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[Ser_Renely]

Hi, I am coming from using KODI for a long while and wanted to give JRiver a go, since I liked it when I first tried it years ago.

Overall I am relatively lazy learning new things, but I am looking for some suggestions for some of the issues I have run into, hoping to get me over the initial hump.

1) Cover art on movies is not populating.  I gather it is because my image files do not have the exact same name as the .mkv file?  What would be the easiest way to fix this...I have a lot of files...hundreds. In KODI I used EMber media manager and it made .TBN files etc...  Each movie is a folder and has the mkv file within it as well as fan art, posters etc...

2) TV naming episodes I have used the format S01e01-02-03-04 doesn't seem MC likes that.  Suggestions, best way dealing with this?

3) I still have a few .iso files kicking around on certain movies/tv  best way to deal with these?

4) watching stuff on my tablet, best way?

Thank you,
Ser

[jachin99]

I was like you when I migrated from kodi, and i figured out pretty quickly that I'm not saving myself any work by going with a paid program.  JRiver does a few things better than kodi but you will have to read up, and see how the software works, like any other program.  To answer a few of your questions,

1.)Like Kodi, JRiver stores all the info for a file in that file's folder so, I have a folder for each media file.  In JRiver, find the file you want, right click and press get Movie and TV info.  This will bring up a box that asks you what database you want to use.  Pick your database, and JRiver finds your cover art and description. 

2.) JRiver is famous for its tagging abilities.  Instead of naming the tv shows after episdoes or seasons, if I'm reading your post right, try using tags instead.  There are quite a few different tag fields including, season numbers, episode numbers media types, and media subtypes.  I bring up Media sub type tags because they determine whether your file will be displayed as a movie, or a TV show. 

JRiver takes almost as much work as Kodi, and like their forums, you have to ask informed questions.  Good luck, I hope I answered your questions.

[Ser_Renely]

Thanks for the response.

1) Easy enough for getting the info...I take it you have to manually change the cover art if you don't like the one at the time of creation? Any fan art options?

2) Any tips on TV files that have more than one episode in them?  i.e Cowboy Bebop S01E01-02-03-04.mkv  I can't seem to sort that out. It only gives me one episode option.  I tried changing the episode tag to 1-4 or 1 2 3 4 but no joy.  Still thinks it is one episode.

thank you.

[CountryBumkin]

You would want your episodes saved with individual file names. Assuming that "Cowboy Bebop" is the name of the series ....
Something like:
Cowboy Bebop S01E01.mkv, Cowboy Bebop S01E02.mkv, Cowboy Bebop S01E03.mkv, etc.   

You can't have multiple episodes in the same single mkv file if you want to be able access them individually, AFAIK (there is no menu available for mkv). When you rip to MKV you should be getting a individual file for each episode.

In Standard View>Video>Files  you would want to display those columns for the fields "Series", "Season", "Episode" and "Name".
That would show the Series as "Cowboy Bebop" and the Season would be "1" for all, and the Episodes would show as "1", "2", "3", etc.

Then when you run the "Get TV & Movie Info" Tool, it will look up the metadata for Cowboy Bebop and add the correct episode name and description for each episode.

The Series will get it's own cover art (one Cover Art for the entire series for each Season). The individual episodes will get an image (screen shot) for each episode.

[Ser_Renely]

Thanks for the response. That is easy enough.

It is unfortunate that MC can't deal with multiple episodes in a file, I have hundreds of shows with multiple episodes per file(per dvd/BR)...I don't have the time to deal with breaking them all up. I guess this is a deal breaker....

[CountryBumkin]

There is "particles" https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Particles
Maybe that is an easier solution for you since your shows are already ripped.

[jachin99]

Thanks for the response.

1) Easy enough for getting the info...I take it you have to manually change the cover art if you don't like the one at the time of creation? Any fan art options?

2) Any tips on TV files that have more than one episode in them?  i.e Cowboy Bebop S01E01-02-03-04.mkv  I can't seem to sort that out. It only gives me one episode option.  I tried changing the episode tag to 1-4 or 1 2 3 4 but no joy.  Still thinks it is one episode.

thank you.

I believe that you can change the cover art but the only databases available are TMDB, and Wikipedia so aside from whatever fanart is available on TMDB, you could maybe upload some of your existing Kodi fanart to Wikipedia??  You can also move them around once you get the folders sorted out.  Plugins aren't very big in JRiver, and its not really a community developed solution like kodi but I would say that most of the utilities out there for JRiver help with things like this.  Also, I would check in the third party plugins forum for tools but don't rely on their partial list at the top because there isn't much out there from that link.  Most of the add-on programs are geared towards media management. 

For remotes, your biggest three options, are Gizmo, which is free, JRemote, which is ten bucks, and EOS, which I think has a free, and paid version.  I use EOS but there is nothing that compares to yatze.  JRIver is trying to get into home automation, and there is a media remote portion of that but its still a work in progress, and their app has to be side loaded.  I believe all of these options let you view your library on your various devices, or play them to another DLNA device.

[Ser_Renely]

There is "particles" https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Particles
Maybe that is an easier solution for you since your shows are already ripped.

Thanks, although an option, I think that will turn into far too much work for mass amounts of files.

I remember trying MC 18 and I think I ran into a similar problem, long time ago and a bad memory, but I was thinking an new option would have been implemented to handle that.

Too bad

[jachin99]

One more thing to consider is that I have gotten Kodi to read my JRiver library so there is probably a way for JRiver to read Kodi's library also. 

[Ser_Renely]

One more thing to consider is that I have gotten Kodi to read my JRiver library so there is probably a way for JRiver to read Kodi's library also.

Hmmm, that is interesting.

A bit stunned that it can't handle a single file with multiple episodes from a show easily.  Ultimately that prevents me from purchasing JRiver.  Shame.

Thanks for all the help.  I will still mess around with it for a bit, as some of the features are great, but back to Kodi.

[JimH]

You could use Particles to separate episodes into virtual files.

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Particles

jmone built a tool called Chapterfy to do this automatically for Blu-ray, I believe.

[blgentry]

A bit stunned that it can't handle a single file with multiple episodes from a show easily.  Ultimately that prevents me from purchasing JRiver.  Shame.

I understand that this is how you've chosen to rip/download your media.  But I think your reaction is strange.  Your idea of how you want to use/store episodes, as multiples in a single file, is pretty uncommon.  I wouldn't expect very many platforms to support the idea of multiple meta-data entries per file.  Maybe I'm the strange one! 

It just seems a tiny bit unfair for you to declare that you are "stunned" that MC doesn't support this unusual feature that represents a data storage paradigm that almost nobody uses.

I mean no insult to your decisions or your statements.  I'm just adding some perspective here.

Good luck with your home audio/video quest.

Brian.

[Ser_Renely]

I understand that this is how you've chosen to rip/download your media.  But I think your reaction is strange.  Your idea of how you want to use/store episodes, as multiples in a single file, is pretty uncommon.  I wouldn't expect very many platforms to support the idea of multiple meta-data entries per file.  Maybe I'm the strange one! 

It just seems a tiny bit unfair for you to declare that you are "stunned" that MC doesn't support this unusual feature that represents a data storage paradigm that almost nobody uses.

I mean no insult to your decisions or your statements.  I'm just adding some perspective here.

Good luck with your home audio/video quest.

Brian.

For sure its not the most popular method, but a group of people use it.

Part of my reaction is this because it limits a group of people from using the program unless they change the format of their media.  Also because MC does certain things so well and then limited support for another.  I also don't think Multi-episode files would require too much to implement, but on this, I truly don't know the inner workings of MC, so it is naive for me to say that.  I think almost every other media program I have used, supported it.

[Ser_Renely]

You could use Particles to separate episodes into virtual files.

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Particles

jmone built a tool called Chapterfy to do this automatically for Blu-ray, I believe.

Thanks I will look into Chapterfy