Read the metadata tags from video container files and import into database / library?

i'm not completely literate when it comes to these things, but i was wondering if it's possible to embed info (title, director, year, etc.) right into an avi file in the same way that audio files have metatags. if this is the case, couldn't xbmc just use the tag info to set up a my videos library like the my music library. the reason i ask is that the current method of searching imdb for movie info isn't quite as useful for some types of videos (tv episodes, music videos, sports clips, etc). if xbmc was just reading the tags off each video file, then people (i'm assuming) could manually tag their videos themselves if the lookup isn't satisfactory.

this was just a thought i had. i apologize in advance if it's way off.

I have about a terrabyte of tv shows which I ripped from the original Dvds. I have ripped them in h.264 AVC1 at 640x480 aac audio. The reason for my choice in codec was that it will play natively in my ipod and apple tv and coverflow. one nice feature of it is that it embeds metadata directly to the file, just like mp3 id3 tags.

All my videos are tagged with show name, season, description, episode numbers, and even artwork. itunes, the ipod and apple tv sees all this metadata fine. xbmc however does not display any of this info. the metadata is embeded directly into the file its not being pulled from any dtabase.

I was wondering if theres a way to have xbmc pull this info directly from the file or if its a planned update.

thank you

XBMC doesn't currently do this, no.

We can read metadata from mp4, but currently only audio-related stuff.

A patch would be most welcome, however.

The idea would be to first modify the MP4 tag loader to read in the TV/Movie related tags.

Then modify the scanner to first attempt to read those tags (if mp4 filetype is found) before trying the scrapers.

A patch would be most welcome. At the very least, supply some sample files with all the tags that are/should be readable, plus information on which atoms should be searched to find those tags.

Cheers,
Jonathan

Could we not use MediaInfo library in XBMC when scanning video files into the database?

See this request for MediaInfo tag reader library for DVDPlayer for more information => http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/3824

MediaInfo supplies technical and can read tag information about a video or audio file containers.

MediaInfo is coded in C++, is cross-platform (Win32, Linux, and Mac), open source code (GPL/LGPL dual-license), and can be compiled into a .dll (Dynamicly Linked Library) on Windows, .so (Shared Object) on Linux, .dynlib (Dynamic Library) on Mac.

What information MediaInfo will get from looking at a container:
General: Title, Author, Director, Album, Track Number, Date, Duration, and much more.
Video: Codec, Resolution, Pixel Aspect Ratio, FPS, Bit-rate, and much more.
Audio: Codec, Sample Rate, Channels, Language, Bit-rate, ReplayGain, and much more.
Text Language of Subtitles (SRT, SSA, ASS, SAMI, and many more).
Chapters: Number of Chapters, List of Chapters (names).

Examples of just some of the supported formats:
Video: AVI, MKV, OGM, DV (RAW), MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-TS, MPEG-4, WMV, MOV, IFO/VOB (DVD-Video), CDXA (VCD/SVCD), Blu-ray and HD DVD files, and more.
Audio: MP3 (Id3v2), OGG, WAV, PCM, RA, AC3, DTS, AAC, M4A, AU, AIFF, WMA, APE/MAC, FLAC, and more.

Quote:about integration of metadata in MediaInfo, my goal is to have all the
metadata available in a file, so if data is present, what is request ("Right
now it allows for the following atoms (new atoms can be defined as well) Show
Name, Episode ID, Episode Number, Season Number, Cast Members, Producers,
Directors, Writers, Original Air Date, Original Network, Long Description (Plot),
Artwork, Video Kind (TV Show, Movie, Music Video) Rating, Genre.") is
easy to have.

Checkout the MediaInfo website for more information:
http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net

Source code (and SVN):
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mediainfo

Unfortunately I am not a developer and have no idea how I would even begin to write a patch or convert the mediainfo source to xbmc.

I Just though it be a nice feature to have since it would eliminate the need for scrapping for already tagged files. if you'd like I can certainly make a small clip and fully tag it for you.

Right now it allows for the following atoms (new atoms can be defined aswell) Show Name, Episode ID, Episode Number, Season Number, Cast Members, Producers, Directors, Writers, Original Air Date, Original Network, Long Description (Plot), Artwork, Video Kind (TV Show, Movie, Music Video) Raiting, Genre.

If you have seen screenshots of the AppleTV whenever you are in the TV section and you are hovering above a video it will display the plot sumary, and all the other tag info underneath the show artwork. please let me know if I can be of any non-development assistance. as I have been using XBMC since it was a XBMP, and I would love to give something back to the community.

I've just upgraded XBMC to use the xTV skin (good stuff) and have a bunch of MP4 files with ID3 information and artwork embedded in them. However, XBMC seems to be reading none of it for video. It is reading it for music though.

How do I get the Movie and TV sections to pull and display ID3 information from my MP4 video files?

You can't I'm afraid. We don't support tagged video formats in My Video views. The problem is ofcourse a bit of a chicken and an egg issue - no formats except MP4 (and really it was itunes that started tagging 'em) have consistent tag support, and very few applications bother reading them.

You can see whether it'll read them by adding them to my music though.

Cheers,
Jonathan

Well that explains why it isn't working for me. Any chance of future MP4 tag support?

Other than trying to add the videos to the My Music section, is the only current way to get videos properly named in the Videos section to actually name the files something meaningful and organize them by folders on a hard drive? If so, can I hide the .MP4 extension?

My suggestion is still to implement the MediaInfo tag reader library for XBMC's DVDPlayer, see:
http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/3824

...but then again I am not a programmer/developer myself

thericky Wrote:is the only current way to get videos properly named in the Videos section to actually name the files something meaningful and organize them by folders on a hard drive?

Yes, unless it's a movie for which meta data can be scraped of the internet, (post in the support forum).

thericky Wrote:If so, can I hide the .MP4 extension?

Yes, look under settings in the GUI.

I'm trying to make it work with TV shows and having difficulties getting it to properly add them to my Library... very frustrating. I've added a regexp and renamed my files to the proper format and yet it still isn't scraping the info correctly and nothing gets added to my Library.

I did turn off file extensions, so that helped a little bit, so I guess I'll just ignore the whole Library thing and go with sticking folder.jpg info in there like I've done with my music.

I can't imagine it'd be all that hard for someone who knows what they're doing to program it to say "if the file is MP4, check for ID3 tags. if there are tags, use them. if not, just display the file name" and put a checkbox in the Video settings that says "Use MP4 ID3 tags when available".