IMDb to VSMETA

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by oPromessa, 2024, V0.0.1

• Published on https://github.com/oPromessa/imdb2vsmeta/

• If you own a Synology NAS and make use of Video Station.

• And need a quick easy way to populate your Movie Library with Metadata.

• imdb2vsmeta is the answer!

How to use

• I run it off a Mac with access to the NAS video folder.

• I place the Video folders to be scanned outside the Movies Library (normally video/Movies) in a temp/staging folder video/Staging.Area (Still on the NAS, to make it fast but not scanned as a Library!)

• It looks for Media (.mkv, .mpg, .avi, and .mp4) files named "Movie Title (Year)" format.

• Use the option --search-prefix to operate in batch modes and process only files starting with say A: --search-prefix A

• It then looks for the Movie metadata in IMDB

• It then generates the corresponding .vsmeta file to update Video Station

• Side Note: poster and background images are the same.

• You must move back your fodlers/files from video/Stagin.Area into /video.Movies

• Once the process is complete you can move back the Movie folders into the video/Movies Library

• ...and see the magic happens ;)

Recognition

• https://github.com/TomMeHo/vsMetaFileEncoder
• https://gist.github.com/soywiz/2c10feb1231e70aca19a58aca9d6c16a

RTFM

• IMPORTANT: The .vsmeta file is available when Video Station indexes the video file first time.
• Use a Staging area to put the Videos and the .vsmeta file outside the Video Station Library. You can then move them inside and voila.. VideoStation reads everything nicely!
• Only support Movies .vsmeta encoding
• Added support to TV Shows.

Setup Environment

• Clone a copy of the repository.
• Create a VENV with Python
• Install dependencies

python3.11 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install imdbmovies
pip install requests
pip install click
pip install vsmetaEncoder

Usage

• Example

python imdb2vsmeta.py --search /Volumes/video/Staging.Movies/  --verbose --search-prefix Sugar --series --no-copy

• Options

Usage: imdb2vsmeta.py [OPTIONS]

  Searches on a folder for Movie Titles and generates .vsmeta file and copies
  them over to your Video Station Library

  IMPORTANT: Use a Staging area on your NAS to generate .vsmeta and only
  then, add them to you Video Library.

  It generates the temp files *.jpg and *.vsmeta on the current folder.  You
  can then remove them.

Options:
  --movies              Specify if it is a movie. Must choose movies or
                        series. NOTE: This argument is mutually exclusive with
                        arguments: [series].
  --series              Specify if it is a series. Must choose movies or
                        series. NOTE: This argument is mutually exclusive with
                        arguments: [movies].
  --search DIRECTORY    Folder to recursively search for media  files to be
                        processed into .vsmeta. NOTE: This argument is
                        mutually exclusive with arguments: [check].
  --check PATH          Check .vsmeta files. Show info. Exclusive with
                        --search option. NOTE: This argument is mutually
                        exclusive with arguments: [search].
  --search-prefix TEXT  Media Filenames prefix for media  files to be
                        processed into .vsmeta. Eg: --search-prefix A
  -f, --force           Force copy if the destination file already exists.
                        NOTE: This argument is mutually exclusive with
                        arguments: [no_copy].
  -n, --no-copy         Do not copy over the .vsmeta files.
  -v, --verbose         Shows info found on IMDB.
  --help                Show this message and exit.

• --check option generates the temp files *.jpg and *.vsmeta on the local folder. You can then remove them.

Screenshots on How to use

• Moving Files to Staging Area...and back once you run the tool.

• Resulting Metadata