OS X make xbmc use local meta-z metadata
#1
Hi all,
Heres the short and skinny;
Is there an add on or set of instructions I can use to make XBMC use and display the metadata that is already embedded in my .mp4 movie files?

And for the details;
I've been "toying" with xbmc for a few years and have never fully committed to using it as my primary media center, until now.
Previously I've been using FrontRow on my mini mac and have been pretty satisfied with the performance. Obviously apple dropped FR back with Lion and I found I was spending more time than I wanted to looking for workarounds to keep FR working.

Heres what I've got;
Late 2009 MacMini 2.26Ghz C2Duo w/ 2 Gig RAM and Nvidia GeForce 9400 256MB running OSX 10.9.1 Mavericks with XBMC 12.3 Frodo
My Mini is connected to my Apple Time Capsule via Ethernet, and the time capsule HDD (4TB) is setup as a shared volume on my network.
I have short cuts (alias') to my media folders on the time capsule HDD in the appropriate home folders on my mini as such

LocalHD\Users\Hondo\Movies\Movies alias
\New Movies alias
\Adult Movies alias
\Adult New movies alias
\TV Shows alias
\Adult TV Shows alias
\Home Movies alias

I have close to 3TB of movies and TV Shows that I have meticulously ripped with Handbrake (Normal profile), and catalogued with Meta-Z.
I spent a lot of time indexing all of my files with Poster Pics, date, rating, short description, long description, and runtime

Heres what I've done;
I've set up XBMC by adding the above mentioned folders to the video library and selected the movieDB as a scraper.
Using the Quartz skin I Made these folders "favorites" and everything looks just like it did with Frontrow.

However,I am not content with the scrapers results as they are somewhat incomplete, and in a few instances do not correctly identify the file/filename. In addition the meta scraper performs an unnecessary task (for my setup) by going out to the internet and retrieving meta data that I do not need (not to mention using unnecessary bandwidth).
If I choose "no scraper" when adding the media folders to the library, no metal data shows at all when I'm browsing my files.

So I'll restate my question. Is there an add on or set of instructions I can use to make XBMC use and display the metadata that is already embedded in my .mp4 movie files?

To wrap on a positive note, Thanks in advance to the community for your support and guidance. And, Thank you to all the devs and programmers, XBMC is an awesome media center!
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#2
It's possible that I'm wrong but I don't think xbmc will read your metadata directly. You might be able to use ViMediaManager to convert the metadata into a format xbmc can use. I know it can write metadata so I would think that it can read it as well. Might be worth a try. They also have a support thread in this forum- http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=109976
ASUS Chromebox M004U (LibreELEC 8.2/Aeon Nox SiLVO)--->HDMI--->Onkyo TX-NR646--->HDMI--->Panasonic P65VT30
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#3
No, XBMC doesn't currently read tags from mp4/mkv files.

I've mentioned it before, but it is likely that for mp4 at least, you could grab this metadata using our existing taglib stuff, though ofcourse it will need to be altered to pull out the necessary fields for videos rather than audio.

All it takes is someone with the time and inclination to look at it. This is likely to be someone volunteering from outside the XBMC team.
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.


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#4
It might be a weird side effect of something else, but we do now pickup on embedded artwork that meta-z uses. No summaries, and I don't know if the embedded artwork is used when scanned into the library, but you can see it in File view before scraping on a totally clean install.
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#5
Pretty sure there's no code doing that - perhaps meta-z just uses a similar timestamp for the screenshot it takes?
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.


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#6
No screen shot, they're movie posters. I'll try to replicate the situation again.
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#7
Here's in File view with no sources even defined, fresh thumbnails folder, etc. Only shows up in MP4s that I have embedded poster art in (the m4v is some weird file extension that seems to make Apple happy, but it's basically an MP4, according to Handbrake). Maybe XBMC thinks it's music art?

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