2010-01-21, 02:49
I am not sure what the intention of the library import and export tool are. They do not seem very intuitive to me. Here's my scenario:
I have my movies (all in one folder) on a SMB share:
\\workgroup\servername\Videos
Under that, I also have TV Shows, Music Videos. I wanted to move all movies to "Movies" so it'd look like this:
\\workgroup\servername\Videos\Movies
\\workgroup\servername\Videos\TV_Shows
\\workgroup\servername\Videos\Music Videos
I spent a lot of time cleaning up my movie library and did not want to go through the process again so first I exported to a single file. It forces you to store the file within the Live install. You can't store it on the network, the same network that it has no problem streaming data from.
Then later I thought I should be really thorough so I told it to export individual files including actor thumbs and user art. I had to enable write access because this time it stored it directly in my \\workgroup\servername\Videos folder. it also made a subfolder called .actors. Now I have a bunch of thumbs and xml files that have the same name as my movie files so say The Departed.avi, The Departed.xml, The Departed.thm (forgot the extension).
So I am all set now, right?
In XBMC, I added a new source \\workgroup\servername\Videos\Movies (at this point I haevn't moved any data over). Then I moved the files over on my server. Then I removed the source linked to \\workgroup\servername\Videos and this took a long time. I started getting worried because I realize it's removing all the entries from the db now and probably deleting all the art.
Next I had it import the XML files.
Then I told it to scan the source for new files at \\workgroup\servername\Videos\Movies expecting it to finish really quickly. Well it didn't. It seems like it still went out and had to retrieve the information, slow as before. So I moved all the xml and thumbs to \\workgroup\servername\Videos\Movies and that didn't seem to help either.
Additionally, when you try to import, you cannot get outside of the XBMC file system so your only choice is to choose the singular backup file (export to single file). You can't even point it in the direction of your "backup to multiple files" folder.
Has anyone successfully used library import/export?
I have my movies (all in one folder) on a SMB share:
\\workgroup\servername\Videos
Under that, I also have TV Shows, Music Videos. I wanted to move all movies to "Movies" so it'd look like this:
\\workgroup\servername\Videos\Movies
\\workgroup\servername\Videos\TV_Shows
\\workgroup\servername\Videos\Music Videos
I spent a lot of time cleaning up my movie library and did not want to go through the process again so first I exported to a single file. It forces you to store the file within the Live install. You can't store it on the network, the same network that it has no problem streaming data from.
Then later I thought I should be really thorough so I told it to export individual files including actor thumbs and user art. I had to enable write access because this time it stored it directly in my \\workgroup\servername\Videos folder. it also made a subfolder called .actors. Now I have a bunch of thumbs and xml files that have the same name as my movie files so say The Departed.avi, The Departed.xml, The Departed.thm (forgot the extension).
So I am all set now, right?
In XBMC, I added a new source \\workgroup\servername\Videos\Movies (at this point I haevn't moved any data over). Then I moved the files over on my server. Then I removed the source linked to \\workgroup\servername\Videos and this took a long time. I started getting worried because I realize it's removing all the entries from the db now and probably deleting all the art.
Next I had it import the XML files.
Then I told it to scan the source for new files at \\workgroup\servername\Videos\Movies expecting it to finish really quickly. Well it didn't. It seems like it still went out and had to retrieve the information, slow as before. So I moved all the xml and thumbs to \\workgroup\servername\Videos\Movies and that didn't seem to help either.
Additionally, when you try to import, you cannot get outside of the XBMC file system so your only choice is to choose the singular backup file (export to single file). You can't even point it in the direction of your "backup to multiple files" folder.
Has anyone successfully used library import/export?
