[hammerhead69]

Hi all, I'M obviously new here,
been on the forum for a week or two, about to get my 1st htpc and looking to run xbmc on it,
so i've been reading up on different programmes such as ember media manager or ember re-visited, and mp3tag, that will re-name my media so xbmc can read it correctly, some of th eposts are quite old,
my question is what are people currently using or would recommend to someone using windows 7, with zero knowledge of coding or linux, to rename and tag their films, music and tv series.
I currently have each film named and in it's own folder,
any advise appreaciated, sorry if this post is in the wrong section?

[IAmNotAUser]

Whilst it doesn't do Music, Media Companion (http://mediacompanion.codeplex.com/) handles TV and Movies admirably on my Windows 7 machine. It can be slightly disorientating to begin with, but it's recently gone open-source and a user has added some beginner guides to that site. There is also a thread on these boards dedicated to it.

Not saying it's necessarily the best for you, but with movies in individual folders, it works admirably for me.

[hammerhead69]

Thank you i'll check this out and give it a go

[scottc]

+1 for Media Companion its brilliant.

I let Sick Beard manage my TV though. Seems easier that way.

[hammerhead69]

sorry if this is a stupid question, but if i use mediacompanion to arrange my films and tv series, will it be ok om my htpc whether it uses windows or ubuntu?
I haven't ordered my unit yet but i think im getting the ASRock vision 3d, which is a barebone unit, and i haven't decided or even worked out if i'll be installing xbmc on ubuntu or windows, or even if they are the only options?

[IAmNotAUser]

sorry if this is a stupid question, but if i use mediacompanion to arrange my films and tv series, will it be ok om my htpc whether it uses windows or ubuntu?
I haven't ordered my unit yet but i think im getting the ASRock vision 3d, which is a barebone unit, and i haven't decided or even worked out if i'll be installing xbmc on ubuntu or windows, or even if they are the only options?

If all your movies are in individual folders named the same as the movie like:

Code:

Movies/
  -  MovieA/
    -  MovieA.avi
  -  MovieB/
    -  MovieB.avi

and all your TV shows are in the accepted XBMC layout of:

Code:

TV/
  -  Show1
    -  S01
      -  S01E01
      -  S01E02
          ..etc...
    -  S02
  -  Show2
    -  S01
      ...etc...

Then Media Companion (and other media managers too) scrape all the information and create .nfo files inside all the relevant folders with all the information that you can freely edit. It also downloads banners and posters and other things into the folders. When you scrape the folders using XBMC it detects these .nfo files and stores them in its database, rather than having to scrape all the information itself.

Using MC allows you control over the data inside the .nfo files, as it's easy to modify them using the program, and all the information is already scraped and saved in case you ever have to reinstall XBMC for some reason, it just reads all the files back in again...much quicker!

Media Companion doesn't actually arrange your files and folders for you though, I prefer to do that manually tbh, automation is good, but having to check things are running correct is a lot of bother when I can just do it right first time It does have a good renamer built into it though that renames your files how XBMC expects to see them too

[hammerhead69]

Would you believe it, about a year ago i got organised with all my films and tv series and manually changed every file and folder name to remove and the .dots and /slashes that annoyed me so everything looked the same in plain english, it took me weeks doing a bit every evening, how funny that im now looking for a programme to change them all back with dots and slashes
my whole film collection is in alphabet folders then in those folders the exact film name folder then the exact film name in the folder
so once this is done it won't matter whether i install xbmc on ubuntu or windows is that right?

[IAmNotAUser]

Well the plain English part will definitely help you as any weirdness in file names will throw off the scrapers (in both XBMC and Media Companion)

it shouldn't take you too long at all to return it to how the programs want it though...you just need to remove the alphabet layer of the folders. Just cut and paste everything out of each letter, and then delete those now empty folders and you should be great to go! You don't need all the dots, and it's actually one less slash in the full file name Some people recommend including the year too, but I don't find that necessary using a Media Manager, as any scraping mistakes are easily fixed by just right clicking and telling it to use a different film.

Sounds like you were just a little overzealous

Yep, the .nfo files produced and saved will be recognised by XBMC running on Windows, Ubuntu, XBMC Live, MacOSX, iPhone, iPad, AppleTV1, AppleTV2...everywhere XBMC runs it can read those new files

[hammerhead69]

yeah im a little obsessive sometimes and i like everything to be in its correct order, random slashes and dots used to get on my nerves, but being as i wont be seeing them anymore (because i wont be viewing my films through windows) it wont matter will it
so from your last post i take it if imdb or whoever it scrapes from provides a cover i dont like, i can change it for a better one? like for my blu ray rips i can add the actual blu ray cover?

[IAmNotAUser]

Tell me about it. I was using MC for a couple of months before even hearing about XBMC because I was that particular about it.

Yep, definitely. The program fives you a few default cover/poster locations (IMDB, TheMovieDB, etc) but also provides a URL/local file button...so a quick image search on Google can easily give you posters too. As for the Blu Ray covers, I think some skins can be made to do that automatically if it detects a 720 movie, but I wouldn't know about that too much, it's not something that appeals to me. As for setting it yourself, that's totally possible.

[hammerhead69]

excellent thanks for your time

[ryan03rr]

Would you believe it, about a year ago i got organised with all my films and tv series and manually changed every file and folder name to remove and the .dots and /slashes that annoyed me so everything looked the same in plain english, it took me weeks doing a bit every evening, how funny that im now looking for a programme to change them all back with dots and slashes
my whole film collection is in alphabet folders then in those folders the exact film name folder then the exact film name in the folder
so once this is done it won't matter whether i install xbmc on ubuntu or windows is that right?
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i know this is kinda brief...
wndows download mass file renamer...
make a txt file in the program directory.
learn to use the remove string option.
as you go through the files evertime you highlight a string "eztv" or "-" or "hdtv" ect copy it to the txt file you created.
after awhile you saved txt file will remove almost all garbage from names "semi-automatically"
make some adjustments to the program to fix s1 e1 -> s01e01 type issues..
i took 1 hour to read the help...
renamed almost 3700 files in 3 hours...
anyway i could also upload my string file if you would be interested.

hope that helped someone alittle

[hammerhead69]

Excellent sounds like another useful programme to know I'll check it out thanks

[hammerhead69]

Media companion started yesterday, been running for 20 hours so far, upto 312 films of 1545
Not sure if either of these figures are counting each actual film title of each file, like when some films are split into 2 or even 3 .avi's
From what i've seen looks like i'll have some work cut out, theres a number of films that seem to have been incorrectly tagged, i:e the film 8mm has come up as some russian film?
But its not even half way through yet so i maybe jumping the gun, but whats important is its started and up and running, order my htpc today so i'm on my way

[hammerhead69]

ok so media companinion finished, and im in a right mess, most films have been tagged wrong, lots dont have cover art, i may need to start from scratch
luckily for me i'm an ocd crank and have to have everything mirrored on another drive so the hd i've been scanning is completed backed up,
i think i'll have to put some time aside over the weekend and look into mass file renamer, get these films named correctly (like all the brackets put back around the film year) then maybe media companion will have a chance of doing a decent job
bye the way, if a film is split into 2 avi's i always named them "Warriors 1" and "Warriors 2" media companion picks them up as separate films, is this ok for xbmc to file and play one after the other? or will one finish and i'll then have to start part 2?