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How it works
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Getting good results using Media Companion for scraping movie details.
There are many ways that a person may store their media on a system, but Media Companion
supports two methods that will make it suitable for most people.
1. File Method - The file method uses only the filename to search for a correct movie, eg:
'D:\Movies\Star Trek.avi'
2. Folder Method - The folder method ignores the filename and uses the folder name in
order to identify the movie, eg:
'D:\Movies\Star Trek\whatever.avi'
In both instances the only folder Media Companion needs to know about is 'D:\Movies'
The default setting uses the File Method, if you wish to use the folder method then be sure to
select this in the movie preferences.
Media Companion uses IMDB to collect movie information, and using either of the above
methods is fairly accurate with about 8 out of 10 movies being scraped correctly.
The accuracy of the scraper can be increased using a couple of methods. The easiest is by using
the year within the folder of filename. eg
'D:\Movies\Star Trek (2009).avi'
or
'D:\Movies\Star Trek (2009)\whatever.avi'
The year should be inside parenthesis, and will increase accuracy to about 90%.
100% accuracy is possible using the IMDB ID in either the filename, or an accompanying .nfo file.
The IMDB ID can be found using IMDB, the IMDB url for 'Star Trek (2009)' is
'http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0796366/'
I've highlighted the ID bold, in the case of the 'Star Trek' Movie, it is 'tt0796366'
Using the IMDB ID within the file or folder name.
1. The file or folder can contain the ID, using this method overrules all other methods. eg.
'D:\Movies\whatever (tt0796366).avi'
or
'D:\Movies\whatever(tt0796366)\whatever.avi'
Using the IMDB ID within an .nfo file.
The nfo must be named the same as the media file, if the nfo file contains the IMDB ID then the
name is not important.
eg.
'whatever.avi'
'whatever.nfo'
The nfo file is simply a text file, and the contents are not important. As long as an IMDB ID is
located within the text somewhere, Media Companion will find it, and use that ID.
Clean Filenames
All of the above methods, with the exception of those that use the IMDB ID, have clean filenames.
There maybe instances when Media Companion encounters less useful filenames.
eg
Star.Trek.720p.Blu Ray.DTS.x264.mkv
Media Companion checks for matches for things such as 720, or Blu Ray, and will crop the
filename of anything after a matching term. In the above example, the filename would be cropped
to become:
'Star.Trek.'
The final period would then be removed and the period between the words would be replaced
with a space, Media Companion would then search for the movie 'Star Trek'.