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mallbritton

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 26, 2006
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I was looking for an alternative media player on my Apple TV for the Computers app so I would not have to have my laptop on and open all the time. So I installed the latest version of Infuse. However I'm having some trouble figuring out how to make this thing work the way I think it ought to.

The two biggest problems I'm having are the conflict between embedded and downloaded metadata, and getting Infuse to put TV Shows into the actual TV Show category.

The TV shows I've got ripped are all from DVDs I own, and I spent hours meticulously making sure all the metadata was correct. However, Infuse, when it scans the folders I add invariably puts the TV Shows in the Other category in Libraries. It also doesn't read all the embedded metadata, which is odd to me. The same for Movies.

I have tried various combos of allowing downloading metadata and reading metadata but nothing really works right for me. I've been able to get the metadata the way I want it by using .xml files for movies, but that method doesn't seem to work for TV Shows.

Anywhoo, I would appreciate an hints, tips and best practices from the community.

TIA
 
In my experience the best method is to not use the embedded metadata at all (Infuse has an option to turn it off), and instead to make sure that the files are named correctly (names and season/episode numbers matching TheMovieDB/TheTVDB, formatted according to the standard conventions). Matching by filename seems to be more reliable and library scanning is faster. You can use Filebot or a similar tool to quickly rename files in bulk if necessary.

If a file isn't properly recognized for some reason, I generate an NFO file using a tool like MediaElch (NFO is also recognized by Kodi, which is not the case for the Infuse-specific XML files).
 
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Thanks. That is very helpful. Knowing that the files should be named a particular way pretty much solved my issue. I was thinking the app would use a combo of file naming and metadata reading/downloading. This does not seem to be the case.
 
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I have this set up

A TV folder and a Movies folder. Add some artwork and name images folder.jpg then add those two folders as your favourites for quick access.

Then as mentioned above ensure you name the shows correctly e.g. Suits S01E01. I prefer to have my shows in speeate folders, again with the folder.jpg artwork in there
 
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I currently have a Movies and TV folder like the user above. For movies, I put the Movie_Name.mkv in the "Movie Name" folder. For TV shows, I have the following set up: Dexter -> Season 1 -> Dexter_s01e01.mkv. This works well and I've never had trouble getting it to populate correctly in the Infuse app.
 
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So I've got another usage question.

Back in 2004 I think it was I bought and ripped the original release of the Universal's Legacy Monster DVD sets. I also ripped the little documentaries that went along with them. Infuse has nicely gathered the actual movies into collection, but does not automatically include the documentaries in those collections. I've tried creating folders to collect all the files together but that doesn't seem to help.

Might there be some way to collect all of these videos into one Collection?

TIA
 
So I've got another usage question.

Back in 2004 I think it was I bought and ripped the original release of the Universal's Legacy Monster DVD sets. I also ripped the little documentaries that went along with them. Infuse has nicely gathered the actual movies into collection, but does not automatically include the documentaries in those collections. I've tried creating folders to collect all the files together but that doesn't seem to help.

Might there be some way to collect all of these videos into one Collection?

TIA
Infuse uses the Collection info from TMDb to group titles together, and unfortunately it doesn't look like the extras are included there. For example, here is the listing for the Frankenstein collection. https://www.themoviedb.org/collection/218406-frankenstein-universal-series?language=en-US

Creating collections manually isn't available right now, but may be something we look into for the future.
 
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