How to organize a movie library (files and folders)
#1
Hi, I would want to take some advice on how to organize my movie library. I have movies both with English and Spanish audio. The English movies are usually accompanied by their respective subtitles files. Some of the movies have a tbn thumb or fanart images along them.

I've got two folders, one for Spanish dubbed movies, and another one for English movies, that contain all files (avi's, srt's, tbn's, etc) without nested folders.

I've been thinking about organizing it in the following way:
One unique folder containing a folder for each movie, named with its imdb name. Inside that folder are the files related to the movie. For example:

Movies/
The Matrix (1999)/
The Matrix (1999).EN.avi
The Matrix (1999).EN.en.srt
The Matrix (1999).EN.es.srt
The Matrix (1999).ES.avi
The Matrix (1999).nfo
The Matrix (1999).tbn
The Matrix (1999)-fanart.jpg

I don't know if that would work. Should I go this way?
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#2
Did you try searching the wiki?
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#3
Nuak Wrote:Hi, I would want to take some advice on how to organize my movie library. I have movies both with English and Spanish audio. The English movies are usually accompanied by their respective subtitles files. Some of the movies have a tbn thumb or fanart images along them.

I've got two folders, one for Spanish dubbed movies, and another one for English movies, that contain all files (avi's, srt's, tbn's, etc) without nested folders.

I've been thinking about organizing it in the following way:
One unique folder containing a folder for each movie, named with its imdb name. Inside that folder are the files related to the movie. For example:

Movies/
The Matrix (1999)/
The Matrix (1999).EN.avi
The Matrix (1999).EN.en.srt
The Matrix (1999).EN.es.srt
The Matrix (1999).ES.avi
The Matrix (1999).nfo
The Matrix (1999).tbn
The Matrix (1999)-fanart.jpg

I don't know if that would work. Should I go this way?

That would work just fine.

It doesnt really matter how or where you store them as long as files are in the same directory.
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#4
A question of interest to me aswell:

How do you organize your movie library on a filesystem level?

I ripped all of my DVD's into Xvid and store them on the NAS. Using XBMC with an Xbox as a streaming-client, it takes quite a while to load the whole list. Not yet annoying, but it takes a few seconds.

My current FS looks like this

\Movies
\Series\Name\Season xx\Name S0xE02.....avi

I am happy with the way the series/TV shows are organized. But the movie list is getting to big. Any ideas? Splitting into genre? Not unique sometimes. Year? Not really. Any advise? Thanks.
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#5
I'm in the planning stages of building an HTPC, and I think I know how I'm going to arrange the library. For convenience, I'm going to rip discs to ISOs, so I would have something like this:
Code:
Movies
+-The Matrix (1999)
|  +-Movie.iso
|  \-Special Features.iso
\-Primer (2004)
  \-Primer.iso
The question is this: Will I need to use specific names to identify the main feature disc and the bonus disc? What about things like The Lord of the Rings, where the movie covers two discs, and there are two special features discs? How would I get XBMC to pick those up properly?

Thanks for your help.
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#6
wintermute115 Wrote:The question is this: Will I need to use specific names to identify the main feature disc and the bonus disc? What about things like The Lord of the Rings, where the movie covers two discs, and there are two special features discs? How would I get XBMC to pick those up properly?

I suppose that stacking works fine with ISO images. To distinguish between the 2 discs you have to name them as follows:

LOTR - Fellowship of the Ring.CD1.iso
LOTR - Fellowship of the Ring.CD2.iso

or

LOTR - Fellowship of the Ring-CD1.iso
LOTR - Fellowship of the Ring-CD2.iso

Both formats, -CD1 and .CD1 are valid, and tell XBMC to play them one after the other when watching the movie.

By the way, I have finally "created" a naming convention for my movies. If would be great if XBMC added support for audio and subtitles language recognition.

Code:
The Matrix (1999)/
    The Matrix (1999).[EN].avi
    The Matrix (1999).[EN].English.srt
    The Matrix (1999).[EN].Spanish.srt
    The Matrix (1999).[EN].nfo
    The Matrix (1999).[EN].tbn
    The Matrix (1999).[EN]-fanart.jpg
    The Matrix (1999).[ES-EN].avi
    The Matrix (1999).[ES-EN].nfo
    The Matrix (1999).[ES-EN].tbn
    The Matrix (1999).[ES-EN]-fanart.jpg

The format I propose for naming a movie file is as follows:

For a movie with a single audio track:
Code:
Movie Name (year).[AUDIO].extension
Example: Goodfellas (1990).[EN].avi

For a movie with multiple audio tracks:
Code:
Movie Name (year).[AUDIO1-AUDIO2-...-AUDIOn].extension
Example: Clerks. (1994).[ES-EN].mp4

For a movie with embedded subtitles:
Code:
Movie Name (year).[AUDIO][Subs].extension
Example: Apocalypse Now (1979).[EN][English].avi

For a movie with multiple embedded subtitles:
Code:
Movie Name (year).[AUDIO][Subs1-Subs2-...-Subsn].extension
Example: Toy Story (1995).[EN][Spanish-English-French].mkv

A movie with multiple audio tracks and multiple embedded subtitles:
Code:
Movie Name (year).[AUDIO1-AUDIO2-...-AUDIOn][Subs1-Subs2-...-Subsn].extension
Example: Pulp Fiction (1994).[ES-EN-FR][English-French].mkv
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#7
What exactly is a .tbn? I'm using the same naming scheme as you, but I added the movie poster with the "-poster.jpg" name. Doesn't seem to be doing much if anything, it keeps downloading the posters from the web.

Is there any way I can set the poster I want using a jpg file?
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#8
The .tbn is a jpg file renamed with the tbn extension that contains the movie poster. Just rename the movie poster from jpg to tbn and you are done.
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#9
Stacking does not work for DVD images
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Stacking

Your best option to differentiate I guess would be the hot-off-the press:
http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/4460
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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#10
Nuak Wrote:Hi, I would want to take some advice on how to organize my movie library. I have movies both with English and Spanish audio. The English movies are usually accompanied by their respective subtitles files. Some of the movies have a tbn thumb or fanart images along them.

I've got two folders, one for Spanish dubbed movies, and another one for English movies, that contain all files (avi's, srt's, tbn's, etc) without nested folders.

I've been thinking about organizing it in the following way:
One unique folder containing a folder for each movie, named with its imdb name. Inside that folder are the files related to the movie. For example:

Movies/
The Matrix (1999)/
The Matrix (1999).EN.avi
The Matrix (1999).EN.en.srt
The Matrix (1999).EN.es.srt
The Matrix (1999).ES.avi
The Matrix (1999).nfo
The Matrix (1999).tbn
The Matrix (1999)-fanart.jpg

I don't know if that would work. Should I go this way?

+1. Yes, this will work fine for you. From XBMC's perspective I'm not sure it makes a big difference but from the perspective of wanting to have better organization when you view your directory tree, this is definitely easier.

Like one other poster suggested, there are a lot of media management programs that give you a better way of reviewing your movie info than by scanning the tree yourself. Another good one is Ember Media Manager (I'm not saying one is better than the other as that wasn't your question, but you might want to check out media managers in general to help you organize your files)
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