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[8139david]

I would like to use JRiver to catalog the dvds and blurays which I have as physical objects (with no numerical copy).
This way I can see all the movies I have, both on computers and as physical objects.
Can I do that and if so how?
(NB: I don't want to insert each disc into my dvd player; and I have no bluray player for my computer so in that case that's completely out of the question.)

Answer (after many trials and much discussion):
Thanks to jmone this is now easy, see this post in particular: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=102906.msg714653#msg714653

[CountryBumkin]

I'm not sure what you mean by "with no numerical copy".

Are all these DVDs and BDs ripped and on your computer (in MC program)?

If yes, you can use the "File>Export Playlist" tool. Just select export to "Text File" and "Output range "All". Then open the file with Excel program and delete whatever columns/data you don't want (you would probably only want "Name" and "File Type"). This will give you a complete list of every DVD and BD ripped to your computer.

[blgentry]

David wants to catalog his discs that are NOT in his computer.  There was a fairly popular program years ago called Delicious Library which was designed for this task; it read bar codes as a way of getting that information into the catalog.

I've seen references, here on the forum, to people making "dummy entries" for DVDs that are not digitally copied into the computer and just using MC as a catalog.  But I'm not exactly sure how you do it.  Maybe you use a tiny little video file that has nothing in it and copy it over and over, changing the name to match the DVD you want to catalog?

Brian.

[8139david]

Thanks for your comments.

Yes, blgentry is right.

I was beginning to think along these lines: creating a dummy dvd, or mkv, or whatever. But I'm still looking how to do it...

AND I was hoping there is a simpler solution!
It would be a nice feature for JRiver, I think

[8139david]

Some people wanted the same thing for LPs:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=82202.0

This seems promising:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=100449.0
I'll test it asap.

[8139david]

In fact, it seems that MCUtils is for dummy CDs.
It creates a 2s dummy mp3.
Also, it downloads perl, etc, which is perhaps too much for what I need...

So then I could create a 2s dummy mkv, as suggested.
Make 200 hundred copies of it, each with the name of the dvd or bluray.
And import them in JRiver.

Another solution would be to import an existing playlist or catalog.
But I haven't been able to create a suitable playlist.
Maybe JRiver checks if there is a real file corresponding to each entry of the playlist?

[8139david]

It's easy to create a short, low quality movie.
With my camera, I thus created a .mp4 movie of 2s, size 1Mo.
Maybe I can make smaller with my phone:)
Then I imported it.
After which it can be treated like the rest, assigning it the title of the dvd or bluray I want to add to JRiver's library.
That's simple enough.

[8139david]

One can also import a .ifo file, which is much smaller.
Then one needs one folder for each .ifo file.
The movie is assigned a length of 0 second.
So I just rename the folder: Name (Year)
This way, the movie is imported as movie, of dvd type, with the correct name, and the correct year.
Then I can do 'Get film and TV info'...

The same works with an index.bmdv file inside a 'Name (Year)' folder.
The folder is imported as a bluray (of 0 second), with correct (movie) Name and Year.

So that's what I will do to catalog my (physical) dvds and blurays 

[8139david]

I already have an excell file with the catalog of my physical dvs (and blurays).
I have extracted one file for dvds, with this structure: Name, Year.
(And a similar file for blurays.)
In windows I can easily duplicate a folder named dvd containing a .ifo file, so as to have as many folders as dvds.
This duplication creates folders dvd_2, dvd_3, etc.
Then I would like to batch rename these folders using my dvd spreadsheet (it can be a simple .csv file): folder dvd_i would named using line i of the spreadsheet, eg:
dvd_1 --> Star Wars, 1977
dvd_2 --> The Empire Strikes Back, 1980
etc
Would someone know how I can to that using the command line or the powershell, or even a free renaming software?
(I have 500 physical dvds, already in my spreadsheed, so if I could avoid doing the renaming one by one, it would be great.)

[AndrewFG]

There is a company called "collectorz" who does what you want with their "Movie Collector" application http://www.collectorz.com (they have similar software for cataloging other physical things like books, CDs, comics etc.)

Nevertheless I agree that it would be really cool if MC could do such a database itself.

[thecrow]

+1 for a way to catalog your DVD & Bluray collection within MC.
I have around 1000 discs and do not want to rip them to hard drive but would love to browse them from within MC. 

[jmone]

MrC was the man for this sort of thing and here is an example of one of many threads on using creating entries in MC from spreadsheets.  Unfortunately he has not been around for awhile and I don't have the perl skills to know what to do.

[AndrewFG]

Ps I see that the CollectorZ app allows exporting its database as a CSV or XML file. So maybe MrC's suggestion could import that into MC ?? There would surely be a problem with the art files though...

[8139david]

Thanks for the comments.
I will try to use MrC's suggestion from the thread mentioned by jmone (https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=87939.0):
1) Create a mpl playlist from some movies that already are in JRiver.
This way I get a type of file JRiver can re-import.
2) Modify this playlist by copy-pastes from my existing spreadsheet.
(Perhaps then I should export a mpl playlist with the number of entries I want.)
3) Then import the final mpl playlist.

MrC writes you don't always need to have dummy files.
But I will create dummy ifo and bdmv files and folders.
[ifo and bdmv files are just very small files, so having them in a special folder on one's computer is really not a problem.]
This way, when I update the data about a movie within JRiver, it can export a sidecar xml file with all the data about it, and more important, it can also store the picture of the movie, which I want.

Once I have my data on JRiver, I will only modify that database (the Library), not my original spreadsheet.
And I can use JRiver to export all sorts of spreadsheet that I can print on paper.

[jmone]

FYI - you can use any file, even a TXT file.  It may be better than IFO or BDMV as these tend to represent a structure of files.  

edit - pending on how you import them you may have to set the Media Type to "Video"

[8139david]

Since I'm happy with dummy files and folders, then I should create as many as I want (a simple copy paste of the relevant folders containing the ifo file).
Then I import them into JRiver.
This way, JRiver creates an almost empty database, linking to the appropriate dummy files on the disk.
Then I export the playlist and work on it.

Problem: I don't know how to easily transfer information from columns of my own excell spreadsheet to the mpl file.
(Ideally I would want something as simple as copy-pasting the Name column of my spreadsheet into another spreadsheet which JRiver can import.)
The latter has this kind of structure:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<MPL Version="2.0" Title="Files" PathSeparator="\">
<Item>
<Field Name="Filename">J:\Videos\Akio Jissoji - 1985 - Poem - D9\VIDEO_TS\VIDEO_TS.dvd;1</Field>
<Field Name="Name">Poem</Field>
<Field Name="Date">31048</Field>
<Field Name="Bitrate">8000</Field>
<Field Name="Duration">7153</Field>
<Field Name="Media Type">Video</Field>
<Field Name="Media Sub Type">Movie</Field>
<Field Name="Get Metadata Info">&lt;XMLPH version="1,0"&gt;
&lt;Item Name="LastFailedDate"&gt;42392,48006&lt;/Item&gt;
&lt;Item Name="LastTryDate"&gt;42392,48006&lt;/Item&gt;
&lt;/XMLPH&gt;</Field>
<Field Name="Date Imported">1453544548</Field>
<Field Name="File Type">ifo</Field>
<Field Name="File Size">7153584128</Field>
<Field Name="Date Created">1419084368</Field>
<Field Name="Date Modified">1419084383</Field>
<Field Name="Compression">ifo video (video: mpeg2, audio: ac3)</Field>
<Field Name="Sample Rate">48000</Field>
<Field Name="Channels">2</Field>
<Field Name="Bit Depth">32</Field>
<Field Name="Width">720</Field>
<Field Name="Height">480</Field>
<Field Name="Aspect Ratio">16:9</Field>
<Field Name="Director">Jissoji Akio</Field>
<Field Name="FPS">29,9699993133544922</Field>
</Item>

So for me, the easiest seems to be my original idea: find a way to rename my folders from my own spreadsheet:
Name1, Year1
Name2, Year2
etc
Then only import the result into JRiver.
Do a "Get movies info", which gives me a cover/picture for each movie.
And check one by one for the mistakes.

[8139david]

Well, exporting as csv file from JRiver creates a playlist I can easily open into Excell.
I just need to be sure I can reimport the file after I modify it.
I'll try a small experiment and report back.

[8139david]

Well, I don't know how to reimport the file after.
In fact, I don't know how to appropriately import a csv or xml file into JRiver.
When I do it, it just import one text file, it doesn't update the corresponding info about the dummy movies.
Any idea?

[imugli]

I used to use DVDProfiler, which lets you export a playlist and import in MC.

[8139david]

I found one way to use powershell to rename my D_1 to D_200 folders:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/34976947/5833055
And another way was indicated to me as well.

[8139david]

FYI - you can use any file, even a TXT file.  It may be better than IFO or BDMV as these tend to represent a structure of files.  

edit - pending on how you import them you may have to set the Media Type to "Video"

It's true that with a .ifo file, JRiver expects it to be within a VIDEO_TS folder. This shows up when it tries to modify info about the movie and save it on disk. It's perhaps better to put the ifo file in such a folder, even though it's not clearly required: JRiver did save an img and a sidecar in each movie folder.
It must be similar with a bmdv file.

[8139david]

I'm glad to report I have found a quick solution using PowerShell on Windows  

Goal: import physical dvds into JRiver's catalog, then use JRiver to get cover art and more information about each movie.
Context: do that using an existing excell spreadsheet containing at least Name and Year information.

First steps using PowerShell:
Within a given folder, automatically
- Create a "Name - Year" folder for each movie, using the spreadsheet
- Copy into it a VIDEO_TS folder containing a VIDEO_TS.ifo file (taken from an arbitrary dvd)

Next steps using JRiver:
- Import the created folders into JRiver
- Get movie & TV information
- Correct the erroneous or missing data by hand

Here is the script for the first steps:

Code: [Select]

$csv = Import-Csv dvds.csv
foreach ($line in $csv) {
    $newname = $line.name + " - " + $line.year
    new-item -name $newname -type directory
    copy-item VIDEO_TS -destination $newname -recurse
}
Remarks:
- The first line of the spreasheet (dvds.csv) must have names for each field, including "name" and "year" where appropriate.
- The dvds.csv file is obtained within excell by chosing "save as" and select .csv as the format.

For blurays it's the same, except that the folder to be copied is named BDMV and it contains a index.bdmv file taken from an arbitrary bluray.

[8139david]

What if one wants to keep more information from the dvds.csv spreadsheet (eg Director, Genre, etc)? One could:
- put in the VIDEO_TS folder not only a VIDEO_TS.ifo file but also a dummy VIDEO_TS_ifo_JRSidecar.xml file (or create the latter on the fly)
- populate its tags from those of the spreadsheet dvds.csv, using the export-clixml function

I haven't found the exact code for that. But PowerShell has a lot of useful functions for that.
For instance, here is a quick way to convert a csv fil into a xml file:

Code: [Select]

Import-CSV dvds.csv | Export-CliXML dvds.xml
This post seems quite useful to understand better how to use such functions:
http://www.powershellmagazine.com/2014/09/09/using-the-convertfrom-string-cmdlet-to-parse-structured-text/

About PowerShell: http://ss64.com/links/pslinks.html
List of PowerShell commands: http://ss64.com/ps/

[AndrewFG]

I noticed that MC has the capability to "Import Playlist" from (among other things) "My Movies XML file".

It seems that there is an app https://www.mymovies.dk/ which apparently allows you to catalog your movies offline, then export its library as XML, and then import that into MC..

Maybe somebody from JRiver can explain it further ??

[8139david]

Can you import a movie database (csv, xml, ...) in JRiver, so that it incorporates each movie into its own library?
And under which conditions can you do so?
(NB: For various reasons, people may already have such an external database, which they would like to integrate into JRiver.)

[thecrow]

I noticed that MC has the capability to "Import Playlist" from (among other things) "My Movies XML file".
It seems that there is an app https://www.mymovies.dk/ which apparently allows you to catalog your movies offline, then export its library as XML, and then import that into MC..
Maybe somebody from JRiver can explain it further ??

I noticed this too and already have my DVD collection in My Movies.
But after exporting from My Movies as XML and using Import Playlist in MC all it does in import the xml file as an object and does not parse the contents.
Obviously I am either doing something wrong or misunderstanding the purpose of this feature.

[AndrewFG]

I noticed this too and already have my DVD collection in My Movies.
But after exporting from My Movies as XML and using Import Playlist in MC all it does in import the xml file as an object and does not parse the contents.
Obviously I am either doing something wrong or misunderstanding the purpose of this feature.

Split to another thread https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=102843.0

[8139david]

Better ask this as a separate question

[8139david]

Concerning dummy files for movies

Importing a blank text file (eg one called Tokyo Story.txt) fails.
But if it contains at least one character, it works.
It's then imported as Data.

Using Tag, one can easily set the Media Type of a bunch of selected text files as Video.
Then set its Media Sub Type as Movie.
Then do a "Get Movie and TV information".

So that's one way to proceed if one doesn't want to have a .ifo file into VIDEO_TS folder for each dummy dvd.

(One can even change the File Type of the text file within JRiver. It first appears as .txt. But it can be changed to anything, eg .iso)

PS: However, it doesn't store a sidecar with the file.
That's a bit worrisome, if for some reason the library is corrupted or lost and one needs to reimport the files.

PPS: It works if the text file is given a .vob extension from the start, eg: Tokyo Story.vob
Then it's directly imported as Video. Just need to Tag it as Movie. Then Get Movie and TV info.
Then a sidecar can be exported: Tokyo Story_vob_JRSidecar.xml.

[jmone]

FYI - I've started dev on a little Util called the Data Fiddler that will let you import data from a Spreadsheet into MC (including Dummy Files).

[AndrewFG]

It works if the text file is given a .vob extension from the start, eg: Tokyo Story.vob
But if it contains at least one character, it works.
Then it's directly imported as Video. Just need to Tag it as Movie. Then Get Movie and TV info.
Then a sidecar can be exported: Tokyo Story_vob_JRSidecar.xml.

Coool. I tried this and it works great. Many thanks for the tip.

• I have all my DVDs and BluRays cataloged in the CollectorZ Movie Collector application.
• I exported the titles of all my movies from CollectorZ Movie Collector to a flat text file.
• I wrote a program¹⁾ to read each entry in the flat file and in the same folder create a dummy VOB file for each title having the name "[title].VOB" and containing the text "[title]".
• In MC I imported the folder containing those dummy VOB files; MC automatically tagged all the imported dummy VOB files as Media-type = Video.
• In MC I selected all of those imported dummy VOB files, pushed the Tag command button, and set Media- Sub Type = Movie on all of them.
• In MC with the imported dummy VOB files still selected, Right Click and select the Get Movie and TV info command.
• Let it run..

Using the above steps, (including the time I spent writing my program to create the dummy VOB files), I was able to import just under 500 DVDs and BluRays into MC in about 2..3 hours.
The Get Movie and TV info function is not exactly stellar in finding the right match for all movies (not as good as CollectorZ), so I had to spend another 2..3 hours manually cleaning up the bad imports.

¹⁾ EDIT:  You can download the dummy file builder application here   http://www.whitebear.ch/downloads/DummyFileBuilder.zip

 

[8139david]

FYI - I've started dev on a little Util called the Data Fiddler that will let you import data from a Spreadsheet into MC (including Dummy Files).

Thanks! I'll try it soon, probably tonight

[8139david]

By the way, for dummy video files, it also works nicely if the dummy file is given a .m2ts extension.
Useful to distinguish dummy dvds (with .vob extension) and dummy blurays (with .m2ts extension).

[8139david]

What if one wants to keep more information from the dvds.csv spreadsheet (eg Director, Genre, etc)? One could:
- put in the VIDEO_TS folder not only a VIDEO_TS.ifo file but also a dummy VIDEO_TS_ifo_JRSidecar.xml file (or create the latter on the fly)
- populate its tags from those of the spreadsheet dvds.csv, using the export-clixml function

I haven't found the exact code for that. But PowerShell has a lot of useful functions for that.
For instance, here is a quick way to convert a csv fil into a xml file:

Code: [Select]

Import-CSV dvds.csv | Export-CliXML dvds.xml

So with PowerShell, once one has obtained the database dvds.xml, it should be very easy to create a JRSidecar for each dummy dvd.
That would be useful if one already has a lot of information on a spreadsheet about one's dvds. Then one creates a dummy file for each dvd and an accompanying JRSidecar file. Then Import fills the information for each dvd into JR's library.

[8139david]

I just realized how to import a mpl playlist for several movies within JRiver
See this post: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=102843.msg714506#msg714506
The key is that the Media Network has to be running.

This solves all problems, once you have such a playlist.
This mpl playlist is an xml playlist with an additional MPL header (second line and last line, cf attached pic).

And to get it, you can proceed as suggested in the post just above: use PowerShell to convert a csv file to an xml file.
JRiver will ignore fields whose names do not correspond to internal fields.
So starting from an Excell spreadsheet, say, just be sure the first line contains the names of fields, and some of these names correspond to JRiver's library fields.
Save you excell file as csv.
With PowerShell (or other) convert it into xml.
Add the missing MPL header.
Import, you're done.

[8139david]

The idea is good, but the above code repeated here doesn't give you an xml file resembling a mpl playlist:

Code: [Select]

Import-CSV dvds.csv | Export-CliXML dvds.xmlSo a more complicated PowerShell code is needed for that.

PS: Once one had found the proper code, one could use this script to create an exe file:
https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/PS2EXE-Convert-PowerShell-9e4e07f1

[jmone]

Hopefully Data Fiddler does all this for you now!

[8139david]

Many thanks, jmone, it works!
See this post who sums it up:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=102906.msg714653#msg714653