Can I import from MyMovies

[junk_struc]

Hi,

I am just new to J River and have imported most of my media into mymovies.  it was quite a bit of effort to get everything pretty much correct (very poor naming of directories/files) and don't want to redo it.  Can pvd use the mymovies.xml files as a starting point?

Thanks
Craig

PS Without meaning to be rude on the Pvd forum, has anyone used both mymovies and Jriver and subsequently moved to pvd and j river with no regrets?
 

[rick.ca]

Welcome, junk.

If you've got the data in mymovies, then I assume you've got in MC as well. If so, you can copy the data directly from MC to a spreadsheet (Excel or equivalent) and import that. Just create a details view in MC with all the fields you want to include. You can then copy & paste directly from the view to the spreadsheet. If you haven't done so already, use MC's file rename utility to clean up your filenames, and include the filename in the import. That way, you get all the data and a perfect match to the physical media files.

I don't know of anyone who has moved from mymovies to PVD. But I would be shocked and dismayed to hear of anyone moving the other direction.

[junk_struc]

i did a quick export from mc with the names (and year).  some of the names were still ambiguous for pvd and thus manual intervention required.  are there some more foolproof fields from mymovies that i can guarrantee the same result in pvd.

installed pvd and it does look a lot better than mymovies as i am not using the wmc aspect.  though i didn't get the pvdimport plugin to do much.  what is the defining attribute that links the pvd database and the MC database, is it the file name, file name and location, or?

will keep playing, your program looks great.

thanks

craig

[rick.ca]

IMDb lookups usually work fairly well with a correct (original or aka) title and year. The only thing that can resolve any ambiguity after that is you or the URL (which I assume you don't have).

PVD and MC records are linked by the full pathname. This is why I suggested you include it in the export/import. As long as they're identical, PvdImport will find the record in the database.

[junk_struc]

does this linking by filename imply that if i move my movies around the link gets broken?

thanks
craig

[rick.ca]

Yes, but rescanning folders will fix that.

[junk_struc]

And the rescan tries to match the filename in the database with a filename in the scanned directories? 

If so, I guess it is ok as long as I don't rename?  What happens if I do decide to rename the directories and files from within MC or other?  Am I doomed?  Is this why you suggested the renaming before starting PVD?

Thanks
Craig

PS: This is actually no worse than what I have at the moment, if I rename the files/directories in MC the mymovies.xml file and artwork are not moved (it appears, will double check when I get home).  I have a vbs script to modify the mymovies.xml to match the name of a media file in the directory, so that bit would be ok.

[rick.ca]

It doesn't matter how they get moved/renamed. A rescan should detect the change, as long as sufficient information (i.e., title and year) remain in the filename.

If I understand what you're saying about mymovies, the situation will be somewhat better. You can break the links by moving files, but they can be re-established automatically by rescanning. And your artwork will be impossible to "lose" if it's saved in the PVD database.

[junk_struc]

Hi Rick,

found time to try again to get from mymovies to pvd.

from mymovies i can export to xml, import into excel and then into pvd.  so....

i was thinking that the imdb id would be a good field to bring in, but the xls pvd import list doesn't contain the imdb id field, only the imdb rating.  easy to fix?  do i just add something to the front and call it the url?

also, on the first i get to choose the fields and the order.  on the second import i only get to choose the file.  so can no longer try.  do i have to do something to reset?


thanks
craig

ps: just tried to import a directory, very cool that you do some filtering on the directory names, but it still only gets a 50% hit rate from imdb.  for big imports (i.e. getting started) it would be much better if it did all of the downloading and remembered the possible choices, i quickly make all the selections (because of my bad directory names) and then go back to the downloading.  At the moment i have a lot of waiting between downloads, it is ruining my movie watching ?? 

pps: still quite impressed with pvd, much better than mymovies.  will pvd export files for wmc (dvdid or whatever it is)? can i export to mymovies.xml files also, seems to be reasonably popular with some other jukeboxes?

[rick.ca]

i was thinking that the imdb id would be a good field to bring in...

If there is no standard field for something you want to include in your database, you can create a custom field. See Preferences - Movies - Custom Items.

on the first i get to choose the fields and the order...

You need to configure the Excel import plugin at Preferences - Plugins.

just tried to import a directory, very cool that you do some filtering on the directory names, but it still only gets a 50% hit rate from imdb.

There are two issues here. First, you need to understand the file scanner is using the regex specified at Preferences - File Scanner. The default regex are not likely to be 100% accurate—especially if you have inconsistent or unusual file pathnames. Second, the import plugin can't do anything more than execute an IMDb search. That is, if you entered the same data manually at the IMDb website, you'd get the same results. Obviously, the title needs to be correct (it can be the original or any valid aka). But, since movie names are not very unique, having the year as well helps in getting direct hits—or at least narrowing the choices.

for big imports (i.e. getting started) it would be much better if it did all of the downloading and remembered the possible choices

This has been suggested by a number of users. Having built my database, I don't find it much of an issue. When I'm adding a handful of movies, I usually have no difficulty finding other things to do with the database while an update is running. When updating a large number of movies, you should be running two passes—one in silent mode, and another with silent mode off to update the ones skipped. The waiting is not so bad when your input is required for every movie in the batch.

will pvd export files for wmc?

Why would you want to? Use PvdImport to pull the data directly from the PVD database into MC.

can i export to mymovies.xml files

I suppose you could—by creating an export template for that purpose. Some users recently created one for XBMC—it might be similar.

[junk_struc]

Regarding the dangling files, I asked a similar question on the MC forum.  the last reply seems like a good answer, haven't tried it yet. http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=54909.0

Craig

[junk_struc]

thanks for all of your replies rick.  greatly appreciated.

is there a way for me to give PVD the imdb id directly.  i have all of these from the mymovies database and can assemble path, title year etc from MC playlist as you suggested in an excel file (unfortuantely MC doesn't import this field from mymovies).  the excel import plugin doesn't have this field as an option.  can i import it into another largely unused filed, say comments and then bulk copy from one field to another?

thanks
craig

[rick.ca]

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you are trying to do or why. If you want to import the ID alone, you can put it in any unused field or create a custom field for it. But I can't imagine what you would use it for. Features that might use it (e.g., using it in Web searches) don't exist yet.

If your only interest in the ID is to ensure proper matching to the IMDb entry, then convert it to a URL and import it to the URL field. Assuming you have the ID in Excel, create URLs with "ht tp://imdb.com/title/"&[ID]&"/".

[rick.ca]

Regarding the dangling files, I asked a similar question on the MC forum.  the last reply seems like a good answer, haven't tried it yet. http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=54909.0

In case you don't understand what he means... Change or create a view so it includes all files types (or at least all those that would otherwise "dangle"). Then the rename/move command can be applied to all files. If you don't want to modify your Video view to do this, create a new root view using Add Library View and set Location to (Root).

[junk_struc]

Sorry for the confusion.  I want the IMDB ID to ensure that it picks up the correct title from IMDB.  When i did the silent import with title and year, it still got quite a few wrong/or didn't choose anything due to ambiguity of title and year.   

I have gone through the manual selection process in mymovies already and thus have all of the correct imdb id's.  So I think I want to do your later option, i.e. create a url for it.  i presume that PVD will use this first (i.e. in preference to title and year) during the query to imdb to get the remainder of the fields?

thanks again
craig

[rick.ca]

i presume that PVD will use this first (i.e. in preference to title and year) during the query to imdb to get the remainder of the fields?

That's correct.

[junk_struc]

Hi Rick,
almost there (spent better part of day renaming tv shows).  

movies worked fine, used the excel import that brought in movie title and "location".  In pvd the correct path shows up in "media location" and the imdb lookups worked a treat.

i then when to do a scan of folders and none of the movies in the database are recognized, i.e. it thinks it has found a lot of new movies.

i thought i would just use the xml export to import into excel and then write a script to rename based on filename and movie title.  but this doesn't report anything in the "path" field for the majority of movies.  the only ones that have something are those that i have subsequently added after the excel import.

guess path and location are different?  but as I said, it displays ok in "media location".

any suggestions?  can i do a bulk copy of location to path if path field is empty?

thanks
craig

[junk_struc]

sorry for last post,

my obvious stupidity, location being in the "hall closet",  path being the file path. 

still, any tips, little scared to do excel import again, incase it screws today's work.

any suggestions

craig

[rick.ca]

any suggestions

Make a backup, then be fearless.

It's been a while since I've done imports, so I'll just say this: The import routine is quite sophisticated, in that it imports (or is configurable) to the field level. In that way it's powerful, but also more challenging to use. Practise—and the fact you can run the same import over again (responding differently to the add/overwrite prompts)—helps. For example, if you accidentally imported the file path to media location, you could probably fix the field mapping and run the import again to fix just the data in those two fields. No other data would be affected.

[junk_struc]

For what it is worth to others (not much)...

I have finally made the change to pvd from mymovies.  main bsis was better/easier support for tv shows.  also liked the idea of the explicit mapping that you can do with pvdimport if you are also using jriver MC.

the excel import in pvd is great.  as rick suggeted, simply export xml file of all movies from mymovies and open in excel.  make a file of filename, title, year and imdb address and import into pvd.  database is largely populated.

Main difficulty with the switch was that all of my directories were poorly named and upon file rescan in pvd, it would constantly want to import it as a new movie, especially so if you move the file to a new drive/directory.  i appears (to me in ignorance) that the only way to reasonably use pvd is to have well named directories.  as i had gone through the movie selection process with mymovies, i had xml files in each directory. so i wrote a little excel script to grab the movie name and year from the mymovies.xml file and rename the directory and file (assuming one media file per directory).

 it is attached, not pretty code but worked for me.  note, comment the rename and move lines to see a list of what will be renamed etc.

Code: [Select]

Sub renamefilesanddirectories()


Dim FSO, Fold, FIL, TS, fld, fld2
Dim strFolder, strContent, strPath, strComputer, objwmiservice, filelist
Dim nameonly, extension
Dim find1, find2, find3, find4, FileName, replacewith1, replacewith2, replacewith3, replacewith4
Dim dfilecontents, filecontents
Dim f, compiledlist, tempfilename
Dim temp, changed, missed, xmldoc

Const ForReading = 1, ForWriting = 2, ForAppending = 8

    'Change as needed
    'strFolder = "\\Tv\ripping\done"
    'strFolder = "\\Tv\Users\cleech\Videos\Ripping"
    'strFolder = "\\Tv\Done"
    'strFolder = "\\tv\Public\Videos\ripping"
    'strFolder = "\\tv\SG1\movies\ripping"
    'strFolder = "C:\Users\Public\Videos"
    strFolder = "F:\Movies\Craig"
    'strFolder = "F:\Movies\Mathew"
    'strFolder = "F:\Movies\ChrisM"
    'strFolder = "F:\Movies\ChrisMDbMovies"
    'strFolder = "C:\Users\Public\Videos\Test"
   
    tempfilename = "c:\temp\delme2.txt"
   
    On Error Resume Next

    'Create the filesystem object
    Set FSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
    'Get a reference to the folder you want to search
    Set Fold = FSO.GetFolder(strFolder)
     
    changed = strFolder & "\changed.txt"
    WriteFile changed, "<!>"
    missed = strFolder & "\missed.txt"
    WriteFile missed, "<!>"

    Set xmldoc = CreateObject("Microsoft.xmlDOM")
    i = 0
    For Each fld In Fold.subfolders
            i = i + 1
            j = 0
     For Each FIL In fld.Files
        extension = Right(FIL.Name, 3)
        nameonly = Left(FIL.Name, Len(FIL.Name) - 4)
        'msgbox nameonly
     
        If extension = "avi" Or extension = "mkv" Or extension = "mov" Or extension = "mp4" Or extension = "mpg" Then
            If j <> 0 Then
                activeheet.Cells(i, 4).Value = 1
                i = i + 1
            End If
            j = j + 1
            If FSO.fileexists(fld.Path & "\" & "mymovies.xml") Then

                xmldoc.Load (fld.Path & FIL.Name)
                xmldoc.async = False
                xmldoc.Load (fld.Path & "\" & "mymovies.xml")
                strQuery = "/Title/LocalTitle"
                mymoviestitle = ""
                mymoviesyear = ""
                Set colNodes = xmldoc.SelectNodes(strQuery)
                 For Each objnode In colNodes
                    mymoviestitle = objnode.Text
                 Next
                strQuery = "/Title/ProductionYear"
                Set colNodes = xmldoc.SelectNodes(strQuery)
                For Each objnode In colNodes
                    mymoviesyear = objnode.Text
                Next

                If mymoviestitle <> "" Then
                    temp2 = fld.Path & "\" & mymoviestitle & " (" & mymoviesyear & ")" & "." & extension
                    temp = FIL.Path
                    temp3 = Fold.Path & "\" & mymoviestitle & " (" & mymoviesyear & ")"
                    ActiveSheet.Cells(i, 1).Value = temp
                    ActiveSheet.Cells(i, 2).Value = temp2
                    ActiveSheet.Cells(i, 3).Value = temp3
                   FSO.moveFile temp, temp2
                   FSO.movefolder fld.Path, temp3
                End If

              '  MsgBox temp
               ' appendFile changed, temp
                'temp = fld.Path & "," & Fold.Path & mymoviestitle & "(" & mymoviesyear & ")"
                'appendFile changed, temp
           
            Else
                If j <> 0 Then
                    activeheet.Cells(i, 4).Value = 1
                    i = i + 1
                End If
           
                temp = fld.Path & "\" & FIL.Name
                ActiveSheet.Cells(i, 3).Value = temp
    '           Appendfile(missed, temp)
            End If
'           Fso.RenameFile(fld.path & "\" & fil.name), (fld.path & "\" & mymoviestitle & "(" & mymoviesyear & ")" & "." & extension)
'           FSO.movefolder fld.path, fold.path & mymoviestitle & "(" & mymoviesyear & ")"
           

        End If
     Next
    Next
           

'Clean up
Set TS = Nothing
Set Fold = Nothing
Set FSO = Nothing


End Sub