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Tuesday 19 November 2013

CW-KID’s XBMC Settings Guide – Part4 (meta-data scrapers)

In Part One we looked at the general XBMC settings, in Part Two for those of you using the OpenElec operating system we looked at the OpenElec Configuration Settings, in Part Three we looked at the various XBMC Program add-ons for artwork.

In Part Four we will be taking a quick look at the settings for the XBMC meta-data scrapers. When you import new content in to the XBMC media libraries, it is the scrapers that get the meta-data information and also some default / basic artwork for your content.

Movies – Universal Movie Scraper

In XBMC the default movie scraper is called “The Movie Database”. When I was first getting in to XBMC it was recommended to me on the forum by one of the experts, to instead use the “Universal Movie Scraper” so this is why I did and it hasn’t let me down yet so I’m sticking with it.

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To install the Universal Movie Scraper go to System – Settings – Add-ons – Get Add-ons – XBMC.org Add-ons – Movie Information. Select and install it.

Once installed we can bring up the context menu, which is a right mouse click or C on the keyboard or guide button on the remote control and select Configure.

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General Settings

Here I changed the setting “Preferred Title Language from” to USA / International, the default setting was Keep Original.

All other settings were left on default.

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Plot Settings

All default settings were used here.

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Credits Settings

All default settings were used here.

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Poster Settings

All default settings were used here. Its important to know that when you import new Movie and TV Show content in to the XBMC media libraries, that the Poster or cover images will be downloaded from themoviedb.org website. These poster images will not be stored in your Movie or TV Show folders on your WHS file server or NAS however, they will be stored internally in the XBMC database.

Its also worth noting if like me you have existing Folder.jpg cover images in each folder then these will be used and take preference in XBMC.

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Fanart Settings

All default settings were used here.

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Trailers Settings

All default settings were used here.

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Rating Settings

I think I used all the default settings here, I may have changed the “Preferred Certification Country” to USA. I have always used USA ratings even in MCE / My Movies and don’t bother with UK ratings.

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Search Settings

All default settings were used here.

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XBMC Sources and using the Universal Movie Scraper

I am not going to explain everything about adding a source in XBMC. I did cover it here for TV Shows, but the principle is the same for movies.

Briefly: What is a source? A source is usually a network location that holds media content. For example SMB://WHS/Movies/ is one of my “source” folders that contains my movies.

Basically in the Confluence skin go to Videos menu then select Files from the sub-menu your sources can be found / added in here.

Here is a list of my Sources

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Editing the existing Movie Source

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OK this is the screen shot below I was wanting to get to, to show you!

For a Movie source ensure “This directory contains” is set to (Movies) in brackets, this is known as the content type. Under “Choose a Scraper” ensure the Universal Movie Scraper is selected.

Also very important ensure “Movies are in separate folders that match the movie title” and “scan recursively” are turned ON. If your movies are not in separate folders they should be.

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Now when I add new content in to this source folder on my WHS file server, I can either just run a Video Library update or select this particular source and select “Scan for new content”. Your media content if setup right should then be detected and scanned in to the XBMC video library.

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TV Shows – TheTVDB.com Scraper

The default scraper for TV Shows in XBMC is TheTVDB.com and this is the one you should be using. To
access this in the Confluence skin go to System – Settings – Add-ons – Enabled Add-ons – TV Information

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Bring up the Context Menu on TheTVDB and select Configure

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The default settings are actually fine to use, but I wanted to show you how to access this scraper add-on and to ensure its Enabled etc.

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To read more about adding a TV Show source(s) and assigning the TVDB.com scraper to it, please see my previous post here.

Music – Universal Album and Universal Artist Scrapers

These Universal Album and Universal Artists scrapers are installed by default in XBMC and are the ones to use.

To access these scrapers go to Enabled add-ons and select Album Information or Artist Information.

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Universal Album Scraper

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General Settings

These are all default settings

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Artwork Settings

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Universal Artist Scraper

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General Settings

All default settings were used here.

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Fallback Settings

I think I added these myself, the defaults were all set to NONE.

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Artwork Settings

All default settings were used here.

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Note: Even though in Part Three I talked about the cdArt Manager add-on program being used to download extra artwork for your Music Library, these Universal Album and Artist scrapers will actually get you basic artwork for your music to be displayed in the Confluence skin as you import your music content in to the XBMC Music Library etc.

Summary

That’s it for scraper settings, up next the Aeon MQ5 skin settings and how to use the Artwork Downloader add-on in the Aeon MQ5 Skin.





www.phaze1digital.com

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