Progress Update

I declared several things in the last update that I wanted to do for the next version, namely :-

The coverart handler is being rewritten and will look and behave similar to the fanart selector, I am also looking at adding TMdB and IMPAA as sources for thumbs, I wish to give the user the ability to prioritise these sources for the main movie scraper.
i.e.
1 IMPA
2 TMDB
3 MoviePosterDB
4 IMDB
With the scraper getting the coverart from the highest priority with available fanart, so the above would get poster from IMPAA if available, if not then TMdB etc.
The Priority for these will be controled from the preferences. Any of these will be available from the movie editor window.

Support for multi-episode tv media has been added to XBMC and I will add this for the next version, with the same rules as XBMC.

I am also looking to fix the issue people are having with multipart movies .nfo and fanarts, with these been saved using the same stack name that XBMC uses.


So how far have I got.

The Coverart handler is finished as is the work on the scraper to include IMPA, TMDb, IMDB, and MPDB as sources for coverart. Users can set the priority of there preferred source in the preferences and it will work its way down the preferences until it finds a source for the coverart. In the Thumb editor users can select the source to scrape from.

Support for multi-episode tv shows is well underway, the multi-episode files scrape fine and load into the program as seperate episodes, the only thing remaining to do is fix the editor to handle these nfo files.

The ability to select your preferred IMDB mirror is now added and appears to work ok in all modes. The mirrors available are :-
http://www.imdb.com/
http://uk.imdb.com/
http://us.imdb.com/
http://akas.imdb.com/
http://italian.imdb.com/
http://www.imdb.de/
It should be noted that although Italian and German mirrors have been added that the information is still English, and the german mirror contains no plot information whatsoever.

I am just about to start work on the stacked filename for fanart and nfo files of multi part movie files. In my mind this is proving to be the trickiest task. The problem is with the way the program works.
When the program is loading it looks in all the movie directories for .nfo files and if its a valid nfo then adds it. This is absolutely useless for stacked names.
eg
moviename - cd1 - divx.avi
the fanart would be saved as
moviename - divx-fanart.jpg
and the nfo
moviename - divx.nfo
The issue with this is that the program now has no way to identify the origional media file (moviename - cd1 - divx.avi)

There are several workarounds I can think of.
1. At startup scan for media files instead of nfo files.
Downside :- Greatly increased startup time due to the program searching each path for each media file type then having to then check for the nfo file
2. Add a filename tag to the nfo file when created with the media filename.
Downside :- Would work ok, but existing nfo files would have to be updated.

I'm leaning towards no 2 but I would like some feedback on what other people think.

Option 3.....

Store in a xml file a list of previously created nfos, also listing the related filename....
On startup , load this file & check the nfos listed actually exist & the filename exists....much the same as what MC is doing now...

Update the xml on what is not found by removing the related entry

Use the list now to populate Media Companion

When a new nfo is created by Media Companion, the xml is updated.

Note that in time, the xml file can be moved to a database system to further speed things up for larger lists.

Thoughts?

Cheers
Richard

Hi,

For me as a foreigner it's a lot of English text to read , but shouldn't it be:

moviename - cd1 - divx.avi
the fanart would be saved as
moviename - divx-fanart.jpg
and the nfo
moviename - cd1 - divx.nfo

For XBMC to understand?

Because when you use (preferred notation):
moviename (year) cd1.avi
the fanart would be saved as
moviename (year)-fanart.jpg
and the nfo
moviename (year) cd1.nfo
and tbn
moviename (year) cd1.tbn


If I'm wrong or simply have added a stupid remark, please forgive me.