[mindweaver]

I have all my movies and tv-series in separate rar archives and they display media flags just fine in xbmc.

so the answer to

Does xbmc automatically flag rar files or do I have to extract the file from the rar's for xbmc to be able to pickup all the flags??

is yes! and no you do not have to extract them.

[junk]

it depends how the rar archives are compressed. If they're set to "storage" (no compression) xbmc finds the flags just fine.

See http://www.xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=55362

[rcoops]

Watch the piracy talk...

Yeah it is intresting to see

Anyway, depending on your platform (Linux or OSX is easiest for this, but windows will be able to do it as well though this might be a little more involved) you could write a short script that goes trought the directories and extracts the files in each of them (possibly removing the rar files at the end though would not do that before making 100% certain that the file was extracted correctly)
Of course regardless of the way of obtaining the files there are applications out there that automatically verify, repair and extract the files for you.
Which one to use depends on your OS platform and of course personal preference in regards to obtaining the files, GUI, command line etc...

See no piracy chatter there

[junk]

Woo, what happened here? Two threads been merged?

I look retarded, first posting a question and then asking if this is the same question as this question (not forgetting that I am actually linking back to the same question!)!

[Flook]

No reason to keep files in rar format. Everyone loves to say to just leave them but it's a waste of time to have to even open them up in xbmc and just causes issues like this.

I use parnrar to do exactly what you were talking about and it works great.

[jmarshall]

It causes no issues whatsoever as long as they're not compressed. Keeping stored rar's in rar's has benefits such as automatic verification of the files, and the ability to put large files onto filesystems that don't support them (eg Fat32 or the xbox).

People who put already compressed media into a compressed rar or zip are, however, to be forever mocked and ridiculed.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[junk]

As a previous poster asked, is there anyway to see if the RARs are stored or compressed (on Ubuntu, not using WinRAR)?

[jmarshall]

unrar lt <name_of_rar> will probably give some reasonable info.

[spiff]

m0 = stored