start with fanart + big collection = hell?

[Saelfaer]

Hi there,
i was wondering,

so far i did not really find a 'get started with fanart and icon art' thread or something alike...
so i gathered some intel from different threads

i have not been bothered with fanart so far
but i like what i see in screenshots more and more
tought i'd give it a shot.

do i really have to go download fanart 1 by 1 in library, (atm using aeon so i have no idea if its the same in other skins...) by clicking movie / serie options, and selecting 1 of the selected fanarts?

or if i want more options do i have to download fan art separately and select them trough the same option but browse to select the file...

or is there a faster way to do this...
because if i have to do that 1 by 1 for 10 movies that would be hard
what about 100 movies and over 30 series (specially series with hard to find art, (local series from my country) which not every site has art for )


anyway,
i'm just gathering intel, and finding the best way to get started
so if ianyone can point me in the right direction that would already be a big help

thanks

Sander

[ekim232]

use a program called media info plus or mediacompanion. Be done in no time.

Seach for those and you will save so much time.

[Saelfaer]

oh, mediacompanion i heard about that tool around here
thought it was about creating nfo files with movie plot and info

didn't know it did something with fanart too

i'll take a look at it

*edit* hm, after looking at screenshots the only thing i see is that it is writing NFO files with movie info
actor info and thumbnail ...
don't see anything about fanart in mediacompanion hm
i'll take a look at media info plus now

ok, ugly program but it will do the trick, media info plus seems to suport fanart and all that
so i'll give that a try

now more the practical question, does this mean i dont have to scrape in xbmc anymore?
will xbmc automatically select the info from the nfo files then?
or do i have to change settings for it not to scrape but to use the NFO files...

Sander

[Batemann]

MediaCompanion supports fanart and posters. I find it a friendlier tool than media info.
And, yes, you still have to scrape, so you still have to select a scraper, but XBMC choses to use, IF FOUND, the local nfo before scraping a movie. If no Nfo is found, the scraper will scrape.

[ekim232]

It will select fanart for you if you use mediainfo. You will find that your scraping is much fast when you have local .nfo files. Very smart way of doing it.

Just a word to the wise...if you start now scraping your movies with one of these programs, make sure you get the info that will best fit all skins. By that I mean a single run time (not usa-278, germany-200), single studio (not mgm, fox entertainment, ect.). This is how it can pull from IMDB, which is going to create problems in the future if you plan to use xbmc to its fullest. New features coming about are stringcompare functions which pull an icon based on studio, rating, ect. So if it matches multiple studios, it will show multiple icons layed on top of each other.

I orginally did a full scan with media companion, now I am redoing a lot of .nfos to get all the best information based upon how how new code functions can inprove my skin.

[Saelfaer]

This all went pretty well
thanks for the info all of you


1 last question...
does it really have to create a single NFO file for each tv episode...
a folder with 20 episodes now has like
80 files (movie, subs, nfo, .tbn for each of the 20 episodes)
is this the way to do it?
or are there better ways?

[Waffa]

Yip, this is the way to do it.

There are no better ways, this is the way.

[quebert]

Originally Posted by Saelfaer

This all went pretty well
thanks for the info all of you


1 last question...
does it really have to create a single NFO file for each tv episode...
a folder with 20 episodes now has like
80 files (movie, subs, nfo, .tbn for each of the 20 episodes)
is this the way to do it?
or are there better ways?

While I have not actually attempted this, I think this would be a method that would result in a much cleaner structure, but also require more work. Not exactly sure how you'd name it, but there should be a way to have each episode in it's own folder, would take a lot more effort, but the end result would be 20 folders with 4 files in each. Instead of 1 folder piled with 80 files. I'm sort of anal about my file structer so maybe I'll try this lol. There has to be a way to do it, if you want to invest the time is a whole different story.

maybe \tv show\sXXeXX\sXXeXX.episode name.avi? Right now I don't have local scrapes for my TV shows. I was thinking about doing it and don't really want a ton of files all in the same folder.