LinuxMCE Forums
General => Users => Topic started by: colinjones on January 29, 2008, 03:12:21 am
-
Am I the only one that seems to have difficulty with the Media Browser menu in the web admin site? Both 0704 and 0710b3 - when I go in there, it is never clear to me which attributes match just the file name. But even when I select every single one(!) it doesn't seem to list all my media - I seem to get mostly mp3s, but finding my video is almost impossible.
I tried adding an attribute to a single video file, and then searching for it in the browser, and then I can find that one only. Does this mean that the media browser doesn't include the actual file name in its searches?
Also - on that point, what have people found to be the easiest way to assign attributes to media that don't currently have any? I know you can do this from the admin site, but it is extremely slow and painful to do large numbers. I saw that someone (Lon22?) wrote a script to assign in batches but is there an external program that I could use (GUI rather than web site) to do this, even on a Windows PC?
I'm assuming that updatemedia reads metadata for mp3 files and pokes it into the database - is that true? So could I use tag editor to set all these on my PC then re-run updatemedia?
What about video? I know AVI containers don't really allow for metadata tags, what are people doing for these?
-
the media browser function is a bit odd in my experience. It only shows files that have attributes that it can read, and from what I see thats mostly mp3s. For video files, i've taken to manually labeling them. I have'nt found a program that can write meta data lmce will pick up on.
I've been using a program called mp3 tag (http://www.mp3tag.de/en/) to write the proper information into the mp3s and all my video i do by hand.
For dvd's , the amazon function works, but currently its a bit awkward trying to track down series. Which is why i normally use the 'File' sort option when browsing video.
Hope this helps.
-
Yes it does, golgoj4, thanks! So you are saying that updatemedia does pick up meta data tag within the mp3 files, not just metadata in separate specific metadata files (with the same name and different extension)?
-
Yes it does, golgoj4, thanks! So you are saying that updatemedia does pick up meta data tag within the mp3 files, not just metadata in separate specific metadata files (with the same name and different extension)?
i've noticed it gets the tags out of the audio files because they can be embedded. With video, it seems (as you said before) that no information is embedded in the file, and there isnt really a place to put it. So while programs like wmp use their own internal database, it seems lmce uses the mysql db AND creates a separate file as you stated with the extension of .id3
However, from my experience, it only creates that information if you go in and add an attribute to it. And for divx files it doesn't create them at all, just stores the information in the db so if you ever re-sync, all of the divx files lose their metadata. The nice thing is that the id3 file is there for other video files so it finds all that meta data right away.
I was thinking about ways to make this easier, and the only way would be to either modify the coverart scan or use a separate script to tag these files en masse.
I wish i could say i have the time to do it quickly but work limits my free time at the moment but I will start trying to put something together. learning c @ the moment is kicking my arse and i think this could be done easier with some php and flash.
it sounds like we need an easier method to tag our videos for easier locating that doesn't involve a thousand clicks. - open to suggestions!
*edit: please someone smarter than me: how can I tell if the ffmpeg-php extension is installed? I've only done simple text driven php stuff before...and while I am searching the goolgle, I was hoping that someone could let me know of any particular landmines I should be aware of involving php and lmce.
-
hmmm... understood, thanks for the extra info.
BTW - straight codec streams certainly would not have anywhere to put the metadata, but not much media would be so "raw". Generally, they are encapsulated in a container file type - eg AVI is only a container, and says nothing about the actual codecs used to encode the stream(s). AVI is ancient and according to the Wikipedia article on containers does not have the feature of meta data. However almost all newer types do (.mov, .asf, .mkv, etc) and many of these have very open and generic metadata, so you can add just about anything. But because it took a while to get there, it seems that few applications implement this stuff suffering from the same (but worse) uptake issue that mp3 id3v1/v2 etc had....
-
hmmm... understood, thanks for the extra info.
BTW - straight codec streams certainly would not have anywhere to put the metadata, but not much media would be so "raw". Generally, they are encapsulated in a container file type - eg AVI is only a container, and says nothing about the actual codecs used to encode the stream(s). AVI is ancient and according to the Wikipedia article on containers does not have the feature of meta data. However almost all newer types do (.mov, .asf, .mkv, etc) and many of these have very open and generic metadata, so you can add just about anything. But because it took a while to get there, it seems that few applications implement this stuff suffering from the same (but worse) uptake issue that mp3 id3v1/v2 etc had....
still though, thanks for that at least! I spent a while looking around google trying to educate myself on the subject a little more and wasn't even able to glean that. Most of what I read said 'there is no way to add metadata to the file' - paraphrased of course. So the question is, would my little side project be a waste of time? Should we just look into adding it to these files ourselves? Maybe including in the script to do both...heh. ideas, ideas
-
Here's some great articles comparing media container formats and their features (including metadata), comparing codecs and comparing media players...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_container_formats
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_codecs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_audio_codecs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_codecs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_codecs_and_containers