Metadata newbie - confused by all the choices

[ThePaladinTech]

Well Everyone I've recently reloaded my Sage Server - Upgrading to a dual core AMD - What a difference it makes, especially for showanalyzer!

This was also my opportunity to document and try some new items- Dynamic Menus, IMDB Search, Weather, CPU monitor. As well as better understand some of the ones I had: Comskip, Nielm's WebServer.

Which brings me to my question-

I'm *really* new to all this metadata stuff, and it's a bit overwhelming for me. I've got lots of Tivo recordings I've changed to MPGs that I would like to 'look like' Sage files - ya know have the show description and all that. So I understand I can use Nielm's web server to add them one by one. but is there an easier way???

I've seen all of these:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38386 EvilPenguins Meta data Scraper
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21629 JREkiwi's Read and Write Meta data
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...tuckless's Batch Meta data importer

And I must profess that I don't quite get what each one does ... they sound similar to me? For the time being I am only looking at TV Shows - I'll tackle DVD's after all the shows are done.

I *think* I would like the data to be stored in my wiz.bin file - which is what Nielm's Web Server does. but is there a faster way to accomplish that then one by one? If I have to rename all my TV shows to follow a naming convention That's no problem!

The reason I say I think is I read about .my and .properties files but don't know if there are any pros to using them?

If anyone can help clarify this I'd be grateful. I'd really rather not mess up my new install trying them all out.

[stuckless]

I think EvilPenguin's Metadata Scraper is a batch processor that is used for TV shows, but I think that he's probably adding in features for Movies and Music as well. Basically feed it a list of files and/or directories and it will fetch the metadata for those shows. It's a command line tool.

JREkiki's Read Write is used an import/export (i think) but it doesn't actually fetch metadata for shows or movies. It Think, it's a UI plugin that runs within SageTV.

Batch Metadata Tools (BMT) is a command line tool that is used primarily for Movies. You give it a list of movies/directories and it will fetch metadata from several sources (imdb, themoviedb.com, dvdprofiler, and soon any any xbmc source). BMT can be run in auto mode that will automatically fetch metadata, or it can prompt you for a list of selections. It also contains a plugin that be installed in the Sage environment that will automatically fetch metadata for movies when they are added to your library.

Also, there is metadata lookups (per movie) built into SageMC using nielm's imdb lookup. Neilm also provided a plugin for the default STV that fetches metadata (single movie).

So, depending on what you are trying to, all or neither may fit the bill.

As for .properties/.my files. SageTV supports .properties as a way getting external metadata into the wiz.bin. I like the .properties support, since it also acts as backup for the metadata as well.

I have no idea what .my files are, but I assume they are the file format for another movie metadata program. SageTV does not use .my files, but i think that SageMC does.

So, I think that if you are doing TV shows, then I'd use evil penguins tools, since I think, at the moment, that's the only only option for fetching metadata for shows.

[ThePaladinTech]

As Usual thanks for the wisdom! - I will try 'metadata made easy' by evilpenguin for now. and perhaps when I get to the movies I will give yours a whirl as well.