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[park]

I know that others have found ways of getting movie posters for their files using other software and then importing them into MC. But my biggest MC christmas wish is for there to be a way to ookup posters in MC.

It could even be as simple as a link in the link bar that would lookup the poster for a selected file and give you the option to download it and apply it as cover art. It doesnt have to fully blown yadb right away.

I'll put out the mince pies and go to bed extra early and see what i find waiting for me (every night until christmas)

[Mr ChriZ]

I'd love to see this too. 

[park]

Actually I tried using the IMDB and google links last night, and it is close to working already. If you use imdb and then click on the movie poster MC asks you if you want to apply that image as cover art to the selected file. The one problem is that if you say yes, it doesnt actually do it. I guess that's a bug. One more thing is that the resolution of the images on IMDB is pretty poor. Still, it's ok for thumbnail quality, and better than the rows of movie studio logos that I have to look at at the moment.

[park]

This site looks pretty good:

http://www.movieposterdb.com/

Any helpful souls out there that could tell me how I could make a link in MC to use the [name] of a file to search that site?

[rick.ca]

This site looks pretty good

Except you have to pay. Okay for a serious collector, but perhaps not if you just want thumbnails for thousands of movies. The search URL is: http://www.movieposterdb.com/browse/search?title=[name]

Not so good, but free: http://www.trailerfan.com/movie/[name]

Or, if you want to make your own from a DVD cover: http://www.cdcovers.cc/search/dvd/[name]

Or, there's always Google: http://www.google.com/images?q=[name]

Don't ask me how to use these in the program. MC relies on IE to do that, and I can't use IE without risk of my head exploding. I open them in Firefox, where they work fine. To use posters in MC, I just save it "beside" the video file—the same name, with it's JPG extension—and it's found automatically.

[park]

All of those links just end up launching google in a new tab on my machine. Be great if they work though. Quite labor intensive but still.

[park]

Before I go ahead and start doing this one movie at a time for hundreds of movies, can I check something:

If I rename my movie files, will the cover art in the cover art folder (I have it set to use a central folder) be renamed too, so that it stays in synch with the files? That's how music album art works isnt it?

If a movie file gets removed from the library and reimported, will MC automatically use the poster instead of generating a thumbnail.

If MC ever does generate a thumbnail, will it overwrite the poster in the cover art directory?

Thanks.

[leezer3]

This is a slightly quick & dirty hack that I've been using for IMPAwards for a while now:

Code: [Select]

<Link version="1.1">
<Item Name="Name">IMPAwards</Item>
<Item Name="Filter"/>
<Item Name="Action">2</Item>
<Item Name="Base URL">http://www.impawards.com</Item>
<Item Name="Search URL">http:////www.google.co.uk//search?hl=en&amp;q=Hexify([Search])+site%3Aimpawards.com</Item>
</Link>
Cheers

-Leezer-

[park]

Thanks.

For some movies the art is being applied to multiple files at once. I thought it was for files which have the same album tag but that's not it. I cant seem to see the logic in it, but it's quite dangerous in that it overwrites a bunch of files I've previously downloaded art for.

[rick.ca]

All of those links just end up launching google in a new tab on my machine.

How are you using them? They work in Firefox and IE on my machine, so you must be trying to launch them inside MC. Change Action (in the Manage Links dialog) to "Open in external browser." "Open inside program" doesn't work at all for me. I don't know whether that's a bug, or just a consequence of me considering IE to be a big, nasty bug. 

Quite labor intensive but still.

I agree completely. That's why I use Personal Video Database to manage my videos. It automatically downloads information—including posters—from a variety of sources. I only use these links for sources it cannot download from—which is why I failed to mention the more obvious ones (following). Note I have used "Godfather" as an example, instead of the [name] variable you would use in MC.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=dvd&field-keywords=Godfather

http://www.google.com/search?q=allintitle:Godfather+poster+site:www.impawards.com&filter=0

[park]

Well, I spent a few hours doing it the hard way, and using google and MC's "Apply image as cover art to selected files" function, which by the way was very very convenient.

Now that I have hundreds of laboriously collected posters I'm a bit paranoid that they're all going to disapear. Can anyone answer my questions 4 posts up?

Leezer, I tried that link you pasted here, but that web page is a bit hit and miss. Lots of random posters on the page and it takes ages to pick out the one you actually searched for. It was faster just to use google images. Perhaps the quality wont be as good though.

[MrHaugen]

I'd also love to see automatic movie poster lookups.

There is a few ways of doing this today, but they are far away from being automatic.
Have you tried the way discribed by darichman? After the initial setup I belive it's only a matter of export, lookup and import.

[leezer3]

Well, I spent a few hours doing it the hard way, and using google and MC's "Apply image as cover art to selected files" function, which by the way was very very convenient.

Now that I have hundreds of laboriously collected posters I'm a bit paranoid that they're all going to disapear. Can anyone answer my questions 4 posts up?

Leezer, I tried that link you pasted here, but that web page is a bit hit and miss. Lots of random posters on the page and it takes ages to pick out the one you actually searched for. It was faster just to use google images. Perhaps the quality wont be as good though.

Depends
The main trouble is that they haven't implemented thier own search engine, so it's limited to the google crawling of the site.
It also depends on what you've got as your movie title, if you've abbreviated, results will be worse.

Quality is about the same anywhere, the advantage IMPAwards has is that it gets all the alternates (Foreign etc.), and quite often some of these look better.

Cheers

-Leezer-

[park]

How about this one:

www.themoviedb.org

Anyone have any ideas of how to make a search link for this site?

How about auto movie posters download for easter?

[rick.ca]

Code: [Select]

<Link version="1.1">
<Item Name="Name">MoviePosterDB</Item>
<Item Name="Filter">[Media Type]=[Video]</Item>
<Item Name="Action">0</Item>
<Item Name="Base URL">http://www.movieposterdb.com</Item>
<Item Name="Search URL">http:////www.movieposterdb.com//browse//search?title=[Name]</Item>
</Link>
But MoTechPosters is a much better source...

Code: [Select]

<Link version="1.1">
<Item Name="Name">MoTechPosters</Item>
<Item Name="Filter"/>
<Item Name="Action">0</Item>
<Item Name="Base URL">http:////www.google.com</Item>
<Item Name="Search URL">http:////www.google.com//custom?domains=posters.motechnet.com&amp;sa=Google+Search&amp;sitesearch=posters.motechnet.com&amp;q=[Name]</Item>
</Link>
As you can see, it uses Google for searching, but if your title is correct, it will be at the top of the list 90% of the time. More importantly, it offers only one poster per movie, and that poster is usually a good selection and of reasonable quality.

How about auto movie posters download for easter?

These sites illustrate three issues likely to apply to any poster download source accessed unilaterally:

1. User intervention is required to select from multiple movie title search hits and/or posters.

2. Changes to the design of the source site will "break" the download routine.

3. Access is not free, or is for personal use only (i.e., is not free to be pirated by a commercial program).