INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => Media Center 15 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: darichman on April 30, 2010, 12:03:55 am
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I'm
a bit obsessive-compulsive when it comes to having useful and correct information about the media in my library. I thought I'd share some useful places I've found over the years to get some of this information. Maybe others can do the same? Please keep it to sharing links to legitimate sources of information or coverart (not media download sites)
MUSIC
Popular Music
Allmusic (http://allmusic.com/)
Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/)
I've found you can get most of what you want for mainstream artists and albums with these two. Wikipedia might seem obvious but is a great source of discographies for artists in general and has tracklists + basic info about the release of an album as well. Very often it will have composers if you're interested in tagging that information too.
Allmusic is more standardised and has more useful album genres. If you're keen, you can also make use of their styles, moods and themes which can make interesting smartlists. Good reviews and artist bios as well.
If you're stuck, amazon will also usually have basic tracklists and sometimes contributing artists if you're lucky.
Classical Music
Arkivmusic (http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/main.jsp)
cduniverse (http://www.cduniverse.com/)
It's always been hard to find reliable information on classical recordings - they very often have generic album titles and mainstream sites usually only list the composer and not other contributing artists. Arkivmusic is great - it lists detailed information about the recording itself (release and recording dates, label and catalog) as well as information about contributing artists (conductors, orchestra/ensemble, chorus and often individual performers). cduniverse does this for many (but not all) albums. Both websites often have extended information like genre and period, as well as dates written and countries for many recordings.
Both are searchable by composer, conductor, label and catalog etc which makes tracking your recording down just that little bit easier!
Soundtracks & Scores
SoundtrackCollector (http://www.soundtrackcollector.com/)
Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/)
I hate it when I get metadata from yadb or cddb for a soundtrack and the artist comes up as "The Matrix" or "The Lion King". I'm sorry, but these aren't artists! Film titles can go in another field. Soundtrack collector is the most complete database I've found so far for movie soundtracks (although cast album collector beats it for musical films). It usually lists performing artists (when present) as well as the composer. For many movies wikipedia will link to a soundtrack recording where one is available and this can often have useful information.
Cast Recordings
CastalbumCollector (http://castalbumcollector.com/database/)
Internet Broadway Database (IBDB) (http://www.ibdb.com/)
Broadway World (http://broadwayworld.com/bwidb/) (Just Broadway)
Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/)
Musicals can be complicated to tag as you have multiple contributing artists - the Composer, Lyricist, Performers and then also the roles they play. I put the performers in the [Artist] field (or the composer if no-one's singing). Sometimes you'll pull metadata from yadb/cddb with Jean Valjean or Simba as the artist... I put roles in a separate [Artist Roles] field if I think the information will be useful - eg I can find Eponine's songs from Les Miserables if I can't remember the name of them :)
The first two will usually give you most of what you need - CastAlbumCollector has very comprehensive info about the recording itself + the tracklist, but won't give track specific information. You can use IBDB and wikipedia to identify individual artists. Also, I've never really used the site itself much, but I've found rateyourmusic (http://rateyourmusic.com/) often has the individual artists for each track when other sites won't.
Game Soundtracks
Video Game Music Database (VGMDb) (http://vgmdb.net/)
You won't find a more complete database online for video game music than this one. Full tracklists, album info, contributing artists and coverart.
Album Art
Album Art Exchange (http://www.albumartexchange.com/covers.php)
Google Images (http://images.google.com)
Just off the top of my head...
VIDEO
Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/) naturally has a lot of info on all these categories. It's just less standardised than the dedicated databases listed below.
Allmovie (http://www.allmovie.com/) & IMDb (http://www.imdb.com/) cover all categories here, but both are less reliable for series.
- As a general rule, I find IMDb (http://www.imdb.com/) to be most useful for credits and release details. The Top 250 / votes fields are also great for ranking which of your movies are popular :)
- Allmovie (http://www.allmovie.com/) has really excellent extended data like tones, themes, keywords. Their descriptions and reviews are professionally written (and generally much better than IMDb which can be hit & miss in this regard).
TheMovieDb (http://www.themoviedb.org/) and TheTVDb (http://thetvdb.com/) are both open databases (with an API designed for home theatre programs just like MC!). Both have very active communities, and are used in programs like MediaPortal and XBMC. The big attraction with these is the banner / poster / custom art system which can be accessed by your home theatre program through the API.
Film
Allmovie (http://www.allmovie.com/)
IMDb (http://www.imdb.com/)
TheMovieDb (http://www.themoviedb.org/)
Television/Series
Allmovie (http://www.allmovie.com/)
IMDb (http://www.imdb.com/)
TheTVDb (http://thetvdb.com/)
Anime
Anime News Network (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/)
Allmovie (http://www.allmovie.com/)
IMDb (http://www.imdb.com/)
TheTVDb (http://thetvdb.com/)
Not really that into anime, but all of these are useful. Anime News Network gives very comprehensive credits + episode lists.
Posters
MoviePosterDb (http://www.movieposterdb.com/) (you pay for points but it's the best one I've found)
IMPAwards (http://www.impawards.com/)
TheMovieDb (http://www.themoviedb.org/) (posters, banners, custom art)
TheTVDb (http://thetvdb.com/) (posters, banners, custom art)
And that's all I can really think of! Any other useful gems out there?
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Great summary! Thanks for sharing your obsessive-compulsiveness. ;)
Here are few additions for movie information. To create links, cut & paste the Code: using "Paste link information from clipboard" in Manage Links...
Allmusic (http://www.allmusic.com) is also useful for finding soundtracks. Search for the movie title, and then look for "Original Soundtrack" in the Artist column of the search results.
<Link version="1.1">
<Item Name="Name">Soundtrack</Item>
<Item Name="Filter">[Media Type]=[Video]</Item>
<Item Name="Action">2</Item>
<Item Name="Base URL">http://www.allmusic.com</Item>
<Item Name="Search URL">http:////www.allmusic.com//cg//amg.dll?p=amg&srch_db=pop&srch_type=pop_album&stype=121&x=31&y=9&samples=1&srvsrch1=Hexify([Name])</Item>
</Link>
MoTechPosters (http://www.motechposters.com) is a somewhat obscure Swedish site that often seems to have a good poster when others do not. I turn to this one when IMPAwards (http://www.impawards.com/) fails.
<Link version="1.1">
<Item Name="Name">Posters</Item>
<Item Name="Filter">[Media Type]=[Video]</Item>
<Item Name="Action">2</Item>
<Item Name="Base URL">http://www.motechposters.com</Item>
<Item Name="Search URL">http:////www.motechposters.com//search//?cx=partner-pub-1232145664289710%3Aleabr0-srj4&cof=FORID%3A10&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Hexify([Name])&sa=Search&siteurl=www.motechposters.com%2F#948</Item>
</Link>
MRQE (http://www.mrqe.com) (Movie Review Query Engine) is great for finding reviews. I'm generally happy with my imported Allmovie (http://www.allmovie.com/) reviews, but this is perfect for finding "second opinions."
<Link version="1.1">
<Item Name="Name">Reviews</Item>
<Item Name="Filter">[Media Type]=[Video]</Item>
<Item Name="Action">2</Item>
<Item Name="Base URL">http://www.mrqe.com</Item>
<Item Name="Search URL">http:////www.mrqe.com//lookup?Hexify([Name])</Item>
</Link>
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Great script, thanks
I would like to do the same using AMG this time to look up classical music (composition/composer)
How do I obtain the correct syntax?
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BTW, this is exactly what I see the feature of Notes in MC to be perfect for.
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BTW, this is exactly what I see the feature of Notes in MC to be perfect for.
Did you use Notes for it? Any issues?
Thanks for the great list of links!
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Actually I've started to build a bit of a database of expressions (including link expressions) using the notes section... Mine's a bit messy, but overall it works quite well - I'll update with progress and post some of the link expressions when they're done (although some of mine use custom fields, so not sure if they'll be useful for others?)
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I would like to do the same using AMG this time to look up classical music (composition/composer)
How do I obtain the correct syntax?
The trick for this or any other web search is to discover the search URL the site uses to do any search you specify. The problem in many cases (like the AMG sites) is these aren't normally visible. My preferred solution is to run the following "change POSTs to GETs" bookmarklet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookmarklet) so the search URL is revealed when the search is executed.
javascript:(function()%7Bvar%20x,i;%20x%20=%20document.forms;%20for%20(i%20=%200;%20i%20%3C%20x.length;%20++i)%20x%5Bi%5D.method=%22get%22;%20alert(%22Changed%20%22%20+%20x.length%20+%20%22%20forms%20to%20use%20the%20GET%20method.%20%20After%20submitting%20a%20form%20from%20this%20page,%20you%20should%20be%20able%20to%20bookmark%20the%20result.%22);%20%7D)();
Save this as a bookmark/favourite. Prepare a test search at the target site—for example, an AMG "advanced search" for a classical music composer. When it's ready to go, but before hitting "search," run the bookmarklet. It will confirm what it has done. Then, when the search is executed, the search URL will appear. Creating a functioning search link is then usually as easy as replacing the test values used with the appropriate MC variables (e.g., replace test data "mozart" with "Hexify([Composer])").
This technique seems to work for most sites that require it. It's not applicable to a few sites that use Flash or something to run searches. The most common problems are those that are caused by the search engine itself—and occur not matter how the search is executed. Unfortunately, the AMG sites are good examples of this. A fun test of the stupidity of it's engine is to search for the title of the page you're looking at, and watch it fail to find it (or lose it in a sea of irrelevant items).
Another problem with the AMG search engine (and perhaps the cause of it's "stupidity") is it's handling of spaces and "&". It's not a matter of using Hexify()—that only seems to make matters worse. I'm having better luck with Replace()—for example: use Replace(Replace([Artist],/ ,|),/&,and) instead of [Artist] (similarly for album, work, etc.).
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I tried a Firefox plug-in revealing the headers send.
Your script did the trick much better
Thanks a lot
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I use http://www.allmusic.com (http://www.allmusic.com) and http://rateyourmusic.com/ (http://rateyourmusic.com/).
I use http://rateyourmusic.com/ (http://rateyourmusic.com/) mostly, the layout allows faster finding of information.
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To load an album art (folder pic) I often use the album art downloader program you find here:
http://album-art.sourceforge.net/ (http://album-art.sourceforge.net/)
A stable piece of good free software, really to recommend! Searches at 30 different server locations
To update tags of all sorts automatically there is a very good program around, made by a german aficionado. You can load track names from a text file too and you can program macros yourself to streamline your track name structure. Supports all kinds of music formats, not only MP3 of course. Recommend it very much!
http://www.mp3tag.de/en/ (http://www.mp3tag.de/en/)
To streamline track names (eliminate strings, fill in string parts etc pp) I use a very nice program called 'Rename Master' you find here:
http://www.joejoesoft.com/ (http://www.joejoesoft.com/)
Makes life really easier!
Thanks
Martin