New Release Media Companion gen2 3.265

Changes for new version 3.265

Couple of Bugfixes

• Bugfix - Using mediainfo to scrape multi disk movies would only return the length of the first disk.
  
• Bugfix - Not really a bugfix as much as a small change, the option to rename existing none xml '.nfo' files to '.info' has been removed from the preferences, the result was the these files were overwritten. I've changed the behaviour so that these '.nfo' files are automatically renamed.
  

Changes for this build.
A couple of nice additional features have been added for this build.

• MC can now handle Offline Movies, and create a 16 second movie clip that serves as a place holder for the DVD/Blu Ray.
  To get this to work you need to follow the following steps.
  
  • Decide where you want to store your offline movie collections and add this folder to the new 'Offline Movie Folders' list in the folders tab.
    
  • For each offline movie you wish to add, create a folder, named after the movie you wish to add,
    eg.
    C:\Offline Movies\
    C:\Offline Movies\Star Trek (2009)
    C:\Offline Movies\Batman Begins (2005)
    The Year is not needed, but it can increase scraper accuracy.
    
  • Search for new movies as normal, MC will hopefully identify the movie and create any files such as nfo, poster, and fanart, aswell as a 16 second movie clip of using the fanart.
    
  • Rescraping, batch scraping, or selecting new fanart should update the movie clip accordingly.
    
  
  When Changing a Backdrop MC checks the Path of the offline folders against the Path of the media. The risk is that people could accidentally add their media to the offline folder list and accidentally overwrite their collection with a placeholder clip. In order to remove this risk, the media will only be overwritten if the size of the media file is less than 2MB, I doubt very much there are any movies that are smaller than this.
  

• I've also added the facility this week to add actor thumbs to a local '.actors' folder. The option can be enabled in the 'General Preferences' and if enabled takes priority over other local actor settings. There are a couple of things to note when using this feature.
  
  • This works for Movies and TV Shows/Episodes, but I am not 100% if XBMC supports this feature for TV Shows/Episodes
    
  • Using this feature can slow down the initial scrape considerably, especially when downloading actor images from TVDB.
    
  • There is an additonal option in the 'TV Preferences' to 'Enable TV Show Actor Thumbs to be copied for Episode Actor Thumbs', there are several reasons for this, firstly, as you are all likely aware, TVDB holds no actor list or thumbs for episodes meaning that to have actor images for episodes IMDB must be used. This option allows IMDB to be used for episodes, but if an actor thumb already exists in the tvshow '.actors' folder, then this will be copied into the episodes actor folder, avoiding the need to download, and at the same time allowing the higher quality TVDB actor thumbs to be kept for episodes.
    This only effects those who have their episodes in subfolders, since otherwise the '.actors' folder will be the same for episodes and tv show details.
    
  
  

I may not get much done over the next couple of weeks since I have a couple of assignments that I need to get done, but other than bug fixes, I intend to spend as much time as I can on developing TV Show and Episode, handling and features.

Report bugs in the appropriate forum, or bump them if they remain unaddressed, I occasionally loose track of what I am supposed to be doing and my memory often needs jogging.

Download Version 3.265

Regards

Billy

excellent stuff - thanks. i'll give it a whirl.

from playing around a few weeks back, the xbmc tv support is set up as follows:

tvshowfolder/.actors (the main cast, as listed in the tvshow.nfo file)
tvshowfolder/seasonx/.actors (any extra cast held in the episodename.nfo files)

oh, and everything worked off the one .actors folder if there wasn't a subfolders for each season (i.e. everything grouped in the main show folder)

billyad2000 wrote:

[*]Rescraping, batch scraping, or selecting new fanart should update the movie clip accordingly.

It does unless you use the Fanart Browser (Alternative) like I accidentally did.....

Cheers

Great app, I'm going to use it rebuild my entire TV library but..

with 3.2.65 when it scrapes my shows, I get the guest cast info per episode but no cast info for the main show listing. (previews builds work fine)