A common question asked is "where do I get metadata for TV Shows?" for Video Browser.  Currently the only supported method of gathering TV Show metadata is the official Ruby script. I'll try my best to explain this process and a couple tricks I've learned from the community.

NOTE: I guess I should also put in a word of warning, this is an easy process with many steps which makes it complicated. Metadata gathering is definitely targeted towards advanced users, hopefully in the future someday Sam and I can refine this process to be more universally accepted.

Before You Begin

1. You must have Ruby installed on your system. You can download Ruby here: Ruby Download

I downloaded Ruby and installed it in the following location "C:\Ruby"

2. Download the TV Scraper script file here: tvdb_scraper.rb

For simplicity sake I saved the script file under "C:\Ruby\tvdb_scraper.rb"

Now We Are in Business

Video Browser looks for the following TV folder structure:

"TV SHOW \ SEASON XX \ FILES"

eg. "E:\TV\Heroes\Season 1\s1e01-Heroes-Pilot..."

Once you have the folder structure setup you can use the following command to gather metadata, under command prompt:

Ruby [PATH to tvdb_scraper file] [PATH to TV Show to Update]

eg. ruby "C:\ruby\tvdb_scraper.rb" "E:\TV\Heroes" -r

There are two switches "-r" and "-f" explained in more detail below:

• -r: This refreshes the metadata for all TV Shows
• -f: This renames episode filenames to: Episode Number - Episode Name format. It is especially important that you verify the metadata collected is correct first before using this command.

Now under command prompt you can run the following command to grab metadata.

Creating An Automated Process

One of the issues I had with the Ruby scrapper was that it relied extensively on me typing in command line, which being a developer is no problem, but was a real hassle for the non-tech savvy family members. To overcome this I use batch files (.bat).

This is what my bat file looks like:

ruby "C:\ruby\tvdb_scraper.rb" "E:\TV\Heroes" -r
ruby "C:\ruby\tvdb_scraper.rb" "E:\TV\Heroes" -f
Pause

AS you can see I customized my bat file for a specific TV Show, the reason I chose to do it this was is that many times I want to only update one series, so combining every tv show into one bat command would be first a waste of processing, and second a waste of time.

I put my customized autoscraper.bat file under the root of each tv show:

eg. E:\TV\Heroes\autoscraper.bat

Now when someone adds more tv shows from Itunes, all they have to do is launch the bat file (via double click) and it gathers the appropriate metadata for that episode. Much more easier for the wife, and lets be honest if it makes the wife happy that's half the battle!

Questions, comments? Feel free to ask questions or get help at http://videobrowser.ch/