noob struggling with dvd profiler and xlobby

[fje00]

I'm in the early stages of trying to get xlobby setup on my htpc. I am trying to get movies setup now and am having trouble.

I am using dvd43 and dvd decryptor to rip my dvds to my hard drive. I am saving them to a common location c:\dvd and using custom subfolder names which I define (i.e. c:\dvd\cast_away_disk1). I am ripping using the FILE setting for dvd decryptor.

I am using DVD Profiler to build a database for my dvd collection and export the collection in the XML format.

I am using theatertek to playback the DVDs on my hard drive.

In setting up xlobby I specified the folder where I have been ripping the DVDs (i.e. c:\dvd). I also have specified the location of the DVD Profiler XML file.

When I import I get two instances of each movie showing up in xlobby. It appears that the c:\dvd scan finds the movies in each subfolder. In xlobby non of these have dvd art, but they play fine. And then it appears that the import of the XML file also adds each movie. These have DVD art, but none of these will play. There's an error message that they are off line.

So how do I get xlobby to map the XML import results with the file scan results (i.e. c:\dvd) so that there are no duplicates, DVD art is used, and then they play?

Will be curious too about anything special that has to be done for DVDs that have multiple disks. When I rip them using DVD decryptor I rip them to separate folders (i.e. castaway-disk1 and castaway-disk2). Yet there's only one database entry from DVD Profiler and it contains both disks in the database entry. I'm not sure whether xlobby will have two entries (one for each disk) or one entry from which I can somehow select which disk I want to playback.

[GrantG]

(I replied a few months ago to a similar question, which I will copy here):

I highly recommend using the Ant movie catalog program together with the Xant plugin. I used to get frustrated also at the default way Xlobby seems to order folders with "subdirectories" first and then the rest of your movies. I also always seemed to get weird behavior trying to refresh databases from DVDProfiler - I would have to manually refresh twice every time I wanted to update it.

Here is a guide from Xlobby France describing how to use Ant and Xant:
http://www.france.xlobby.com/forum/inga ... e-Xant.htm

and more here:
http://www.france.xlobby.com/forum/inga ... efilms.htm

even if you can't speak French, I think you can get a basic idea (or use Babelfish).
and a nice (but less in-depth) English guide:
http://www.xlobby.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3759

With Ant and Xant, there is a little extra work in maintaining your movie database. However, the pluses are:
1) The depth of the directory structures and their ordering is up to you.
2) Xlobby automatically updates databases from your Ant database when you start Xlobby.
3) More control over data fields you want to import.
4) You can set up filters to create more than one Xlobby database based on your Ant database (example: all movies, online movies, movies whose genre includes"children", movies whose filetype is .mkv,....)

[C-moi]

Ant movie catalog is free. You can read or post on the forum
http://forum.antp.be/phpbb2/index.php?c=2
If your movies are divx, rv9, mkv, avi... you can use Xscan :
http://www.xlobby.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5280
Xscan is not a plugin : it's a tool. First use Xscan for scaning your hard disk or your cd ou dvd disks : when you have finished, Xscan save a file that can be open with Ant Movie Catalog : you just have to launch the scripting with Ant movie catalog and Ant will search all the informations about the movie automatically. Xscan can realise massive scan of disks.

[fje00]

Thanks to both for the feedback. Is there a prayer of getting this working with DVD Profiler? I went off and paid for a premium registration and would probably like to try and get that working before bailing out and going with Ant or something else. Then again maybe I should just cut my losses.

[bfauska]

This is from memory, so I think it should work but I am not sure. I currently am using a changer to playback my movies, but I did have about 40 moview stored on the HDD for a while and it was working fairly well with DVDprofiler. What I am sure of however, is that you can accomplish what you are trying to do with DVDprofiler and XLobby, with the possible exception of multi-disk entries.
To get the import to only see one instance of each movie the names must be identical. The folder names that the movie file is stored in needs to be exactly the same as the "Sort title" for the movie in DVDprofiler. You can view and/or change the "sort title" that DVDprofiler uses by clicking "personalize DVD." The first thing I would reccomend is to get rid of the underscores in your folder names. If you need the underscores because of some folder naming convention of another program then you will have to change the sort name in DVDprofiler.

As far as the multi-disk issue, I don't know what to tell you. I didn't rip my special features, I combined multi-part features, and I never found a good solution for episodic DVDs like television series. I figure that if I wanted to watch the special features I could grab the disk (I don't watch the special features as often as the movies.) This saves space and allowed me to skip the menu.

I think that there have been some good tv series solutions but I havn't tried them yet. I will be going back to HDD storage at some point, but for now I just have XLobby launch the dvd on my changer.

Good luck, and don't give up. DVDprofiler is a good program, since you already paid for it you might as well use it.

Later,
Brian

[fje00]

Thanks for the tip on disc and folder naming. I will definitely give that a shot.

[fje00]

The sync between the DVD Profiler "Sort Title" field and the folder name did the trick ... sort of.

Of the 8 or so DVDs I had burned so far, it worked for all but 2 or 3. That is to say that Xlobby correctly mapped the DVD Profiler scan to the DVD folder scan. I ended up with one icon in Xlobby and it played just fine.

However there were a couple which were still resulting in multiple icons. The way I solved it was to sync Display Title, Sort Title, and folder name. Odd I suppose, but it worked.

And I got multiple discs working as well! This was for two Movies (AI and Cast Away) and for a TV show (Farscape). I had been playing around with multiple titles in Beyond Media, so I now had the folder structure set up for Beyond Media. And I guess this is what Xlobby was looking for as well, since when I now click on the AI movie icon (for example) in Xlobby, it drills down to two more icons: one for "Disc1" and one for "Disc2". Both of these now play fine. And as I said this works for Cast Away and Farscape too.

The directory structure I used was to place each disc in a subfolder named "Disc1" and "Disc2". I'm not using VIDEO_TS subfolders, but placing all the files directly in the subfolder. I don't think that matters for Xlobby, but it supposedly did for Beyond Media. And I'm not sure that "Disc1" as a folder name necessarily matters for Xlobby as well, but again Beyond Media required it.

The one thing though is that the art for the two disc subfolders is missing, but that is easy enough to set manually by editing the database parameter directly (i.e. browse to the art file in the DVD Profiler subfolder).

[bfauska]

I am glad that it is working for you. And it is nice to hear that the multi-disk solution is that simple. I don't think that I had really looked into it before, but now at least I know where to start. I may have to start sooner than I thought. Tonight when discussing my disapointment with my sony 995 changer my wife said "I don't want another changer, we'll just get more hard drives and put the movies in the computer." How cool is that from a wife?

Later,
Brian

[fje00]

That is very cool. I got the opposite response. "We don't need them on the computer. What's wrong with just putting in a disk when you want to watch it?"

[dalanik]

That is very cool. I got the opposite response. "We don't need them on the computer. What's wrong with just putting in a disk when you want to watch it?" Crying or Very sad

I got the same response from my wife ....