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Full Version: What I would like to see.
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I'd like a strict standard on the following features:

1. Actor Photos
Implement an Actor folder in XBMC for downloading to. If multiple movies have the
same actor, XBMC will check that folder to see if that actor already has a photo. If not,
download it. If so, any movie with that actor will simply pull from the same photo.
Do this instead of just linking to an online photo which may vanish, had it's link
changed, etc.

2. File naming
Pick a standard name for files like Disc.PNG for the disc image, or logo.png. Make it
the same across the board. Some skins look for <Movie name>-Poster.jpg instead
of just poster.jpg, for example.
Just pick ONE name that the program always understands.

3. Speaking of file names...
Have a "collection.png" option. We can then have a folder hierarchy like so:
/Alien Collection
-collection.png
/Alien Collection/Alien (1979)
-fanart.jpg
-logo.png
-poster.jpg
/Alien Collection/Aliens (1986)
-fanart.jpg
-logo.png
-poster.jpg

You get the idea.

Anyhow, what I'm thinking about doing is creating a spot on my
domain to host "movie files" so folks always have a place to just
download all the files for a particular movie that they can just
copy directly into their folders without having to worry about
naming conventions. So if you have the movie "Kick Ass", you
can download the .zip files from my site and it will contain
the banner.jpg, clearart.png, disc.png, fanart.jpg, landscape.jpg,
logo.png, theme.mp3, and poster.jpg. If XBMC had a strict standard, this would
be an extremely easy process without having to worry about extra add-ons
and so forth.

EDIT
Almost forgot #4
I'll be adding an NFO file as well. What I'd like to see is XBMC recognize the
area someone is in (an option in XBMC) so that it can pull relevant data from
the NFO file while ignoring the option from other countries. Most notable example:
MPAA rating. Our rating system in the US isn't the same around the world. So in the
NFO file I could create tags for various ratings and XBMC would display only the relevant
one for a particular user.
Isn't this how it already works ?? I kind of get your point about centralising actors, but XBMC already creates a (in my case) .actors directory with photos in, not http links, for each movie.

Collection.png - Don't need it, just drop fanart.jpg/poster.jpg in the top level directory of a collection for custom backgrounds/covers.

Ratings - those depend upon the skin supporting them, and the correct flags being available. I use AeonMQ5 because it supports UK age ratings and has the required flags. Its just a case of manually swapping the MPAA rating to the equivalent BBFC rating. I manage my video library with MediaElch which makes doing what you requested a breeze. It sorts out all the art etc and creates an NFO file with the required details. XBMC only ever scrapes the local info so I know my art is gonna look right before I even import it.

I guess what I'm saying is that all those features are already available, but you may need to use a third party management tool to get the best from XBMC. I think it's time well spent, but it can be an effort in the beginning if you have a large collection.

I think the more you automate, the less control the user has over the final product, and it's much easier to do my art on the PC with a keyboard and mouse, than editing it afterwards with a remote.

Just my view.
1, 2, and 4 are already done on XBMC and have been included for some time.

XBMC stores only one image for each actor. It stores this image, along with all the other images, in userdata (wiki)/thumbnails/ . If you are importing information from an NFO file that has an actor image URL, and that URL is broken, XBMC can still search for an actor image outside of that URL.

All posters, fanart, and thumbnail images are standard across all skins. Different skins do not use different file names. There is various types of "extra artwork", but even those are more or less standardized across the different XBMC skins. All skins will look for all accepted names. "poster.jpg" is used when a movie is in a folder for that movie. "moviename-poster.jpg" is used both in a folder for the movie, and when the movie is in a single folder with other movies.

3 isn't a core feature yet, but there are some add-ons that can help with this. The issue with artwork for collections is that not everyone has the same file / directory structure for those movies.

NFO files only store one rating, using the local data used when the data was scraped.
For the actor images, is the directory:

XBMC\userdata\thumbnails

And then the actor images named:
Amy_Adams.jpg


I ask because right now each movie folder has its own /.actor folder, which means
the same actor photo is saved in multiple folders. I'd like to just have one folder
hold actor images that XMBC looks in.
Each movie should only have their own .actor folder if you've exported artwork (and included actor images) or used a 3rd party metadata program, and in those cases those copies only serve as a "backup". By default XBMC doesn't store any images along side the movie files. Either way, once media is scanned in then XBMC only uses the copies in userdata/thumbnails/.
Got it, but I'm not seeing any actor images in that folder.