very neat to have the optional "folder lookup" function. All my movies are in correctly named folders but my movie names come just as download from the scene and my nfo's typically only contain txt with the imbd reference (which is changing now!!!)

billyad2000

2008-06-12, 19:50

I just downloaded 1.02 and running it on a vista machine scanning my movies on a server. It crashes every time:

http://pastebin.com/m2612b068

It locks just like flipped cracker shows his post

I notice from your later posts that you seem to have solved this problem, did you narrow down what was causing the issue?

terminalx

2008-06-12, 19:54

I stopt scannen actually and I am doing manual lookups one-for-one...I hoped that the error would tell you something. I will have a look again :)

billyad2000

2008-06-12, 20:14

I stopt scannen actually and I am doing manual lookups one-for-one...I hoped that the error would tell you something. I will have a look again :)

Any chance you could let me know the file names of a few of the files that cause the issue. it will help me track the problem down

terminalx

2008-06-12, 20:29

this is where it hangs...

Starting Folder Scan
170 movies without nfo's Found
Scanning IMDB For Appleseed.2004.DVDRip.XviD.AC3-NDRT-cd1
Appleseed.2004.DVDRip.XviD.AC3-NDRT-cd1IMDB returned no results, Empty nfo saved
Use the editor to change movie and manually find
Scanning IMDB For Appleseed.2004.DVDRip.XviD.AC3-NDRT-cd2
Appleseed.2004.DVDRip.XviD.AC3-NDRT-cd2IMDB returned no results, Empty nfo saved
Use the editor to change movie and manually find
Scanning IMDB For ccfactory.fs.cd1.lrc.xvid
ccfactory.fs.cd1.lrc.xvidIMDB returned no results, Empty nfo saved
Use the editor to change movie and manually find
Scanning IMDB For ccfactory.fs.cd2.lrc.xvid
ccfactory.fs.cd2.lrc.xvidIMDB returned no results, Empty nfo saved
Use the editor to change movie and manually find
Scanning IMDB For hls-cwtc
hls-cwtcIMDB returned no results, Empty nfo saved
Use the editor to change movie and manually find
Scanning IMDB For criminal

sho

2008-06-14, 01:36

This is truly a nice piece of software.
To put it more in line with XBMC, I would like to suggest the following:
a) Offer the option to use folder names for scraping (a la XBMC). My setup relies on that, and most definately other's.
b) Use already present*.tbn files instead of scraped thumbs, for those that you actually bothered to find the most appropriate thumb. (It looks like it overwrote all my custom tbns!!)
c) Don't automatically save tbns. Those who use IMPA or movieposters may not appreciate them being overridden by "crappy" imdb thumbs.
(At least allow people to choose wheather to save them, default off)

Rand Al Thor

2008-06-14, 02:27

c) Don't automatically save tbns. Those who use IMPA or movieposters may not appreciate them being overridden by "crappy" imdb thumbs.
(At least allow people to choose wheather to save them, default off)

I think having the option to scrape these other sites as well for thumbs would be the only other feature I could suggest. IMDB usually has crappy thumbs so most of mine are from impa or movieposters. Also what and how are the scraped images handled? Does it resize them? It would be nice to have an option like in xbmc itself to set thumb size. Those of us using linux/windows versions with the extra horsepower to display big pretty images would appreciate keeping the highest quality possible.

Also, thanks for the addition of cropping. It works great! Cheers and keep up the great work.

Rand Al Thor

2008-06-14, 03:06

One more thing. Votes seems to return "votes:" instead of an actual integer. I figured that was probably not what it was supposed to do.

billyad2000

2008-06-14, 19:22

Version 1.03 is now ready to try.

Download Here (http://www.datafilehost.com/download-1cb2551e.html)

Bugfix: Votes storing "votes : " in said field during autoscrape now fixed.

Bugfix: Actor thumb is now blanked when displaying an empty nfo

Option added to stop automatically overwriting existing thumbs with imdb thumbnails. This is now the default. Their is a checkbox to force overwrite on the edit form.

Option to use folder names instead of filename. This is for all those who store each movie in it's own folder. It allows IMDB to use the folder name as for its search. In addition this is used to populate the combobox list

Rand Al Thor

2008-06-14, 19:38

good stuff! I will give a shot later today and let you know how it goes. Cheers.

Clumsy

2008-06-14, 20:04

I just tried the scan by folder name option, but it doesn't seem to be working with my setup. I have a network drive mapped to z:, and that is where all my movie subfolders are. This happens:

http://www.abload.de/thumb/problemdcg.jpg (http://www.abload.de/image.php?img=problemdcg.jpg)

billyad2000

2008-06-14, 21:09

Clumsy

2008-06-14, 21:26

Yep, fixed it. Thanks, will try later !

sho

2008-06-14, 21:41

billyad2000

2008-06-14, 23:03

Thanks for the quick response.
I'd rather not save imdb tbns with the movies as per default, is that something you are willing to consider?
(Then perhaps save the tbns in a thumbs subfolder of the program location)

The Default behaviour is NOT to save the IMDB thumbnail.

When you re-scrape a movie via the edit screen the IMDB thumbs wiull be downloaded, But unless select to overwrite via the checkbox, it wont be saved.

The auto scan should only save imdb thumbnail if a tbn file doesn't already exist

billyad2000

2008-06-14, 23:05

Version 1.032

Several bugfixes effecting program stability

download (http://www.datafilehost.com/download-46ce83bd.html)

sho

2008-06-14, 23:29

Cool,

The XBMC behavior for foldernames scraping is to use them for files within subfolders, but it falls back to filename scraping if there is a standalone file in the folder.
Media companion uses the parent folder name in that case (movies etc which of course retuns nothing ;) )

sho

2008-06-15, 00:04

billyad2000

2008-06-15, 01:52

Couple of quirks, observed using foldername scraping:
1) if a movie that has not been scraped is selected, thumbs for the last selected movies will be shown.
2) File: will be shown as <foldername>.nfo rather than <actual filename>.nfo
Wouldn't it be best to read the filename rather than generate it?
3) If incorrectly detected, "Re-Scrape Movie" will not open the dialog the allows "select another title", it will simply rescrape the data of that incorrect movie.

1 - will fix soon

2 - The Full filename and path is stored, but for the first versions a seperate variable existed which contained only the filename, This is still the case when using filename scans, but for folder scans the folder title is stored instead. I overlooked the File label text, will fix soon

3 - re-scrape was more for files that already had the correct nfo file but perhaps had scraping errors, or maybe people wanted to update the movie stats etc. There is an option to change the movie within the edit form. I'll look into adding a seperate menu item to start this from the main window.

For your point from the previous post, the ability to use foldernames for the search is optional and only should be used by those who have only one movie in a correctly named folder. This was for the benefit of a couple of previous posters who stored their movies like this :-

Appleseed.2004.DVDRip.XviD.AC3-NDRT-cd1
Appleseed.2004.DVDRip.XviD.AC3-NDRT-cd2
ccfactory.fs.cd1.lrc.xvid
ccfactory.fs.cd2.lrc.xvid
hls-cwtc

As you can see IMDB would return no results for the above filenames. They did however say that each movie was in a correctly named subfolder. So I added a method which allowed the program to use the foldername instead.

This is also purely optional. In the Menubar/options, make sure the "Use Folder names instead of Filenames" is not checked. If this option is not checked then the program will use the filenames (minus the extension) for IMDB searches.

For people who have unformatted movie filenames such as those above, and have them all stored in a common drive then I would recommend that the movies are scraped in the normal filename way. This will still give zero IMDB accuracy, but these can be corrected manually. If all those movies are stored in a common folder, say "movies", then the combobox would show every movie as "movie".

For those that don't like the folder names listed in the combobox and would prefer the original filename then after the scan is complete and all the nfo's have been added then you can disable the folder name option to get the original view.

flipped cracker

2008-06-15, 04:15

trying the new version now, but i wanted to say thanks for the hard work, and the fast responses to the bugs we come across.

i also wanted to mention something else, just as an FYI. if you add movies to the program, and it writes a blank nfo, make sure you update it before updating your XBMC library. i had a bunch of movies that i hadn't updated yet and XBMC went by the nfo instead of scraping for the movie itself and i ended up with a bunch of blank entries. not really a big deal because i'll update them and then update the library, but i was a little confused at first.

flipped cracker

2008-06-15, 05:16

still having an issue with movies that have more than one file associated with it. i'm even using the folder name instead of the filename, and am ending up with 2 nfo files. i think it's just happening on the initial scrape though, because if i delete the second one and re-scrape, it only saves one. it might also be doing 2 thumbnails on the initial scrape.

also, whenever i have to manually search for the title (in the edit screen), i always got a popup from imdb. it's pretty annoying. it'd be nice if it used the default web browser (FF for me) so you get the features of that browser (like adblock and such).

i love that you can choose the thumbnail you want. i'd like to see it start over from the beginning if you get to the end and keep going. and maybe if you change the thumbnail, it can automatically check the box to overwrite the old one. more than once i've forgotten to check it and i have to re-scrape and then find the one i wanted.

i've also had it do an initial scrape and find the movie, but not save the thumbnail (saved everything else though). so i had to go in and re-scrape for it to save the thumbnail.

overall, it's coming along nicely thought.

Rand Al Thor

2008-06-15, 07:08

billyad2000

2008-06-15, 12:00

New Build looks great! I still wish it would scrape more than imdb for posters though as I have manually entered a url for a poster on every nfo I have created. Other than that this thing is awesome ;) Thanks again.

Among other things I am looking at additional scrapers. http://www.movieposterdb.com/ seems a likely candidate as its guaranteed to return correct movie art, and would be fairly simple to scrape.

sho

2008-06-15, 12:35

The Default behaviour is NOT to save the IMDB thumbnail.

When you re-scrape a movie via the edit screen the IMDB thumbs wiull be downloaded, But unless select to overwrite via the checkbox, it wont be saved.

The auto scan should only save imdb thumbnail if a tbn file doesn't already existUndestood. But I'd rather have the option not save ANY imdb thumbs, since I for the most part rely on other, superior thumbs (IMPA, movieposters). I imagine many others do the same.

I just now realized that the program will not read imdb urls from nfo files for identification purposes.
(at the same time I found out it overwrites my imdb nfos if they exist :) )

How about having an option to save nfos with imdb urls, not xml files?

Clumsy

2008-06-15, 13:11

sho

2008-06-15, 14:03

Apparently it does not observe XBMC stacking.

billyad2000

2008-06-15, 14:06

The scanning process seems to create multiple .nfo files if there are multiple video files in the subfolders, say movies with 2 parts, or trailers or samples. Would it be possible to limit this to one .nfo per subfolder ?

I need a way of doing this. While it will be fairly simple to disregard multipart movie containing cd2, disk2 in the filename etc, although moviea and movieb would be useless. I also dont know how to differentiate a trailer from a movie. I need to know peoples naming methods.

Another possibility would be to add a dummy file for files to ignore,

for example:-

movie_cd1.avi
movie_cd2.avi
movie_cd2.dng - dummy file

if the dng file exists then the program would ignore the file. Let me know

In the meantime it would be helpful if people let me know their naming methods for multipart movies, trailers etc.

In the long run I intend to attach a DB to this which will make it much easier to flag media as unwanted.

billyad2000

2008-06-15, 14:16

Version 1.041 is now ready - see my sig

Bugfix - actor thumb from previous movie displayed for blank nfo - this should now be definately fixed

Bug fix - "filename :" text showed foldername.nfo instead of filename.nfo when in folder mode

Bug fix - auto-scan should now work properly. I introduced some bugs when I introduced the ability to scan for foldername.

The program will also get all available thumbs from MoviePosterDB. In addition to this, during auto scan, if no tbn file exists then it grabs the first thumb from MovieposterDB instead of IMDB.

Clumsy

2008-06-15, 14:33

Wouldn't it be possible at least for people who use the "folder name" scan option, to assume the folder contains only a single movie and create just one .nfo file ? I am pretty sure alot of people have a structure like this:
Movies / Movie A / part1.avi,part2.avi.trailer.avi etc.

sho

2008-06-15, 14:38

I need a way of doing this. While it will be fairly simple to disregard multipart movie containing cd2, disk2 in the filename etc, although moviea and movieb would be useless. I also dont know how to differentiate a trailer from a movie. I need to know peoples naming methods. Why just not use the XBMC stacking code and default regexp?
As far as I know it covers most of, if not all the most popular methods.

billyad2000

2008-06-15, 15:37

Version 1.042

Now should now only create an nfo for the first part of a multifile movie, additional parts will be ignored.

I think I got most of the popular naming methods, let me know if i've missed any.

It should work in either filename or folder mode.

also filenames containing trailer will be ignored

download via my sig.

billyad2000

2008-06-15, 15:52

BTW, regarding the new version 1.042

multipart movies that have already had an nfo scraped will still display in the movielist combobox.

Just remove the extra nfo files using the delete nfo button, or manually delete via Windows. It will not be re-scraped.

tbn files created for these files will have to be deleted manually.

Clumsy

2008-06-15, 18:50

billyad2000

2008-06-15, 20:03

The multipart thing didn't seem to reliably work here. This is probably due to the fact, that I only have correct folder names but never correct file names - they can be something really random if the source they are from chose to name them something weird. An example where it didn't work:

z:\movies\walk the line

I now have:

walk the line - 1.avi
walk the line - 1.tbn
walk the line - 1.nfo
walk the line - 2.avi
walk the line - 2.tbn
walk the line - 2.nfo

And the movie shows up twice in our application of course. How does your app decide if a movie is a multipart movie, purely by filenames ? If so, what file naming schemes would you suggest ? It is probably best I just start renaming my files because they are a real mess.

The trouble with that is that many movie names will finish in a number and it would be impossible to tell the difference.

Say you had a movie folder containing :

Lethal Weapon 1
Lethal Weapon 2
Lethal Weapon 3
Lethal Weapon 4

Then only the first one would be recognised.

Recognised naming for stacking includes :-

the following are not case sensitive

cd1, cd2 etc
cd 1, cd 2 etc
cd-1, cd-2 etc
cd_1, cd_2 etc

part1, part2 etc
part 1, part 2 etc
part-1, part-2 etc
part_1, part_2 etc

dvd1, dvd2 etc
dvd 1, dvd 2 etc
dvd-1, dvd-2 etc
dvd_1, dvd_2 etc

disk1, disk2 etc
disk 1, disk 2 etc
disk-1, disk-2 etc
disk_1, disk_2 etc

I think the above includes most naming conventions, if i've missed any out then let me know.
I wont however be including such as

somemovie1
somemovie2
or
somemoviea
somemovieb

It would effect too many other movies which aren't multipart.

buzzra

2008-06-15, 23:39

I'm having the same problem I posted about in the 'XBMC-DB - seperate nfo files' forum earlier today. The window is so large, I can't see all the fields or buttons. Re-sizing the window doesn't make any difference. My screen resolution is 1024x768. Am I doing something wrong? It does work if i up the resolution to 1280x1024, but that's way small on my laptop screen.

Thanks for ANOTHER much needed piece of software!
Great work!

buzz

harryzimm

2008-06-16, 03:49

Really good program. Had to rename a few movies but worth it. :grin:

Clumsy

2008-06-16, 16:58

Ok, after having renamed my movies the program works great and it really saves a TON of time if your have to clean your xbmc database. I am eagerly awaiting support for tv shows, then this will be absolutely perfect. Thanks alot !

What I noticed:
- If I close the app while is is working/scanning the process remains active and a small window pops up every second or so (probably the imdb scanner thread?). I have to close it with the taskmanager in this case.

flipped cracker

2008-06-16, 21:14

i feel like the new version is a lot slower than the previous versions.

flipped cracker

2008-06-16, 21:29

and thinking about thumbnails, i'd be nice if you could browse your own system in case you have images downloaded already that you'd rather use.

flipped cracker

2008-06-17, 01:51

i feel like the new version is a lot slower than the previous versions.
nevermind, i think i just had a memory leak somewhere with another program.

flipped cracker

2008-06-20, 02:12

the only other issue i've come across is during the initial scan, sometimes it doesn't find a movie, and all the info is blank, but when i edit it and go to the "find another title" section, it finds the exact movie. why couldn't it find it during the initial scan?

other than that, the program is working perfectly for me, and i'm about ready to use it on my main movie collection (i had been doing it on just test batches before).

i do find that deleting any nfo files that aren't formatted correctly before the first scans helps with duplications and extra files.

flipped cracker

2008-06-20, 02:19

billyad2000

2008-06-20, 06:55

*consider this an edit to the post above*

it would be nice if the program could scan previous nfo files for imdb title ids. of course, if you already have a .nfo file, and then have the program scan, you end up with 2 .nfo files, and 2 entries in the list. maybe the option to overwrite the existing .nfo file or something.

I'm not sure how this could happen,

The format for nfo files and XBMC is :-

Moviefile.avi
Moviefile.nfo
Moviefile.tbn

How can you have 2 nfo files. If you were to have an additional nfo file named other that the above then just delete it via Windows, or the Program Interface. Once the Movie has a correctly named nfo it will not be rescanned.

The only way to fix this would be to check each nfo for correct content and check the filename with media of the same name. This would increase startup time of the program greatly. Instead of scanning your selected folders for nfo files it would then have to open and read each file. Then scan for avi files, then mpg, then xvid etc.

flipped cracker

2008-06-21, 02:14

here's how i'd end up with 2 .nfo files.

i have a folder for a movie. it has a .avi and a .nfo file in it. but the .nfo file doesn't have the same name as the .avi file, or as the directory. the program will find that .nfo file, and put that movie in the list. then i have it scan the folder for new movies, and it finds the .avi file (or scans based on the folder name), doesn't find a .nfo file that matches, and makes a new one. but the old one is still there too. so the movie shows up twice in the list.

of course, it's easy to go through and delete the old .nfo file (which is what i do), i just have to do it before i scan.

sho

2008-06-21, 02:33

billyad2K, please look here
http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?p=192819#post192819

I wont however be including such as
..snip...

somemoviea
somemovieb

It would effect too many other movies which aren't multipart.Xbmc handles this just fine.

flipped cracker

2008-06-23, 01:26

a suggestion about the cropping feature, it'd be nice if you didn't have to click it every time, but could hold down the button and it'd keep going.

and i'd still really love the option to browse your local system for a thumbnail to use. i find that the program always picks a poster with no words, or one that's not in english. i probably have to change 50% of them.

also, it'd be nice if you didn't have to rescrape just to get the images to search through. sometimes the movie info is just fine, but it just needs a different thumbnail.

billyad2000

2008-06-28, 21:39

Version 1.100 is now available

Changes since version 1.042

Bugfix - Scraper including unwanted characters in some Titles
Bugfix - Scraper extra space added to some fields
Bugfix - Scraper would continue to run on application close

Popups should now be blocked within the IMDB browser
Feature to Re-Scrape Thumbnails from MovieposterDB only (V.fast, no need to scrape everything anymore)
Browser added to get thumbnails from local path

nfo files are checked during initial scan for correct content - this should stop release nfo files being added at startup.

Extra genre filter fields have been added - War, Animation, Crime, and History.

Program Form size has been slightly adjusted so it would display comfortably at 1024x768 resolution - this is as low as I will take it.

Image crop buttons are now press and hold. I think ive got the speed about right, let me know.

In addition to the above a "Play" button has been added, this is experimental at the moment and will open a media file in your defaul media player whatever it is. DVD and CD images (ISO, IMG etc) will not work, and only the first part of multi part movies will play. I'm still working on this.

In addition to the above i'm almost ready to add support for DVD VIDEO_TS folders.
I do need verification of the way that XBMC reads nfo and tbn files for DVD folders. The wiki has no information on this and the only reference I could find was in this thread :-

http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=33183

The only relevent reply was :-
Movie.Title.nfo (file)
Movie.Title (Folder)
> Video_TS (Folder)
> Audio_TS (Folder)

A little dab will do you.

The problem I have is writing the crpytic nfo file for anything other then the most simple things. A nfo editor on the Mac like whats out for Windows would be a godsend.

There are so many things that need to be tweaked with an nfo to be correct in XBMC. This is IMDB (and other) related, not XBMC.

Can anybody confirm this.

For The Download link see below :-

flipped cracker

2008-07-02, 03:50

i'll be testing it out tonight. the only thing is that now all of my movies are all set and i haven't gotten any new ones recently. but i'll still play with it.

flipped cracker

2008-07-02, 03:53

i did come across one thing. when exiting, there's a spelling error. it says "Medis Companion".

plooger

2008-07-02, 04:38

Some things to consider for future releases, from other posts in the XBMC forum, where a central third-party application like XBMC Media Companion might be a better fit ...High-Definition video flagging (library filter, and thumbnail overlay) (http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=30419)Gamester mock-ups... #1 (http://xbmc.org/forum/showpost.php?p=178379&postcount=18)... #2 (http://xbmc.org/forum/showpost.php?p=190800&postcount=32)... demo'ing what a skinner could do with the additional information, were it available.> (http://xbmc.org/forum/showpost.php?p=178687&postcount=25) NFO would be a nice option but should not really be needed, IMO best would be if XBMC could collect the media-information of each video when it is first scanned into the database (on the initial scan). Media-information such as; horisonatal & vertical pixel resolution, number of audio-streams with the language and type of those streams (DTS, Dolby Digital, 2.0, 5.1, 7.1, etc.), and also number of subtitle-streams and the language of those subtitle streams.

Off-line DVD-Video library database support (http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=24443)
> (http://xbmc.org/forum/showpost.php?p=195911&postcount=23) Here's a scenario for why XBMC displaying offline DVDs would be handy... I either don't have the HDD space or the personal time to rip my entire DVD collection to the hard drive; however, I would like my family and house guests to be able to search through my *entire* media collection (online and offline) to find something that interests them -- and XBMC's library is a whole lot nicer than having to stroll around to the various DVD storage cabinets spread around the house.

Some short-term workarounds...

Rather than using an empty file as the placeholder for the offline DVD disc, I can use some short, small homemade video clips instructing the viewer that the selected media is a DVD not stored online... and could go so far as to have several different clips for each DVD storage location in the house. ("The DVD disc you have selected to play is stored in the main Living Room entertainment center.") Extra credit for also noting DVDs that have been loaned-out.
Find a relatively simple/automated way to overlay some graphic (disc, house) onto media thumbnails associated with offline content, providing a visual cue that a given title is offline.

flipped cracker

2008-07-02, 22:08

got this error doing a scan:
See the end of this message for details on invoking
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************** Exception Text **************
System.Net.WebException: The remote server returned an error: (502) Bad Gateway.
at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetResponse()
at XBMC_Media_Companion.Form2.loadwebpage()
at XBMC_Media_Companion.Form2.rescrape_movie()
at XBMC_Media_Companion.Form2.Form2_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnLoad(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnCreateControl()
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl(Boolean fIgnoreVisible)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl()
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmShowWindow(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Mes sage& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ContainerControl.WndProc(Mess age& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WmShowWindow(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.O nMessage(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.W ndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

************** Loaded Assemblies **************
mscorlib
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.832 (QFE.050727-8300)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.NET/Framework/v2.0.50727/mscorlib.dll
----------------------------------------
XBMC Media Companion
Assembly Version: 1.1.0.0
Win32 Version: 1.1.0.0
CodeBase: file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/robert.EXTENDEDCARE/My%20Documents/my%20stuff/xbox/XBMC%20Media%20Companion%201.1/XBMC%20Media%20Companion.exe
----------------------------------------
Microsoft.VisualBasic
Assembly Version: 8.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 8.0.50727.42 (RTM.050727-4200)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/Microsoft.VisualBasic/8.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll
----------------------------------------
System
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.832 (QFE.050727-8300)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Windows.Forms
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.832 (QFE.050727-8300)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Windows.Forms/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Windows.Forms.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Drawing
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.832 (QFE.050727-8300)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Drawing/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Drawing.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Runtime.Remoting
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.832 (QFE.050727-8300)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Runtime.Remoting/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Runtime.Remoting.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Data
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.832 (QFE.050727-8300)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_32/System.Data/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Data.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Configuration
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.832 (QFE.050727-8300)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Configuration/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Configuration.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Xml
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.832 (QFE.050727-8300)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Xml/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Xml.dll
----------------------------------------

************** JIT Debugging **************
To enable just-in-time (JIT) debugging, the .config file for this
application or computer (machine.config) must have the
jitDebugging value set in the system.windows.forms section.
The application must also be compiled with debugging
enabled.

For example:

<configuration>
<system.windows.forms jitDebugging="true" />
</configuration>

When JIT debugging is enabled, any unhandled exception
will be sent to the JIT debugger registered on the computer
rather than be handled by this dialog box.

it pops up after it finds the imdb id for the first new movie in the folders.

Clumsy

2008-07-03, 01:31

The new version works very stable here and I really like it, so thanks alot !

buzzra

2008-07-03, 02:16

Version 1.100 is now available

Program Form size has been slightly adjusted so it would display comfortably at 1024x768 resolution - this is as low as I will take it.

My eyes thank you!! :nod::D

And I thank you for such a great program. It has greatly enhanced the XBMC experience in my house. I have multiple Xboxes and now it is much easier to keep them in sync.

buzz

billyad2000

2008-07-03, 08:13

got this error doing a scan:
CUT
it pops up after it finds the imdb id for the first new movie in the folders.

This is an error to do with connectivity of the IMDB website and unreleated to the program, although I will add a handle for the exception.
The program depends on IMDB working ok. Just try it again at a later time.

bionic1234

2008-07-04, 06:28

Fantastic tool billyad2000 - really has the potential to help organize movie folders - thanks for sharing.
Question - spiff recently added local trailer support for XBMC scraper (putting -trailer at the end of the file before media extension), do you think that you will be adding this into your Media Companion tool?
Tried version 1.1 from your signature and it sets up two nfo files in the movie folder rather than one nfo file linking to local trailer

snoxbox

2008-07-04, 06:47

Fantastic tool billyad2000 - spiff recently added local trailer support for XBMC scraper (putting -trailer at the end of the file before media extension), do you think that you will be adding this into your Media Companion tool?

That would be a KILLER feature. I've been trying to find a way to automatically download all the trailers for my movies. There aren't enough trailers on imdb. If this app could download the trailers from Apple that would be awesome.

kricker

2008-07-04, 17:42

This is one nice tool. The only thing I would like to see so far is a way to tell what size the image I am downloading is, and the ability to download more than one, so I can switch thumbnails easily later if I wanted to.

flipped cracker

2008-07-04, 22:07

found another spelling error. when hovering over the scan folders button, it has an "ans" instead of "and".

other features i'd like to see:

1) it'd be nice to be able to see what folders have already been added. i know i can open the xml file, but something in the program would be nice.

2) it'd also be nice if it could search for duplicates. i have my movies in 3 different folders (i really need to get a bigger hard drive) and there is potential to duplicate movies. i try to go through them, but i have 535 currently, and it's not easy spotting dupes.

kricker

2008-07-04, 22:10

billyad2000

2008-07-05, 10:58

To address some of posted suggestions.
found another spelling error. when hovering over the scan folders button, it has an "ans" instead of "and".

other features i'd like to see:

1) it'd be nice to be able to see what folders have already been added. i know i can open the xml file, but something in the program would be nice.

2) it'd also be nice if it could search for duplicates. i have my movies in 3 different folders (i really need to get a bigger hard drive) and there is potential to duplicate movies. i try to go through them, but i have 535 currently, and it's not easy spotting dupes.
The typo will be fixed in the next release

1, I agree that this feature is neccessary and it will be added soon, along with the ability to remove folders.

2, A duplicate search would not be quite so easy. Unless the files names were identical. I suppose it would be possible to check other file attributes such as file size and date for possible matches.
I do sympathize with you, I have 1300 movies spread over a dozen folders on 6 hard disks and i found using this prog that I had about 20 duplicate movies. This program does make it easy to see what movies I do have so I should not have a problem with getting the same movie anymore.

This is one nice tool. The only thing I would like to see so far is a way to tell what size the image I am downloading is, and the ability to download more than one, so I can switch thumbnails easily later if I wanted to.
I can't see any problem adding nfo as to the image resolution and size(KB), but i'm not sure how I would implement multiple image support. Media folders could end up getting very cluttered.
At the moment MovieposterDB thumbs can be scraped very quckly. For example the movie "300" returns 132 images in about 3 seconds on my connection (10Mb)

Fantastic tool billyad2000 - really has the potential to help organize movie folders - thanks for sharing.
Question - spiff recently added local trailer support for XBMC scraper (putting -trailer at the end of the file before media extension), do you think that you will be adding this into your Media Companion tool?
Tried version 1.1 from your signature and it sets up two nfo files in the movie folder rather than one nfo file linking to local trailer

I have considered adding partial trailer support in that existing trailers could be played from within the app. Im not sure about the automatic download for trailers for the simple reason of scraper accuracy. Downloading 100s of large files with only some being correct seems like a waste of bandwidth to me.
Could you please expand on your other problem please. I've just tested the program and with a file named "movie.trailer.avi" it is ignored by the program. No nfo file was created.

Another thing that I would like some user input on
I am thinking of creating an expanded actor details that would work as follows. A folder would be selected by the user. As Movies are added to the DB then if the actor file doesn't already exist then an nfo file would be created by the program "actor name.nfo" as well as "actor name.tbn". These would all be stored within the same folder.
This would allow the nfo file to the actor biography that could be scraped from IMDB. The actor tbn could also be stored locally as opposed to the current system which stores the thumb url (if available from IMDB) and downloads it realtime, each time the movie/actor is selected. It would also allow tbn files to be created for actors on IMDB with no thumbnail.

Let me know.

bionic1234

2008-07-05, 14:21

Could you please expand on your other problem please. I've just tested the program and with a file named "movie.trailer.avi" it is ignored by the program. No nfo file was created.

Thanks billyad2000 - did some more testing after your replay
Existing Movie folder structure: Folder Name = IMDB Movie Name
Movie.avi
Movie.tbn
Movie-trailer.mov

Run XBMC Movie Companion 1.100 - scan for new movies
Movie.nfo created
Movie-trailer.nfo created
Movie-trailer.tbn created

:nerd:I also tried renaming trailer to "movie.trailer.avi" but the result was the same.
*During scan - each time log shows 2 files found without nfo files and thus 2 nfo files are created.

Regarding my earlier request:
1) *this may already work, but with my problem above I cannot confirm* Your XBMC-DB tool created nfo files with a <trailer></trailer> tag - so I am wondering if the XBMC Media Companion uses local trailers to fill the tag when creating the nfo file?
2) BTW - I really like your idea about storing local actor nfo and thumbs, kindof the same reason why I think scraping trailers would be a good idea (save on bandwidth in the long run). Honestly don't have time to sort through each and every trailer that I download, but when it comes time to sit back and watch a movie it is sure handy to be able to watch a couple of different movie trailers to get you in the mood to watch one of those movies.

How I presently download trailers:
1) Open up my laptop in front of the TV
2) Run Apple Movie Trailer plugin in XBMC
3) Set AMT to Download files
4) Go through my movie folder alphabetically comparing to AMT trailer list
5) Individually select movies and exit out of trailer before it plays (after all I don't want to get excited about watching a movie right now)
*Yes a long process all to achieve a relaxing movie experience later in the day:sniffle:

Thanks again for the tool

flipped cracker

2008-07-05, 19:49

about the dupes, you could do a search by title in the nfo files. if all the movies get scraped properly, the should come up with the same exact title.

about the actor stuff, i don't really use any of that stuff, so i personally don't have a need for it.

about trailers... you could have a link that goes to the actual trailer, and then have buttons that give you the option to either search for a different title, or to download it. then you really only have to have the program return a url for all the trailers, and you wouldn't be downloading incorrect trailers. you could also have a button for downloading all trailers (which one could hit once they've gone through and made sure all the trailer urls were correct).

flipped cracker

2008-07-05, 20:07

kricker

2008-07-05, 21:32

another issue, the cropping is press and hold, but you can't just click it once. is there a way you can make it both?

actually, after testing a bit, it does work that way, sometimes.

and about thumbs... it'd be nice you could tell the program which number thumb to go to... say there's 130, and you through all of them, but the best one was number 10 or so.. you have to go all the way back through them to get to the one you want.
Or maybe have a setting to ignore any thumb under a certain dimension or file size. I do not care about small thumbnails I only want the large ones so they are future proof.

As for multiples, I am not sure how you can handle them except maybe call them nameofmovie_#.tbn and just number up as new thumbs are downloaded. It is up to the user to hit the download button, so they should know if they are cluttering up their folders.

With multiple thumbs it could then be possible for someone to add code that allows XBMC to rotate thru the poster in a view. MovieNight for Meedio does that and it is very slick.

sandman4sure

2008-07-08, 16:14

It would be so cool if this is also available for Mac OSX.
For now I'm going to try getting it to run within VMWare when I get home.
It sure looks very promissing!!

billyad2000

2008-07-09, 13:05

Version 1.113 has now been uploaded - see my sig for link

Main Changes since last release:-

Thumbnail browsing has been changed in the edit screen. - A zoom feature has been added aswell as image details, i.e x,y, filesize. The ability to directly to any thumb has also been added. Movie Browsing still works with zoom enabled.
Thumbnail cropping changed slightly to allow single click to work properly.

IMDB scraper hit accuracy should be improved. Exact matches are now used before popular matches.

Play movie should also handle stacked movies now, a playlist is created and played via default player.

I think i may have fixed problem with movie trailer been scanned - let me know.

A search for duplicate movies has been added - it uses the Title field within the nfo file. Let me know how it works.

Bram77

2008-07-09, 15:06

flipped cracker

2008-07-09, 19:27

awesome, thanks. i'll let you know if i come across anything.

billyad2000

2008-07-09, 22:20

Nice! Thank you!
I used the tool at the 1.0 stage and it wrote empty nfo files if no movie info was found. This was kind of anoying because it caused me being unable to scrape imdb info for these movies with the xbox.
Now the program finds more matches it isn't such a big deal anymore to manually lookup the ones it doesn't. I'm not sure if it still saves empty nfo files. I think it shouldn't.

There has been significant improvements overall since version 1.0, including the scraper. Read through the whole thread for additions and changes. - I suggest you try the latest version.

The behaviour is still to write blank nfo files for files that return zero imdb results - the main reason for this now is un-formatted filenames.
eg. "lrc-tgca.avi", would search for "lrc-tgca" which obviously returns a blank. XBMC scraper could do no better. This has been aleviated slightly for people who use correctly named folders eg. "c:/Movies/The Golden Compass/lrc-tgca.avi" when they have selected the option to Use folder name instead of filename.

The way the program works at the moment is to scan for correctly formatted nfo files at startup within the selected folders. If no nfo is present then it can't be listed by the program. If it's not listed by the program then it can't be modified and the correct movie scraped.
To find the correct movie in this instance then select the effected title - in the above instance "lrc-tgca" then goto the edit menu click the change movie button and browse IMDB to the correct movie and click "go". The correct movie will then be scraped

If you are still having problems and really want me to then I could add an option to disable the blank nfo behaviour.

Let me know

flipped cracker

2008-07-09, 23:51

still have a spelling error in the tooltip for the scan folders button.

other than that, i'm really liking the new thumbnail handling. the zoom in feature is nice, and i absolutely love being able to go to a specific thumbnail. saves soooo much time.

i'm almost sad that all my movies are all tagged and have thumbnails because i can't really use it on stuff that's done. i do randomly go through and see if i can find better thumbnails though.

one thing that would be nice is a button or something that'll take you to the directory or file of the movie that's currently selected.

bionic1234

2008-07-10, 13:37

Version 1.113 has now been uploaded - see my sig for link

I think i may have fixed problem with movie trailer been scanned - let me know.

Hey billyad2000 ran some quick tests:
Fixed Confirmed - movie trailer nfo file is no longer created.
However FYI at this time the trailer link is not added to the movie.nfo file if that is your direction.

Geeba

2008-07-10, 15:07

Very very nice!!!! just running it now... my next thing is to do a fresh install of XBMC on my box and hopefully it will put up all the required info from my server!!

billyad2000

2008-07-10, 19:25

Hey billyad2000 ran some quick tests:
Fixed Confirmed - movie trailer nfo file is no longer created.
However FYI at this time the trailer link is not added to the movie.nfo file if that is your direction.

I will likely add support to play movie trailers at some point. The reason the path isn't added to the nfo file is because I am unsure of the behaviour of XBMC.

This can be shown with the thumbnail files, if you have
Movie.avi
Movie.nfo
Movie.tbn
Movie.trailer.avi

The Movie.tbn file is ignored if thumbnail url's exist within the nfo file.

XBMC will also play Movie.trailer.avi but I dont know if XBMC will ignore it if the nfo contains a trailer url.

In addition to the above, the smb path that most people would have for networked Xbox would look very different from the Real Windows Path.

I think a better way to go would be to add the option within the program to play the Movie.trailer.avi file. The behaviour would then match XBMC's. The <trailer> catogory is not really needed.

jetskijoe

2008-07-12, 02:03

I just scanned my movie collect and out of all of them I found one error: if you have the movie Totally Baked: A Pot-U-Mentary it gets: an Unhandled exception Index was outside the bounds of the array. Below is the call stack. Please let me know if you need me to debug farther:

ee the end of this message for details on invoking
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************** Exception Text **************
System.IndexOutOfRangeException: Index was outside the bounds of the array.
at XBMC_Media_Companion.Form2.rescrape_movie()
at XBMC_Media_Companion.Form2.Button14_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.OnClick(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnMouseUp(MouseEventAr gs mevent)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseUp(Message& m, MouseButtons button, Int32 clicks)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ButtonBase.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Button.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.O nMessage(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.W ndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

billyad2000

2008-07-12, 10:49

jetskijoe

2008-07-13, 21:09

yes I am using the latest version 1.113
The full path is M:\Movies\Totally Baked

please let me know if there is anything else that you need

jetskijoe

2008-07-13, 21:10

sorry forgot the file name: vmt-baked-xvid.avi

billyad2000

2008-07-13, 22:22

I just scanned my movie collect and out of all of them I found one error: if you have the movie Totally Baked: A Pot-U-Mentary it gets: an Unhandled exception Index was outside the bounds of the array.

Thanx for the nfo - I found out what the problem was.

I created an array large enough to contain 101 actors which I believed would be enough for any movie since IMDB only usually lists 15.

Totally Baked seems to be an exception to this and lists more than that. I have fixed it and will upload it soon. I've just got a few other things to finish off first.

billyad2000

2008-07-14, 21:10

Updated Release nfo

XBMC Media Companion latest version is 1.210

Main Changes since last release:-

I've created a new form for preferences although its looking a bit bare at the moment. The options to use folder names and overwrite existing thumbs have been moved here. This page also lists media folders that have been added, and gives the user the ability to remove folders as well as add them. The options previously located in the main menu bar are gone.

A couple of appearance options have been added letting users choose the foreground and background colours

Program window can now be enlarged for monitors larger than 1024*768 and all the controls are scaled accordingly.

Program Window can also be reduced, scroll bars are added if it gets below a certain size

Spelling error in the tool tip for the scan folders button fixed ;)

Bug Causing crash when IMDB returned more than 100 actors fixed

Nice animated Zoom has been added to the movie thumbnail displayed in the main program window. Hover mouse over thumbnail to see,

Clumsy

2008-07-14, 21:51

flipped cracker

2008-07-14, 22:09

billyad2000

2008-07-14, 22:12

Things I noticed:

a) I immediately had to change the background color back to white, that just looked ugly ;)
b) some spelling mistakes in the preferences: "Background Colour" and "Foreground Colour", "Don't overwrite ..."
c) the play movie button doesn't seem to work, unhandled exception because it doesn't find the player

a) Understandable - just trying to give people a few options to customize

b) The spelling is correct where I live, it's (England)English.

c) I can't duplicate this, the program creates a playlist and launches it, it should play in default player. Could you give me more details about your setup and the exact problem you are having.

billyad2000

2008-07-14, 22:16

the play movie button works for me, although it picked the wrong media player. i think it should pick the default media player for the certain filetype. it chose winamp, which isn't associated with .avi file (which my movies are usually). vlc is the default avi player.

the File | Exit doesn't work for me.

You need to Associate .m3u extension with vlc

Just checked - File/Exit non functional. Oversite on my part, forgot to add the code for that menu option :blush:. Will fix shortly

Clumsy

2008-07-15, 00:07

billyad2000

2008-07-15, 00:47

b) what I posted was the corrected words so you would know where to look, I think they are still mispelled in the app.

about c) the logfile unfortunately is in German, but here is the exception:
http://pastebin.com/m5779391

OK - I see what you mean - spelling fixed

Could you let me know the filename (or filenames if its a multipart movie) so I can try to duplicate the exception.

flipped cracker

2008-07-15, 02:38

You need to Associate .m3u extension with vlc

oh, nevermind then. i'd like to keep .m3u files associated with winamp since that's what i use for music playlists.

billyad2000

2008-07-15, 09:40

oh, nevermind then. i'd like to keep .m3u files associated with winamp since that's what i use for music playlists.

Unfortunately this is the only way I can think of that will allow me to play media on external media player software that can handle multipart movies.

I could make it work as you would like, but only for single file movies.

Once i've found this bug that a few people are encountering then I can also give people the option to use an embedded Windows Media Player.

Clumsy

2008-07-15, 13:10

How about making the player user configurable. You would then pass on your m3u file to the player specified by the user and wouldn't have to touch file associations. Then you could maybe add a checkbox to allow for multipart handling, and if disabled just pass the .avi file instead without multipart support. But to be honest, I wouldn't put in too much effort here, the app is designed as a companion to xbmc - so that is what the user is probably going to use anyway. I just use the feature if I quickly want to check video quality or similar things.

blittan

2008-07-15, 20:56

was scanning thru my movies and got an idea.

Add a counter (since we count how many movies there are in the folder) you must be able to add a counter like "3 of 100 movies scanned"

flipped cracker

2008-07-15, 21:15

Unfortunately this is the only way I can think of that will allow me to play media on external media player software that can handle multipart movies.

I could make it work as you would like, but only for single file movies.

Once i've found this bug that a few people are encountering then I can also give people the option to use an embedded Windows Media Player.
to be honest, i'm probably never to going to play the movie through this program, so i'm not that worried about it.

blittan

2008-07-15, 23:14

got a few other things too..

1: when searching for example "starsky & hutch" there is a tv-show named the same.. maybe do a filter to not select that, think it even show like Starsky & Hutch (tv-series)

2: If there are a movie with the same name (Fun with Dick and Jane) the program often chooses the oldest.. I would like it the other way around..

rtwight

2008-07-15, 23:34

billyad2000

2008-07-16, 10:09

Another "option" might be to rename the file as well to something that makes more sense and can be scrapped easier in the future.

Using the Fun with Dick and Jane example, if the file is currently called "fun with dick and Jane.avi", it could rename it to "fun with dick and jane (2005).avi".

Not sure how easy this would be but would help down the road once you have set up the proper movie with file it would be able to scrape it properly the next time.

Just an idea...

Unfortunately renaming in these cases would not help. It is IMDB that is the problem.

If you do an IMDB search for "fun with dick and jane (2005)" it returns the same results.

While "Media from" and "Popular Titles" returns the correct movie in this instance, the part of IMDB that gives the highest proportion of correct hits is "Titles (Exact Matches), even in "Exact Matches" though "fun with dick and jane (2005)" returns "Fun with Dick and Jane (1977)"

Their is no way to tell the difference. The best I could do was make it very quick to get the correct IMDB title (Edit Movie/Change Movie button). Once the nfo file contains the correct movie it will always be able to scrape the correct movie.

billyad2000

2008-07-16, 23:20

XBMC Media Companion latest version is 1.221

Main Changes since last release:-

3 preferences have been added for playing media files :-

Use default player (this will be whatever program has ".m3u" set as file association.

Use Windows Media Player - will open with WMP

Browse to your own player. If you want to set a different player than above without changing file associations.

Whatever you decide the preference will be saved to the config, as will the player path for option 3.

Limited playback support for trailers has been added. trailer filenames compatible with XBMC are supported i.e. :-

moviename.trailer.avi

or

moviename-trailer.avi

The extensions don't have to be the same (if I've missed any out then let me know)

Multipart movies would have the trailer named as the first part (moviename-cd1-trailer.mov)

A "play trailer" button appears next to the play movie button if such a trailer file exists.

Several Spelling Mistakes have been fixed

Only one instance of XBMC Media Companion can run now

Bug causing exception when trying to play media possibly fixed

Clumsy

2008-07-17, 00:03

I just tried the new version.
This error shows up when I try the embedded WMP thing: http://pastebin.com/m2a171f8e
This error, when I use default player: http://pastebin.com/m3c07411c
When I use the third opiton to specify the player, that works.

All this under Vista 32bit, German Version.

One thing I noticed, was that the path field at the bottom shows something like this:
N:\\N:\Walk The Line/ - for my mapped network drive, is that the intended behaviour ?

bionic1234

2008-07-17, 12:47

Limited playback support for trailers has been added. trailer filenames compatible with XBMC are supported

Awesome, thanks billyad2000.
Can't wait to try this out (fyi your download link on your site is not presently working) :sniffle:

blittan

2008-07-19, 03:16

maybe now that things are getting more stable, you should look into adding tv-shows to the program also :)

billyad2000

2008-07-19, 11:19

maybe now that things are getting more stable, you should look into adding tv-shows to the program also :)

Just what I was thinking. hotzenpl0tz has informed me his problem has been sorted so lacking other feedback I am assuming that the program is running fairly stable now.

rtwight

2008-07-19, 22:20

xeonicxpression

2008-07-20, 05:28

I keep all of my dvds in video_ts format. Am I correct in assuming that there is no way to make this work since it is only for movies in a single file?

KidKiwi

2008-07-20, 07:25

This is a great proggie - thx for your efforts billyad2000. Found it today (been using your XBMC-DB prog) but didn't know this existed until I read a lucky post. Been using it all afternoon. Way cool! :)

I wonder if you would consider a suggestion? I like to modify all my nfo's for consistency, alterations to incorrect grammar, spelling mistakes etc, etc. (really what your programme is for). What would be nice is for a (Checkbox?) to be available so once the nfo is perfect it could be checked so that the file is marked as complete (locked?). You could make the moviename text in the LHS panel change to "bold" to show that is was complete. Then any new movies added later would clearly stand out (not being bold). I don't know anything about progamming or if this is possible. Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Again thx.

billyad2000

2008-07-20, 10:34

One thing I have noticed with this program (and its a great one at that) is when I have a movie that doesn't have any poster art for it (say Bob and Doug's 24 Anniversary), the program picks a thumb that doesnt match instead of leaving it blank.

Not sure if anyone else ran into this yet...

Besides this I love this program :)

I verified this and it will be fixed in the next release

I keep all of my dvds in video_ts format. Am I correct in assuming that there is no way to make this work since it is only for movies in a single file?

Not at this time - I was about to add support for DVD folders a while back but I needed to know naming conventions of .nfo and thumbnail files that are used by XBMC for DVD folders.
I did ask in this thread but I am still waiting for that information.

This is a great proggie - thx for your efforts billyad2000. Found it today (been using your XBMC-DB prog) but didn't know this existed until I read a lucky post. Been using it all afternoon. Way cool! :)

I wonder if you would consider a suggestion? I like to modify all my nfo's for consistency, alterations to incorrect grammar, spelling mistakes etc, etc. (really what your programme is for). What would be nice is for a (Checkbox?) to be available so once the nfo is perfect it could be checked so that the file is marked as complete (locked?). You could make the moviename text in the LHS panel change to "bold" to show that is was complete. Then any new movies added later would clearly stand out (not being bold). I don't know anything about progamming or if this is possible. Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Again thx.

It is very possible, and I may implement it at some point in the future.
At the moment however, I am convetrating on adding support for TV shows.

KidKiwi

2008-07-20, 11:21

It is very possible, and I may implement it at some point in the future.
At the moment however, I am convetrating on adding support for TV shows.

Excellent...and a great way to spend your time :laugh: I'm seriously looking forward to it.

KidKiwi

2008-07-22, 03:07

billyad2000

2008-07-22, 10:51

After using the proggie it a test mode, I finally fired it up to the sources on my media server. Worked like a charm :)

One more possibility (once TV is done):;): could an option to "backup" to a single folder for movies/multiple folders for TV shows be accomplished - both nfo files and thumbs? Also, a "restore" function that allows everything from backup to be put back where it belongs in the actual source folders. Keep up the great work!

While what you are asking would be fairly easy to implement, I was just wondering why you would want such an option. If you were to loose the tbn and nfo files stored with each file then it would be very likely that you would also loose the media as well.

KidKiwi

2008-07-22, 11:58

While what you are asking would be fairly easy to implement, I was just wondering why you would want such an option. If you were to loose the tbn and nfo files stored with each file then it would be very likely that you would also loose the media as well.

I can replace the media with the original DVD's, but all the work that has gone into the nfo's/thumbs could be lost (nfo's more so). I thought it would a great addition to have the prog create a backup (I know it can be done a single file at a time but very time consuming - especially restoring them one at a time). This would save a great deal of time and your prog is already working with all the files. Having invested a great deal of time setting my system up they way I like, protecting the files makes a lot of sense.

Hope you think it's worth a look.

How is the TV side coming along?

terminalx

2008-07-23, 13:14

I have considered adding partial trailer support in that existing trailers could be played from within the app. Im not sure about the automatic download for trailers for the simple reason of scraper accuracy. Downloading 100s of large files with only some being correct seems like a waste of bandwidth to me.
Could you please expand on your other problem please. I've just tested the program and with a file named "movie.trailer.avi" it is ignored by the program. No nfo file was created.

Not being the expert here, but once the database is correctly scanned, is it not possible to do a “rescan” - add an option "scan database of trailers". This would allow a automatic download of (apple) trailers and ensure the correct trailers are downloaded not wasting the bandwith. In other words scanning for trailers would not automatically go together with a "normal" scan. A separate option per entry "scan&download for trailer" could be made available for the individual lookups.

I have no trailers currently and would love this option. It would kick start my effort for searching for all trailers.

but…..even without this option it this remains a great program.

rccadman

2008-07-23, 14:16

I am trying to do something "different" with this. Since I do not have internet at home I have created an empty text files with names of my movies then saved them with the file extention .mpg. I am then using these files on another computer with XBMC Media Companion 1.221 and internet access to get the movie info. Here is the problem...I am behind a firewall that I have no control over!!!! I am getting this error message every time I scan folders for new movies.

See the end of this message for details on invoking
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************** Exception Text **************
System.Net.WebException: The remote server returned an error: (407) Proxy Authentication Required.
at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetResponse()
at XBMC_Media_Companion.Form1.getid()
at XBMC_Media_Companion.Form1.scanfornewmovies()
at XBMC_Media_Companion.Form1.MenuItem3_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.MenuItem.OnClick(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.MenuItem.MenuItemData.Execute ()
at System.Windows.Forms.Command.Invoke()
at System.Windows.Forms.Command.DispatchID(Int32 id)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmCommand(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Mes sage& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ContainerControl.WndProc(Mess age& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.O nMessage(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.W ndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

Would it be possible to have the software "look" at your browser connection settings and use those? Or have somewhere to enter the connection settings for proxy servers?
Thanks for the help!

flipped cracker

2008-07-23, 21:02

terminalx

2008-07-24, 13:41

one feature i'd like to see is the option to use "folder.jpg" in addition to the .tbn files. it could be in the options or something to just copy the same .tbn as folder.jpg. it helps when not in library mode.

yes I agree, the folder.jpg is great when not viewing in the Libery mode. It would really be nice indeed to have.

billyad2000

2008-07-25, 00:45

Just a brief update.

I'm still working on adding support for TV shows. It has not been so easy as I first thought. This is the first time I have been forced to use Regular Expressions and I have spent much time scouring the web for useful information.
In addition to this I have also had to figure out thetvdb.com API.

Relatively simple things but doing things for the first time is always a bit daunting.

Anyway, the research is now finished and I have routines in place that will handle filenames for series and episode information. I've pretty much sussed the basics of the tvdb API also.

Just a matter of doing the main coding and integration now.

As for a few of the other suggestions;

create folder.jpg for folder mode will be added in the future

Proxy support - never been an issue for me before, but I will look into it.

apple trailers download - Not sure about this, I have looked at the website and can't think of any way to ensure the correct movie trailer is downloaded. In addition to this trying to dl a .mov file results in a file a couple of Kb big. Any suggestions from people who have experience in this would be appreciated.

Geeba

2008-07-25, 01:32

Am I missing something? spent hours correcting all the scrapped info on my movies but when I copy the movies to my Xbox (I use it away from the server) none of the movie posters show up without re-scanning the folder and the trailer button is missing ???

billyad2000

2008-07-25, 10:41

Geeba

2008-07-25, 10:57

"Surely this is an issue with XBMC."

Dunno tried two different builds now ??? various ones from around last month...

rudeboyx

2008-07-25, 14:29

i agree after checking and old nfo file created by xbmc db-nfo.exe from exported xbmc videos.xml, i noticed trailer tag is missing from media companions nfo files, meaning no trailers will be displayed in xbmc. just noticed this after refreshing my extreamly large movie collection with media companion AGHHHHH!

been waiting for a app like this for some time
Keep up the work billyad2000

blittan

2008-07-25, 15:25

trailers are linked from IMDb, dont know if they do it on every movie.

rudeboyx

2008-07-25, 15:56

trailers are linked from IMDb, dont know if they do it on every movie.

checked with movie known to have trailer available. media companion just no creating tag

Geeba

2008-07-25, 20:29

"checked with movie known to have trailer available. media companion just no creating tag"

Exactly what I did..... Deleted the info created by XMC re-scaned the movie and trailer button appers :(

rudeboyx

2008-07-25, 22:28

billyad2000 is there any plan to implement the trailer link into the nfo files.

if not i shall start rescaning with xbmc as its a feature i use often.
if you are then i shall wait for your next release before rescanning.

by movie trailer i dont mean download link or apple movie trailer, i mean the imdb streaming url link scraped from the site.

billyad2000

2008-07-26, 18:37

For everybodys information I will be including support for trailers.

I will upload a version in the next day or two that will allow the scraper to get the trailer URL for the nfo <trailer> tags.

My highest priority is still to add support for tv show scraping and navigation.

But once this is complete I will flesh out the trailer support to include playback and download of such trailers.

flipped cracker

2008-07-27, 00:38

is the new version going to have folder.jpg support? :cool:

lawina900

2008-07-27, 03:49

I have all my DVDs stored using VOB (over 500). Any progress in getting the information needed to do the NFO and thumbnails for DVD format? Thanks for the cool progam!!

steve1977

2008-07-27, 14:55

Awesome program, was looking for something like this for a while. Terrific job.

Unfortunately, I sometimes get error messages with specific movies. Please see error message and debug below. Any thoughts?

> Unhandled exception has occured in your application. If you click continue, the application will ignore this error and attempt to continue. If you click quit, the application will clos immediatley. The underlying connection was closed: an unexpected error occured on a receiev.

Details:
> See the end of this message for details on invoking
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************** Exception Text **************
System.Net.WebException: The underlying connection was closed: An unexpected error occurred on a receive. ---> System.IO.IOException: Unable to read data from the transport connection: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host. ---> System.Net.Sockets.SocketException: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host
at System.Net.Sockets.Socket.Receive(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size, SocketFlags socketFlags)
at System.Net.Sockets.NetworkStream.Read(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size)
--- End of inner exception stack trace ---
at System.Net.Sockets.NetworkStream.Read(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size)
at System.Net.PooledStream.Read(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size)
at System.Net.Connection.SyncRead(HttpWebRequest request, Boolean userRetrievedStream, Boolean probeRead)
--- End of inner exception stack trace ---
at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetResponse()
at XBMC_Media_Companion.Form1.getid()
at XBMC_Media_Companion.Form1.scanfornewmovies()
at XBMC_Media_Companion.Form1.ToolStripButton6_Click( Object sender, EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.RaiseEvent(Obje ct key, EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripButton.OnClick(Event Args e)
at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.HandleClick(Eve ntArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.HandleMouseUp(M ouseEventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.FireEventIntera ctive(EventArgs e, ToolStripItemEventType met)
at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.FireEvent(Event Args e, ToolStripItemEventType met)
at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStrip.OnMouseUp(MouseEven tArgs mea)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseUp(Message& m, MouseButtons button, Int32 clicks)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Mes sage& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStrip.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.O nMessage(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.W ndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

************** JIT Debugging **************
To enable just-in-time (JIT) debugging, the .config file for this
application or computer (machine.config) must have the
jitDebugging value set in the system.windows.forms section.
The application must also be compiled with debugging
enabled.

For example:

<configuration>
<system.windows.forms jitDebugging="true" />
</configuration>

When JIT debugging is enabled, any unhandled exception
will be sent to the JIT debugger registered on the computer
rather than be handled by this dialog box.

billyad2000

2008-07-27, 21:03

As promised :)

XBMC Media Companion latest version is 1.229

Main Changes since last release:-

Trailer URL is now added to nfo file if available on IMDB.
Play Trailer button will now start this url as a process. This will allow people to dl and play the media. If a movie.trailer.avi file exists then the url is ignored.

Re-scrape movie to add trailer.

Create Folder.jpg has been added.
In the preferences screen there is now the option to create folder.jpg for each folder. This option is only available to those who use the folder name option.

if enabled folder.jpg will be added during scrape or re-scrape.

To add folder.jpg it is not necessary to re-scrape. Just enter the edit form and save. If this option is selected then the folder.jpg will be added.

Various improvements to exception handling.

Movies which return no thumbs now remain blank, animation to empty picture box is disabled.

Menu File / Exit now works.

Please note, I had not intended to do a release at this point, but as a few people pointed out, the XBMC scrapes a trailer url if one is available.
I apologise for those of you who lost those links by using this program, and a simple re-scrape will now get this link back.

I will flesh out this trailer support in the future.

Geeba

2008-07-27, 21:33

Top Stuff!!! great software!

rudeboyx

2008-07-27, 23:35

nice one billy you ARE awsome

Meat_PoPsiclez

2008-07-28, 02:53

Thanks for this great peice of software, I'm slowly copying my movie collection for easy access on one network fileserver, and this just makes it easier to work with.

One idea, you could implement a file renaming tool that uses info from the nfo. I've written one in php (cli) to do it, but something integrated in the app would be great. For example, all my movies are now renamed according to the <title> tag, appended by [<year>], to ensure multiple movies with the same title don't get messed up. It renames all files with the same base name, no matter the extension, so anything that people might want to keep with the film stays associated (tbn's, idx's, rar's, txt's, etc).

Of course, it's very important that people verify the nfo's are correct before unleashing any renaming scheme, but it's something that has made my library tidier already.

snoxbox

2008-07-28, 09:43

Great work. The addition of the trailers is great. I'm hoping one day that an option can be set to automatically download and rename trailers in a scan.

Anyway, I'm having trouble with 2 part movies using my naming scheme. All my 2 part mves are named MovieName Pt1.ext & MovieName Pt2.ext . This doesn't seem to be catered for in your app. I either get duplicate movies, or I get 2 different movies.

Is there any way to allow the user to specify the regexp's used for stacking?

Meat_PoPsiclez

2008-07-30, 04:20

I found that my two part movies that ended in cd1 and cd2 would have the cd2 ignored. That results in correct info being listed in XBMC when stacking is enabled. I suppose that pt# is a valid and reasonable naming scheme aswell though.

billyad2000

2008-07-30, 12:31

terminalx

2008-07-30, 23:59

billyad2000

2008-07-31, 01:10

I would like to add the folders.jpg and movie trailers. Is there away to re-scrape the existing NFO files or do I have to re-scrape all 200+ movies manually? I think I am just not looking right.Sorry if this is a silly quesiton.

At the moment it has to be done one by one, although for folder.jpg support the movie does not have to be re-scraped. Just enter the edit screen and select save, folder.jpg will be created.

My priority at the moment is TV support and I won't be looking at adding any other featured until this is fully functional. Even then I doubt very much that an automatic feature is needed since all new nfos created will have the trailers added and I would imagine that by the time I would get around to it that people would have updated their nfo files manually.

I will be looking into fleshing out trailer support with download and playback/stream options in the future.

Rand Al Thor

2008-07-31, 18:08

billyad2000

2008-07-31, 23:01

@billyad2000

Great work! I use this app every day. Not sure if you have seen this.

http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=35382

but szsori is now hosting movie fanart and spiff has added support for it to the imdb scraper. I was wondering if you would be able to add that to the app as well. That way all aspects of the movie can be taken care of all at once. It would not have to fancy. Just display fanart if it is there, if not give the option of adding a local file/http:address and the option to crop. Then it would rename and save as moviename-fanart.jpg.

Does that sound doable? Cheers.

Looks like it would be a piece of cake to scrape them. I'll look into adding the ability to save as moviename-fanart.jpg.

I would love to be able to use these as actual backdrops, trouble is making foreground vb controls transparent. I haven't worked out how to do that yet.

Rand Al Thor

2008-07-31, 23:35

Cool m8. Thanks for looking into it. You mean you would like to use them as backdrops for the program as well right? That would be quite cool ;)

KidKiwi

2008-08-01, 02:17

Wow...things just keep getting better and better. The fanart addition would be great, as would the trailer. I like the idea of local paths to fanart, so I hope trailers can have a local path as well. Keep up the great work - cheers.

One program to do it all (Sounds LOTR'ish) :D

steve1977

2008-08-01, 09:58

Looks like it would be a piece of cake to scrape them.

This sounds awesome. That was indeed be awesome and a terrific addition. Cannot wait to see this running. Really love your work. Thanks!!!

Separate question: for some reason IMDB trailers dont show up with (neither within the scraper, but also not on the IMDB web site). Are there country restrictions that makes them not accessible outside the US or so? Thoughts?

Cheers.

billyad2000

2008-08-01, 12:09

Separate question: for some reason IMDB trailers dont show up with (neither within the scraper, but also not on the IMDB web site). Are there country restrictions that makes them not accessible outside the US or so? Thoughts?

Cheers.

IMDB doesn't have trailers for all movies. Try looking on IMDB for Dark Knight.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/
There are definately trailers available for this movie. If their are none available then try the uk mirror below.
http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/

I am not aware of any restrictions on IMDB in different countries although I could be wrong.

They are availably in the UK.

steve1977

2008-08-01, 16:11

IMDB doesn't have trailers for all movies. Try looking on IMDB for Dark Knight.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/
There are definately trailers available for this movie. If their are none available then try the uk mirror below.
http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/

I am not aware of any restrictions on IMDB in different countries although I could be wrong.

They are availably in the UK.

The Dark Knight (2008)
advertisement photos board trailer details

IMDb Trailers
There are no related videos available from IMDb.

Please see above. This is how it looks on the imdb site. There are plenty of "Trailers on other Sites" refered by IMDB, but none from IMDB itself. No clue what it is, but it could be censorship... (although it doesnt make any sense...).

terminalx

2008-08-01, 23:37

The folder.jpg is created in the directory where the movie files are. Some times however you can movie in the folder "Alien" and the a sub-folder which includes the actual movie files. The Folder.jpg should always reside in the root movie folder i.e. "alien" and not in any subfolder containing the movie files (which is currently the case) otherwise it defies the purpose of having the folder.jpg. I hope this is something easy to change.

great program!

PS would it be possible to have the program run with a certain start up action allowing it to be launched after automated download doing a scan for new movies on startup? Together with some other great programs like Natburs tv renamer (http://renamer.natbur.com/)this would be absolutely fantastic.

as I said. Great program.

PrimusZa1

2008-08-02, 15:21

I seem to be having a problem with the new trailer tag in the nfo. It's the same thing I mentioned in your DB NFO Creator post. When it scraps a movie and trailer I get this from your program:

<trailer>www.totaleclips.com/Player/Bounce.aspx?eclipid=e11009&bitrateid=310&vendorid=102&type=.flv</trailer>

XBMC will not play this. It quickly posts something about it being a bad file format. When I export the DB to XML and edit it directally the same move looks like this when it is directally scaped from IMDB:

<trailer>http://www.totaleclips.com/Player/Bounce.aspx?eclipid=e11009&bitrateid=310&vendorid= 102&type=.flv</trailer>

The "amp;" parts are missing from your program and the DB Nfo Creator. Now maybe this is just a problem with just me. I'm not really sure because no one else has mentioned it. I am using the latest build of XBMC also.

One last thing when I convert the NFO from your program into XML format like the xport of the DB it gives me this message when it it accessed:

"A semi colon character was expected. Error processing resource:"

billyad2000

2008-08-02, 15:40

PrimusZa1

2008-08-02, 19:50

Not sure what you are talking about with the other.

It's nothing actually. It's just an observation I made when I was converting the NFO created back into a XML file. If you fix the first thing I mentioned it will fix this problem too. Sorry if I made it more confusing. Thanks for looking at fixing the special characters tho!:D

steve1977

2008-08-03, 08:24

Really like this work. Two questions though:

(1) How do I need to change the following file name that the scraper show proper resultss? "2 Days In Paris (2007) (german)_cd1.avi"? I know that it works if I just delete "(german)_cd1", but thats not the point.

(2) I had all my .nfo files nicely created and then copied them on a different HD. No I rescraped them and all my .nfo files have been replaced by empty (non-looked-up) one. I always thought that the software doesnt overwrite. What did I do wrong and what do I need to do to avoid this in the future?

Cheers!!!

rccadman

2008-08-04, 19:44

I am now able to get through the firewall(Thanks) The only problem is the program will only get IMDB id number. No other information or thumbs are created? Any ideas???

Thanks
Rick

bionic1234

2008-08-05, 12:01

Just a couple of trailer sites that I tend to use

http://www.hd-trailers.net/indexAll.php

http://www.movie-list.com/classics-alpha.php

timdog82001

2008-08-06, 02:06

Just an idea I had today...How about support for subtitle downloading?

Meat_PoPsiclez

2008-08-06, 09:41

Is it just my imagination or did imdb break something with media companion scraping? The last few movies I've tried wouldn't get thumb's (actor thumbs however did come up) automatically. Just tried Cloverfield and John Tucker Must Die without success, a quick browse to imdb and I was able to manually save them without issue.

lawina900

2008-08-06, 10:48

Media Companion was working fine and today when I scanned about 60 movies it would get the nfo but not the thumbnails. If I individually rescanned the movie then it would get the thumbnail. I have rebooted, erased the config.xml, redownloaded Media companion. I am out of ideas. Did IMDB format change?

billyad2000

2008-08-06, 11:19

Media Companion Grabs thumbs from http://www.movieposterdb.com/ during an autoscan, since these thumbs tend to be better quality.

During a manual rescrape it grabs the thumbs from IMDB.

It appears the site is down for an upgrade at the moment. This is most likely the the only problem. I'll check out the scraper when the site is back up.

billyad2000

2008-08-06, 12:16

movieposterdb is back up now and whatever they have done hasn't effected the scraper, it's working fine.

lawina900

2008-08-06, 13:54

Yes. That was it as it is now working fine. Thanks for the quick response and explanation!!

rtwight

2008-08-06, 21:22

Hi Billyad2000,

Love your program as it makes adding new movies to my xbox go a lot smoother (and quicker).

One thing that might be nice to add to the next rev would be the ability to sort by add date. That way if you scan in new movies, you could filter them someway so you can make sure they all scanned correctly.

Sometimes its hard to remember what new movies you added to go and double check them.

Not sure how easy it would be to do this, but might be a nice feature.

Thanks again for your work on this, i know it has saved me a lot of time.

jsheeler

2008-08-07, 15:33

Great App, I have been trying to download 1.229 for a week or so now from billyad2000.co.uk with no luck.

Here is the message I receive:
"Accessing directly the download link doesn't work. The download only starts if you click from the download page."

Any ideas??

Thanks,
Jeff

Sparkz

2008-08-07, 21:54

AMAZING app! Currently one of the most important apps I use. I have a huge movie library. I recently set up a fileserver and had to rescan the whole library. My xbox couldnt do it. It would hang everytime. This app made it real easy. Thanks alot.

If your open to suggestions I have one for you. XBMC currently does this so I know its possible. Alot of filenames have various things at the end that should be stripped off when searching IMDB. For example CAM, DVDSCR, R5, CD1, CD2, etc. Currently the app reads the filename and searches for the whole thing. So "Batman-CD1" rarely finds any results where as the correct search should be "Batman"

Ex: "Speed Racer-R5-CD1.avi" should become "Speed Racer"

Even if you never do anything about this, it's still an amazing program. I love it! Thanks again.

billyad2000

2008-08-08, 00:51

XBMC Media Companion latest version is 1.481

Main Changes since last release:-

Support for TV Shows has finally been added.

TV Shows can be scraped from www.thetvdb.com.

Individual shows must be contained within one root folder and these root folders must be added one at a time i.e.

C:\tv\24\

would be added separate from

C:\tv\Lost\

C:\tv\ would not work

It doesn't matter how the shows are organised within this folder/subfolders as long as each root folder added only contains one show.

In order to make this work it was necessary to include a couple of extra xml tags within the tvshow.nfo file. These are :-

<id>tt0092455</id> - This contains the IMDB ID of the tv show, to allow more detailed cast information from individual episodes.

<tvdbid>71470</tvdbid> - This contains the TVDB Show ID, needed to scrape episodes.

You will only need to do the above once, on adding a new TV Show Folder. These tags do not affect XBMC compatibility.

When you add a TV Show folder the program will first check if tvshow.nfo exists within the root. If it does not then you will be given the option to scrape this from TVDB. This must be done before the folder will be added.

If tvshow.nfo exists and it contains valid xml data then you will be given the option to add the above tags (NOTE - The data contained within the XML will not be altered. The above tags will merely be inserted, or edited if it already contains empty <id></id> tags).

If the tags already exist then the folder will be added straight away. (If you need to re-add them at some time in the future)

Preferences available for TVDB are :-

Language
Episode sort order (DVD order, or Default (Usually aired order)
Banners and Fanart is downloaded from TVDB. Main Banner is saved as folder.jpg, fanart as tvshow-fanart.jpg, tvshow-fanart-1.jpg, etc
Series jpg URL's are included within the nfo files
Ability to get actor info from IMDB for tvshow.nfo and/or episode-title.nfo

In order that 100% accuracy is maintained then I recommend that you check the show episode order as listed on TVDB. The scraper uses Series No and Episode No and if the orders are different then the wrong information will be scraped for out of order episodes. (Sometimes this is as simple as selecting use DVD order as episodes may differ from aired order)

As above, if you are getting the actors from IMDB for the TV Show episodes then I would recommend that you check the order of your TV shows compared to IMDB. If the episode order is different then the wrong actors will be downloaded

Compatible naming would be any filename including S01E01 or s01e01 etc, or 1x1 or 1 x 1 (02x01 would be ok) etc where the first number would be the season and the second number, the episode.

Movie fanart can now be obtained automatically from http://moviebackdrops.com/
Enable in preferences, Available images saved as "moviename-fanart.jpg", "moviename-fanart2.jpg", "moviename-fanart.jpg", etc.

Naming convention added for multi-part movies now includes "pt1" , "pt.1" , "pt-1" , "pt_1" , "pt 1"

Bug Fix - IMDB trailer URL now include XML codes to be compatible with XBMC.

Please note - TV show support is in very early days, and while it seems to be working ok on my system there is still much to be done. I would appreciate it if people would approach this as they would any beta softwarem, namely with a bit of caution.
Editing TV show and episode nfo files has not been enabled yet, and I am still working on the layout so please be patient.

blittan

2008-08-08, 00:59

will testdrive this :) thanks for developing this.

joebrady

2008-08-08, 01:17

same here, been meaning to try this out for some time, this looks like the time!

harryzimm

2008-08-08, 01:18

Thanks billyad2000. This keeps on getting better and better.

spiff

2008-08-08, 01:50

billyad; fyi, local tvshow fanart should be named fanart.jpg and stored in the root of the tvshows folder in order to be picked up automagically by xbmc

anoobie

2008-08-08, 10:35

Hi billyad, could you add an option to just scrape for fanarts without having to rescrape for new nfos again? Thanks a lot.

billyad2000

2008-08-08, 15:27

Small update is now available.

TV Show Fanart now saved as fanart.jpg, fanart2.jpg for XBMC compatibility.

Option added Menu/Movie/Scan all movies for fanart.

steve1977

2008-08-08, 18:11

joebrady

2008-08-08, 18:22

Tried this out last night. Isn't perfect, but it got the job done. A few wrong lookups that I had to go back and fix, but most were due to my erratic naming of files. I was never able to actually browse and edit my collection after adding my movie folder. It just kept tring to re-scrape some of the things that it never found and would just lock up on me. And I did get some type of "error exceptions", don't remember exactly what it said, i just hit continue... Of course this was just an hour or so of messing around, I'll get some more time to use this over the weekend hopefully, right after I check out this mediasteam hype....

xeonicxpression

2008-08-08, 20:59

Using the latest 1.482 built. When I select "Enable Fanart for Movies" and click "Save changes and exit", my computer crashes. Tried several times, but doesnt help. Anybody is facing the same issue? Any thoughts?

Same problem here. It crashes everytime I hit save. It doesn't matter what I've changed. This also happens on 1.221. I happened to have it saved on my computer, just had never tried it out I think. I got it partially working by editing the config.xml, but once it started scanning the first movie it ended hanging after getting the imdb id. It didn't make the nfo file at all.:sad: Guess I'll just have to try it again some other time. I'm on Vista Ultimate SP1 with .NET versions:
1.1.4322.2407 Version 1.1 Post-SP1 with KB928366 Apr 2007
2.0.50727.1434
3.0.4506.648
I doubt that helps at all but I couldn't find any type of log.

Clumsy

2008-08-08, 21:17

Had a chance to test the tv show support today. Everything seemed to work, but it would be nice if everything was automated a bit better. It was extremely time consuming to add all tv show folders per hand because there was no way to chose multiple folders at once and the Add Tv Folder button doesn't remember where it was set to last, so I had to click through the directory listing each time.

Clumsy

2008-08-08, 22:52

Hm, I can confirm the crash the above posters reported. And also I now get a crash on application startup:

http://pastebin.com/m2246138c

flipped cracker

2008-08-09, 02:14

is there any plan to make adding tv shows as easy as adding movies? i have over 100 tv shows on my server, and adding every show will be tedious. i'm hoping to be able to just add my "tv shows" directory and have it scan all the shows automatically.

also, any option for having "season" instead of "series". here, in the US, everything is done with seasons. but that's a pretty minor thing.

flipped cracker

2008-08-09, 02:22

one issue i came across, when the role field has quotes it in, it shows up as "

flipped cracker

2008-08-09, 02:36

ok, other errors. (i really should wait to post until i play with it more).

this is how the nfo's are looking for episodes:

<episodedetails>
<title>Launch Party</title>
<season>4</season>
<episode>3</episode>
<plot>In this hour long special, its the launch of the new Dunder Mifflin Infinity website and Michael is anticipating going to the launch party in NYC. At the Scranton branch, Angela and the Party Planning Committee plan a satellite party. Meanwhile, Dwight competes against the website to be top seller of paper in a day.</plot>
<thumb>http://thetvdb.com/banners/episodes/73244-337899.jpg</thumb>
<watched>false</watched>
<credits> <Writer>Jennifer Celotta</Writer></credits>
<director> <Director>Ken Whittingham</Director></director>
<aired>2007-10-11</aired>
<actor>
<name> <GuestStars>John Ingle</name>
</actor>
<actor>
<name>Craig Robinson</GuestStars></name>
</actor>
</episodedetails>

notice the <Director> and </Director> in the <director> tag.
also, the <Writer> in the credits tag.
and the <GuestStars> </GuestStars> in with the actors.

btw, i'm getting everything from thetvdb (since i contribute quite a bit over there).

i also can't get episodes to show up for certain shows. it mainly happens when there aren't episode thumbnails saved (even though they're available on the website).

blittan

2008-08-09, 03:21

I am getting the same errors as flipped cracker.. Alias and Anna Pihl are amongst the shows that fails for me..

bionic1234

2008-08-09, 14:41

Small update is now available.

TV Show Fanart now saved as fanart.jpg, fanart2.jpg for XBMC compatibility.

Option added Menu/Movie/Scan all movies for fanart.

hey billyad2000,

:cool: feature
I got a chuckle :rofl: out of the scan complete message "...scanart" way to make it your own
Any chance that you may let the users see/choose the fanart art from Media Companion gui?

BTW still some challenges with moview with local trailers - this may be an XBMC problem, but recently I did a clean rescan of all movies and found out that although Media Companion recognizes that a local trailer exists in the folder, 9/10 XBMC won't see the trailer if there is an nfo file for that movie (created by Media Companion)
Whereas XBMC sees other 'addons' like fanart and tbn files whether there is an nfo file or not.

magfal

2008-08-09, 14:47

I love this application it fits most of my video tagging needs and i have done about 5 total rescrapes of my 600 movies. there is however one more media type that would be cool and that is musicvideos. If anyone knows a program that can handle that or mr. billyad2000 can implement it that would be even more awsome.

billyad2000

2008-08-09, 17:43

XBMC Media Companion latest version is 1.490

Bugfix Update

Numerous possible causes of instability and possible causes of crashes have been addressed

Fixed - TV Show regex error occurred with format 01x01. last digit was not picked up.

Fixed - If TVDB sort order is set to "dvd" and returns 0 results then "default order" will be tried. nfo will not be saved with incomplete information

Fixed - Change to DVD/Default order would not be saved properly

Fixed - <Director> and </Director> in the <director> tag. <Writer> in the credits tag, and the <GuestStars> </GuestStars> in with the actors.

hey billyad2000,

Any chance that you may let the users see/choose the fanart art from Media Companion gui?

BTW still some challenges with moview with local trailers - this may be an XBMC problem, but recently I did a clean rescan of all movies and found out that although Media Companion recognizes that a local trailer exists in the folder, 9/10 XBMC won't see the trailer if there is an nfo file for that movie (created by Media Companion)
Whereas XBMC sees other 'addons' like fanart and tbn files whether there is an nfo file or not.

I dare say that once the TV mode is working better then I will be looking at doing more with fanart.
As for the problem with local trailers not been recognised if an nfo exists, this sounds like it may be worth mentioning in the Bug discussion forum. Out of curiosity, if you delete the trailer tag from the nfo file does it work then?

Clumsy

2008-08-09, 21:21

Still getting crashes on startup. I deleted all .nfo files and restarted the tool, but still the same problem and now it doesn't even rescan anythingwhen I press on the scan for new content button.

http://pastebin.com/m6a8c7d27

Clumsy

2008-08-09, 21:26

Ok, I think I tracked down that bug - when the tvshow.nfo file is missing (or corrupt?) the scna for new content button causes a crash. I had to readd the show with the add folder button in options. It is also a bit confusing that the add directory button scans the series, but then doesn't scan the episode infos - I think that sould be combined.

Clumsy

2008-08-09, 21:59

Now THAT was stressfull bugsearching :) Deleted all .nfos, re-added every single tv show folder (about 20, very annoying ;) ), rescanned all episodes - and now it works without crashing.
So to reiterate: the crashes in the beginning, I have no idea why they happened - maybe a corrupt tvshow.nfo file somewhere ? I then deleted all tvshow.nfo files, and pressed the rescan button -> crash. I then had to remove and readd all folders so the thshow .nfo files got added again, then the crashes went away.
I suppose you could add more file existance checks instead of relying on them beeing there - on the other hand: not all users have my uncanny ability to break stuff :D

Clumsy

2008-08-09, 22:27

bionic1234

2008-08-10, 08:44

[B]XBMC Media Companion latest version is 1.490

I will try removing trailer code from nfo file later tonight.

I was playing around with version 1.49 for TV shows this evening.
I think that you might have some sort of a loop problem when scanning/adding new episodes to shows. ie; if the user only has one episode of a complete tv series, a tv series nfo file is created (when the folder is added), but when I run a scan, no episodes are added (I have tried this with 3 different tv series, each where I only have one episode for the series) so my thought is maybe that you are not scanning if there are not more than two episodes in the folder?? just a thought

Cheers and thanks again for a great tool!!

blittan

2008-08-10, 09:31

version 1.490 seemed to solve the issues with my series not scraping correct.. Instead I got more crashes. Dont know why.

Once you have the crash issues solved, implement a root tv show folder (like with movies) instead. And also editing of tvshows would be nice (since I have a few swedish shows not having to much info anywhere).

HarshReality

2008-08-10, 14:12

Works great here guy! Wonder if you could incorporate the trailer URL and the other information now scraped into its working..

HarshReality

2008-08-10, 14:14

Damn no edit feature... also a possible dialog... since I use the tilted cases for my thumbs. The sucker just overwrote with the IMDB thumbs... so could we have a box to overwrite or a popup dialog?

Rand Al Thor

2008-08-10, 17:50

And also editing of tvshows would be nice (since I have a few swedish shows not having to much info anywhere).

I agree. There are a few shows that I would like to have "custom" info to that I think thetvdb might be a little upset if i changed around their versions of the synopsis to meet me own selfish needs ;) Also, it would be cool if fanart had a button just like the movie thumb so you could flip through multiples if there is more than one to pick your favorite or browse to a local file. Cheers and thanks again for the great app.

billyad2000

2008-08-12, 05:44

Grml, I want an edit function :)
After readding my movies folder (that scanned ok some days ago) I get a crash on startup again: http://pastebin.com/m7a38002e

Something seems to crash your listfiles function, but unfortunately the error message doesn't tell me the folder it chokes on, so I can't really test further because I am not willing to delete all the .nfo files for my 400 movies, that would take ages to rescan.
version 1.490 seemed to solve the issues with my series not scraping correct.. Instead I got more crashes. Dont know why.

Once you have the crash issues solved, implement a root tv show folder (like with movies) instead. And also editing of tvshows would be nice (since I have a few swedish shows not having to much info anywhere).

I am currently trawling through every routine adding exception handling to everything I can think of that would cause an error. It is difficult to fix a problem I can't duplicate.
I am also incorporating an error.log. When people have crashes then hopefully it will give me more useful information.

I agree. There are a few shows that I would like to have "custom" info to that I think thetvdb might be a little upset if i changed around their versions of the synopsis to meet me own selfish needs ;) Also, it would be cool if fanart had a button just like the movie thumb so you could flip through multiples if there is more than one to pick your favorite or browse to a local file. Cheers and thanks again for the great app.
Damn no edit feature... also a possible dialog... since I use the tilted cases for my thumbs. The sucker just overwrote with the IMDB thumbs... so could we have a box to overwrite or a popup dialog?
An edit feature will be included once I get the stability issues fixed.

@HarshReality - Could you explain what you mean, TV shows do not use IMDB thumbs. If you mean Movie Thumbs then existing files should not be overwritten unless you have checked the option to do so on the preferences Form. The default for this is Not To Overwrite.

is there any plan to make adding tv shows as easy as adding movies? i have over 100 tv shows on my server, and adding every show will be tedious. i'm hoping to be able to just add my "tv shows" directory and have it scan all the shows automatically.

also, any option for having "season" instead of "series". here, in the US, everything is done with seasons. but that's a pretty minor thing.
Had a chance to test the tv show support today. Everything seemed to work, but it would be nice if everything was automated a bit better. It was extremely time consuming to add all tv show folders per hand because there was no way to chose multiple folders at once and the Add Tv Folder button doesn't remember where it was set to last, so I had to click through the directory listing each time.
The reason that I have the TV folders added one at a time is that I cant think of a good way to differentiate between multiple TV Shows.
It would perhaps be possible to give users the option to add a root folder, eg
C:\TV Shows\
Where each sub folder within contains a single TV Show.
The problem I have is when people then try to add a single TV Show folder. I could then have the situation where It is looking for a TV Show called "Series One"
I could add an option such as XBMC, Folder only contains a single TV Show that would work around this but what if somone has the following -
C:\TV Shows\Sci-Fi\
C:\TV Shows\Drama\
C:\TV Shows\Comedy\
etc.
To be honest, initially, it may take a while to get up to date but the shows only have to be added once.

Ok, I think I tracked down that bug - when the tvshow.nfo file is missing (or corrupt?) the scna for new content button causes a crash. I had to readd the show with the add folder button in options. It is also a bit confusing that the add directory button scans the series, but then doesn't scan the episode infos - I think that sould be combined.
Unfortunately tvshow.nfo files created by XBMC lacks 2 key peices of information relating to TV Shows.
Firstly and most importantly is the TVDB ID. Without this the scraper simply cannot work. Second is IMDB ID, TVDB at this time has no cast information for individual episodes so if people want other than a couple of guest stars (without role information or thumbnails) within their episode nfo files then this is needed.
If people were to cheat and add the paths manually to the config file without adding the additional tags (<id></id> and <tvdbid></tvdbid>) then this may well cause a crash. From the next release these directories will be removed from the config file at start-up.

bionic1234

2008-08-12, 06:38

A little more testing for you:
1) If media companion scrapes a tvshow.nfo file but leaves <id></id> blank then media companion will not scrape any episodes for that tv show.
*the id tag is looking for the imdb id, so if you manually go to the imdb and look up your tv show, and copy and paste the imdb id to the tvshow.nfo, the episodes will scrape better.
So.... media companion will not add a tv show unless it finds an imdb and a tvdb (perhaps this is where user editing comes into play like it does for Movies (change movie feature).

2) I noticed that crashes that I was experiencing appeared to be due to the bad file naming convention of the files that I was telling media companion to scrape (ie; if the file name had a ',' in it or multiple '.' throughout the name it would crash - also if the name of the file did not match the tvdb it will crash
**I rename the file to 'TVDBshowname' SxxExx.avi and scrapes appear to work better.**hope that helps

3) Multi-episode files are not scraping today - instead media companion treats these files as one episode and creates an nfo file for the first episode in the avi file (ie; S01E21E22) - E21 is scraped to nfo file

blittan

2008-08-12, 09:42

@billyad: yes its hard to debug a thing that is random, have tried to get a pattern why it crashes.. but seems a bit random to me. Good idea with a log file.

bionic1234

2008-08-12, 16:37

Had some time, so did a little more testing:
Pinky and the Brain
Actual episodes Season 3 episode 11, 16

foldername = Pinky and the Brain
sub folder = Season 3
episodes = Pinky and the Brain S01E11.avi, Pinky and the Brain S01E16.avi

Steps:
1) Added Pinky and the Brain folder
2) tvshow.nfo file created
3) Scanned for episodes, 2 episode nfo files created
*Media Companion sees Pinky and the Brain tvshow, but when you go to Season 3, Media Companion does not show any episodes

4) Delete episode nfo files
5) Rename episode 11 = Pinky and the Brain S01E01
6) Scan for episodes, 2 episode nfo files created
*Media Companion sees Pinky and the Brain tvshow, and sees Season 3 episode 1, but Media Companion still does not show episode 16.

It's almost like Media Companion wants to see all episodes in sequential order before showing.

NOOK

2008-08-12, 16:59

HackerHelpDesk

2008-08-12, 21:21

Is there an option to pick which fanart to use instead of it downloading them all?

anoobie

2008-08-13, 03:19

PrimusZa1

2008-08-13, 13:19

bionic1234

2008-08-13, 14:38

Maybe that's because the episodes are labeled as S01? Wouldn't make any sense to find them in Season 3?

Typo in forum - sorry, they are S03 in the Season folder

bionic1234

2008-08-13, 14:40

Wow. I must really be doing something wrong here. I tried the TV scraper but all I can get it to do is add the TVSHOW.nfo. When I tell it to scan for episodes. It says "scanning for new episodes" nothing shows up in the list and a sec later its pops up "All Done" The folder layout is

TVshowName\Season 1

I chose the TVshowName dir per the instructions. Like I said it does create a NFO and downloads fanart into the root TVshowName folder. It just wont scan the episodes. I have also tried moving all the episodes into the TVshowName dir and out of the Season # sub folders. I get the same results. Any suggestions?

Try editing the TVshow.nfo manually:

1) If media companion scrapes a tvshow.nfo file but leaves <id></id> blank then media companion will not scrape any episodes for that tv show.
*the id tag is looking for the imdb id, so if you manually go to the imdb and look up your tv show, and copy and paste the imdb id to the tvshow.nfo, the episodes will scrape better.

bionic1234

2008-08-13, 14:42

Try editing the TVshow.nfo manually:

1) If media companion scrapes a tvshow.nfo file but leaves <id></id> blank then media companion will not scrape any episodes for that tv show.
*the id tag is looking for the imdb id, so if you manually go to the imdb and look up your tv show, and copy and paste the imdb id to the tvshow.nfo, the episodes will scrape better.

I noticed that the IMDB entries sometimes have "" around them or have multiple entries vs. TVDB, so Media Companion needs a little more help choosing the right one.

billyad2000

2008-08-13, 15:47

Wow. I must really be doing something wrong here. I tried the TV scraper but all I can get it to do is add the TVSHOW.nfo. When I tell it to scan for episodes. It says "scanning for new episodes" nothing shows up in the list and a sec later its pops up "All Done" The folder layout is

TVshowName\Season 1

I chose the TVshowName dir per the instructions. Like I said it does create a NFO and downloads fanart into the root TVshowName folder. It just wont scan the episodes. I have also tried moving all the episodes into the TVshowName dir and out of the Season # sub folders. I get the same results. Any suggestions?

It is also worth asking how your episodes are named. The only supported naming conventions at the moment are :-
S01E01 or S01 E01 lower case will work ok
and
01x01 or 01 x 01 or 1x1 or 1 x 1

It also may be worth checking that www.thetvdb.com main tv show page actually contains an IMDB ID.

Please bare with me on this I understand that people are having problems, especially with TV Shows, and I am working very hard to fix these issues.

billyad2000

2008-08-13, 20:34

For those experiencing problems with unexplained crashes would you please try this version.

http://www.datafilehost.com/download-4409185c.html

I have included a lot of additional exception handling and cleanup code and since I can't recreate the crashes I need help to see if i'm making progress.
If you do get a crash would you please check the error.log file that should be created within the application root folder and post the results.

thanx

bionic1234

2008-08-13, 22:15

If you do get a crash would you please check the error.log file that should be created within the application root folder and post the results.

:laugh:please don't mock me on my tv show selection, two 'repeatable' crashes captured in error.log: (these shows did scrape properly after) - FYI I rescraped again (same thing each time).

System.IndexOutOfRangeException: Index was outside the bounds of the array.
at XBMC_Media_Companion.options.loadwebpage()
Loading Webpage :- http://thetvdb.com/api/6E82FED600783400/series/75719/all/en.xml

System.IndexOutOfRangeException: Index was outside the bounds of the array.
at XBMC_Media_Companion.options.loadwebpage()
Loading Webpage :- http://thetvdb.com/api/6E82FED600783400/series/71697/all/en.xml

FYI billyad: I tested a few other tv shows that did not originally grab the IMDB ID and that appears to have been fixed in 1.52beta, nfos are created for these tvshows/episodes even though IMDB ID may not exist - Great!

FYI billyad: I tested several tv shows where I have scattered episodes (incomplete seasons), and nfo files are created (as usual) for each episode however even though nfos are created not all episodes are visible in Media Companion GUI.

FYI billyad: I tested scraping files with , and . and these are no longer crashing from my point of view. As well files with different naming structures were tested and as identified by you in the thread above were not scraped and did not crash Media Companion this time.

Let me know if there is additional testing that you would like to have down, I am happy to help for such a fantastic tool!

joebrady

2008-08-13, 22:30

I will try to do some testing for you tonight also.

Bionic1234 - I have those same shows....:nod:

Meat_PoPsiclez

2008-08-13, 22:36

Hi billyad, I notice that xbmc doesn't automatically pick up fanarts with this naming convention for stacked movie: movie.cd1-fanart.jpg

instead for stacked movies this naming works: movie-fanart.jpg

So it would be great if media companion could save fanarts with the 2nd naming method. Thanks

I noticed that too (that's what brought me here), however, I think that might be a bug in xbmc. That is, xbmc finds the nfo file in the proper place as the first disc name, so it seems to make sense that fanart should follow the same naming convention. Dunno if this has garnered a bug report (didn't find any) but maybe it should have one?

At the moment, half my movies don't have fanart showing :(

Meat_PoPsiclez

2008-08-13, 22:46

Also another quirk in XBMC's fanart loading code.

I have a few dvd's ripped as ifo/vob's in their own folders. I created dummy avi's of the same name to initially get mediacompanion to create entries for them, then subsequently deleted the dummy files. Xbmc works great like this (nfo/tbn in root, movie in folder of same name), however it won't load the fanart like that. Just an fyi before anybody asks

billyad2000

2008-08-14, 00:44

:laugh:please don't mock me on my tv show selection, two 'repeatable' crashes captured in error.log: (these shows did scrape properly after) - FYI I rescraped again (same thing each time).

System.IndexOutOfRangeException: Index was outside the bounds of the array.
at XBMC_Media_Companion.options.loadwebpage()
Loading Webpage :- http://thetvdb.com/api/6E82FED600783400/series/75719/all/en.xml

System.IndexOutOfRangeException: Index was outside the bounds of the array.
at XBMC_Media_Companion.options.loadwebpage()
Loading Webpage :- http://thetvdb.com/api/6E82FED600783400/series/71697/all/en.xml

FYI billyad: I tested a few other tv shows that did not originally grab the IMDB ID and that appears to have been fixed in 1.52beta, nfos are created for these tvshows/episodes even though IMDB ID may not exist - Great!

FYI billyad: I tested several tv shows where I have scattered episodes (incomplete seasons), and nfo files are created (as usual) for each episode however even though nfos are created not all episodes are visible in Media Companion GUI.

FYI billyad: I tested scraping files with , and . and these are no longer crashing from my point of view. As well files with different naming structures were tested and as identified by you in the thread above were not scraped and did not crash Media Companion this time.

Let me know if there is additional testing that you would like to have down, I am happy to help for such a fantastic tool!

Fixed above issues, much easier when you know what you are looking for.

version 1.521
http://www.datafilehost.com/download-7a076036.html

Would everyone please use this one for testing now.

Jezz_X

2008-08-14, 05:08

joebrady

2008-08-14, 05:11

I tried the new version (on win XP Pro) with around 70 movies and a few TV shows and everything scanned fine this time. No crashes. :grin:

Thanks so much for this great program! Will save me many future headaches with getting correct thumbs, info and fanart!

billyad2000

2008-08-14, 05:44

I just got around to trying this for the first time and its nice though it does have a few things that bug me
* The main page for movies is all edit boxes but most of them like imdb field you can't actually enter anything in
* It would be nice if it had a list of common terms it ignores when searching like 720p 1080p xvid divx x264 and so on. I had quite a few fail to find anything because of that stuff in the filenames but xbmc is fine.
* If you have Movie Fanart enabled it really does rape the fanart site by downloading every fanart for the movie. And when I did a fresh install with 100+ movies thats a lot
* If it gets the wrong title and downloads the wrong fanart it wont delete the incorrect fanart on title change and just adds to the end so you end up with moviename-fanart.jpg being for the wrong movie when xbmc gets it first off
* Can we have an option to not download all the cast thumbnails (it takes time) ? and where are they stored ? and is it possible to upload them to XBMC for it to use ?

1 - You can edit any part of the movie nfo by using the edit feature. The reason TextBoxes are used is to allow copy to clipboard.
2 - I'll see if I can find the regex that XBMC uses
3 - It doesnt rape rape the fanart site in that it takes just as much bandwidth to view the backdrops as download them. I could create an option to download the first one only though for people who aren't so picky.
4 - I've added this to my list of things to do.
5 - I could add the ability to disable actor thumbs. They are stored as url's within the nfo files and downloaded realtime when the movie.nfo is viewed. This is the only way I could do it that would allow XBMC to use them.

Tension113

2008-08-14, 07:03

Great program.. Really just started messing with it tonight using Vista.. When I selected my entire movie folder it crashes, but selecting them one at a time, it was working.. Noticed that my older .bin movies won't show up on the list and can't be scraped.. Still moving folders around to try and see what is causing it to crash when I select the entire folder..

bionic1234

2008-08-14, 07:50

version 1.521
Would everyone please use this one for testing now.
Awesome: Confirmed fixed for all except:

FYI billyad: I tested several tv shows where I have scattered episodes (incomplete seasons), and nfo files are created (as usual) for each&every episode however even though nfos are created not all episodes are actually visible in the Media Companion GUI?

It's weird because there is no difference between the episode nfo files that do show up versus the nfo files that do not show up.

jmarshall

2008-08-14, 08:39

3: Only if you are downloading the full sizes for viewing, rather than the thumbs (see the _cache directory on tvdb, and there's a separate thumbs directory for moviebackdrops.com.

PrimusZa1

2008-08-14, 13:15

It is also worth asking how your episodes are named. The only supported naming conventions at the moment are :-
S01E01 or S01 E01 lower case will work ok
and
01x01 or 01 x 01 or 1x1 or 1 x 1

It also may be worth checking that www.thetvdb.com main tv show page actually contains an IMDB ID.

Please bare with me on this I understand that people are having problems, especially with TV Shows, and I am working very hard to fix these issues.

Just wanted to update: The newest version fixed everything I had mentioned and worked like a charm. Just to let you know you were right though THETVDB did not have the IMDB ID. But for some reason with the new release it didn't matter. I am beginning to think it might have been a problem on THETVDB with that series.

Thanks for all your work on this.

mnk6

2008-08-15, 00:37

A few thoughts on movie scraping (haven't tried tv yet):
1) Why not store a list of "alternative" thumb urls in the .nfo so that to change the thumb after the initial scraping doesn't require hitting "rescrape thumbs"? Does having unrecognized xml tags in the .nfo cause problems for XBMC? If not, it would make it much faster for me to correct thumbs (some come up with an alternative language from what I use).

2) Have you ever considered incorporating a very simple file renamer? For instance, have a "movie pattern" (something like "%t (%y) %r" which translates to "track (year) runtime)") which would change the file names for movies? Even without anything complicated like trying to organize into directories (just rename files in existing directory) would be helpful. Something similar for tv shows would also be helpful. It wouldn't be useful for people who organize all of their movies into individual folders, but it would be helpful to some (including me).

3) When you scan a folder (hit the plus icon), does it search for missing thumbs and/or missing fanart even if the nfo is there?

Łarhol

2008-08-15, 02:33

Hi. Thank you billyad2000 for this great app. I am using XBMC Media Companion few days and i have request. I'm from Poland and i have problem with specific polish language signs like "Ł" in my nick, when i edit plot. I can't see polish letters on my xbox. This problem happen only when i change TV Shows nfo. I discovery that the Movie nfo files is UTF-8 coding and TV Shows files are ANSI coding. When I change TV Shows nfo from ANSI to UTF-8 with Notepad (Save as -> Coding: UTF-8) everything is ok ( I see polish letters on xbox), but this take to much time. Can you set default coding for TV Shows nfo to UTF-8? I think this is not only my problem.
P.S. I know my english is poor, but try to understand me.

mnk6

2008-08-15, 04:39

I noticed a big problem with my last post. I didn't say thanks and how helpful this thing is. Granted, it does need a little polish, but it gets the job done.

I also noticed that the website doesn't have the latest version on it. I downloaded the copy from the website instead of looking through all of the forum posts only to experience a bug that was discussed and fixed.

Thanks again.

HackerHelpDesk

2008-08-15, 19:48

I also would like to see file renamer, I have been wanting to change the actual file name but they are all in a different naming convention and there are hundreds this feature would be great.

It would also be great to get a choose FanArt button similar to the thumb preview, maybe allowing you to pick the one you want and not download the extras.

bionic1234

2008-08-16, 01:31

[QUOTE=billyad2000;207737Out of curiosity, if you delete the trailer tag from the nfo file does it work then?[/QUOTE]

Finally had a chance to test this with two movies. One with empty trailer tag in nfo file, one with trailer tag removed from nfo file.
Same outcome for both movies, trailer is not visible if nfo exists in folder.
I will need to update to Atlantis build (my build is a couple of weeks old now) and then I will submit a bug (if problem still exists)

timdog82001

2008-08-16, 02:54

I also would like to see file renamer, I have been wanting to change the actual file name but they are all in a different naming convention and there are hundreds this feature would be great.

you'd probably have to start over from scratch again with the nfo files or anything you have already set up with the media companion, but if that isn't an issue, there's an awesome file renamer available in thetvdb.com forums. Customizable and works awesomely

http://forums.thetvdb.com/viewtopic.php?t=406

Or, maybe billyad2000 could use this program as a starting point for implementing such a feature into his own program. That would be awesome too :)

chepnut

2008-08-16, 04:32

Just tried the new version and it crashed on 2 different machines one vista x86 and the other xp pro. It would crash when I would try to scan my movie folder. So after reading the thread I decided to set up a test folder and put 1 movie in there. It crashed so I removed all the nfo's and other stuff in the folder and just had the avi file. It scanned and didn't crash, now its going to be kinda a pain to go and remove all of my nfo's from my movies but after thats done, I will just do it automatically from any new movies I add into my folder. Now if somebody can tell me how to automatically add movies to xbmc without having to go into each file and click on movie info in order for xbmc to see all the details. it would be appreciated.

I don't want to divert this thread into that subject so could a kind soul pm me about the easiest way to get movies into the library.

Thanks

billyad2000

2008-08-16, 11:01

For everyone having problems the most recent version is 1.521

http://www.datafilehost.com/download-7a076036.html

This is the version you need to be using.

Just tried the new version and it crashed on 2 different machines one vista x86 and the other xp pro. It would crash when I would try to scan my movie folder. So after reading the thread I decided to set up a test folder and put 1 movie in there. It crashed so I removed all the nfo's and other stuff in the folder and just had the avi file. It scanned and didn't crash, now its going to be kinda a pain to go and remove all of my nfo's from my movies but after thats done, I will just do it automatically from any new movies I add into my folder. Now if somebody can tell me how to automatically add movies to xbmc without having to go into each file and click on movie info in order for xbmc to see all the details. it would be appreciated.

I don't want to divert this thread into that subject so could a kind soul pm me about the easiest way to get movies into the library.

Thanks

Could you pm me an exact copy of the contents of the nfo file thats causing a crash, aswell as details of filenames, path names, and the filenames of everything else contained in your test folder (If you can duplicate this error with only one movie and nfo file then this will allow me to fix it)

Finally had a chance to test this with two movies. One with empty trailer tag in nfo file, one with trailer tag removed from nfo file.
Same outcome for both movies, trailer is not visible if nfo exists in folder.
I will need to update to Atlantis build (my build is a couple of weeks old now) and then I will submit a bug (if problem still exists)
This has to be an XBMC bug

Awesome: Confirmed fixed for all except:

FYI billyad: I tested several tv shows where I have scattered episodes (incomplete seasons), and nfo files are created (as usual) for each&every episode however even though nfos are created not all episodes are actually visible in the Media Companion GUI?

It's weird because there is no difference between the episode nfo files that do show up versus the nfo files that do not show up.
This is a small problem that occurs because I wish to list episodes in order within the listbox. The episode counter would scan up through the episodes and when one does not exist then it assumed that no more were available. This has been fixed and will be ok from the next build.

Hi. Thank you billyad2000 for this great app. I am using XBMC Media Companion few days and i have request. I'm from Poland and i have problem with specific polish language signs like "Ł" in my nick, when i edit plot. I can't see polish letters on my xbox. This problem happen only when i change TV Shows nfo. I discovery that the Movie nfo files is UTF-8 coding and TV Shows files are ANSI coding. When I change TV Shows nfo from ANSI to UTF-8 with Notepad (Save as -> Coding: UTF-8) everything is ok ( I see polish letters on xbox), but this take to much time. Can you set default coding for TV Shows nfo to UTF-8? I think this is not only my problem.
P.S. I know my english is poor, but try to understand me.
I'll look into this.

I also would like to see file renamer, I have been wanting to change the actual file name but they are all in a different naming convention and there are hundreds this feature would be great.

It would also be great to get a choose FanArt button similar to the thumb preview, maybe allowing you to pick the one you want and not download the extras.

A few of you have mentioned how great a file re-namer would be and it would be fairly simple for me to implement. The only thing that concerns me is things like rar files. While it would be a simple matter to rename the rar file itself, don't the contents of the rar (usually subtitles) need to be the same as the other filename.

Doing more with fanart is also my intention, and what you are asking for will be included in the near future.

mnk6

2008-08-16, 16:33

I wrote a small php program to help me rename files that sort of works. Here are the things that I renamed:
the video
.tbn
.srt
-fanart.jpg
.sub

One thought is to ignore the extension and rename every file that starts with the current movie/tv show name. Something like this:
existing_video_name = substr(filename, 0, last occurance of period)
new_video_name = pattern from gui and info from nfo
foreach (filename in directory) {
if (substr(filename, 0, length(existing_video_name)) == existing_video_name) {
rename(filename, new_video_name . substr(filename, length(existing_video_name), length(filename)));
}
}

That would get files with any extension and the fanart.

Another thought is to either have a button where you rename each file one at a time (so you can have a preview of what the new filenames will be) or have a preview of the rename before it is done.

Not trying to make this too complicated. I also agree that bug fixes and fanart would take priority over the renaming feature. Just thought it might help.

billyad2000

2008-08-16, 19:58

Just a teaser of the next version.

Click thumb for full size

http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/7747/screenshotoo8.th.jpg (http://img48.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshotoo8.jpg)

rcr62

2008-08-16, 23:09

I am getting an error with version 1.521 that I wasn't getting in an earlier version (1.229).

After I added a movie folder of "E:\" in the preferences screen I got the error "Access to the path E:\System Volume Informatin is denied."

I can still run version 1.229 and don't get this error. Drive E is an external USB drive (which is working fine).

Below is the copy of the information from the detail tab.

Thanks

***********************************************
See the end of this message for details on invoking
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************** Exception Text **************
System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Access to the path 'E:\System Volume Information' is denied.
at System.IO.__Error.WinIOError(Int32 errorCode, String maybeFullPath)
at System.IO.Directory.InternalGetFileDirectoryNames( String path, String userPathOriginal, String searchPattern, Boolean includeFiles, Boolean includeDirs, SearchOption searchOption)
at System.IO.DirectoryInfo.GetFiles(String searchPattern, SearchOption searchOption)
at System.IO.DirectoryInfo.GetFiles(String searchPattern)
at XBMC_Media_Companion.Form1.ListFiles(String lst, String pattern, DirectoryInfo dir_info)
at XBMC_Media_Companion.Form1.ListFiles(String lst, String pattern, DirectoryInfo dir_info)
at XBMC_Media_Companion.Form1.nfos_to_array()
at XBMC_Media_Companion.Form1.rebuild()
at XBMC_Media_Companion.Form1.Form1_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e)
at System.EventHandler.Invoke(Object sender, EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnLoad(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnCreateControl()
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl(Boolean fIgnoreVisible)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl()
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmShowWindow(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Mes sage& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ContainerControl.WndProc(Mess age& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WmShowWindow(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.O nMessage(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.W ndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

************** Loaded Assemblies **************
mscorlib
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.1433 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///c:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.NET/Framework/v2.0.50727/mscorlib.dll
----------------------------------------
XBMC Media Companion
Assembly Version: 1.5.2.1
Win32 Version: 1.5.2.1
CodeBase: file:///C:/download/xbmc/XBMC_Media_Companion_1.521/XBMC%20Media%20Companion%201.521.exe
----------------------------------------
Microsoft.VisualBasic
Assembly Version: 8.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 8.0.50727.1433 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/Microsoft.VisualBasic/8.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll
----------------------------------------
System
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.1433 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Windows.Forms
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.1433 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Windows.Forms/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Windows.Forms.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Drawing
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.1433 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Drawing/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Drawing.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Runtime.Remoting
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.1433 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Runtime.Remoting/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Runtime.Remoting.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Data
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.1433 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/assembly/GAC_32/System.Data/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Data.dll
----------------------------------------

timdog82001

2008-08-16, 23:16

Rand Al Thor

2008-08-16, 23:44

Just a teaser of the next version.

Click thumb for full size

http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/7747/screenshotoo8.th.jpg (http://img48.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshotoo8.jpg)

Very nice! +1 for showing Jennifer Garner's backside in the preview ;)

billyad2000

2008-08-17, 00:20

I just noticed a problem with the current trailer function. Perhaps you've already addressed it, but if not, here it is: I tend to keep many local trailers on the Hard drive, as they're generally better quality, and faster to stream. They seemed to work well until I used this program to generate a nfos for all my movies. It now seems that the program input a url for the trailers for all the movies and xbmc now ignores the local trailers and goes straight to the imdb version. An option to disable scraping trailer information or something along those lines would be a nice addition!

Tim
This sounds like the same issue mentioned a few posts ago.
Finally had a chance to test this with two movies. One with empty trailer tag in nfo file, one with trailer tag removed from nfo file.
Same outcome for both movies, trailer is not visible if nfo exists in folder.
I will need to update to Atlantis build (my build is a couple of weeks old now) and then I will submit a bug (if problem still exists)
As you can see it seems that the existence of the nfo is itself the problem. If you find this is not the case then please let me know.

I am getting an error with version 1.521 that I wasn't getting in an earlier version (1.229).

After I added a movie folder of "E:\" in the preferences screen I got the error "Access to the path E:\System Volume Informatin is denied."

I can still run version 1.229 and don't get this error. Drive E is an external USB drive (which is working fine).
snip

I think I've found the problem here and it should be fixed in the next release.

timdog82001

2008-08-17, 00:39

to the guy who plans to update and check the nfo issue, I'm running a version i built yesterday from SVN so its obviously very current and so i don't think that's the problem. The only thing that works is if you type in the absolute path of the trailer file. I posted in the associated movie trailers thread to see if this is the expected behavior and will report back when i get a response.

Hitcher

2008-08-17, 00:40

Just a teaser of the next version.

Click thumb for full size

http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/7747/screenshotoo8.th.jpg (http://img48.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshotoo8.jpg)

Really nice.

I've only just discovered this wonderful program and it's a big help in making everything just how I want it. Thanks.

ibejaminben

2008-08-17, 10:45

Everytime I try and run the exe for this program I get a error message program failed to initialize. What am i doing wrong?

billyad2000

2008-08-17, 12:18

Everytime I try and run the exe for this program I get a error message program failed to initialize. What am i doing wrong?

The fail to initialize error message is usually releated to the .net framework.

Assuming you already have .net 3.5 installed then I would reccomend uninstalling it and re-installing it from scratch.

gollumsluvslave

2008-08-17, 12:41

First off BillyAD2000

Many thanks for a great and very useful tool!

My job is actually a senior C# developer and I've always thought about doing something like the Media Companion for personal use, but can never be bothered due to working with code all day!

So again, many thanks for your excellent application - it's exactly what I was thinking about; your GUI is intuitive, and your support seems excellent!

Anyway, I do have one strange issue - Media Companion seems to have a problem with one of my TV Shows - Ally McBeal. This is not an issue to me, but the wife loves the show :P

Media Companion will scan the tvshow.nfo for Ally McBeal quite happily, but it won't find any episodes - period. I have completely renamed all episodes as follows:-

M:\TV\Ally McBeal\Season 1\Ally McBeal S01E01 Pilot.avi

etc, etc.

Interestingly, for all other shows I have, the scan logger will show the following:-

"Scanning Alias for New Episodes
120 Episodes Found for this show
0 New Episodes found"

For Ally McBeal all that is logged is:-

"Scanning Ally McBeal for New Episodes"

It doesn't log the fact that 0 New Episodes were found, which looks to me like there may be some exception getting swallowed.

I'm guessing there may be some problem with tvdb scraping for this show?

Any help or ideas would be appreciated.