[monty68]

So from day one I have always preferred to a) use the .mp4 container, b) tag all my files correctly from IMDB and
c) using a standalone scraper, e.g. Ember and now MediaElch scrape all the artwork and generate .nfo's for my
entire video library. A lot of work and perhaps a little OCD of me, but there you go

Why, because I have always had a mix of streamer devices and found that for example tagging MP4 and streaming
UPNP/DLNA from Twonky running on my NAS to a PS3 worked great and picked out a lot of info from the MP4
tags etc, including the cover art.

In the beginning a nice flat library but since using XBMC I've a lot more files and feel the library on my NAS is untidy.

So, for my own preference and also in response to this thread http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=12721
I am working on two projects.

Project 1: NFO2TAG

This is a standalone program (currently only Windows but should port easily to other mainstream platforms) which will
scan your folders and tag any .mp4|.m4v files with standard (iTunes) based tags from a corresponding .nfo. It will also
embed a poster/cover and fanart files. Optionally it will clean up the folder and remove the .nfo and artwork files etc.

Project 2: XBMC Scrapper Update

I will patch the core XBMC scraper to detect .mp4|.mv4 files and check for tags/embedded art and use that if found.

Appreciate any feedback, comments or thoughts and be useful to gauge how many people would want/like this
as it will help encourage the development along a little quicker

[davoo22]

Hi.. I found this thread through google and made an account just to show that I am VERY interested in your NFO2ID3 project. I use Media Centre Master to tag all my movies and that works great I find, but I would like to have the ability to port my collection into iTunes and have all my metadata taken with it.
I have been looking at the other options such as subler and identity2 and metaz, but they all look rather tedious considering all the information is already there.
But I will be following this thread :-)

[monty68]

Thanks for taking the time to drop in and show some support, hopefully I can get this project moving quickly

[davoo22]

I have very limited experience with programming but have done a few courses on procedural programming in my degree, but I did find this link which I thought was useful. I had considered doing the whole thing through apple script using the AtomicParlsey, which is apparently what metax and metaz use to tag the MP4s.

http://andrew-jones.com/blog/2011/10/10/...-mp4-file/

Just trying to help

[monty68]

Happy for the help and suggestions etc. I'd looked at AP, and did prefer it as it is pure C, I've never really liked C++, but XBMC uses taglib and I am hoping
to help add this feature to some of the media manager/scrapers out there so have chosen taglib as the base and writing an M4V class as the taglib
author/maintainers do not want to add video support to taglib, its meant to be pure audio tagging.

I am well on the way with the new class so hope to have an Alpha release in a week or so assuming my day job doesn't distract me too much.

[davoo22]

Yeah ok, so your well on your way then. Looking forward to test it

[Powerhouse]

I am very interested in these tools as well. I have been working on adding NFO, poster and fanart to all my Music Videos, that way the show up correctly in XBMC (currently using the ACE skin). I have several write-up's regarding what is and isn't used by XBMC (http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=164550) regarding Music Video files if this helps you at all.

I do have questions regarding the NFO2ID3.
1. What is the difference between iTunes NFO files and XBMC files?
2. What poster/cover file names are you going to look for to embed in the .mp4 container? I ask, because if you read the forum link above, it points out exactly what names are associated with the Music Video files, to show up correctly in XBMC (The WIKI on this is horribly outdated, so don't go by that information).
3. Could you have this scanner look for artwork from Fanart.tv, Amazon, TheAudioDB, etc and embed those files if you don't have any artwork currently?

If you check out this post (http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=93241) someone created an NFO generator that would grab the Artist and Song name if the Music Video was Artist - Song.ext. I'm not sure if that would help you, but perhaps if you don't have an NFO created, perhaps this could generate on first.

[monty68]

Thanks for the interest and any information is always helpful, I will look at your posts in detail when I come to do the music video tagging.
In terms of you specific questions, iTunes uses a combination of ID3 tag, free form tags specific to itself and for movies an embedded XML
document for the cast, director(s), screen writer etc. And on top of that duplicates some of the information into standard tags as well.
Initially the program will only look for Frodo named artwork files, may provide Eden backwards compatibility if there is sufficient need
and requests for such. The NFO2ID3 (changing to NFO2TAG, as I hope to also support MKV tagging as well) is meant to only pick up
an NFO and artwork already gathered by other scrapers and embed all the information correctly. I do hope that the code I produce
could then be added to some of the scrapers such as MediaElch to tag as they scrape.

But, you never know!

[Richdmoore]

Hello, I just registered to let you know you have support for the xbmc scraper update to allow embedded tags in videos to just work.

I have my entire library tagged using subler, in a usb hard drive and it would be a nightmare to try and reorder all those movies, rename and put in folders just for xbmc to let its scrapers work.

I would also have to rebuild my entire iTunes library to relink the movies as I rename and move them, simply reading the existing metadata from the file is much, much better for my purposes.

Thanks for working on the scraper update!

[monty68]

Thanks for taking the time to register and post your support, work is going well and will post updates here in the next week or so.

[gaiko]

Hey Monty, I just noticed this post and gotta say this is almost exactly what I have been looking for. I say almost only because I use a combination of mkv and mp4 in my collection, but I am quoting this post because I see you are planning to support mkv (thank you!!!).

So this is just to say, 1) thank you, 2) can't wait for mkv support to be added and 3) if i could make a wee suggestion, at least for mkv since it support attachments, a way to batch attach all the nfo, fanart, tbn, poster, trailer etc files to mkv files would really be appreciated. So i can keep track of all the xmbc files i have been trying to manually go through my collection using mkvmerge which has been a pain/.
As for your work with the XBMC scraper I really hope they incorporate it into the main xbmc build as this would be icing on the cake!

Thanks for the interest and any information is always helpful, I will look at your posts in detail when I come to do the music video tagging.
In terms of you specific questions, iTunes uses a combination of ID3 tag, free form tags specific to itself and for movies an embedded XML
document for the cast, director(s), screen writer etc. And on top of that duplicates some of the information into standard tags as well.
Initially the program will only look for Frodo named artwork files, may provide Eden backwards compatibility if there is sufficient need
and requests for such. The NFO2ID3 (changing to NFO2TAG, as I hope to also support MKV tagging as well) is meant to only pick up
an NFO and artwork already gathered by other scrapers and embed all the information correctly. I do hope that the code I produce
could then be added to some of the scrapers such as MediaElch to tag as they scrape.

But, you never know!

[monty68]

Thanks for the post of support, still working away, just had little time, but I will get this done, including MKV and AVI support.

[Seegras]

Hi

This:

Project 2: XBMC Scrapper Update

I will patch the core XBMC scraper to detect .mp4|.mv4 files and check for tags/embedded art and use that if found.

Would be most welcome. I can't stand spaces in filenames, and thus my whole collection does not have any, resulting in the scraper, as it is now, to be totally useless.

However, all my .mkv-files (I don't have any others) are correctly tagged with (at least) the title. mediainfo (http://sourceforge.net/projects/mediainfo/) can extract them:
/usr/bin/mediainfo --Output="General;%Title%" LongJohnSilver.mkv
Long John Silver
/usr/bin/mediainfo --Output="General;%DATE_RELEASED%" LongJohnSilver.mkv
1954
/usr/bin/mediainfo --Output="General;%DIRECTOR%" LongJohnSilver.mkv
Byron Haskin
/usr/bin/mediainfo --Output="General;%COPYRIGHT%" LongJohnSilver.mkv
Public Domain

Depending on the libraries you use, there should be no difference between the handling of m4v and mkv.

[Seegras]

In the meantime, I patched my "titlemkv"-utility to be able to generate simple .nfo files. It's for Unix/Linux.
http://seegras.discordia.ch/Programs/titlemkv

Use like this for a whole collection (assumed titlemkv is in the path):
for i in `find /where/my/movies/are/ -type d`; cd $i; titlemkv -n; done

needs mediainfo and mkvpropedit, d.h. "apt-get install mediainfo mkvtoolnix" on Debian or Ubuntu.

It also will try to set the title tag according to the filename if none is set; so either the filename or the title-tag must be set to something useful.

[Seegras]

Actually, you can generate .nfo-files directly from mediainfo, by using a template:

mediainfo --inform=file:///home/user/NFO.csv file.mkv

NFO.csv:

Page;(unused)\r\n
Page_Begin;<movie>
Page_Middle;
Page_End;</movie>

General; \r\n <title>%Title%</title>\r\n <director>%DIRECTOR%</director>\r\n <year>%DATE_RELEASED%</year>\r\n

This won't do you much good with xbmc itself unless you've really got everything in the metatags already, since when trying to refresh the information, the .nfo gets ignored. But MediaElch won't ignore it.