Scraping Movie Sets from TheMovieDB.org (TMDB) so no need to generate NFO's manually?

Vankwish · 2010-08-04 10:40

I have recently been pruning/updating my library and decided to give the sets a crack? After a lot of time and a fair amount of effort I have successfully sorted my movie's into sets and used sorttitle to order them correctly. I have been using EMM to create external files since i lost my database the first time, rescanning now does not take very long at all (in comparison!).

I was slightly unhappy (read: I'm a sad lonely single male) when I rescanned my library and saw all my sets show up, but they were NAKED! (i.e. no specific fanart/poster/thumb) still not a major issue but i have become a little bit anal retentive about my library.

After scouring the forums I see that it is possible to add these extras in through the XBMC GUI manually, but i have another proposition . . .

TheMovieDB contains information for sets e.g. Alien (the defacto example), it has posters, fanart and the correct ordering for sets. Now admittedly I am no coder but could this information not be scraped and used to generate sets automagically - or - could pre existing sets be scraped for?

The reason i post here is because XBMC's own scraping xml's are used by/as a starting point for many other programs (such as EMM).

I appreciate my thoughts may not reflect a worthwhile majority of users or the practicality of doing it may not be there, I suppose that's why I'm posting here first not submitting a feature request.

What do other people think?

Spaggi · 2010-08-04 10:49

This is no direct answer to your question, but you know that EMM has a set Manager, which edits the nfo files? So sets are stored there forever?

This is a very confortable function - The problem I see with a set scraper is that set names might vary so you end up having different sets for the same collection.

EDIT: Ah, sorry I misunderstood your request. It is indeed a great idea, would like to see this feature!

Vankwish · 2010-08-04 10:54

EMM is what I initially used to create all of my sets. I used the set manager to create the sets then the sorttitle to order them all. To check I had created the correct order I went to TheMovieDB and looked up one film in the set, then I checked if it was part of a collection then I checked the order it was in that collection.

Incidentally I thought it best to name a moviesset the same collection name it was assigned on TheMovieDB, and subsequently used "collection name #" for the sorttitle of each movie.

It was this that got me to thinking if it would be possible to then have XBMC automagically scrape poster/fanart for the set?

Code:

Set : "[b]Alien[/b]" <-- As taken from TheMovieDB a.k.a "Alien Quadrilogy"

Contains :

     [b]Alien[/b]

          SortTitle Alien 1

     [b]Aliens[/b]

          SortTitle Alien 2

     [b]Alien3[/b]

          SortTitle Alien 3

     [b]Alien Resurrection[/b]

          SortTitle Alien 4

In this example if a set exists (i.e. manually user created) would it be possible to automagically get the poster/fanart for it after matching it to a collection on TheMovieDB (either manually or automagically)? Once linked to a collection perhaps it would not matter what the user named the set as. I understand that automagic creation of sets may be more difficult, infeasible even (due to different sets for different movie's and multiple set names etc) . . .

blacklist · 2010-08-07 17:07

I had been asking earlier about some additional controls for sets within the UI (adding and removing movies from a set, reordering, etc) and was told that the current implementation of sets is basically a hack on to the existing database structure. Jonathan is currently working on a new database schema that is going to basically make sets a thing of the past but make the relationships between data in the database much mo fluid.

Long story short I wouldn't expect to see to many changes to the way sets are implemented until after the database is updated.

Vankwish · 2010-08-08 21:41

Thanks for the update. I have searched around, is there any information about features/progress around I can have a look at. Sounds like a pretty big job!

Better let this thread die then Smile

Mental Block · 2010-12-01 17:24

TheMovieDB.org has movie sets, could the scraper be updated to get this information as well? Just have an option to use it or not, then it would all be done automatically Smile

**sho** · 2010-12-01 20:31

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=86383
http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/7528

UserInterface · 2010-12-30 01:29

Could someone not ask themoviedb to include the movie set?
then it could scrape the info if avalible.

Vankwish Donor Posts: 67 Joined: Sep 2008 Reputation: 0 Location: Wales UK	2010-08-08 21:41 Post: #5 Thanks for the update. I have searched around, is there any information about features/progress around I can have a look at. Sounds like a pretty big job! Better let this thread die then Playing with XBMC on all platforms :)
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Mental Block Senior Member Posts: 107 Joined: Oct 2003 Reputation: 0 Location: Kent, UK	2010-12-01 17:24 Post: #6 TheMovieDB.org has movie sets, could the scraper be updated to get this information as well? Just have an option to use it or not, then it would all be done automatically
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sho Team-XBMC Member Posts: 4,133 Joined: May 2004 Reputation: 3	2010-12-01 20:31 Post: #7 http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=86383 http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/7528 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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UserInterface Senior Member Posts: 174 Joined: Dec 2009 Reputation: 0	2010-12-30 01:29 Post: #8 Could someone not ask themoviedb to include the movie set? then it could scrape the info if avalible.
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