[BamBam1963]

Hi all,

I have just finished searching the site for this answer so I hope I am not duplicating a question.

I recently had all of my T.V. Series work deleted by the folks over at TVDB because it did not fully conform to their strict guidelines. (It was a military DVD documentary based on an old 1963 T.V. Series.)

Anyway, I have 3 seasons that I would like to add to XBMC and hope to include banners, fanart and episode information. Seeing that TVDB will not allow this, how do I go about manually adding this to my collection?

I have tried manually adding it, but each episode gets dumped into my Movie database, and has no option for adding banners and art.

I see that some people use .nfo files for this. How do I go about creating .nfo's so that XBMC scans the TV Series to my Library? Is an .nfo a text file?

Thanks in advance for any assistance offered.

John

[krish_2k4]

emberMM will do it but you need to put in the info yourself obviously.

[Aenima99x]

Good info in the wiki on how to do it - Creating NFO files

[jhsrennie]

Look at http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Imp...g_XML_data. Have a play with creating the nfo files and come back to us if you run into any problems.

JR

[outatouch0]

Here are the quick and easy .nfo files I use for stuff that doesn't scrape. You can fill in the details however you like. An .nfo file is simply a notepad.txt file with the .txt changed to .nfo
Copy paste, fill in the data, rinse repeat

Code:

<tvshow xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <title>TV SHOW TITLE</title>
  <rating>10.0</rating>
  <plot>SHOW PLOT</plot>
  <genre>Documentary</genre>
  <premiered>1969-07-14<premiered />
  <studio>International</studio>
</tvshow>

Code:

<episodedetails xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <title>EPISODE TITLE</title>
  <season>0</season>
  <episode>0</episode>
  <aired>2011</aired>
  <plot>EPISODE PLOT</plot>
  <displayseason />
  <displayepisode />
  <watched>false</watched>
  <rating />
</episodedetails>

If you want all the artwork, set your folder up like this. Google images usually turns up something useful for me if you have lost your fanart etc. ".tbn" is simply .jpg with the extension changed

C:\TV\
TV.Show.Title\
Season.01\
-----^-TV.Show.Title.s1e1.Episode.Name.mkv
-----^-TV.Show.Title.s1e1.Episode.Name.nfo
-----^-TV.Show.Title.s1e1.Episode.Name.tbn
Season.02\
fanart.jpg
folder.jpg
season01.tbn
season02.tbn
tvshow.nfo

[phsyraxion]

I have a script "exe" that creates a NFO for episodes just to get them in your library. You create the tvshow.nfo file and get the artwork detailed above and the script I have then creates a nfo for each file which can then be edited if need be.

The only catch is my collection is prepared first so it HAS to follow:

Show Name - 01x01 - Title.ext

if it doesn't, no nfo is created.

The script is autoit so if you want to mod it more than happy. just pm me.

[Chizad]

Obvious n00b here.

I have been pulling my hair out trying this, to no avail.

There are two situations I'm trying to rectify.

1. DVD Extras on TV Seasons not listed on TV.DB.

2. I have a huge collection of my alma mater's college football games.

I tried resolving both by following the instructions from outatouch0. They seemed fairly straightforward and easy to follow, yet they did not work for me.

I have a folder called:
Z:\TV\Football

In that folder, I have the following files:
Football.nfo
Football.tbn
fanart.jpg
folder.jpg
Season 2013.tbn

I also have a folder called Season 2013.

In that folder I have the following files:
2013.08.31.mp4
2013.08.31.nfo
2013.08.31.tbn
2013.09.07.mkv
2013.09.07.nfo
2013.09.07.tbn

I also played around with making the folder name Season 13, and making the files name S013E01, etc.

I can't get XBMC to recognize the files for anything. Am I missing a step? Assume nothing is obvious with me. I basically know nothing about XBMC.

Is there some kind of special setting in XBMC to get it to recognize those files not scraped by tvdb.com?

Your help is much appreciated!

[Harro]

Instead of calling your folder Season 2013 under your Football folder, try and Season 1 instead of Season 2013. Then name each video file as such 01x01.2013.mp4 01 represents the season and x01 represents the episode or in your case game 2013 represents the year. Continue renaming your video files until you have all games or episodes in incremental order staring with x01 - how many games you have.

[Chizad]

I tried this. DIdn't work.

I tried Season 1, Season 13, Season 2013.

I've tried about every combination imaginable, and none work. There's got to be something stupid I'm not doing right, like a setting in XBMC or something.

[Chizad]

For what it's worth, I can see the files AND the nfo pictures and stuff I set up for it 100% correctly, from the Videos menu > Files > TV folder, but ONLY there.

Under the TV menu item on the home screen, it still does not appear. Am I close?

[kmatheson]

I successfully added my episode, but killed all my artwork? Anyone know how to restore?

[Gweilojake]

Hello,

I am facing a similar challenge. I've (barely) nailed down the creation of NFO files for movies. Now, I'm attempting to create an NFO file for a somewhat obscure TV series (Duckman). While using scrapers, it seemed to recognize it, but the progress bar never moves, and it is not imported.

So now...how to create an NFO for a 5 season series plus special features. Would I have to create an NFO for each episode, or is there a simpler protocol?

Either way, could someone provide a sample or template of an NFO that was generated for a TV series that I could use for reference, and perhaps customize? That's essentially how I learned to create files for movies that would not scrape.

ANY advice for this novice is greatly appreciated. I did not seem to get anywhere with the information provided on the initial "how to" on the Kodi intro.

And lastly, how should I rename files in each season folder, or should I remove them from the folders, place them in a single folder, with a naming convention "Duckman - S01E01" for example.

Thanks, again!!!

[moviebuff1017]

I have a somewhat similar question.
Analyzing the database, you can see that for tv shows and episodes, in the uniqueid table as scraped by the tvdb scraper, you often have (for the same file) two "unique ids", one from imdb, the other one from tvdb. But in the NFO documentation at https://kodi.wiki/view/NFO_files/tvshows , you see that the "uniqueid" tag is not "multiple". Moreover, it doesn't bear an attribute allowing one to describe whether it's a tvdb id or an imdb id.

Has someone tried to create NFOs for tv series pointing to tvdb and imdb ?

Thanks

[Karellen]

Can you post a screenshot of what you are seeing in the database. I don't want to try and guess which tables and fields you are referring to.

Thanks.

[moviebuff1017]

@Karellen  

As you can see in the screenshot below, there are two rows in the uniqueid table for the same episode of "Hercules : the legendary journeys" (same file in the source), one with its imdb id ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0599822/ ), the other one with its tvdb id ( https://www.thetvdb.com/?tab=episode&ser...7857&lid=7 ).



For movies, things are straightforward (as far as the uniqueid in the nfo is concerned) - there's only one row in the uniqueid table.

For tv series, there may be two rows for the same file/media_id . But the wiki page about tvshows nfo ( https://kodi.wiki/view/NFO_files/tvshows ) says about the uniqueid tag:
*REQUIRED = No
* MULTIPLE = No
* MEANING = Scraper site ID

If I create my own NFOs, how can I ensure that two rows are created in "uniqueid" (mimicking the behaviour of the tvdb scraper) if I'm not allowed to repeat the uniqueid tag?

Thank you