DVD Collection Management - Boxed sets and Cover art

[TonyBryan]

Hi all,

I've just got LinuxMCE working (Hybrid Core on an Acer Revo R3610 if anyones interested), and have got my NAS working on the external NIC.  Trouble is I've got hundreds of DVDs on there, quite a lot that are 2-disc sets or more.  Can anyone help me with the following?

1.  Is there a way to add cover art to DVDs quickly, without havign to sit in Media Synch for a day and manually search Amazon?
2.  Is there a way to handle boxed-sets, so that I would select, say "The Wire Season 3" and then see all the discs within that title?

And for bonus points, is there a trick to getting Blueray to play over LinuxMCE?

Many thanks

[Rukus]

Is there a way to handle boxed-sets, so that I would select, say "The Wire Season 3" and then see all the discs within that title?

I know that this is possible, but I just don't know how to get it done. If you figure it out, please provide the steps you follow so that they can be added to the wiki.

Ernesto

[golgoj4]

Hi all,

I've just got LinuxMCE working (Hybrid Core on an Acer Revo R3610 if anyones interested), and have got my NAS working on the external NIC.  Trouble is I've got hundreds of DVDs on there, quite a lot that are 2-disc sets or more.  Can anyone help me with the following?

1.  Is there a way to add cover art to DVDs quickly, without havign to sit in Media Synch for a day and manually search Amazon?
2.  Is there a way to handle boxed-sets, so that I would select, say "The Wire Season 3" and then see all the discs within that title?

And for bonus points, is there a trick to getting Blueray to play over LinuxMCE?

Many thanks

1. At the moment, there is no support for batch tagging of movies
2. Could you explain boxed sets? Do you mean like each disc in the a dvd season with the corresponding episodes? Currently, its tag the dvd and the metadata really depends on whats included from the source. the imdb tagging may or may not include it, but rip all the individual episodes and label em that way so i wouldn't know.

golgoj4

[TonyBryan]

2. Could you explain boxed sets?

By boxed sets I mean that I wish to have a more hierarchical display.  For example, I have the first five seasons of Lost ripped to .iso files on my NAS drive - thats about 30-35 discs.  So in Media Browser I see:

Lost Season 1 Disc 1
Lost Season 1 Disc 2
...
Lost Season 5 Disc 5

This is pretty cumbersome.  What I would like (and I hate referring to other products) is something like MyMovies, where you get:

Lost Season 1
Lost Season 2
Lost Season 3
Lost Season 4
Lost Season 5

Then when I select the 'boxed set' Lost Season 1 I see as a sub-mnu:
Disc 1
Disc 2
Disc 3
Disc 4
Disc 5

[golgoj4]

To do the dics this way would require some plumbing changes in the source code. Im still trying to work out updateMedia in an effort to add mymovies metadata import from a previous request.

I think the metadata system is built around attributes associated with an individual file, with no real hierarchical view outside of the file view. Everything else is based on attribute as if you would be searching for the one file, not necessarily a disc in a multi-disc series. There are a number of different filters i would like to add like 'program' then filter by 'season' and so on, but that goes back to plumbing and not necessarily just updateMedia.

its something that needs to be addressed, but frankly im not even what you would define as a programmer so its slow work.

-golgoj4

[jimbodude]

1.  Is there a way to add cover art to DVDs quickly, without havign to sit in Media Synch for a day and manually search Amazon?
2.  Is there a way to handle boxed-sets, so that I would select, say "The Wire Season 3" and then see all the discs within that title?

And for bonus points, is there a trick to getting Blueray to play over LinuxMCE?

1. Someone made something for this recently.  It's not too pretty, and it's very tricky to use.  I'm not sure if it's in the 0810 releases or not.  Search the forum and wiki - it was built as part of the web admin.
2. The attributes to do this exist, but the UI doesn't use them.  We have the same problem with recorded TV.  Look at the attributes you can attach to each file - there are fields for all the things you're looking for.  If you record any TV with MythTV, you'll see that they're all populated properly.  You can even search them using the search tool.  You just can't have a hierarchical filter like you're talking about, though it has been discussed several times.

There is no reliable BluRay playback in any open source Linux distribution due to licensing restrictions.

[skeptic]

I also have the same issue - to the point where I do not keep boxed sets on my server.  Actually, my issue is worse, I like to rip all my movies to mkv on my desktop then copy them to lmce.  Instead of one file per ISO, I have one per episode.  It might not be so bad if movies and TV were not all lumped together in a generic video view, but they are, it is, and the best solution for me has been to just delete them after watching them once. 

The only way I know to get bluray to LMCE is to rip the movie elsewhere and copy it.  At least there is a Linux program that seems pretty reliable, makemkv.  There is rumor of "underground" work being done so mplayer will support bluray natively, including BD+, but that rumor seems to have been around since bluray first appeared.  Maybe soon, maybe never. 

[jimbodude]

It might not be so bad if movies and TV were not all lumped together in a generic video view, but they are

This isn't quite right... There are different media types, and you can filter by any combination of them.  The default is "All".  Look under the options, and select "TV Shows" to filter out the movies.  Assuming everything is tagged correctly, this works.

You can also search by title.  Once you select a title, you will see only episodes from that TV show title.  See Thom's screen casts on media tagging.  They are on the forum somewhere.

[skeptic]

It might not be so bad if movies and TV were not all lumped together in a generic video view, but they are

This isn't quite right... There are different media types, and you can filter by any combination of them.  The default is "All".  Look under the options, and select "TV Shows" to filter out the movies.  Assuming everything is tagged correctly, this works.

You can also search by title.  Once you select a title, you will see only episodes from that TV show title.  See Thom's screen casts on media tagging.  They are on the forum somewhere.

I know this, but there is no way that I know of to set a default search or create search categories such that instead of going to "video" from the main menu, go to "movies" or "tv shows".  My wife is non technical and wants things to just work without hassle.  Filtering or searching requires lots of extra arrowing around every time you go into video.  Having all episodes with the same title plus separate episode info makes it a hassle to find the right one. 

I do not have the technical ability to fix this.  Those that do, do not see this as a problem that needs fixing (as far as I am aware - big assumption).  Well, it is a problem and it comes up from time to time.  "Tag your media correctly and use the filters" is not a solution if you have to click through the filters every time you go to the video screen.  I want minimal hassle.  I want to keep my wife happy with LMCE.  Right now the best way to do this is to delete all my tv series videos after I watch them and keep up on Myth recorded TV shows and delete them before they become a nuisance. 

I'm not blaming anyone.  I'm not demanding or expecting it to be fixed.  I have my work around of just deleting what I don't want to see stuffed in with movies, others have their work around of selecting filters every time they don't want to see other stuff.  I just hope everyone sees these as ways to work around a current limitation, not "the way it should be" solutions.

[tschak909]

"The way it should be" ... that's funny.

It is worth noting, that with Orbiter's redesign, I will be rethinking the media browser.

yes, it will still be all flat, it will still consolidate everything into one place, yes it WILL COMPLETELY IGNORE FILE AND FOLDER STRUCTURE. THIS IS INTENTIONAL.

however, it will differ in presentation. I haven't started the research phase on this particular problem yet, so I do not have any more information.

-Thom

[TonyBryan]

yes, it will still be all flat, it will still consolidate everything into one place, yes it WILL COMPLETELY IGNORE FILE AND FOLDER STRUCTURE. THIS IS INTENTIONAL

Yep, I understand that and that's how I like it too for the underlying file structure  Why should the file strucutre dictate the arrangement of items in the media browser?  But that's my point - the DB should understand limited hierarchies for boxed sets, 2-disc and multi-sided DVDs, and TV series.  Apologies again for referencing a Windows product, but that's how MyMovies does it and my wife loves it - ignores file structure but handles tv series and boxed sets.  Of course, you need to tell MyMovies which discs are hiearchical, but it's just a quick config setting.

Also - I'm finding filtering under 08.10 does't work.  Before I posted all this, I tagged a disc as 'Drama' and 'TV Show' and did an Amazon metadata lookup in Media Sync.  Results for filtering:
- Recently Used: No results (and yes, I've played the disc)
- Filename: No results
- Title:  Works fine.
- Performer:  Works fine
- Genre:  No results
- Director: Works fine.
- Filter on Media Type : doesn't work.

In writing this post I've just discovered that filtering on Genre now works if I have a user selected in the filter, rather than just 'Public', but why that should make a difference is beyond me and it doesn't affect filtering on 'TV Show'.

[Techstyle]

Also - I'm finding filtering under 08.10 does't work.  Before I posted all this, I tagged a disc as 'Drama' and 'TV Show' and did an Amazon metadata lookup in Media Sync.  Results for filtering:
- Recently Used: No results (and yes, I've played the disc)
- Filename: No results
- Title:  Works fine.
- Performer:  Works fine
- Genre:  No results
- Director: Works fine.
- Filter on Media Type : doesn't work.

In writing this post I've just discovered that filtering on Genre now works if I have a user selected in the filter, rather than just 'Public', but why that should make a difference is beyond me and it doesn't affect filtering on 'TV Show'.

I just checked mine and 'Filename' and 'Recently used' work just fine even with 'Public'.  filtering based on Media types (Movies etc. and HD720 etc) works for me also in 'Public'  Filtering based on Genre also works. All my media was saved into Public.  Was yours saved into Public or the User?

As for the original question, I do like the idea of the g'zillian episodes of 'Sex and the City' showing up as one item at the top level (still flat with all the movies, music videos and home videos) and then season under it and episode after that - kind of like Artist - Album - track in the Audio menu.  Perhaps all the tools are there, there is an attribute for 'Episode', is there a season? there is a 'Program', not sure what that is?

[jimbodude]

the DB should understand limited hierarchies for boxed sets, 2-disc and multi-sided DVDs, and TV series.

You're confusing things based on a very small view.  The database does, in fact, understand relationships between most of these concepts, however the UI does not have functionality to use that information to build a hierarchical representation.  Since the database understands the relationships, you can use the search which will give you some of what you're looking for.  These are the current features.

If you search the forum, you will see multiple discussions about how to design and implement such hierarchical views of the media, but this feature is not available currently.

Also - I'm finding filtering under 08.10 does't work.

 
This is simply not true.  I use the filters and searches every day.

Before I posted all this, I tagged a disc as 'Drama' and 'TV Show' and did an Amazon metadata lookup in Media Sync. 
...
In writing this post I've just discovered that filtering on Genre now works if I have a user selected in the filter, rather than just 'Public', but why that should make a difference is beyond me and it doesn't affect filtering on 'TV Show'.

If you get no results when you expect results, you probably have not tagged the media properly.  For 'TV Show' vs 'Movie' filtering, you must set the "Media sub-type" drop-down in the "media file sync" section of the web admin.  This is a completely separate setting from the "Attributes" section.  Make sure you hit the "Save" button to save your changes.

Beware - when you do Amazon or IMDB metadata lookups, you may replace any tags you have manually applied.  There is a radio button to choose the behavior just before you accept the new tags, I believe.  The media you think is 'Drama' may be something different to Amazon or IMDB, or the lookup may not provide a genre at all.  I'd suggest using IMDB instead of Amazon - the data is much cleaner, and I know for a fact that genres are included.

The fact that things work if you have a user selected means that the media belongs to a specific user.  Read about file structure in the FAQ - you probably have a storage device owned by the wrong user or have put the media under a user's directory.

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/FAQ#How_are_media_files_organized.3F

[canukguy1974]

 Can we share each others movie tags?

[jimbodude]

Who exactly is "we" and what do you mean by "share"?