Personal Video Database

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There are slight differences between XBMC and MovPicNFO. E.g. the genre tag. I will adapt the script to meet your requirements and I am going to post it here as a separate version in case somebody else has the same needs. I will provide a solution for folder.jpg as well.

Just give me a week or two as I am suffering of heavy overdose of business workload at the moment.

Regards,
Oliver

Yeah, TMDB ist the one I use as well, because I think it is the best one. It has posters in different languages and standard format is 1500 x 1000. One can find backdrops (screenshots) as well.

I don't see a Recompile Scripts anywhere.

On the screenshot you provided it is the button on the lower right...

First thing that puzzles me is that your log is empty. Did you clear the log before trying to import the movie data or was it empty from the beginning? Does it fill up when you press "Recompile scripts"?

I really would be very welcome assistance in modernizing existing and new scripts.

OK. I would personally like to start with a TMDB person script. IMDB person script works well but TMDB has better pictures. TMDB has an API, but Version 3.0 only works with JSON. As I haven't used JSON before I do not know what that means for the script (I just had to learn pascal to write my first PVD script ). Has anyone got any ideas? API Version 2.1 will be shut down in September.

Any other scripts that need to be modernized or created?

Oliver

This is going to be a little guide for people using the MediaPortal extension Moving Pictures.

Inventory

• Introduction
• Prerequisites
• Export from Moving Pictures
• Import to PVD
• Export from PVD
• Import to Moving Pictures
• Conclusion

Introduction
Using MediaPortal on my HTPC I liked the extension Moving Pictures for the beginning. Building the movie database I followed Lehmden’s manual (german only). Now I have a nice collection of movies easy accessible. But I wanted to have the possibility to create lists, do mass updates, have informations about the actors and so on. So I decided to move to PVD as primary tool. What I needed was the means to get the data out of Moving Pictures into PVD and back into Moving Pictures again. I the next chapters I describe how this can be accomplished.

Prerequisites

• The movies must be stored in a separate folder for each movie. If this is not the case, there are several tools to do this. Some are the freeware tools file2foldergui and Peter's Flexible Renaming Kit (PFrank). Nostra is working on a solution so that PVD will be able to manage this itself in future. For this topic read also Organize files / How to move videos to separate folders
• Posters and screenshots for each movie have to be stored in the movie folder. They can be in subfolders though.

Export from Moving Pictures
There is a tool called MovPicNFO that creates XBMC like XML files with the same name as the movie filename and the extension .nfo in the movie folder. This file follows XBMC definition but is not exactly the XBMC format.  MovPicNFO can also export posters and backdrops (screenshots) as well as the watched status. But remember that Moving Pictures has only one poster and one backdrop so it is better if all images are already in the movie folder like stated in the prerequisites.

Import to PVD
To import the movie data proceed as followed:

• Use PVD function “scan folders for new movies/changed paths…” to import the movies and read the technical data. All images will automatically be imported as posters. Nostra is working on a solution to prevent the automatic import of pictures (see How to load movies without pictures). As a workaround delete all posters and screenshots. The newly imported movies are all selected so just execute the appropriate functions in PVD.
• To import the movie metadata I have written a little script (see Import from XBMC/MovPicNFO .nfo XML-File).
• Importing posters, screenshots (aka backdrops) is done with a separate script (see Import Script for locally saved images).
• As a last step the watched status is imported via a little script (see Import Script for viewed field from local file WatchStatus.xml).

Export from PVD

• Export movie metadata via template (see Export Template: MovingPictures .nfo XML file). If you have added pictures in PVD that are not present in the movie folder, they can be exported with the corresponding template that exports also the pictures.
• Export watched status via template (see Export Template: watched status as XML file).

Import to Moving Pictures
To import the movie metadata in Moving Pictures, the XBMC scraper has to be used as described in Lehmden’s manual. The watched status can be imported using MovPicNFO.

Conclusion
Thanks to the powerful customization features of PVD I have created a solution to seamlessly integrate PVD in my existing home theater landscape with the method I described above. PVD is now my primary tool to manage my movie collection. The interface to my media portal is realized via local files. They serve as a database independent backup as well. As the pictures are saved locally too, I do not have to import them in PVD which keeps my PVD database small.
The mentioned scripts and templates may have to be adapted to your situation as I have used some user defined fields.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

Oliver

New version.

Template now creates files that have the same name as the movie file. A second template is included in the .zip file that additionally exports all pictures.

I will provide such a possibility in the next update.

Thanks nostra, that would be cool.

For the meantime I have found a workaround:

1.) A little program called file2foldergui which is freeware
2.) A mighty renamig tool called Peter's Flexible Renaming Kit (PFrank) which is also freeware. The regex search pattern is (?Bx)(.*)(\..*)$ and the replace pattern \1/\1\2

The series and episodes feature is really helpful when dealing with real series. But what about movies like James Bond? If you use the series function, you could group the James Bond movies but you will loose the links in the filmography of the actors. For series one maintains the actors on series level not on episode level. But for James Bond movies this is not very usefull as we have different actors in every movie.

One could use a group field as described by Rick.ca. But then one has to show all films grouped. The ones that do not belong to a set of movies will all be in one group (with empty group field). If you put the title in the group field for those movies not belonging in a set, you will receive a folder for every movie containing only one film. Not very sophisticated either.

I would like to have the possibility to keep the links to the actors filmography for episodes at least for manually added actors. Or a group field that groups sets of movies like series.

But maybe I have missed something and there is already an elegant solution for my problem. Can anybody help?

Oliver