Questions on meta data, scraping and how it all works (from an ex XBMC user)

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live Streaming
1

I am a confessed newb with SMP so please bare with me :slight_smile:

My config is as follows:

Dlink NAS with 4TB (1.5TB videos, 500 GB of TV Shows, 500GB of music albums and about 200GB of photos.  

Wired SMP via gigaethernet to the NAS via a giga router/giga switch.

My folder structure on the NAS is as follows:

VIDEO

/ Kids

/ /  Movie name folder (30 Minutes or Less [2011.DVDRIp.Xvid])

/ / / Movie file (Can sometimes be an avi, cd1/cd2 folder combo, mkv, iso, VOB) ~ naming convention will typically match folder name ~~  This is the case for all movie folders/files)

/ Movies

/ /  Movie name folder 

/ / / Movie file (Can sometimes be an avi, cd1/cd2 folder combo, mkv, iso, VOB)

/ Personal

/ /  Movie name folder

/ / / Movie file (Can sometimes be an avi, cd1/cd2 folder combo, mkv, iso, VOB)

/ Other 

/ /  Movie name folder

/ / / Movie file (Can sometimes be an avi, cd1/cd2 folder combo, mkv, iso, VOB)

Thumbs, metadata, etc… were all scraped via the app.  I however get the feeling that there is more to it than that for SMP, however am struggling on where to find the details surrounding this.  I do get the thumbs for most of the movies, however i get no data on the movie (Plot, cast, etc…).  The fields are there for the data but they are blank.  Is my naming convention correct?  I hear of 3rd party apps like thumbgen, etc… What are these?  Is there more that i have to do than simply allow the smp scraper pick up the thumbs/data?

For TV Shows, my naming convention is as follows:

TV Shows\Breaking Bad\Season 2\Breaking Bad.s02e01

For this particular show, i get the details however ALL the thumbs are the same and i do not get any of the banners.  BTW, this was being done under Mojo and will be reverting back to default to see what happens (As an aside, if i flip back and forth between themes, do I need to clean any lingering files associated to the previous theme???

I am just getting into the music section.  For it, my folder structure is as follows:

Audio\Compilations

Audio\Country

Audio\Comedies

Audio\Scores

Audio\Soundtracks

Audio\ROCK\H\Heart (1976, 160k) - Dreamboat Annie\01 - Magic Man.mp3

I just setup a media manager file for the Audio folder.  It is currently as i type this compiling…  Am not sure if i am going to run into problems as there are over 4000 complete albums (Folders)…

2

Getting the metadata for movies and TV shows, using the default app, can work OK, as long as the naming of the movie/TV show is correct, I have find out that movies named like this image.dvdrip.Xvid, will most likely get me a thumbnail, but no information what so ever, now, naming the movie, image.Xvid, give me all the information, same rule apply for TV shows.

In other words, the naming of your files needs to be correct, in order to get an accurate information.

In regards of the thumbgen software, it is a great software used to genera thumbnails and more, from your files, it is a bit less rigid than the WD TV for naming and it download all your data automatically, normally, people use this software if they are not in the mood to rename they collection of files. Be aware that even using this software, some renaming is necessary.

3

@timmer:

My movies all follow this naming convention, which works well with the SMP:

My_Book on’ WDTV Live’ (X: )\Movies\Arthur (1981)\Arthur.1981.Dudley.Moore.avi

The SMP has created the files Arthur.1981.Dudley.Moore.metathumb and Arthur.1981.Dudley.Moore.xml as part of the scraping process. I get the movie poster and a descriptive blurb.

I think the secret is in naming the individual movie folders as <movie title (year)>

4

Argh…

Why isn’t there a standard naming convention for all these tools currently in play.

Jeepers.

@jschall

What theme are you using and firmware?  If i recall, all my videos do indeed have a metathumb and xml file resident within the movie folder post compile so in theory i should also have the descripions as well… 

5

I am new to all this as well.  Most of my movies will receive thumbnail and information.  Some don’t depending on the file name I assume.  I took a look at thumbgen and I thought it was too cluttered and possible overkill.  I did however find a tool that easily takes care of this.

http://wdtvhubgen.codeplex.com/

This tool is simple.  I didn’t have to change any settings.  It took care of all my movies and tv shows.  In some cases when it is questionable what title/year the movie is, it will ask and give you choices to select.  Basically this tool with default settings:  renames the file, creates the cover art in jpeg format, and creates xml file for movie information.  It seems that afterwards the SMP will get automatically get any other missing parts such as the backdrop images.

6

Are you using this on SMP or WDLive as this is a thread on SMP (As that’s what i am using).  I have noted that there are allot variances between the two and the link you’ve provided is for WDLive.

7

I have the Western Digital Live Streaming Media Player.  I don’t have the original Live or Live Plus

8

Good to know thanks.  So basically, you install this app local from a PC and then point to the directories and it in turn does the scrapping , thumbnail inserts, xml file inserts for you?  Then when you run SMP, it recognizes the thumbs and xml files created by this application?

Do you know if one must first delete all existing thumbs or xml files?

I’d also love to know what folks to when your video is broken up across say 2 DVD’s or if the files format is in VOB? 

Sorry for all the questions, i just have been having a hard time finding answers from any of the WD literature (What little there is) provided or found!

Cheers,

9

After you download it, you then extract it somewhere on your computer.  Inside the folder is WDTVHubGen.exe which will execute the program.  You don’t actually install the program.  My content is on a harddrive connect to the SMP.   I have the drive mapped on my pc.  Using this software i point to a folder on that mapped drive.  After I used this tool I went to use the SMP and the cover art and information in the xml shows up just as it should.  The SMP also downloaded the backdrops on its own.

There were some folders that I processed where I had some movies that had the xml and cover art already created by the SMP.  The software will load all the movies but it will separate processed versus non-processed.  It doesn’t touch those that already have the xml and cover art.

I don’t know about video split in two parts or other formats such as dvd and vob.

10

Thanks.  I have a NAS running off the router so it won’t be an issue.

I will give it a try this evening.

Cheers,

11

This looks good but does each movie file have to be in its own separate folder? All my movie files are listed in one folder called “Movies”

12

My guess based on my understanding of the file structure, you’d probably need a folder/movie…

Works for me as this as a standard approach for xbmc.

13

You don’t need a separate folder for each movie if that is what you are asking?

They way I have my folder structure setup is I have a folder for each genre.  I have these folders:  Action Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Drama, TV shows, Sports, ect.  Under TV shows I have sub folders for different shows and another level of subfolders such as Season 1, Season 2, Season 3, ect.

When I ran WDTVHubgen I processed one folder at a time just so I didn’t mess myself up and get confused with what was going on.

14

wseyller wrote:

You don’t need a separate folder for each movie if that is what you are asking?

 

They way I have my folder structure setup is I have a folder for each genre.  I have these folders:  Action Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Drama, TV shows, Sports, ect.  Under TV shows I have sub folders for different shows and another level of subfolders such as Season 1, Season 2, Season 3, ect.

 

When I ran WDTVHubgen I processed one folder at a time just so I didn’t mess myself up and get confused with what was going on.

Thank you. So what does it do with thumbnails then if you dont have separate folders for each movie? Just keep them in the parent folder eg the folder called “Horror” containing all horror films?

15

The thumbnails, xml files, and the movie files are all just piled together in the same folder.  

16

This is a brilliant piece of software :slight_smile: Just a shame it cant put each file into its own folder rather than throwing them all together.

wseyller wrote:

The thumbnails, xml files, and the movie files are all just piled together in the same folder.  

17

Interesting…  So then they must be named uniquely to the file then being scanned…

I guess my only concern i still have are cases whereby you have a movie ripped to VOB as it can span multiple files.  Or cases where a movie is ripped as two seperate DVD’s.

In any event, i can’t wait to get home and try it out!

And, also to just confirm, when you did this, you DID or DID NOT already have xml / thumbs in place from the SMP efforts?  Only reason i ask is that currently all my movies (Around 600 or so) have an xml and thumb file already in place within each respective folder.  These were created when i used the default scraping tool that comes with smp.

18

My brother has been using this for the last few years:

http://mikinho.com/yammm/

He says it will rename the folder that contains the video file rather than just the video contained within it.

19

I DID have xml, thumbs already.  I let SMP have the first opportunity to get the content info.  Problem is that it didn’t work for every movie or tv show episode which I why I use this software.   I would just leave them be if the SMP already did it for some of your videos.  This software will load them if they are in the folder you choose, but it  will separate the videos into two sections, Processed and non processed.  The software will already know if there is a thumbnail and xml for some of the videos in the folder and will consider them as already processed.  It won’t touch them as far as I can see.

There are a few options that I did not touch.  I’m sure there are settings that would cause different effects.

20

Well, so far, i love the way it fetches the thumbs.  I did so from a pc via the 3rd party app.  XML and the thumbs were downloaded and saved to the movie folder.  Problem i am still having though is that the data is still not appearing.  So i have reset my media manager data and it’s rebuilding again.  I’ve only done this for a selection of movies so am really hoping this will work.

And oh yeah… You DO have to remove all existing xml and thumbs already in place.  The 3rd party app did not like them!!