2012-03-20, 15:58
Sorry if this all sounds complicated but or is in the wrong place but I couldn’t work out the best place to put my query.
As a bit of background; I have a system with thousands of TV episodes on it and a friend of mine also has a similar number.
Up until late last year, both of us had been using Windows Media Center but we are now both using XBMC.
Both systems are not mirrors of each other as he has some series that I don’t and vice versa.
Where we are both collecting the same series, we make sure that both of us have the same best quality version of the episode.
Obviously in order to achieve that, it is necessary to compare the two systems and the following is how it is currently done.
- Directory listings are done for each system.
- The listings are imported into an Access database which generates two batch files. These files run MediaInfo on every video file within each directory and output the result to a text file.
- The resultant text files are then processed within Access (not as straightforward as it sounds as there are multiple lines for each video) .
- To obtain a complete list of TV series episodes, TVRename is used. Within that I hold a master list of all series on both our systems; I don’t point the software at any folders on the system just use it to download an updated episode list. The XML file held by TVRename is processed in yet another Access database.
- All the information described above is accessed in another MS Access database which is used to list what episodes are missing from each system, to compare the quality of the same episode between systems (this comparison looks at video resolution, length, audio channels etc) plus various other bits and pieces.
- The result of all this is imported into Excel.
All the above sounds horrendous but it does work albeit in a cackhanded way.
It was also set up before we both started using XBMC.
I therefore have started looking at the information held within XBMC itself which should make things much simpler and quicker.
Looking at the tables within XBMC’S database, it seems that a lot of the information is already there. The streamdetails table contains the same information as we were getting using mediainfo. However, the information isn’t there for all files and I was wondering if someone could explain when this table gets populated. More importantly; is there a way to force XBMC to update the information for all files on the system and to keep it uptodate?
Secondly, rather than using TVRename to get a complete list of episodes; is there another way I can get this information? I realise there are other programs like Media Companion but this does too much and relies on the existence of directories to scan. I don’t want to have to scan anything just get a list of episodes.
I hope this all makes sense.
Glenn
