Imported TV & Movies - Organizing & Metadata

[Rusdude]

Hello!

I'd like to use the HD extender to watch all of my existing TV shows/programs & movies that I currently have on DVD (slowly ripping in preparation for the extender). Some of it is American content (metadata could be scraped) and some of it is foreign (would have to manually put in).

Now, I installed STV a few days ago and have been looking at what options are available, but default settings don't seem to have very good organization & management features for imported videos.

For TV shows, I'd like to see something like XBMC (never used it but I saw screenshots) which would have be something like this:
(1) Series [with banners/posters] ->
(2) Seasons ->
(3) Episodes [w/ thumbnails & meta data visible, e.g. one part of the screen has names/thumbnails and highlighting particular episode gives its name, description, etc.]

For Movies, it'd be (1)->(3) and for TV programming (one offs/specials), it'd be something else I haven't figured out (perhaps, browsing by Genres).

How can this be done with Sage? I've read how to create different buttons on the main screen to get to specific content (e.g. TV Series, TV Programming, Movies), but I've not been able to locate examples of customized browsing of videos and easily manipulating metadata (which I would need to do for a lot of foreign content).

Thank you!

[Slipshod]

I'm just starting off, so they may be a better way (and somebody please chime in if there is), but folder-structure seems to be the only way to get there. First off, I installed SageMC. It has a view by "filesystem", and I create directories for organization. Examples:
Kids\Singing Time\Vol1\Video_TS
Kids\Singing Time\Vol3\Video_TS
Kids\Singing Time\Vol4\Video_TS
Kids\Singing Time\Vol5\Video_TS
Kids\Cars\Cars\Video_TS
Kids\Cars\Mater and the Ghostlight\Video_TS
Kids\A Bugs's Life\Video_TS
TV Shows\Firefly\S1E1\Video_TS
TV Shows\Firefly\S1E2\Video_TS
TV Shows\Jericho\S1E1.mp4
TV Shows\Jericho\S1E2.mp4

To attach an icon to a file, use a jpg with the same filename. For a folder, use "folder.jpg". I haven't figured out how to edit the rest of the metadata manually yet, almost all of my stuff is in IMDB. Amazon has been a good source for cover-art not in IMBD.

I wish I had an interface by genre with a customizable heirarchy. Something which let me enter information on the "Series name" and "season number" so it could automatically group items similarly labeled. I'm not really much of a coder, but after everything is in I figured I'd take a look and see how hard it looked. This is pretty much the only area I think sage might be lacking compared to MCE + MyMovies. Don't know for sure though because no DVDs over the extender was a complete deal-breaker for me and MCE.

[Rusdude]

I'm using SageMC right now and file system is a no-go since it groups all folders with same names together, e.g. if I have
24->Season 1->...
Lost->Season 1->...
then "Season 1" will have files from 24 and Lost folders.

The simplest way would be to use groups (each show = a group) but I've found no way to change group banners (plus clicking on a group shows genres again).

The way to actually have the banners for each show (that I found so far) is to have a genre for each TV show (24, Lost, Heroes) and then create two icons ("24_list.png" and "24_folder.png" files) and put them in the folder with all the other genres (I'm using Blue Two theme but for some reason, genre icons come from Default folder).

The above method is pretty crude and I'd rather avoid it. I think, I am going to hold off on purchasing Sage and extender for a few months while I rip all of my DVDs and index the library on my HTPC using myTV (http://mytv.senseitweb.com/). If someone comes up with a reasonable hack, I'll try to transfer myTV's XML data to SageTV. If not -- I'll just build a new HTPC in the summer (when new mobile chips arrive and AOpen updates its MiniPC line) and put my current HTPC in the room meant for HD Extender.