Tag export/import (like ID3 for mp3) has been marked as already added. This is good news if that is the case. Looking at 0.9.9.10 I can't see where it is implemented.
Further to discussions
hereActually I'm not sure what is going to be the most efficient path to getting movie tagging functionality.
Importing & exporting, text & image data near a movie file is part of the functionality required.
However I suspect working reliably with the file scanners name parsing and multi-part file identification could well be more challenging.
To explain
For a single file movie the tag information would probably go in .jpeg and .txt (or .xml or .pvd?) files with identical path and base file name.
For multi-file movies the base file name is less obvious as it would involve stripping out the disc number or using the first file name or exporting for all component files
For DVD images (ie with .vob files) the tag files could go within the directory containing the .vob files or 1 level above; with a generic file name or directory name (if 1 level above .vob files)
For TV series similar issues arise however then there is the need to identify the episode, season, series, as well as grouping with other episodes in the same series.
As such it wouldn't surprise me if nostra intentionally left it till other parts of the file scanner were implemented & stable.
mmm
Reading through this again, it looks as if I'm making it all too hard so perhaps it is time to stand back & think what it is all about.
My aim is for PVD to import media with maximum reliability and minimum user intervention.
The problem is PVD needs to make a connection between the video data I have & various internet databases but PVD can't watch movies and it is often ambiguous which record in and internet database is preferred. So an indirect link needs to be used. The best way of doing this is going to vary with the information available to PVD, for example:
1) Analyse file (& path) name to deduce movie name, then use that to look up internet databases. PVD does this very well (& flexibly with regex). The only enhancement I can think of is sometimes the enclosing directory has a better name, so being able to easily select that would be handy.
2) Some media files have an associated .nfo file containing a link to an internet database (most often imdb). It would be good if PVD could automatically extract the reference. I'm actually not sure if it is doing this already as it has been discussed. Knowing what .nfo file to associate with what media file could be a problem as they are generated by humans, thus done inconsistently. The way to start is support the easy cases ie if have .nfo with same base file name as media or folder with one .nfo & one media file then PVD could assume they belong together. Ideally PVD would display some how that it found the reference in the "Scan results" dialogue box. Perhaps the action could show "Add movie" imdb link. This would save the user worrying about the information in the file name.
3) If the movie has already been imported into PVD, and links to internet databases checked, then it would be good if that information could be written back to the movie file, so if it was moved to another system, it could then be imported into PVD there with minimal user intervention. Writing data back to the movie file is also likely to assist communication between media programs (is it does for music with mp3 tags). For PVD though the value is to provide assistance to the file scanner, so the writing protocol needs to be linked to the file scanner reading protocol. Again just doing the easiest case (single movie file) would be useful (provided it cleanly ignored the more complicated case and its functionality was documented eg in change log)