INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => Media Center 11 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: Tim Harvey on July 05, 2005, 01:14:52 am
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I've always used MC for my Music Library, but it has support for images and video as well.
Is there any way for it to lookup imdb data for video files? It would be nice if it would fill in a video database in the same fashion as music files, perhaps by searching IMDB for a movie matching the filename, or even placing the IMDB number in the filename of a movie in a specified syntax.
Tim
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That would be swanky, but pretty difficult. There are SO many different "rips" of video files out there, the hash database would be a nightmare.
However, if you use FireFox as your browser, you can just add a Bookmark called "IMDB Quicksearch" and then add this info to the Bookmark (Manage Bookmarks --> Find the bookmark you made --> Properties):
Location: http://us.imdb.com/Find?%s
Keyword: imdb
Then, you can just type "imdb requiem for a dream" into FireFox's address bar and IMDB will come up with requiem's info all nice and preloaded. That's how I tag my video files nice and easily. Of course, it's easier with my 2 x 21-inch monitors! ;)
PS. Adding one for TV Tome would be just as easy. The search string would be:
http://www.tv.com/search.php?type=11&stype=all&qs=%s&x=0&y=0
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Actually, I was more looking for a feature of MC to use IMDB to automatically perform lookups and populate the library database.
I use some other apps that do it (XboxMediaCenter, MythTV) and it works quite well simply based off the filename. It would work even better if for example '(IMDB#xzy)' was present in the filename.
Perhaps this is a feature a plugin could handle? I haven't looked at the plugin capabilities of MC, but if you can gain access to the database to add/edit items in it, a plugin should be easy to provide that would do this.
Tim
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As a suggestion, you might post the same request on the Plugin Board, in the thread for the plugin "aTagger". The developer, who goes by the name "@l@n", but who may in fact answer to "Alan", is working with several users on his plugin, which goes out to AMG in the way you want to go out to IMDB. You might try some skillful/subtle pestering, he seems like a hard worker who could get it done.
Happily, I'm ignorant of all the complexities Glynor mentioned, so I have no idea of how big a task it might be that we're trying to lay on poor @l@n. But if that capability comes to MC, along with the ability to play Nero mp4s internally, then I thing you're really busting a hole in the sky.
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If you just did a filename based search, you wouldn't have the differing hash problem I mentioned (though you could get invalid tags if the file was named incorrectly -- which happens a lot). I suppose the difficulty level would depend mostly on how flexible the information returned by IMDB is... It isn't really designed (as far as I know) to be filtered and re-used, but it could be possible with enough of a PERL master.
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So you'll give it a try?
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it could be possible with enough of a PERL master.
Not I, my friend, not I.
I know a little about what would need to be done to parse the output from IMDB. How to go about it? No clue at all...