Noobie looking for assistance/manual

[monkeyslapper]

Hey there.... Noobie here. Just installed the program and seems to work, but i do have some question, hopefully you can answer them.

I have all my movies in 1 folder and all the files are titled. w/ out year dates. I do have some tv show but i figure i will takle that after.

I installed the mb. and put the movie folder in the settings. The program seems to notice the movies, but it has not added the movie poster on MOST of them. If i goto some of the movies that have missing poster it does have the info. And the other that dont have the data, place directly to the movie.

So what am i doing wrong here?

I have read some info on the forums stating that they create folder for each file????!!!!

Is this true?

If I want to add addition Folder to the list, I have to create a .vf file... Is that basically txt file, that directs mb to locate the other folder such as TV folder?

How do you change the Folder pix to a pix that you choose for the genre/Actor list?

How Do you change the Poster to different one that you wish to use?

Last but not least is there any helpme/walthru that i can read that would shed some light of the basic info.?

Sorry about my ignorance. But I gotta ask! BTW Looks great so far!

Monkeyslapper

[jakewill]

Ok, let me give you some direction here...

1. Yes, all of your movies need to be in individual folders. Your movies directory should look something like this:
M:\Movies\Casablanca\Casablanca.mpg
M:\Movies\The Dark Knight\Video_TS\Video_TS.ifo, etc.
2. The Backgrounds are currently downloaded from http://www.themoviedb.org , and they MUST be written EXACTLY as they are on themoviedb.org
Example:
WRONG -> M:\Movies\Batman - The Dark Knight\Batman - The Dark Knight.mpg
RIGHT -> M:\Movies\The Dark Knight\The Dark Knight.mpg
3. Yes, Virtual Folders are just text files that have the extensions changed from .txt to .vf . Here's how I have mine set up:
M:\Media\Movies.vf
"Movies.vf" contains this text:
image: M:\media\movies.jpg
folder: M:\Movies
The image points to a picture of a Director's Cut board... I think I found that here on the forums somewhere...
M:\Media\TV Series.vf
"TV Series.vf" contains this text:
image: M:\Media\TV.jpg
folder: D:\TV Series
As you can see, my TV Series are stored on a different hard drive.
4. In MediaBrowser, my "Initial Location" is set to M:\Media , this means that when I start Media Browser, I have two options -- "Movies" or "TV Series".

5. I used Salami's Movie Organizer to retrieve all of the album art for my DVDs, as well as the metadata, and this is stored in each movie's individual folder. The backdrop files on ALMOST all of my movies is automatically downloaded after I roll over the movie from within MediaBrowser.

6. I used TVScout to retrieve the Metadata and folder images, metadata, etc. for my TV Series. Again, the backdrop is automatically downloaded if the folders are named correctly. I would like to try out MediaScout, but I don't know where to download it from.. I think I'll put up a post about this in the forum. The zip file is broken in the MediaScout post in the TVScout forum.

I hope that info helps get you started! I still think that this software will take off when it becomes more beginner-user friendly, but for now it runs GREAT once you get it all set up.

Good Luck.

jakewill

[paul777]

Strictly speaking you don't have to have each movie in a seperate folder now, but doing so enables you to specify your own local metadata in mymovies.xml format and backdrop.jpg/folder.jpg images so it is recommended. If you have them all in one folder you will be limited to the themoviedb.org provider which doesn't contain data for all movies (it's getting better) and people find some of the data a bit quirky (again it's getting better)

[broken iris]

Two more silly noob questions:

So how does naming work with illegal characters in Windows, like a colon?
"Star Wars: Attack of the Clones" for example?


Is it possible to get metadata for Actors/Actresses? Like their images, etc.? I see you can start making your own by placing an appropriate folder.jpg under C:\ProgramData\MediaBrowser\ImagesByName, but is there a way to mass populate that based on existing movie metadata?

[Jon]

For colons, I just use a dash and have not had it fail me yet (Star Wars - Attack of the Clones).

Right now, I don't know of any way to do mass population actor/actress images. I'm sure something may come along in the future though.

[paul777]

Do you have a good source for actor data? I have done an experimental provider for it but it is disabled, mainly because of restictions about the way you are allowed to use the site. If we can get a good source that we are allowed to use then we can plugin a provider and it will start getting the data.

[Jon]

Do you have a good source for actor data? I have done an experimental provider for it but it is disabled, mainly because of restictions about the way you are allowed to use the site. If we can get a good source that we are allowed to use then we can plugin a provider and it will start getting the data.

Is actor data on themoviedb.org still too sparse? Or what about using the MyMovies database? It does allow read-only access and is very established.

[paul777]

themovedb.org doesn't seem to have an api for their actor data last I checked. Is there a web api for mymovies - I thought you had to use their client?

[Jon]

Sorry, you're right. After I looked into it, they only offer a read-only connection string to the database - not the webservice. I'm sure no one, including myself, wants to keep the MyMovies database current with what is in MB.