[ztxdk]

Hi
Out of boredom (i recently lost my job), i started sorting my movie/tv library so i could get a wife/kids approved htpc with xbmc.
But i quickly ran in to problems. I have a lot of movies/tv shows that i've recorded and ripped myself over serveral years and so on..
But the main problem is that the naming of the files are..well pretty random and even worse, they're mostly in Danish...
That makes it pretty impossible to scrape the files and I dont want to run in "file mode"..
Editing the info in xbmc is not really fun and after trying some of the tools from this forum let me to write my own little tool..
I find that most of the tools in here (and xbmc) really relies on scrapers and makes it hard (for me at least) to easily and quickly add movies without having to spend time correcting scrape errors.
Dont get me wrong i do use the tools and xbmc for ex. TV Shows and well known movies.

But I thought show you guy the tools and ask some questions to get it to the point where others might want to use it.

I've put a couple of screenshots up here that shows the gui at present.

First off, the real goal is to have a easy, fast little program..
You drop a movie file on the top and it gets some info about the codecs and stuff, then it gets data from an xbmc .nfo if it exists or tries to clean up the file name and set the title to that.
Everything is fully editable except for the codec stuff. You can drop a image file to set that as file.tbn / file.jpg (for use with <thumb> in the nfo)

If the file is a mp4 with tags (itunes and somesort of id3 weird combo thing) it can fill the fields incl. artwork, with that data and will be able to write these tags in to a mp4 so you can use it with itunes, wmp, windows explorer etc. which will show the info/artwork.
This is really usefull to me as I have Windows, Mac, Android, iphone and iPods devices and some files are tagged in itunes and some have nfos from xbmc and so on, and i mainly use mp4 to rip/record.

As you can see there a little cleaning up to do.. I'm working on fanart/folderart, the tag thingy, a settings menu with options to save only nfo or tags etc, renaming of files and a bunch of ideas I have..

And now for some questions from you guys...

• Would you use a tool like this?
  
• What would be a killer feature for you?
  
• How do you deal with scrape errors?
  

And before you slay me:
I've haven't programmed stuff for normal human use before and this is my first program with a gui.. Uh, and it was made on a mac... in windows...
And it was written in a couple of days...


Martin

[olafvs]

I don't really get it. What does this program do that for example ember media manager doesn't?

[pecinko]

If I understood it gets metadata from usual places and writes them to mp4/m4v files? It would be MOST welcomed! I'm in a similar situation, Mac user also and I've been taging kids videos manually in iTunes... Mp4 tag support for XBMC is already prepared and waiting for merge.

Is It Mac native thingy? Can't wait to try it!!!

[alshain]

@pecinko: The window decorations look like Windows.

[pecinko]

@pecinko: The window decorations look like Windows.

Well, they are either decorated or windows like. Can't have both :-)))

I'm kidding. I was afraid it has to be run in VM or Wine, looks does't really matter.

[ztxdk]

I don't really get it. What does this program do that for example ember media manager doesn't?

Well, it actually does no way near what ex. ember does.
I'll try to explain, all cartoons i have (even tv shows) goes in to xbmc as movies,
categorized in sets (so ex. scooby doo movies and the tv shows goes in the
same sets), this is so my wife and sons can use it without going back and forward.

Lets say I have 20 - 30 files of scooby doo episodes, in danish, with danish file names (the name of the episode, without season/episode numbers) that I want to add. I find that using other tools either are slow (like takes up all cpu and so on) or rely to much on scrapers (which because of the danish is nearly impossible).
And when I get the files in the manager I find it very cumbersome (i've recently added around 200 files) to set sortname/set and so on.

With this tool i dump the first file from explorer, it sets the name (from filename or title tag if it's a mp4, same with image) and sortname (this I change manually, putting say an X in front of a name, so movies comes before the tv episode.), type in the set and what other info i want (i usually dont use the plot field for episodes).
Then I drop a cover image (fanart etc. is comming) and press the "write nfo" button. It then makes an .nfo, .tbn and a .jpg (if chosen, uses the thumb tag in the nfo.) in the same folder as the original file (going to make an option to move/copy files)
Then i drop another file on the gui, the only thing that changes is the title/artwork and codec details. Set/category etc. stay the same. Drop a image and write nfo..

Hopes that kinda explains it..

If I understood it gets metadata from usual places and writes them to mp4/m4v files? It would be MOST welcomed! I'm in a similar situation, Mac user also and I've been taging kids videos manually in iTunes... Mp4 tag support for XBMC is already prepared and waiting for merge.

Is It Mac native thingy? Can't wait to try it!!!

It gets data from existing nfo, mp4/mkv meta tag or filename, but absolutely no scraping, I'm going to make a button for searching google images for covers but thats about it. It will (when I get it done after this weekend) be able to write info from the program or the nfo (for existing files) back to the files meta tags (mp4/mkv). There will be settings as well so that one can disable the nfo files completly and use it as a mp4 tagger only..

Great to hear that tag support is coming, i mainly use mp4 so that would help a lot.

And no, it's not a mac app... It's made for windows (can't program on a mac..).
And (let the flamewars begin) have pretty much been using windows 7 for a while now.. havnt booted osx in a month or so...

Originally Posted by alshain
@pecinko: The window decorations look like Windows.
Well, they are either decorated or windows like. Can't have both :-)))

I'm kidding. I was afraid it has to be run in VM or Wine, looks does't really matter.

Well, I guess it would work in wine, one could use the winebottler app to make a standalone program. But i'll check, i cant remember how the access to files work in wine on mac.. But if you want to use the program I will make the changes needed for it to run in wine...

when i was using the mac more or less exclusive I had a bunch of win programs running this way... Most notably Mp3Tag which I have never found a good alternative to on the mac side..

Martin

[alshain]

If you were to use python, there's the mutagen library that handles lots of different metadata for you. That would make your app cross-platform.

Even though the docs only talk about MP4 audio files, I guess it should work for video as well, especially since MP4 is a container.

Also, here has someone used mutagen to process tags of MP4 video files:

http://pytivo.sourceforge.net/forum/post7223.html#7223

[pecinko]

Well, I guess it would work in wine, one could use the winebottler app to make a standalone program. But i'll check, i cant remember how the access to files work in wine on mac.. But if you want to use the program I will make the changes needed for it to run in wine...

when i was using the mac more or less exclusive I had a bunch of win programs running this way... Most notably Mp3Tag which I have never found a good alternative to on the mac side..

Actually, I hoped it would use scrapers but write metadata to MP4s instead of nfos, so it would save me from copy-pasting metadata in iTunes or MetaX.

As for Mp3Tag (my favourite on Win:-) - try TriTag if you come back to Mac.

[ztxdk]

Actually, I hoped it would use scrapers but write metadata to MP4s instead of nfos, so it would save me from copy-pasting metadata in iTunes or MetaX.

As for Mp3Tag (my favourite on Win:-) - try TriTag if you come back to Mac.

Dont think i have seen that program before.. will surely check it out..

Well, come to think of it scraping would actually be kinda of handy..
I'll take a look at it... but i still cant make it osx native.. i, as suggested, cant program in phyton..

Martin

[pecinko]

but i still cant make it osx native.. i, as suggested, cant program in phyton..Martin

Wine is fine.

[Faldafeykir]

This could be handy to make nfo files for music videos, they are barely scrapeable but alot of the info is in the file name and sometimes metadata in the containers.

[ztxdk]

This could be handy to make nfo files for music videos, they are barely scrapeable but alot of the info is in the file name and sometimes metadata in the containers.

It should work with musik.. will try it later, i got a email about that from a user here and i just need to add the right output tags.. and atleast with music there is standards concering tags..

Martin

[chrisjunkie]

Any more news on this? It is EXACTLY what I need for tagging in iTunes.

Would use XBMC on the ATV2 but it just isn't quite there yet and doesn't have the FAF (Family acceptance factor )

[tuxen]

Greetings fellow Dane, and name brother! :)
This looks very lightweight, something I really like, and could use.

Btw. I looked at the screenshots. I like the load "file",8,1 It brought back lovely memories. :)
Is there a beta download to test, it would make it easier to evaluate, or am I just blind?

Best regards tuxen