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[benn600]

What are my options for storing DVD tags within Media Center?  With ~650 DVDs and 3 commonly used (5 total) MC databases, I'm having difficulty creating a good procedure for keeping our DVD collection up to date across the board.  I've asked about this a few times before but don't remember any extremely useful responses...nothing that solved the problem.

1. Auto import appears to destroy tags in DVDs always.
2. I have to use Fill Properties From Filename...on all ~5 databases.
3. #2 means I get Name and Genre based on my folder naming structure.  I don't know how any other fields can be saved.  I would love to utilize "Episode" and store episode titles for television DVDs but if it doesn't seamlessly carry over to the three main user databases then what's the point?  I could easily spend several hours adding episode names for all our television DVDs and:
   a) Auto import would likely destroy them.
   b) They would have to somehow be "saved" and imported into the other MC databases.

It appears to me that there just isn't a good system for storing tag information in DVD files.  Most standalone media files have great tagging abilities.  Standalone files are great at tagging and DVDs are great at menus, extra audio/video tracks, subtitles, etc.

[raym]

Someone may have already covered this with you but have you explored copying the MC db to all clients? What I mean is,

1. import your DVDs on your server and setup everything the way you like.
2. when you're done, plublish (copy) the db to each of your clients.

There's a lot of discussion on this on both the wiki and on Interact. You can automate the "publishing" in many ways. For example, I've written a script for each client which:

1. stops MC if it's running
2. copies the server instance of the db to the local client
3. starts MC

I basically run this whenever I want the latest copy of the database. Make sense?

Like I said, there's loads of info for this on the forum. Glynor in particular has some excellent free scripts for this you may like to make use of.

Cheers.

[Alex B]

1. Auto import appears to destroy tags in DVDs always.

This doesn't happen to me. In my experience Auto-import rereads the file contents and replaces certain field values with the default values only if the file path has changed (in this case the VIDEO_TS folder contents are imported as a new library entry) or if the last modification date has changed (when "Update for external changes" is enabled).

... b) They would have to somehow be "saved" and imported into the other MC databases.

It appears to me that there just isn't a good system for storing tag information in DVD files.  Most standalone media files have great tagging abilities.  Standalone files are great at tagging and DVDs are great at menus, extra audio/video tracks, subtitles, etc.

It isn't just DVD Videos. Only a few video container file types can store file tags and currently MC supports only WMV tag writing.

I wonder if you have forgotten the MPL system already.

You can save all library fields in an MPL file. For example: select the file folder in MC tree > Video > Disk Location and do File > Export Playlist... (select mpl in the options)

You can apply the tag values back to a library file (or files) simply by importing the MPL with the File > Import Playlist... tool (select "Common playlist types" in the "Files of type" box).

I always create an mpl file after I have tagged a bunch or videos. Normally I store one mpl in each "movie" folder or if the folder contains several video items like recorded TV series episodes I store an MPL that contains them all. When I save a folder specific MPL file I use the "relative paths" option and the file will work from any location if it is kept in the same folder with the video files or VIDEO_TS subfolder. This makes possible to restore the tags after moving a video folder outside MC.

In addition, I periodically save an MPL file which contains all video files in the root of my video location.


EDIT

Feature request: a "sidecar file" option for untaggable file types.

It would be great if MC could automatically create and maintain an MPL file in the file folder. It would then also update the file when tags are changed.

MC could have an option for doing this whenever the file type is known to be not able to hold tags.