Hello.
There's definitely a lot of interest for movie database integration. Two important things need to happen before this is realised...
WHERE DO WE GET THE DATA?
1. Hook up to a database. I don't think YADB would work for this - no one is going to type out all the information and submit it when sources like IMDb, AMG and others already exist, sorry. For this to work, J River would need to make a deal or hook into one of the existing databases.
HOW DO WE DISPLAY THE DATA?
2. Develop specific information views. Currently, most of MCs "view" capabilities surround "finding" the file you want... not viewing information about it. We'd need a way to display all the people and film data and synopsis for a particular film. While we're browsing.
In the meantime, we worked on a workaround earlier this year to at least get this info into MC. It takes a little bit to set up, but once it's done it's done, and you only need to a simple export/import to update your data when you get new movies.
As rick mentioned, you can use one of the free software alternatives out there to download the info and then export it to MPL. For those who don't know, MC can use MPL files to retrieve database information.
Thanks again to rick.ca for recommending PVD... it's clean, simple and performs what it does really well.
Get PVD and Pull Data from your preferred database1. Download Personal Video Database:
http://www.videodb.info/forum_en/index.php?action=down2. Import your videos: Tools > Scan Folders for New Movies > Select the folders your movies are in
3. The movies should now be imported in PVD in a list down the left hand side...
4. The titles, which will be used for lookup, will be based on the filenames, so you might need to clean up the titles if you have messy filenames (OR if you have a field in MC with the movie titles already, you can copy your MC film view into excel and then import this data into PVD: Tools > Import > Get movies from MS Excel)
5. Import metadata from your preferred database: Tools > Import > And then pick IMDb or AMG
6. To import images for your movies: Tools > Import > Get Poster from your choice (I like IMPAwards)
Rick.ca has posted some workarounds for getting the posters into MC easily:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=47538.msg325913#msg325913Set it up for ExportIn PVD, go to tools > preferences > plugins > plain text/export > add > (call it what you want) > and then copy and pase the following:
(i pulled the info from AMG, so my fields are named accordingly, but you can rename them to whatever you want)
%OPTIONS%
replace="&<->&"
replace="<<-><"
replace="><->>"
filter="MPL Files|*.mpl"
encoding="UTF8"
%OPTIONS%
%HEAD%
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<MPL Version="2.0" Title="ChrisRulz">
%HEAD%
<Item>
<Field Name="Filename">{%value=27}</Field>
<Field Name="AMG Year">{%value=5}</Field>
<Field Name="AMG Genres">{%value=44}</Field>
<Field Name="Themes">{%value=46}</Field>
<Field Name="AMG Synopsis">{%value=15}</Field>
<Field Name="MPAA">{%value=6}</Field>
<Field Name="Actors">{%value=52}</Field>
<Field Name="Director">{%value=53}</Field>
</Item>
%FOOT%
</MPL>
%FOOT%You can add as many entries of:
<Field Name="XXX">{%value=YY}</Field> as you want
(just replace my ones with the names of your fields)
Also, you can add replace=",<->;" to the template to replace commas with semicolons so genres and actors will import to list fields correctly. I prefer to leave it out and do this in MC (with Find and Replace) as some fields have actual commas in them (eg synopsis).
XXX is the name of the field in MC -- this has to match exactly or it won't import
YY is the two digit number PVD uses to refer to fields:
http://www.videodb.info/forum_en/index.php?topic=766.msg1293#msg1293Once you've picked the fields you want to import and saved the script, select the movie entries you want to export, go to tools > export > select your template and name the mpl file.
From MC, select File > Import Playlist > Open the MPL file
The appropriate fields should now be populated in MC.
For this to work properly, both the PVD and MC databases need to point to the correct path and filename for each movie file.
Hope that helps.
