RFE: NFO and TBN file scraping

Ami Ben-David [Boxee] added a comment - 07/Apr/10 8:45 AM this feature still working on XBMC, this is the xbmc manual resolving but completely manual (tbn and nfo files can be managed without working with imdb to fetch metadata) is there any intention to implement this into boxee?

Lance Chapman added a comment - 10/May/10 6:59 PM I would also like the ability to create a set. Sets allow you to click on something like "Bad Boys" and it will open and you will see "Bad Boys" and "Bad Boys II" This way you can compact your movie database for large series of movies such as Harry Potter and Aliens.

Eugene Bur added a comment - 01/Jul/10 11:31 AM I've just tested version 0.9.21.12563, and still no improvement.

Mike Hawthorne added a comment - 15/Nov/10 1:57 PM This is a needed feature. I have content that is not on IMDB (home videos, foriegn TV shows, etc) or IMDB has a listing for the show but does not have any information.

Lance Chapman added a comment - 15/Nov/10 3:05 PM http://code.google.com/p/moviejukebox/wiki/NFO_Files#Format or http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Nfo For more information.

Par Janda added a comment - 18/Nov/10 3:04 AM - Local content management, use of local .nfo and artwork for local file database - fanart support as background when a title is selected in movie view screen - artwork/title information shown for a movie when an info key is pressed (or the movie is paused) - use of local artwork and info files for media - genre, etc, sorting options for media - cache of artwork etc to local media the features that i want added most are the above listed ones. local content/fanart is what is going to determine for me (and friends/family who are also interested in buying a media streamer) whether to go with the boxee or the netgear 550. i really couldn't care less about the whole internet connectivity thing-- it's secondary to the ability to play my local files (in full 1080p and HD audio) and i want to be able to have visually impressive fanart/posters/film summary/year of film/etc come up whenever i call up each movie. obtaining this information should be a simple and straightforward process that a newbie like me can figure out. i don't want to have to go to multiple sources or have to get a degree in programming to display some pretty pictures!! what i think would be ideal is if boxee supported Ember Media Manager (EMM). as far as i can tell, EMM is a free program that is pretty straightforward to use. i like it because it transfers posters and fanart to the folder where i have each individual movie and also shows the year of the movie, director, cast, plot summary (which is great when you want to give your guests an idea what the movie is about if no one has seen it), etc. and it does it automatically (which saves me TONS of time). it also sorts and re-names movies and puts the "the" at the end (ex. sorts the karate kid as "karate kid, the") which apparently more than a few people (including me) would like to see their media streamer be able to do.   EMM also gets images/information from themoviedb.org, movieposterdb.com, impawards.com, thetvdb.com, and imdb.com so it is quite comprehensive in finding what you need (even foreign films that aren't commonly viewed by western audiences). you can choose to let it make choices automatically or manually choose what you want if you prefer certain images for the poster or fanart (ex. higher resolution, posters from other countries, more recent posters vs. classic (ex. star wars)). if it gets the movie wrong when in auto mode, you can manually enter the movie number as it is listed on imdb.com and i've never once had it not be able to find the correct movie using that technique. i don't know what the hell a local .nfo is, what it does, how to get one, and whether it's necessary to display the fanart/poster/film summary/etc, but i just want my media streamer to let me see these things and show it off to my friends! EMM support by the boxee box seems logical to me (and i believe the program was made to support xbmc, so i'm guessing boxee would be able to integrate its use relatively easily). quite frankly, if boxee doesn't implement the above features, at this point i cannot see why i would choose this box over the netgear. i realize the netgear isn't out yet, but with all of boxee's issues, the netgear already looks like a better choice. please, please, PLEASE make it so i can add the pretty pictures myself to the boxee box!!!

Jamey Campbell added a comment - 18/Nov/10 12:43 PM Aside from convenience for us users, local nfo and tbn support would be highly advantageous for Boxee at this point. This would allow for consistent behavior across media scans, without having to fix entries, especially an annoyance if you're running multiple boxes around the house. A number of 3'rd party programs already generate nfo/tbn (as the above mentioned Ember does.) While the XBMC marketshare is small, many of these users already have libraries set up with nfo/tbn etc. This makes migration effortless, or adding a Boxee box to your network trivial, compared to rescanning and correcting entries. In the case of XBMC, I've used nfo/tbn to manage files not covered by the scraper, from local/private event videos to family videos. The eventual ability to integrate well tagged/thumbed etc family videos into Boxee easily would seem like an excellent addition, and using nfo/tbn to facilitate that seems like a smart move, leveraging a standard that's already out there and somewhat well supported by 3'rd party apps.

Yuval Tal [Boxee] added a comment - 22/Nov/10 10:35 AM What we are including as a first phase is the follows: 1. <filename>.tbn support 2. <filename>.nfo -- if it contains a URL of the title in IMDB, we use this to get the info, otherwise we query our server.. This should be part of the next boxee box software drop. A later drop will include the rest of the support for more complete NFO, or other format file.

Lance Chapman added a comment - 22/Nov/10 12:59 PM OMG Sweet! Thanks for listening and working on a solution for this. Looking forward to step 1.

Michael McCoy added a comment - 29/Nov/10 1:29 PM @yuvalt That is an awesome first step, is this feature implemented in 1.0.1.16319?

Lance Chapman added a comment - 29/Nov/10 4:34 PM In step 2 can we get <id></id> support with just tt#######. So for example in my NFO file for black swan I would have <movie> <id>tt0947798</id> </movie>

Yuval Tal [Boxee] added a comment - 29/Nov/10 4:47 PM - edited @michael, yes, @lance, yeah, we'll add it in the next version. You can track it in issue BOXEE-7280

Steven Rollason added a comment - 29/Nov/10 5:42 PM That issue, BOXEE-7280, doesn't seem to be publicly viewable (I get an access violation error trying to view it). Would it be possible to open that issue up? Thanks.

Michael McCoy added a comment - 30/Nov/10 7:52 PM - edited The nfo scraping doesn't seem to be working for me.. observe the following file structure: total 55037736 -rwx------ 1 staff staff 4697774201 Aug 31 06:03 South Pacific E01 2009 720p Blu-ray DTS x264-SSG.mkv -rwx------@ 1 staff staff 36 Nov 30 19:28 South Pacific E01 2009 720p Blu-ray DTS x264-SSG.nfo -rwx------ 1 staff staff 4696036659 Aug 31 06:03 South Pacific E02 2009 720p Blu-ray DTS x264-SSG.mkv -rwx------@ 1 staff staff 36 Nov 30 19:28 South Pacific E02 2009 720p Blu-ray DTS x264-SSG.nfo -rwx------ 1 staff staff 4695058061 Aug 31 06:03 South Pacific E03 2009 720p Blu-ray DTS x264-SSG.mkv -rwx------@ 1 staff staff 36 Nov 30 19:28 South Pacific E03 2009 720p Blu-ray DTS x264-SSG.nfo -rwx------ 1 staff staff 4695068639 Aug 31 06:03 South Pacific E04 2009 720p Blu-ray DTS x264-SSG.mkv -rwx------@ 1 staff staff 36 Nov 30 19:28 South Pacific E04 2009 720p Blu-ray DTS x264-SSG.nfo -rwx------ 1 staff staff 4696394343 Aug 31 06:03 South Pacific E05 2009 720p Blu-ray DTS x264-SSG.mkv -rwx------@ 1 staff staff 36 Nov 30 19:28 South Pacific E05 2009 720p Blu-ray DTS x264-SSG.nfo -rwx------ 1 staff staff 4698971452 Aug 31 06:03 South Pacific E06 2009 720p Blu-ray DTS x264-SSG.mkv -rwx------@ 1 staff staff 36 Nov 30 19:28 South Pacific E06 2009 720p Blu-ray DTS x264-SSG.nfo The .nfo files are 1-line plain text files with an imdb.com url. Boxee has not picked up the nfo, and I can't even see the .nfo files when I 'browse files' from the boxee box. I have forced boxee to rescan the source multiple times.

Par Janda added a comment - 30/Nov/10 9:49 PM I have the exact same issue with the same results. Even after having reset the box to original settings multiple times. It doesn't work.

Yuval Tal [Boxee] added a comment - 01/Dec/10 11:50 AM Can you please tell me exactly what was written in one of the NFO files and I'll try to reproduce it here. Thx.

Michael McCoy added a comment - 01/Dec/10 12:01 PM Attached the nfo file as requested

Michael McCoy added a comment - 02/Dec/10 6:10 PM @yuvalt able to reproduce? (example nfo file attached)

Steven Rollason added a comment - 03/Dec/10 3:03 PM There appears to be an issue with how Boxee handles TBN thumbnails. When the Boxee Box is rebooted, all movies which had thumbnails from TBN files lose their thumbnails and it shows the title of the movie in place of the thumbnail. The thumbnails are not reloaded from the TBN files until there is a rescan of the source on which those movies are located. Maybe the process of reloading the thumbnail images when displayed for the first time after a reboot, should also check for TBN files for those movies missing a thumbnail?

Tim Baxter added a comment - 04/Dec/10 1:13 PM I think on a vague level we need: 1. Support for local artwork which won't stop working post reboot and also won't take ages to cache. 2 .Clear instructions on how to do this (including alternatives - I don't plan on making folders for every single media file I own so moviename.tbn perhaps?). Also correct thumbnail size, no doubt a bunch of people will have 1080p thumbnails... 3. A fallback method, e.g if there's no thumbanil found choose imdb's artwork. 4. Ideally a choice between our local artwork and whatever imdb has to offer, this will also clarify that the thumbnail is available to boxee. As for the nfo stuff, seems pointless. When I ripped my DVD collection I didn't ever think I'd need to search imdb for each movie, if boxee can't locate the movie properly or comes up with blank/incorrect results thats a software fault and shouldn't need an extra method of searching just to deal with this, fix the initial problem which is incorrect search results before you add support for something which has no purpose.

PJ added a comment - 04/Dec/10 7:19 PM @Tim Baxter Pointless *for you* - don't speak on behalf of the rest. A lot of us WANT a way to enter our own info and edit as we please, not have boxee waste time trying to scrape something for us.

Tim Baxter added a comment - 05/Dec/10 1:36 PM Issue: Scraping comes up with incorrect results often. Solution: Add an extra feature to statically define what url to use when scraping. The solution should be to fix scraping not add additional features to help a failed scrape along. What do you think will happen when imdb changes the way it's movies are indexed? All your nfo files will be wrong. If scraping worked properly boxee would release a fix to resolve the issue, but using your idea of grabbing the url from an nfo file you'd need to update every single nfo by hand. I know a lot of people want this but you seem to forget exactly what the problem is. Boxee need to avoid manual intervention as much as possible. As this has already been dealt with in "BOXEE-7280" it's pointless me saying all this, just seems like a shift backwards and won't help any boxee newcomers.

Steven Rollason added a comment - 05/Dec/10 2:09 PM NFO scraping for TV show episodes doesn't work as expected. If you have a TV show episode with a filename like "Show Name S01e01.mp4" and create an NFO file containing the URL of the IMDB page for that episode and name it "Show Name S01e01.nfo", Boxee picks up the correct episode description but adds it with a show name which is actually the name of the episode. For example: Show: Miranda Episode: Season 1, Episode 1 : Date - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1545367/ Files: Video: "Miranda S01e01.mp4"          NFO: "Miranda S01e01.nfo" containing IMDB URL http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1545367/ Result: New show in Shows called "Date" containing this one episode.

iamcyrus added a comment - 05/Dec/10 2:35 PM - edited @Tim Baxter What I believe most people here want, and what I hope boxee is going to implement, is a way to granularly define every possible info field. This way, the movie doesn't even need to be on imdb. I have several movies that aren't, including home movies, foreign films, and student films. There are also many Hollywood films and shows, that have incomplete info on imdb. The fact is that no matter how good their scraper is, it will never be a 100% solution, which most of us understand, as this is the case with almost any automatic scraper. All we ask for is a method to fix errors on our own and customize the way our media's information is displayed. For example, I have all the Evil Dead movies, which the automatic scraper calls: "The Evil Dead", "Evil Dead II", and "Army of Darkness". As you can see, when in alphabetical order, these movies are scattered throughout my library. I want to be able to call them "Evil Dead", "Evil Dead II", and "Evil Dead III: Army of Darkness" so they are listed together and in chronological order. No automatic scraper will be able to help with this type of customization, no matter how good it is.

PJ added a comment - 05/Dec/10 3:10 PM @Tim Baxter "The solution should be to fix scraping not add additional features to help a failed scrape along. What do you think will happen when imdb changes the way it's movies are indexed? All your nfo files will be wrong." Nobody has defended having an "nfo" file with just a link it, that's stupid. What some of us want is an 'nfo' file with complete information about the some so no scraping is required - at all. Like what the Ember program outputs for instance (of course in another suggestion I made regarding not getting meta, it was immediately dismissed, apparently they want to go online all the time regardless of what the user wants, presumably so they can log what we watch and sell that information to advertisers) "I know a lot of people want this but you seem to forget exactly what the problem is. " No no, I know exactly what the problem is. They want to force people to use online lookup and aren't prepared to offer a good offline option to the people who want this. "Boxee need to avoid manual intervention as much as possible." No, boxee needs to display graphics and metadata which is already there and never ever go online to get it UNLESS the user wants that. " As this has already been dealt with in "BOXEE-7280" it's pointless me saying all this," Since its not visible I have no idea what it says. Perhaps it says "don't get a boxee box, wait until Google TV opens for real apps from the android market"

Brian Cole added a comment - 05/Dec/10 4:16 PM full nfo support is definitly needed manly so I can use thetvdb tv show info instead of imdb.

PJ added a comment - 05/Dec/10 5:04 PM Its also needed if you want to create information for material not in imdb (which includes home movies and the like - that includes graphics AND description information)

Yuval Tal [Boxee] added a comment - 06/Dec/10 8:07 AM @Michael McCoy - the reason why this item is not shown is because your file name conventions is invalid for TV show. You must have SxxEyy (in your case, for example, replace E01 with S01E01). Please see the following for more information: http://boxee.zendesk.com/entries/42693-correctly-naming-local-media-files I verified that it works when renaming the files.

Yuval Tal [Boxee] added a comment - 06/Dec/10 10:16 AM - edited @Steven Rollason - Re: thumbnails not shown after reboot -- you are right, it is a bug. Fixed. BOXEE-7402.

Yuval Tal [Boxee] added a comment - 06/Dec/10 10:33 AM @Tim Baxter - I think at a high level, this is what we provide regarding TBNs (including moviename.tbn).

Dave added a comment - 06/Dec/10 11:09 AM @Tim Baxter: > As for the nfo stuff, seems pointless I think you're missing the point with this request. The problem in this bug isn't that scraping comes back with incorrect results (that should be a problem for another bug) - it's that there is content should *not* be recognized by the scraper by design, and your scraper works from a closed dbase that shouldn't include some content by design. This bug should allow that content to be part of boxee's libraries, at the cost of manual steps from the user (steps that many users already know to take for other apps).

a931048 added a comment - 06/Dec/10 11:28 AM @Tim Baxter: > The solution should be to fix scraping not add additional features to help a failed scrape along. This nfo feature is orthogonal to the scraping problem. No one is asking you or any other novice user to use nfo or tbn files. You want boxee to improve their scraping, create a ticket for it. The nfo feature is for advanced users. Not all content is in imdb. There are other sources like tmdb or something like home videos, which boxee will have no idea how to scrape and I want that to be included in my library. I want consistent posters across my xbmc and boxee boxes. And I power off my boxee box, so do not want it to go to internet to get the poster everytime I power it on. And it is better when the metadata resides with my contents. Then all the media players can use it instead of every media player using its own scraper. As said above, you are not the intended user of nfo and tbn file, as you cannot grasp how it can be useful. And you do not have to go create nfo and tbn file if you want to depend on boxee scraping.

Yuval Tal [Boxee] added a comment - 06/Dec/10 11:46 AM @Steven Rollason -- we are looking into the episode inf issue you described.

Par Janda added a comment - 06/Dec/10 2:21 PM i'm the farthest thing from an advanced user, but i'd have to agree with the other comments that suggest that the box needs to be able to display what i've downloaded into each movie folder for posters/coverart/fanart/plot summary/etc and if that means nfo/tbn files are necessary, then that's what needs to be implemented. I don't want to have to rely on the box to pull in info as it can be wrong and i like to choose my own posters/fanart as there are some options that i might like more than others. relying solely on IMDB isn't really a great option. if the box could just look in each folder and display the images that i've downloaded (using a simple and free program like Ember) and chose as my own, that'd be ideal. if that's too complicated for the general user, then they can choose to stick with the box connecting to the internet and downloading what it can find. basically, the more options, the better.

Brian Cole added a comment - 06/Dec/10 8:37 PM what are people complaining about? its just another option the key word being OPTION. personaly I hope they do offer nfo support that media companion or emm create.

Tim Baxter added a comment - 07/Dec/10 4:52 PM - edited I'm 100% for using our own artwork (it would need to almost definitly be our own seeing as you'll have billions of users who use images found on google with different dimensions). I sort of partially agree that there should be a method in place to hack the db, just not so sure an nfo is the solution. Look at how people have struggled with the fairly basic naming convention in place for TV shows, they're gonna struggle with multiple different calls to nfo files containing differently defined variables (people will seldom write their own nfo's), you couldn't just use an nfo from a tv show you grabbed off the internet seeing as "description" may occasionly contain release info or contain escape characters etc. You also couldn't just point the url to a static webpage and expect it to pull a show description and not 950 lines of html, perhaps a better method would be alternate websites to use for scraping? Why not just give us access to the db, that would be the best solution. Let people specify where the thumbnails come from, the name, show, file location, any cock ups would be easily logged. That's been the solution to this 'problem' in the past. Just to add to this, the attached nfo relating to this problem JUST had a url in it and nothing else so any statements like "nobody want to put just a url in an nfo thats stupid"; sorta demonstrates how different the contents of these files can be for different people.

Tim Baxter added a comment - 07/Dec/10 5:24 PM Just looking through Lances nfo examples from November 15th, as long as there's a very clearly defined structure to these files (most nfo files aren't like that) then I guess it's the equivelant of manually editing the db. The examples are basically xml. @a931048 I resent being called a novice user. I don't think any of us want conflict here so tone it down a bit would you. I can see lots of people are passionate about this but the decisions already been made.

Carl added a comment - 07/Dec/10 7:03 PM In addition to movies, the added abilities for user-defined info should include other media (eg music). Right now it is painful trying to label Artist and Albums exactly the way Boxee expects them so it can pull mediocre art from a preset database. And, of course, would be great to have support for the other fields (eg Lyrics, fanart) which could make better backdrops for music that is playing than looking at the current gyrating bars :)

PJ added a comment - 07/Dec/10 7:35 PM @Tim Baxter "I sort of partially agree that there should be a method in place to hack the db, just not so sure an nfo is the solution." Who said 'hack' - some people want an offline alternative. "nfo" is a microsoft format for system files, so they could invent something new, as long as its format was documented. "Just to add to this, the attached nfo relating to this problem JUST had a url in it and nothing else so any statements like "nobody want to put just a url in an nfo thats stupid"; sorta demonstrates how different the contents of these files can be for different people" It is stupid to just put an url in a file - but that was the quick hack they added - hopefully it will be removed. "as long as there's a very clearly defined structure to these files (most nfo files aren't like that) then I guess it's the equivelant of manually editing the db. The examples are basically xml. " There are several "manual" scraping programs which generate a pseudo standard of xml nfo's - those are the programs some people would like to have the option to use. "I resent being called a novice user. I don't think any of us want conflict here so tone it down a bit would you." You keep fighting an OPTION, and that annoyed him - he wasn't calling you a novice - he was saying some of us would like to have this as an option and you seem to keep fighting us getting it even as an option.

Tim Baxter added a comment - 07/Dec/10 8:16 PM @Carl music uses ID3 tags, it's not based off the filename. I do think boxee should focus more on music though, but that's probably a new issue (you've raised some important points there).

Yuval Tal [Boxee] added a comment - 08/Dec/10 4:03 AM Guys, maybe it's better to move this discussion to the forum so more people can comment and state their opinions. Just FYI, we will add the ability to include more metadata in the inf, it's just gonna take a bit more time.

PJ added a comment - 08/Dec/10 3:05 PM @yuvalt I think everybody understands and accepts you can't do everything at once. I think most are prepared to wait a bit.

Phat Phreddy added a comment - 15/Dec/10 10:31 PM Please allow for local meta data.. If theres no local data THEN go online and try to ident it. Otherwise its like saying the boxee box can guess better then I can certainly tell it. Thats just crazy. If you want to scan what I watch for data mining, no problem, but respect that I can identify my collection better than an algo. Local meta data option benefits. 1) if no IMDB listing (especially for TV where the current database is v poor) 2) incorrect listings 3) allows movie grouping (make all my 'cheech and chong' start with that not 'nice dreams' under N 'up in smoke' under U) 4) correct cover art 5) fan art 6) faster art use (no imdb scrapes on reboot) 7) for people who have no or unreliable internet connections. Same for people with home net media but offline. 8) Allows defining what is TV and what is movies, currently much of my docu TV is thought of as movies, and some my UK made for TV movies and thought of as TV. Just so many things get fixed with a user customizable meta data standard. And it does this without drawback !! If a user doesnt take the time to make their own custom data set, then boxee can still do exactly what its doing. It gives the detail people the option of having a perfect library.

Giuseppe Rudi added a comment - 16/Dec/10 5:14 AM I agree with PJ and Phat. Please also consider that most of the people in the world want to see the desription in the local language and not in English sourced from IMDB. So if you want to go global you definately need to allow local meta data.

PJ added a comment - 16/Dec/10 8:24 AM Also, if you don't store art in the limited memory of the Box, the space can be used to have larger playback buffers, and thus less buffering.

Will added a comment - 02/Jan/11 5:24 PM Boxee Box requires two .nfo files for a two part stacked video: http://jira.boxee.tv/browse/BOXEE-7791 Please fix that too.

Brajesh Upadhyay added a comment - 05/Jan/11 12:08 PM I'm already happy with movies and putting a .nfo file and folder.jpg inside each movie folder. 100% of my 850+ local movies get identified correctly. So, please don't remove the .nfo with only an IMDb link in it. That should stay. What I want is the same for TV shows, but with tvshow.nfo (containing only a link to the show's page on thetvdb.com) and folder.jpg recognized. Also, for non-movies and non-TV shows, namely home videos, please add that as a new category to Boxee and a way to use .nfo (detailed, using XBMC convention) and folder.jpg for those as well. Thanks!

Simon Andersson added a comment - 11/Jan/11 6:33 PM - edited This is really needed ! I have a huge bunch of unidentified movies (with nfo). I guess this feature would save me lot of work during manualy try to identify them ..

James Miller added a comment - 12/Jan/11 10:00 PM Please also support "movie.nfo" files for single folder movies as XBMC does with the "Use folder names for movies" option.

Lance Chapman added a comment - 23/Jan/11 5:47 PM Can we get an update on this? I understand netflix is #1 priority. I just hope this is #2.

Yuval Tal [Boxee] added a comment - 23/Jan/11 9:21 PM It is being worked on by one of our developers. Don't have an ETA, yet, but the current plan is to roll it into 1.0.5.

Cal Lund added a comment - 01/Feb/11 11:23 AM It would be nice, not not have to resort to using NFO/TBN Files. For example. My entire collection is in mp4 format. with all the Metadata written directly to the file. This would be an ideal way to scrap data. I saw a MKV request for this. I would just like to add this to the mix. Please add the ability to scrap data from the metadata written on the file.

Yuval Tal [Boxee] added a comment - 01/Feb/11 12:14 PM @Cal, please open a separate issue for that. Thx.

Jeremy Milum added a comment - 01/Feb/11 12:18 PM @yuvalt, that's really a feature request. I thought we were getting away from submitting those in jira?

Darien Roberts added a comment - 05/Feb/11 6:58 PM This will be across the board for both movies and TV shows correct? As right now folder.jpg or folder.tbn does not work for TV shows.

Yuval Tal [Boxee] added a comment - 06/Feb/11 12:58 AM Yes. We will publish guidelines on file naming.

PJ added a comment - 06/Feb/11 1:16 AM Even though I can't use Netflix I hope it will soon be finished, so the programmers can move onto this.

Yuval Tal [Boxee] added a comment - 06/Feb/11 1:27 AM It's already done. Once we're done with the Netflix saga, we'll release an EA version for 1.0.5 which includes this feature. If you would like to be in the EA for 1.0.5, please send an email to marcel@boxee.tv asking to participate in order to provide feedback on this feature.

Phat Phreddy added a comment - 06/Feb/11 6:30 AM "Yes. We will publish guidelines on file naming".. My apologies if I am off base with this, but having guidelines from file naming sounds very much like your still trying to parse the file names and do a lookup. The request here is to have our own meta data (if we wish, not compulsory for all users) which over rides the scraping and makes file naming irrelevant. Our meta data will provide the naming, not a scrape and guess.

Yuval Tal [Boxee] added a comment - 06/Feb/11 10:58 AM @phat -- no, that's not what I meant. There are many options of how to store thumbnails and info. For example, if someone decided to call the file FoLdEr.JpEG, we will not find it. For TV shows, where do you put the series info, and where do you put the episode.Those are the kind of guidelines. Come on, give us some credit :-)

Paweł Kruszewski added a comment - 06/Feb/11 11:43 AM BOXEE was born from XBMC so why don't you make this the same way like a "father" :) Better push it to "NO ETA". Fanarts and posters might by loads from local hdd/nas (not from internet only).

Yuval Tal [Boxee] added a comment - 06/Feb/11 12:01 PM @pawel, we're trying but since our scanner + lookup is very different, it's hard to make it 100% similar.

PJ added a comment - 06/Feb/11 2:07 PM What? Case matters? shiver, evil Linux ;-) @yuvalt Does that 1.0.5 EA require NDA?

Jeremy Milum added a comment - 06/Feb/11 2:11 PM @PJ, the Early Access group does require an NDA

PJ added a comment - 06/Feb/11 4:23 PM Pity.

Phat Phreddy added a comment - 06/Feb/11 8:40 PM @yavalt.. Then my apologies.. It seemed earlier in the discussions there was a strong resistance to local meta data and a desire to continue to 'refine' scraping.. While I agree refining scraping is desired, and scraping is the first line of attack for most users. Some of us will have media that will never be scrapeable. Thanks and looking forward to meta data working. Especially hopeful we can define what is 'TV' and what is 'movie'..

Guerra Francesco added a comment - 08/Feb/11 3:28 AM Beeing Italian the Boxee recognize 1% of my library... so support for local information should be implemented.

Ami Ben-David [Boxee] added a comment - 10/Feb/11 4:33 AM Hi Guys, all of you that voted and commented on this feature request, the boxee team would like to release this feature soon. we would like to ask for your help and corporation, what application are you guys using to create a proper NFO file to your shows / movies? also, please upload 1-2 NFO sample files from your library to this FTP server: ftp.boxee.tv user: dropbox pass: swA4EQAt we'd appreciate your help regarding this. Thanks.

Paweł Kruszewski added a comment - 10/Feb/11 4:45 AM - edited i try to upload movie.nfo but after copy (winscp and totalcommander) it doesnt apear on server. To create nfo, fanart and posters I use Media Companion. http://mediacompanion.codeplex.com/ When I export data files from XBMC to nfo then NFO (MC) = NFO (XBMC).

Filip Lejon added a comment - 10/Feb/11 4:47 AM I use Ember Media Manager [ http://code.google.com/p/embermediamanager/ ]. Will upload NFO samples tomorrow.

Ami Ben-David [Boxee] added a comment - 10/Feb/11 4:49 AM Pawel, try using FileZilla : http://filezilla-project.org/

Paweł Kruszewski added a comment - 10/Feb/11 4:54 AM - edited Status: Starting upload of Z:\filmy bez napisow\Flipped (2010)\movie.nfo Command: TYPE A Response: 200 TYPE is now ASCII Command: PASV Response: 227 Entering Passive Mode (67,227,134,52,175,111) Command: STOR movie.nfo Response: 150 Accepted data connection Response: 226-0 Kbytes used (0%) - authorized: 6291456 Kb Response: 226-File successfully transferred Response: 226 0.510 seconds (measured here), 44.82 Kbytes per second Status: File transfer successful, transferred 23 785 bytes in 1 second Status: Retrieving directory listing... Command: TYPE I Response: 200 TYPE is now 8-bit binary Command: PASV Response: 227 Entering Passive Mode (67,227,134,52,211,155) Command: MLSD Response: 150 Accepted data connection Response: 226-ASCII Response: 226-Sorry, we were unable to read [.] Response: 226-Options: -a -l Response: 226 0 matches total Status: Directory listing successful My file is gone. Can You create folder "pablolite" with proper permissions? :)

Ami Ben-David [Boxee] added a comment - 10/Feb/11 5:03 AM guys don't be alarmed if your files are being removed. i download the nfo file and remove it from the FTP server, thanks

Ami Ben-David [Boxee] added a comment - 10/Feb/11 5:05 AM one more thing, there is no need to upload other files such as TBN and the sample video files, please upload only NFO files.

Kim Brouer added a comment - 10/Feb/11 5:19 AM Emacs. ;-) Basically, I'll write my NFO files to whatever your parser's requirements are. Will you release a description of how the files should look, and how we should name them for TV shows? Also, does the text "The client sends tvdb_series_id, tvdb_episode_id, nfo_title (extracted from the nfo)" in BOXEE-8143 mean that SP5 accepts pointing to the TheTVDB and not just IMDB?

Phat Phreddy added a comment - 10/Feb/11 5:21 AM Been using ember media manager.. Understand its been discontinued (but that a file is hosted for it) tho I still have it instaqlled and working fine. Will upload file(s)

Paweł Kruszewski added a comment - 10/Feb/11 5:27 AM - edited I try to show directory/file structure :) ------"Movies" (dir) ---"Movie Title (year)" (dir) -movie.qwerty.title.mkv -movie.nfo -movie.tbn -fanart.jpg ---"Movie Title 2 (year)" (dir) -movie.title.qwert.mkv -movie.nfo -movie.tbn -fanart.jpg Boxee should find movie titles also from DIR_NAME. NFO from XBMC: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Import_-_Export_Library#Video_nfo_Files

Phat Phreddy added a comment - 10/Feb/11 5:31 AM Am I being specially dense today ?? User / pass getting a 530 Login auth fail. Using both FTP in firefox and filezilla.

Ami Ben-David [Boxee] added a comment - 10/Feb/11 5:36 AM Phat, try not to copy/paste the user and password.

Henrik Haagensen added a comment - 10/Feb/11 5:56 AM I really also need this feature, im from Denmark and my movies show with the original title and mostly it is okay but some danish movies with a translated title is not working for me (looks really silly and is verry hard to search for). why not use the standard as Paweł Kruszewski referrs to ?

Phat Phreddy added a comment - 10/Feb/11 5:56 AM After C&P failed I did type it.. And obviously being careful to retain case too. Just tried again.. Still same.. 530 login auth fail.

a931048 added a comment - 10/Feb/11 8:12 AM I use XBMC (latest build Dharma) to export to individual files. I already use XBMC in other rooms and would appreciate if boxee works on the same NFO format.

Jason Bisk added a comment - 10/Feb/11 8:22 AM I just uploaded movie.nfo to the FTP site. I'm using Media Center Master to generate the file. In the program, it has the option to create the metadata for Boxee/XBMC.

Big Pun added a comment - 10/Feb/11 12:44 PM I uploaded a few sample .nfo files. One from a movie and two from the TV show Tales from the Crypt. One is for a specific episode, and the other is tvshow.nfo, which resides in the root folder (the level above Season 1, Season 2, etc). I use Media Companion to create the metadata.

Big Pun added a comment - 10/Feb/11 1:00 PM Actually sorry, those two TV show samples might have been generated via Media Browser. I just uploaded two samples that were freshly created with Media Companion, for a different show. The format does look slightly different.

Aaron Thompson added a comment - 10/Feb/11 1:24 PM I use My Movies which is supposed to create these files. I see them in all my BD ISO folders.

Chris Simons added a comment - 10/Feb/11 2:58 PM Like Jason Bisk, I use Media Center Master, using the XBMC setting. I've uploaded two NFOs, one from a TV series (Grey's Anatomy) of which I have a number of seasons, and one from a movie (Cemetery Junction).

Kevin Sartori added a comment - 10/Feb/11 5:24 PM I use Ember Media Manager for TV Shows. http://code.google.com/p/embermediamanager/ I've uploaded the following sample .NFO: BOXEE-4303 TV SHOW [EmberMediaManager].nfo I use ThumbGen for Movies. http://thumbgen.org/ I've uploaded the following sample .NFO: BOXEE-4303 MOVIE [Thumbgen.org].nfo

Jason Nemeth added a comment - 10/Feb/11 7:53 PM I use Sickbeard for TV shows using the XBMC .nfo file format option. I attached the "tvshow.nfo" it drops in the top level folder of each show, and an .nfo file for a specific episode (V S2E4, in this case), which it names the same as the episode itself. Like some of the other posters, I also use Ember Media Manager for movies. It has a ton of settings that can change the content within the file, so I attached the .nfo file from my copy of Lost in Translation to hopefully add to the diversity of the examples you have from this program.

James Miller added a comment - 10/Feb/11 10:33 PM I use Media Center Master for my metadata management, and have just uploaded 3 sample .NFO files. One movie NFO (movie.nfo: The Social Network), and two TV Series NFOs (Episodes and Weeds). Hopefully that helps.

Filip Lejon added a comment - 11/Feb/11 5:27 AM Uploaded 4 files: 1) "In Living Color.S03E01.Homey The Sellout Part 2.nfo" 2) "movie.nfo" 3) "movie_2.nfo" 4) "tvshow.nfo" 1) NFO for TV show "In Living Color", single episode NFO 4) NFO put in root of TV Show "In Living Color" 2) NFO for movie "Platoon" 3) NFO for movie "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" Using Ember Media Manager. Each of my movies is in a separate folder "Title [year]", containing a "movie.nfo" file. "movie_2.nfo" was renamed for this FTP upload.

Riyad Chowdhury added a comment - 11/Feb/11 12:23 PM I use Sickbeard create meta data for my files, they are generated for xbmc, I uploaded some sample nfo's that sickbeard generates. There is a tvshow.nfo file that contains information about the show and then inside the seasons folder there are nfo files for each episode.

Lance Chapman added a comment - 14/Feb/11 1:29 PM This is how my files are setup and named for (YAMJ). The .nfo files from everyone else look great.

Simon K added a comment - 16/Feb/11 5:47 PM - edited While, yes, I'd love this to be working, I must say I find the use of .tbn files to be daft :) It annoys me to have these files kicking around (that none of my photo apps will open), when it'd be much easier to just have a .jpg in it's place. I've never been an XBMC user so I'm not sure of the reason for this .tbn thing, but it's seems completely counter intuitive to me. It makes much more sense that if your movie is "Sunshine.mkv", then the associated poster file is "Sunshine.jpg" (NOT folder.jpg or folder.tbn, or Sunshine.tbn) Anyway, baby steps :)

PJ added a comment - 16/Feb/11 6:44 PM Yeah Simon it annoys me a bit as well, though in Windows you can always associate the file with a viewer but it doesn't show in windows explorer. I think the reason is so they don't show up in the Boxee browser because generally you are not going to want to see it I guess. And of course when the system is up and running you are not likely to want to sit and watch those pictures on the PC only in Boxee :) I just hope they'll release this as a test version so we can see if it works now, and not in 3 months.

Phat Phreddy added a comment - 16/Feb/11 7:57 PM @Simon. Your missing the purpose of the TBN file totally. The TBN is for the meta data.. The folder.jpg is for the cover art.. How do you suggest a jpeg tells the boxee software the movie title, the synopsis, the release date, the run time, if its a TV show or a movie, if TV the episode info, etc etc etc. The TBN data is there as a fall back to fix / correct / replace scrapes when scrapes fail (which they will because the world of content is so large). Its not simply to solve cover art which I agree can and is solved simply by folder.jpg files.

Simon K added a comment - 16/Feb/11 8:12 PM - edited Right, well that does make more sense. I'm coming from a Popcorn Hour, so metadata is all handled in NFO files. I've recently started playing with Couchpotato, which automatically downloads cover art and saves it with a TBN exension. Renaming this to a JPG just allow you to view the image. Hence why I assumed XBMC just used TBN's for cover art. How confusing :D   How do you guys edit TBN's to view/add metadata (just something like Notepad++)?

Phat Phreddy added a comment - 16/Feb/11 8:17 PM I used ember to do it all for me.. As I come from the XBMC background.. Tho while I would see sense in following the xbmc protocol as theres tools already out there, it is far less important than simply having a robust system fully documented thats highly detailed. Make it as complete as possible. Any published format we can then work to will work and I am sure there would soon be apps that export that format.

Jon Taylor added a comment - 16/Feb/11 8:19 PM @Phat, I think you may be a little confused too. The TBN file is what is used instead of the JPG file, this is a thumbnail version of an image, smaller in size, ideal for use on devices such as boxee where only a small image is needed. The NFO file is the one which contains all the meta data

Simon K added a comment - 16/Feb/11 8:20 PM Ok good, so I'm not insane afterall :D My original point stands ;)

Phat Phreddy added a comment - 16/Feb/11 8:34 PM - edited Yes totally agreed.. I was talking about the TBN / NFO pair.. I wasnt very clear, sorry (its first cup of coffee time for me here ;) ) How it ends up being implemented we dont yet know. If its the xbmc system or something entirely new. The point I was trying to make is that any system needs to have more than just a cover art image file, which you can currently do with folder.jpg (on movies only for some odd reason). You cant do proper meta data with a JPEG image file alone.

Riyad Chowdhury added a comment - 17/Feb/11 12:06 AM Most of the popular existing apps such as Sickbeard or Couchpotato only use XBMC style meta-datas (TBN NFO). So support for TBN files would be very nice. Not being able to open TBN files using photo editors are really not that big of a deal, everything working seamlessly together because it all uses the same format/style is more important.

Simon K added a comment - 17/Feb/11 12:10 AM - edited I use SickBeard and CouchPotato myself and generally like to check what poster the application has downloaded for me, hence why I get annoyed when I can't open the TBN file. Not an issue as of now anyway as I've just found the option in the Couchpotato config.ini to have that poster file named whatever you want, so I've changed it to folder.jpg for the sake of the Boxee. SickBeard uses folder.jpg as default anyway.

Kosmo marks added a comment - 17/Feb/11 11:29 AM - edited I use tvrename to create metadata (NFO), shows cover art (folder.jpg) and episode thumbnails (TBN) for my tv shows http://www.tvrename.com/ I use ember media manager to create metadata (NFO) and cover art (folder.jpg) for my movies http://code.google.com/p/embermediamanager/ or http://sourceforge.net/projects/emm-r/ A few fw updates ago I used ember media manager to organize my movie collection, added cover art and metadata to all my movies. Now when I use boxee and click on my movies I get instant loading of all my cover art. Scanning my movie folder also goes much smoother. prolly due to the metadata and cover art already being on file, instead of the net. We just need this support for tv shows now.

Simon K added a comment - 17/Feb/11 6:38 PM Boxee guys, while you're implementing this, please think about adding support for movie "sets". See - http://forums.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=29746

Brian Kiser added a comment - 17/Feb/11 11:15 PM Hopefully, if we have a folder.jpg file in a directory, then 1) the folder.jpg should be "invisible" when browsing via Boxee, and 2) that .jpg file should show up on the directory image containing the movie/tv file.

Darien Roberts added a comment - 17/Feb/11 11:43 PM I hope that is the case too as it would resolve BOXEE-7521 and make the browsing in the Files menu a much better experience.

Brian Kiser added a comment - 18/Feb/11 12:00 AM Yes, what Darien says is good. Boxee, please remember that many of us use Boxee much like XBMC... 90% of what I do is streaming my network files to my TV. I don't use "Shows" or "Movies" because my network files are organized with folder.jpg and .nfo files, and the folder hierarchy is clean and manageable. Therefore, PLEASE make sure to implement full.nfo and folder.jpg capabilities for us File users as well!

PJ added a comment - 18/Feb/11 11:20 AM I think the folder browser should show that is there - ie not censor which files shows up in the list - so if this is implemented it should probably be an option.

Ami Ben-David [Boxee] added a comment - 16/Mar/11 6:23 AM verified on 1.1.0.17863

PJ added a comment - 16/Mar/11 4:15 PM Hopefully the closing of this topic means a new release is very close.

darcilicious added a comment - 16/Mar/11 4:25 PM >>Hopefully the closing of this topic means a new release is very close. I wouldn't draw any conclusions from that. There are a number of open bugs currently assigned to the same release (though it doesn't mean they all will be fixed for this release). That and Avner mentioned something like "maybe April" for the next release.

PJ added a comment - 16/Mar/11 4:33 PM I wish they would release small patches which fixed bugs, instead of dragging it out by keep adding more stuff.

Yuval Tal [Boxee] added a comment - 16/Mar/11 5:46 PM The reason you see this as closed means that it has passed QA, not related to a date. I'm sure there's gonna be some heated discussions in this thread once it's out... that's the nature of this RFE :-)

Simon K added a comment - 16/Mar/11 5:55 PM Ok, if it's finalized hopefully they can now give us the conventions they've used so that we can start generating appropriate NFO's for our stuff before release.

PJ added a comment - 16/Mar/11 7:12 PM Thanks for the explanation yuvalt, I'm sure you are right someone will have some thoughts on this :)

Yuval Tal [Boxee] added a comment - 16/Mar/11 7:21 PM Well, as I learned from developing a consumer product, users have opinions about everything :-) I'm glad we have an active community that trys to guide us on stuff that's important for them. Will keep you guys here posted on progress.