A quick guide to movie file naming convention

This is intended as a mini-guide for file naming in order to get the best results for scrapes. Feel free to add to this. (And please let me know if I got anything wrong!)

Supported File Extentions
.avi
.divx
.mkv
.mpg
.mp4
.wmv
.bin
.ogm
.vob
.iso
.img
.bin
.ts
(I took a chance with a few of these - fact is, I'm not really sure of the images!)

Word Spacing
Space between MovieName, year, part, etc. could be replaced with period (.), underscore (_) or hyphen (-) throughout this naming standard - I am not going to include these characters in every example - assume that they can replace the spacing between words.

Movie Titles
While including the year in the filename is not a necessity, the inclusion of the year in the file or folder name will return a greater accuracy when scaping than without.
Examples:
MovieName (year).ext
Or
MovieName (year)\MovieName (year).ext

DVD Rips
Straight DVD rips would be best placed in a folder containing the movie title and year. Avoid using the \VIDEO_TS\ folder in your storage path:
MovieName (year)\VIDEO_TS.vob

Split movies
Certain movies may be split for whatever reason and stacked for the purpose of display in the XBMC GUI. There are several examples in the wild:
MovieName CD#.ext
MovieName Part#.ext
MovieName Disc#.ext
MovieName pt#.ext

TV Series
There are several options available, with the standard being: SeriesName\SeriesName-Season-Episode. While some follow this with an episode title, this is not a requirement for scraping.
In the event of a 'Special' episode, use season '00' with the episode number being as per TVDb.
The folder names are very important in raising your chances of success - the series title is not a necessity in the filename. In certain cases it may be prudent to include the year in the folder name - refer to TheTVDb for the name used (e.g. Knight Rider (2008)).
Examples:
Lost\Lost S##E##.ext
Lost\Lost s##e##.ext
Lost\Lost s#e#.ext
Lost\Lost ##x##.ext
Lost\Lost #x#.ext
Or, without the series title in the filename:
Lost\S##E##.ext
etc...

Just a few points on your post

A few extensions you missed
.xvid
.mpeg
.mov
.rm
.3gp
.m4v
.asf
.nrg
.rmvb
.vob is not supported but VIDEO_TS.IFO is to allow support of DVD folders.

DVD folders can be in the following format:
Moviename\DVD Files (IFO,VOB etc)
or
Moviename\VIDEO_TS\DVD Files(IFO,VOB etc)

the only disadvantage to the latter is that it wont work for those who want to use folder.jpg for file view in XBMC, since the folder.jpg needs to be in the folder root.


Split movies

cd1
cd 1
cd.1
cd_1
cd-1

or similar with
"dvd", "part", "disk", and "pt"
I never considered "disc" since I don't spell it like that.

I'm always open to suggestions about these things, the only think I don't really want to do is
moviename 1
moviename 2
It would cause too many problems with sequels etc

Thanks for that Billy,
I see that there were queries in terms of naming standards.
Here's a link to a Wiki article on this topic for those having problems scraping their shows:
http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=TV_Shows

Insomniac wrote:

Thanks for that Billy,
I see that there were queries in terms of naming standards.
Here's a link to a Wiki article on this topic for those having problems scraping their shows:
http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=TV_Shows

It's worth mentioning that at the moment XBMC does not support importing nfo files for multipart TV Episodes