INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => Media Center 14 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: mike@wendlings.com on August 17, 2009, 12:43:17 am
-
Is there a database of cover art for movies anywhere? And if not, why not? The images you get from the file are most often useless. The cover from the video packaging would be much more useful. Seems it would be easy to extend the album cover art db to one for movies, no?
Thanks! ;D
-
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=dvd
http://www.impawards.com
http://www.motechposters.com
http://www.allcdcovers.com
http://www.movieposterdb.com
http://www.trailerfan.com
That should get you started. ;)
You can add search links to your links bar (see Tools - Links) using any of these sources.
-
When there's a lot of movies this is hardly a simple way of getting movie covers. What I would like to know is what J River is doing to meet the demands on Movies and Series data and cover art. I hope you aren't totally relying on the Personal Video Database plugin and similar, to do the job from here on and out. We would need eiter a good way of collecting info automatically from good sources, or we need to get our self's a database with similar data.
There's no way we can be tied up with a plugin that requires another program, importing/exporting and excel editing of data, for many years. That's a sure way to loose video centric customers in the long run imo.
-
When there's a lot of movies this is hardly a simple way of getting movie covers.
Of course not. I was just answering the question—these sites are, or include, databases of cover art for movies. As you well know, I use and recommend the best solution for getting cover art and video meta data...
I hope you aren't totally relying on the Personal Video Database plugin and similar, to do the job from here on and out.
...and I hope it drives you to distraction. As I predicted it would a year ago, it has proven to be a highly effective and efficient way to collect a wealth of video meta data and automatically feed it to MC. MC might eventually include something that satisfies those who aren't seriously interested in video information, but they'll never come close to something as complete and robust as the PVD/PvdImport solution. It's not for everyone, but I highly recommend it for anyone who doesn't want to wait a long time for something that won't be nearly as good.
-
I do not disagree, but I believe that most people would be satisfied if a good database was created with the most common fields used. If enough people start using it it might be about as good as any other service. A web crawler to dig up the data from other sites is also a possibility, but there might be legal problems as discussed before.
Anyway, I hope a more automatic solution is implemented soon. You can't expect all video and series watchers out there would want to set up the PVDB app, plugin and excel to do the job. I will my self, but I'd be much more comfortable with a built in solution.
-
Thanks for the replies. I am primarily interested in the "simple" tool that would automatically check my movie titles against a database of titles and add the appropriate cover art with no effort on my part, like we have for audio. For now, I'll check out the tool mentioned and see what I can get done.
I would agree that for the long run, a tool like I mention above would seem like an obvious need. The sooner the better. ;D
-
Anyway, I hope a more automatic solution is implemented soon. You can't expect all video and series watchers out there would want to set up the PVDB app, plugin and excel to do the job. I will my self, but I'd be much more comfortable with a built in solution.
I'm curious, what do you guys do for series? I'm very adamant about the quality of my cover art, and in the case of series/episode I have an entire process of selecting 'perfect' frames as cover art (even if that collides gracefully with the current stacking, one-cover-for-all behavior)
-
Hello MrHaugen
I am at the stage also of trying to put covers on my movies.
Painful to say the least downloading the files.
How does PVDB app, plugin and excel work?
I need an easier way to do this I have over 600 movies.
Cheers
-
How does PVDB app, plugin and excel work?
I'm not exactly sure how to do this my self. I will start using it soon, but have not looked at it yet.
I think it involves installing PVD application, MC's plugin, updating movies and series through PVD, exporting to a file, editing some with excel, and then importing to MC through the PVD plugin. I believe the biggest job is at the start, and some of the steps get automated after that. There's even talk about making this process a bit more automatic directly from the plugin, but I can't say anything for sure until I've tried it my self.
Have a look at this link: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=52145.0 (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=52145.0)
*Edit*
Updated to correct link.
-
[...]
I think it involves installing PVD application, MC's plugin, updating movies and series through PVD, exporting to a file, editing some with excel, and then importing to MC through the PVD [..]
Have a look at this link: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=51699.0 (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=51699.0)
Hi, just a couple of comments:
There is no Excel tinkering involved in the PvdImport work process...
And the above URL is actually a locked test log from the beta testing. The release post can be found here:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=52145.0 (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=52145.0)
I plan making a FAQ at some point, but for now you can probably find some solutions in this thread.
-
Another possibillity is My Movies. This program also collects the Movie data and covers automatically. From My Movies you can export your database to an XML file that can be directly imported into MC14. This is how I do it and it works really well.
TLS