Personal Video Database

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

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

I have not fully understood the difference between scripts and plugins. When do I have to develop a plugin and when is a script sufficient?

Oliver

This is an export template to write the movie data back to an XML file for MediaPortals extension MovingPictures.

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My next little script imports the viewed flag from a local file. The MediaPortal extension MovingPictures can save movie data to a local file via the program MovPicNFO and one will get .nfo files as from XBMC. The Status if a movie has been watched or not is not saved in that file, but may be saved in an extra file. For all people that do not track the viewing status via Trackt or Follw.it and have the need to synchronize that status per file may find this script useful. OK, honestly, it probably turns out to be only me but who knows...

Script can be customized, read documentation in the script and have a look at http://www.videodb.info/forum_en/index.php/topic,3352.msg16908.html#msg16908.

Oliver

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When I select the movie folder for Import and start importing the movies, PVD automatically loads all pictures in the movie folder as covers. Is there a possibility to prevent this? I have written a script that will import only the relevant pictures later on and divides them in posters and screenshots.

Thanks,
Oliver

Hi there,

actually I have stored the PVD DB on the movie server. PVD is installed there as well. I use TeamViewer to access that server. Everything works fine except that I am looking for a possibility to accesss the DB with a PVD installation on a local frontend. So I installed Firebird on the server and changed the path to the movie data so it uses shares instead of absolute paths.

Server:

PVD:	D:\Programs\PVD
Movies:	\\server\public\movies\
DB:	\\server\public\data\PVD\movies.pvd
Pictures:	\\server\public\data\PVD\posters\

 
The first thing that appeared a little strange to me was that you have to use an absolute path when connecting from a client to the server:   

Instead of using \\server\public\data\PVD\movies.pvd one has to link to \\server\E:\Data\PVD\movies.pvd. Once I figured that out, I could access the database. But I cannot see any pictures. If I look at the properties in the client installation (which are of course the same as on the server, because they are stored in the DB) I can see the correct path: \\server\public\data\PVD\posters\. Entering the path in an explorer window I have access to the pictures.

Am I doing anything wrong? I know I could store the pictures in the database, but for various reasons I decided otherwise.

All Computers are running Windows 7 Professional x64.
PVD version 1.0.2.3

Kind Regards,
Oliver

Hello!

The IMDB [EN] plugin seems to work very well, but all entries are in english. For kids and wife German would be a lot better. I have noticed, that IMDB searches on www.imdb.com. If you use the same search-string but replace www.imdb.com by www.imdb.de you will get the results in German. Is there a possibility to adapt the plugin or to use some sort of psf script to receive something like IMDB [DE]?

Regards,
Oliver

P.S.: If this post belongs to the support forum, please feel free to move it there.

Hi there,

I set the option "silent mode for all plugins" and "download all pictures". I then imported 200 movies. Very few movies have been recognized by the plugin. This is going to be another topic. And I had no pictures downloaded. Absolutely zero.
After that I downloaded the pictures by using the picture download plugin manually for every movie and it worked.

Regards,
Oliver

P.S.: If this post belongs to the support forum, please feel free to move it there.