[HyperEscape]

Hello All,

My setup is as follows :

Dell Studio Hybrid 140G running Windows 7 Ultimate 32-Bit. 4GB RAM/40G HDD/Core2Duo 1.6Ghz/Intel 965 GPU.

I have installed XBMC 10.1 (the latest available) version. I have got all my movie collection on NAS HDDs. The NAS server is a thin client machine running FreeNAS 0.7.xx with two USB harddisk connected and shared as SAMBA network drives.

Both network drives are mapped on the PC running XBMC as local drives with drive letters W: and X: (instead of giving a UNC path \\192.x.x.x\XYZ)

In both the drives the directory structure for storing video files is as follows :

Code:

Movies-|
           - English -|
                         | MovieNameFolder -|
                                            | MovieFile.avi/mkv/mp4/vob
                                            | MovieFile.NFO
           - Indian
           - Documentaries

I have also generated and placed the NFO file with the same name inside each movie folder. The NFO file is generated from Extreme Movie Manager (via a plugi) in which I have the up to date information filled from IMDB. So XMM is updated with all the information of all the 1500+ movies files I have in both the HDDs.

I have set up XBMC by defining a media source which contains two drive paths to the intended folder level (to both the harddisks X: and W: ). I have defined the NAS mapped drive letters as the media source, instead of giving the UNC paths. Hence one media source should catalogue the english movies in both the HDD locations.

When prompted I select the content type as movies and scrapper IMDB latest version (with settings automated scan, use the folder name and scan recursively).

XBMC starts scanning the media source and adding the movie information to the library. However apparently the scrapper IMDB is pulling no information from the internet (imdb.com). Instead it rapidly adds the movie file names in the library (since pulling information for a particular movie from imdb would definitely take a little while to proceed). It goes on with the same rally.

The behaviour of the scraper is erratic and uncertain. At the end when I have a look at the movie library, it simply shows the movie file specifications, the plot text and sporadically the movie poster from IMDB. . For some movie files, it has updated the information from the web with the movie poster. For most of the files, around 90%, it only has the plot text and instead of movie poster, it shows movie screenshots from random intervals of the movie itself.

I have tried tinkering with various settings and deleting and refreshing the media sources and movie library database numerous times, but there is no change.

Can anyone have a look and help me what I maybe missing, or maybe check whether the scrapper works fine or not.

Thanks in advance for your help. I dont know where is the XBMC log and how is it activated and where to post it , if needed please guide.

[Ardalista]

If the .NFO file is in the correct format (which I can't be sure of from XMM) then the .NFO will take priority over the internet.

Are you in file mode or library mode because is sounds like you are in file mode still.

Also.. suggested naming convention is;
<whatever>\movienamefolder (year)\moviename (year).xxx (xxx being whatever)

[HyperEscape]

If the .NFO file is in the correct format (which I can't be sure of from XMM) then the .NFO will take priority over the internet.

The NFO file is in correct format, just so for your doubt there is an export plugin in XMM which lets you choose various options to create NFO files and also contains a (hopefully) readable NFO file template compatible with XBMC> I have used the same template to create all the NFO file. I have also manually checked them for the XML code formatting prescribed by XBMC Wiki.



As per my understanding the NFO files were not meant to take precedence over the internet search. What I understood was that NFO files help or supplement the internet search scrapper by providing the exact URL and other information, hence they can save time and incorrect search results. Correct me if the NFO files are making the nuisance themselves.

Here is a tiny excerpt of the NFO file created by XMM.

Code:

<movie>
        <title>He is Just not that into You</title>
        <originaltitle>He's Just Not That Into You</originaltitle>
        <rating>6.5</rating>
        <year>2009</year>

        <top250>0</top250>
        <votes></votes>

        <outline></outline>

        <plot>The needy Gigi Haim is a young woman seeking her prince charming somewhere amongst her unsuccessful dates. After dating estate agent Conor Barry, Gigi anxiously expects to receive a phone call from him. However Conor never calls her. Gigi decides to go to the bar where he frequents to see him, but she meets his friend Alex who works there. They become friends and Alex helps Gigi to interpret the subtle signs given out by her dates.  In Baltimore, five women and four men try to sort out the signals that the sexes exchange. Gigi imagines every man she meets is Mr. Right; she gets reality checks from Alex, a sweet but cynical saloon keeper. Janine and Ben seem solidly married until he chats with Anna in a market checkout line; meanwhile Anna is indifferent to the pursing Connor. Neil and Beth have been together seven years; she dumps him when she realizes he really and truly isn't going to marry her. Does he love her? And Mary sells advertising while searching on line for a man. Will those in love stay in love? Will those searching figure out who is and who isn't into them? Are men all that different from women?  </plot>
        <tagline>Are you the exception...or the rule? </tagline>
        <runtime>129 min</runtime>

        <thumb>D:\Documents and Settings\Syed Faisal Hasan\My Documents\eXtreme Movie Manager 7\Databases\Syed Faisal Hasan English Collection_cover\197-He-is-Just-not-that-into-You.jpg</thumb>

        <mpaa>Rated PG-13 for sexual content and brief strong language.</mpaa>

        <playcount>0</playcount>

        <watched>SEEN</watched>

        <id>tt1001508</id>

        <filenameandpath>W:\Movies\English\He is Just not that into You\He is Just not that into You.avi</filenameandpath>

        <trailer></trailer>
        <genre>Comedy</genre>

        <credits></credits>

        <director>Ken Kwapis</director>





        <actor>
            <name>Morgan Lily</name>    
            <role>5 yr. old Girl</role>
        </actor>

Are you in file mode or library mode because is sounds like you are in file mode still.

I started with File Mode, which is the only available option at the first start. Then I created the media sources by giving the network mapped drive letters, set the content, chose the scrapper IMDB, and then let XBMC update and create its library during which supposedly it has to use the scrapper to update the movie info and create the database. Once it was created I was checking it in both File Mode and Library Mode.

Also.. suggested naming convention is;
<whatever>\movienamefolder (year)\moviename (year).xxx (xxx being whatever)

Well yeah thanks for the suggestion. However since I already have a latest updated database of all the movies in XMM , from which I created and exported the NFO files in every movie folder, I dont need to add the year tag with every text string to make the searches more accurate, at least this is what I thought after reading the purpose of NFO files.

To save this mess anyways I was looking for a way to convert or to populate the XBMC database which is in Sqlite format directly with the XMM database which is in Microsoft Access MDB format. Tried to poke in it but without any experimental guidance did not make much way through it.

Would be thankful for any help.

[Ardalista]

The NFO file is in correct format, just so for your doubt there is an export plugin in XMM which lets you choose various options to create NFO files and also contains a (hopefully) readable NFO file template compatible with XBMC> I have used the same template to create all the NFO file. I have also manually checked them for the XML code formatting prescribed by XBMC Wiki.

Yes, I understand XMM has a plugin for XBMC, prior to using XBMC I actually used XMM. My understanding (at least with the version I was using) is the XBMC output was experimental. I also attempted to export the data from XMM into XBMC initially but this failed so I just gave up.

I did use XMM to sort my movies into their own folders, and unlike the suggested naming format I didn't bother adding the year to my movile folders, but I did add it to the movie files themselves.

This worked for me and I was able to scrape everything using the TMDB scraper, only occasionally having to manually correct movie titles or narrow down the selection that the scraper presented, as well as using IMDB to scrape movies that TMDB didn't know about.

Now I have everything in my movie source added to my library, and have created the .NFO files by exporting my library from XBMC itself into seperate files.

Linked below is a copy and paste of an entire .NFO as created by XBMC. Also worth noting is your example contains tags not found in the example created by XBMC, <watched> is one such example.

http://pastebin.com/hSth3T2E

I'm unsure of the relevance of the very 1st line and wether it is indeed necessary, maybe you want to experiment if it's not already in your .NFO files by manually adding it.

As per my understanding the NFO files were not meant to take precedence over the internet search. What I understood was that NFO files help or supplement the internet search scrapper by providing the exact URL and other information, hence they can save time and incorrect search results. Correct me if the NFO files are making the nuisance themselves.

Can you confirm your .NFO file actualy contains the full URL for IMDB as per the examples below which was taken from the wiki pages? I can't see the URL line in your example above.

Code:

<movie>
         <title>Sin City (Recut, Extended, Unrated)</title>
         <runtime>147 min.</runtime>
     </movie>
     http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401792/

As another test, select a movie in your library which is affected, bring up the movie information page and select refresh, it will prompt you if a .nfo file is found and give you a choice to use the local data or the internet, select the internet, Do you then get the right information displaying?

[&gt;&gt;X&lt;&lt;]

:o

[HyperEscape]

Sounds like a solution.

I am relying totally and blindly that whatever NFO file is created by XMM output template is actually what will help XBMC to fill the relevant data and fetch it from IMDB.

Now if the XMM NFO files contain unneeded tags and too much information, then what I assume from both the replies, is that the information contained in will take precedence and it will prevail for nothing much to be added from IMDB.

The NFO template from XMM does not contain the full URL of the movie itself, however it contains the code or the webpage ID (like tt833940) of the movie on the IMDB database, which in my opinion should have sufficed to be converted to a URL for an exact movie page search. But apparently this is not the way it is working.

So in my opinion for the movie to fetch all the data from IMDB/TMDB the NFO file should have all the prerequisite technical information and just a URL to the movie itself so the rest can be filled from the online database. Correct me if I am wrong.

And also since you have experimented with XMM, is there any way or plugin for XMM to get more XBMC friendly NFO files created with the bare minimum information. Adding the year suffix to every movie file name sounds like a bit cumbersome and crude way of telling the scrapper to go where it is supposed to be.

Thanks for the help anyways, will try and post the results. Any other ideas are also welcome.

[&gt;&gt;X&lt;&lt;]

Ignore what I said previously I just tried a mixed nfo by that I mean containing xml data and movie URL and it did use both you just need to put the url outside the xml I only thought this worked with set and sorttitle but I was wrong :o