Contents [hide] 1 Summary 2 Features 3 Installation 3.1 Main Plugin Installation 3.2 Media Watcher Installation 4 Configuration 4.1 Media Identification methods and Naming Conventions 4.2 Setting Media and Metadata Locations 4.3 Simple Configuration Mode - Selecting & one-click Importing/Updating of Media Sections 4.4 Advanced Configuration Mode - Media Importing 4.5 Advanced Configuration Mode - Media Updating 5 User Interface 6 Advanced Usage 7 Known Bugs / Issues / Limitations 8 Changelog 9 Planned Features 10 Frequently Asked Questions

Summary

MediaFairy is a multi-purpose media importer and updater which aims to provide a complete solution for Meedio/MeediOS users to easily import and acquire meta-information for their media collections. The plugin currently supports importing of Movies, TV Shows, Music, Games and RSS news.

Features

Intelligent & adaptive media files importer:

Compared to traditional file importing plugins (tag mask or regular expression importers), MediaFairy's built-in media file importer:

- Needs very minimal initial configuration (only needs to know the location of user's media collection on disk).

- Recognizes and imports only media files of interest within the specified root directories, ignoring non-media files or files which do not belong to the desired media type. (film, tv episode or music)

- The file importing algorithm works completely idependently from video/audio extensions ensuring that you 'll never have to specify any, and also that any media file which the system is able to playback will be imported regardless of it's file extension.

- Distinguishes media types of interest inside directories which contain mixed content, eliminating the need of manual media collection organizing.

Audio Tag importer:

- Extracts the track information contained in the audio file's IDV3 tags and imports them in their respective library tags.

- Has the ability to embed downloaded information and/or album cover into the audio file's IDV3 tags.

Media Information importer:

- Similarly to the popular MediaInfo plugin, this process will analyze your media files and import media information like video/audio formats and bitrate qualities. Most modern themes display this information graphically on the frontend's interface.

Built-in filenames parser and cleaner:

Inspired from the SmartMovieSorter and SmartSeriesSorter plugins, the purpose of this sub-process is to detect the media material's title from the filesystem and extract adittional information about the material which will later help the online identifier to recognize and import details for the media product More specifically:

- Cleans the filenames of media files and extracts the media's actual title from them.

- Locates media identification information like a film's production year and IMDb id or a tv episode's number and season number. This information then helps the built-in online details downloader to automatically identify the media file without requiring user assistance.

- Parses .nfo files existing in a film's or music album's directory and extracts required media identification information further increasing matching acurracy.

Media details, cover art and fanart downloader:

- Matches the media file's unique hash or 'fingerprint' with online databases (themoviedb.org, opensubtitles.org and MusicIP) to identify films, tv episodes and music. Requires no previously existing information for the media file to recognize it and tremendously maximizes the identifier's acurracy and minimizes the need of identifying assistance from the user.

- Downloads media information from multiple online databases:

- IMDb, TMDb (themoviedb.org), OSDb (opensubtitles.org) and AMG (allmovie.com) for films.

- TVdb (tvdb.com) and IMDbTV for tv series.

- MusicDNS and AMG (allmusic.com) for music.

- MobyGames (mobygames.com) for games.

- Amazon.com for e-books.

- Downloads cover art and frontend backdrops fully unattended from the following online sources: (switching between them as necessary)

- TMdb, ImpAwards and IMDb for films.

- TVdb and TMdb for tv series.

- Amazon.com and Meediofr.org for music.

- AMG (allgame.com) and MobyGames for games.

- Amazon.com for e-books.

- Provides you with the ability to disable unattended operation on the fly, letting you select your preferred cover image from the found images on all sources.

- Optionally resizes the downloaded images to the resolution of your choice.

- Saves film description .xml files on sucessful identification.

In case the user's Films media section is re-imported from scratch, the plugin will acquire the required information from these descriptors, skipping the online lookup and significantly decrease importing time.

- Has the ability to automatically switch to the external IMDb title matching engine (located on www.deanclatworthy.com/imdb) in case the internal matching engine fails.

Automated subtitles downloader:

- Downloads from OpenSubtitles.org synchronized subtitles for your films or tv episodes in your preferred language(s).

- The video fingerprint matching algorithm ensures that the subtitles will always be perfectly synchronized to the particular version of your film.

- Allows to specify an alternative language in case no subtitles are found for your primary language.

Song lyrics downloader:

- Downloads lyrics for your songs and imports them into your music section to be used by themes which support lyrics display.

Media Organizer:

- Automatically sorts (renames and moves) identified media files to your specified locations for each media type according to your desired filesystem structure.

Online Content Downloader:

- Downloads to the user's specified location any online file the address (URL) of which is contained in the user's specified tag of the media library. Possible applications for this feature are downloading online trailers or online images.

Library Cleaner:

- Automatically deletes library items which refer to non-existent (deleted) media files. The built-in network diagnostics will ensure that files residing on offline drives will not be accidentaly deleted.

- Optionally removes empty library section tags ensuring a cleaner media section and faster library accessing opearations.

- Scans and links together multiple video files which constitute a single film. This process ensures that those video files will be chained together even if a previously used file importer was unable to do so.

Library Backup & Restore:

- Has the ability to automatically backup your media sections to the disk location of your choice. These sections can be later restored/importer by the same or another MediaFairy import instance running on any computer of your local network.

- Useful for library backup purposes, synchronization of media libraries between different machines, or for people who prefer to assign the media importing task to their home server in order to offload the Meedio/MeediOS clients from this task.

Archive Extractor:

- Automatically extracts compressed archives contained in the specified media locations and imports any media files of interest they contain. Optionally deletes extracted archives. Is also able to mantain a user-specified free space amount.

Media Archiver:

- Optionally compresses and stores in your specified location a compressed archive for each already watched film, (containing the entire film's directory) for disk space and archiving purposes. Each archived film is removed from the media library, ensuring that only new material is displayed in the frontend.

Film Releases Updater:

- Scans the user-provided rss feeds for newly available film releases and downloads those films using your default Bittorrent client. LegalTorrents.com (default source) is tested to work but other sources may work as well.

Media Watcher:

-Monitors in real-time your media locations and imports newly added media files of your selected types. (the MediaFairyWatcher Windows service needs to be installed)

- Provides the ability to define if new media files should be imported and updated or imported into library only.

- After a new media file is imported and identified, Media Watcher can rename it accordingly or move it to the user-specified location for organizing.

RSS news downloader:

- Downloads RSS feeds from your provided adresses and imports them into the library section of your choice.

- Has the ability to optionally download the images that the RSS feeds contain to the disk location of your choice.

Orphan metadata remover:

- If you have configured the plugin to remove library entries of which the main media file was deleted ('delete missing library items' option), optionally the plugin can also delete their associated left-over coverart or fanart images.

Built-in Import Sequencer:

- Optionally runs the importers of your choice after MF finishes.

Miscellaneous:

- Intelligently detects media files which reside on a network disk and skips them if your file server or network disk is offline.

- Built-in internet connection and databases availability diagnostics, to cut down retrying delays and prevent connection errors.

- Extensive debug logging and important information or warnings display through the system tray.

- Compatible with MovieNight (for Meedio) and partially compatible with meePopupProvider (for MeediOS)

Installation

Main Plugin Installation

Important: MediaFairy requires MediaFolders and MetadataFolders general plugins. Please make sure that they are installed on your system before proceeding with the installation of this plugin.

Download the importer from OpenMAID and save the file to your desktop. Double click the file when the download is complete, and click the Install button to install the plugin to Meedio/MeediOS.

:

Once the installation is complete, perform the following to create a MediaFairy import:

-Open the Configuration Editor application of Meedio or MeediOS.

-Navigate to the Media Library tab and choose on the left the media section you wish to attach a MediaFairy import to.

NOTE: Contrary to how most other importers for Meedio/MeediOS work, MediaFairy's ability to update multiple sections at once means that it doesn't necessarily update the library section it is attached to. The library sections you wish MediaFairy to update are defined in the plugin's configuration screen, as we will see later in this document.

-Select the Imports tab and click the 'Add new import' button to select MediaFairy from the drop-down list of available importers, as shown on the screens below (frist screen for MeediOS, second screen for Meedio):

:

:

Media Watcher Installation

Please note: This feature is experimental and currently only available to the Meedio version of the plugin.

Please follow these steps to install the Media Watcher Windows service and prepare your MediaFairy configuration to run in single-item mode:

1) Create a new MediaFairy import in the section of your choice. If you already have created a MF import you can skip this step.

Make sure that MF is the only import in this section.

2) Navigate to the plugin's installation folder located at ...\Meedio\plugins\Import\MediaFairy. Inside this folder you will find a sub-folder named MediaWatcher.

The image below shows the files which should reside in the MediaWatcher folder:

3) Extract the zip file you will find there in your ...\Windows\System32 folder as indicated by the zip file's nanme.

4) Run InstallNETService.bat to install the MediaWatcher service.

5) Enable MediaWatcher in MF's configuration screen and set your preferred settings.

6) Run MediaFairy once to automatically configure and start the MediaWatcher service.

Notice: If you 're using Windows Vista you must run the Meedio Configuration application with administrator privileges, otherwise you 'll have to start the service manually.

Now everytime a new media file is added to your defined media sources the service will run MF in single-item mode and will silently import and/or update your new media files.

Configuration

Media Identification methods and Naming Conventions

Now that we are done with the installation of the plugin, it's important to clarify which naming conventions MediaFairy can recognize and works best with.

Media naming conventions have long been a major headache for HTPC enthusiasts, causing all kinds of problems when the user's media collection is not properly organized.

MediaFairy goes out of it's way to avoid dependence on the naming of your media where it's applicable, but unfortunately there is no such thing as a perfect world and there will be cases where other identifying methods fail and it will have to rely on the naming of your media.

So let's see in detail how exactly MediaFairy will attempt to identify your media:

Movies:

What MediaFairy needs to get online details for this media type:

-IMDb ID

Methods used to obtain it without relying on the file's naming:

1) Parsing an .nfo file inside the movie's directory which contains an IMDb link to the movie in question.

2) Matching the file's hash (fingerprint) to the online databases themoviedb.org and opensubtitles.org.

Which information MediaFairy will try to extract from the file/folder name if alternative methods fail:

1) Will extract the IMDb ID if it is found in the media file's name or the folder which contains it. This will give perfect matching accuracy.

2) Will extract the movie's production year if it is found in the media file's name or the folder which contains it. Combined with extraction of the movie's title, this will give almost perfect matching accuracy.

3) Will extract the movie's title found in the media file's name or the folder which contains it. Using this information alone (without being combined with the production year) will give good matching accuracy.

How and where the information must be stored in the media file's name in order for MediaFairy to extract it:

IMDb ID: It must start with the letters 'tt' followed by the film's IMDb id number. The IMDb ID can be anywhere on the file or folder name, before or after the film's title.

Example: Fight Club [tt0137523].mkv

Production year: It's best to be contained within (), [] or {} brackets to avoid false year recognition in the rare case where the actual film title contains a year or a similar number. It can be anywhere after the movie's title in the media file's name or the folder which contains it.

Example: Inception (2010).mkv

Film title: It can be anywhere in the file name or the folder which contains it. If the file name contains common keywords which describe the format, resolution, disc type or language of the media file, they will be ignored in order for the correct film title to be extracted. If the title contains dots instead of spaces, they will be converted to spaces.

TV Shows/Series:

What MediaFairy needs to get online details for this media type:

-TVDb ID

Methods used to obtain it without relying on the file's naming:

Unfortunately none because there isn't an alternative proven identifying method that I know of.

Which information MediaFairy will try to extract from the file/folder name:

1) Will extract the Series name if it is found in the media file's name or the folder which contains it. Combined with succesful extraction of Season number and Episode number, this will give perfect matching accuracy. If any these three types of information could not be extracted, the episode will not be identified.

2) Will extract the episode's Season number if it is found in the media file's name or the folder which contains it.

3) Will extract the Episode number if it is found in the media file's name.

How and where the information must be stored in the media file's name in order for MediaFairy to extract it:

Series name: It can be anywhere in the media file's name as long as it is located before the season and episode numbers.

Season number: It can be anwywhere in the media file's name as long as it is located after the Series name. Must immediately follow the 'S' character or be immediately followed by the 'x' character (case of both characters doesn't matter).

Episode number: It can be anywhere in the media file's name as long as it is located after the Series name. Must immediately follow the 'E' character or immediately follow the 'x' character (case of both characters doesn't matter).

Examples:

Seinfeld S01E12.avi

Seinfeld 01x12.avi

Music:

What MediaFairy needs to get online details for this media type:

-PUID (PUID or Portable Unique IDentifier is a unique identifier used by MusicIP and given by MusicDNS to identify a song).

Method used to obtain it without relying on the file's naming:

Will analyze the acoustic properties of the music track in order to uniquely identify it and obtain it's PUID.

Which information MediaFairy will try to extract from the file/folder name:

None, since music tagging is a much more reliable and proven method of organizing music. There are many good programs out there which can help you easily tag your music. But even if your music is not properly tagged, MF will do a good job automatically tagging it since the MusicIP database is very extensive.

Games:

What MediaFairy needs to get online details for this media type:

-The title of the game and optionally the company who developed it.

Method used to obtain it without relying on the file's naming:

If there is manifest information stored in the game's main executable, MediaFairy will obtain the game's title and developer from there.

Which information MediaFairy will try to extract from the shortcut's name if the alternative method fails:

Will extract the game's title from the name of the shortcut which points to the game executable. The shortcut's name must be exactly identical to the title of the game.

Setting Media and Metadata Locations

Note: The settings to define media and metadata locations shown below are only applicable to the MeediOS version of the plugin. For the Meedio version, media and metadata locations are still set/configured from the plugin's configuration screen, since the MediaFolders and MetadataFolders plugins don't exist for Meedio.

The first thing that needs to be done after installation is setting the locations of your media on disk. The first three settings on the image below are made for this task. Click on the corresponding "..." button for each media type you wish to set the locations for. On the dialog that comes up select the 'default' profile to use the default, globally used locations or select 'Custom' to define custom locations only used by this plugin.

With the last three settings you can configure where metadata should be stored on disk (images or other types). Click on the corresponding "..." button for each media type you wish to set metadata locations for.

:

Simple Configuration Mode - Selecting & one-click Importing/Updating of Media Sections

The first section of the importer settings on Simple mode allows you specify the libraries you wish the importer to create (if running for the first time) or update for each individual media type, as shown on the uppermost part on the screen below. The lowermost settings group allow you to select which media sections you wish the importer to update each time it runs.

NOTE: Each 'import and update' setting combines two diferrent tasks which can be seperately enabled/disabled in Advanced mode: Importing and Updating. Importing is responsible solely for importing the media files from disk, analyzing them and possibly acquiring media information. Most other tasks including online identifying and metadata downloading are accomplished on the Updating phase as we will see later in this document.

:

NOTE: You will need to create the Libraries FIRST in order for them to appear in the drop down.

Advanced Configuration Mode - Media Importing

Media Importer

This section controls which types of media you wish to import from disk into their corresponding library section. Simply check the box of the Media Type (Movies, Music, TV Shows, Games or RSS news) you wish to import from disk.

A word about detecting media files and acquiring key information that describes them:

Conventional file importers allow the user to provide a list of file extensions that he/she wishes to be imported. In MediaFairy however, the plugin automatically builds a list of file extensions which are detected to contain video or audio. So in most cases, the built list of file extensions will not need any changes. However if you wish to manually add file extensions to the known list, you can add a video extension by editing the 'video_extensions.txt' file or add an audio extension to the 'audio_extensions.txt' file. Both files are located in the plugin's installation folder in ...\MeediOS\plugins\import\MediaFairy (for MeediOS) or ...\Meedio\plugins\import\MediaFairy (for Meedio).

General-purpose file importers also use a user-defined set of tag masks or regural expressions to extract additional information about a file and import this information into custom library tags. In MediaFairy this task is automated. The plugin finds and extracts from the file/folder structures additional information which describe the file in question, to be possibly used later to identify the file through the available online databases or just for display in the frontend.

:

Film Importing Options

This settings group appears if the 'Import and update Movies' option in Simple mode or 'Import Films' option of Media Importer in Advanced mode are enabled. It contains options to define what types of local disc backups of films should be imported into library, among other options.

:

Import DVD images containing films

Imports DVD image files that are detected to contain films. Supported file types are .iso,.img,.bin . Note that if you use an external player, it has to support direct playback of disc images.

Import BluRay images containing films

Imports BluRay image files that are detected to contain films. Note that if you use an external player, it has to support direct playback of disc images.

Import DVD film back-ups (preserved disc structure

Imports local backups of DVD films. The file/folder structure must be the same with the original disc. The folder containing the backup will be used to determine the name of the film.

Import multi-part RAR archives as films

Imports the first part of a multi-part RAR archive which contains a film. Note that if you use an external player, it has to support direct playback of RAR archives.

Override automated film title locator

If the automated film title locator fails to correctly locate the titles of your films in their paths (file name or folder name), please check this setting to manually override it.

RSS Importer

This settings group appears if the 'Import RSS news' option of Media Importer in Advanced mode is enabled. It allows you to add the RSS feeds you wish to import and also choose if you want to download the images that the feeds contain locally:

:

RSS feeds to import:

Here you can define the URLs of the newsfeeds you wish to import into the News section.

Download feed images

Choose this option if you want to download the newsfeeds' images locally.

RSS images location:

Allows you to define the location where the images of the newsfeeds will be stored.

Media Analyzer

This section appears if the option 'Enable media importer' is enabled. Media Analyzer is responsible for analyzing the media properties of files, and determining if they are valid media files. These media properties can later be imported into the Meedio/MeediOS library, to be used by themes which can display such information.

:

Re-scan media files missing from library

This setting determines if media files already scanned (but currently not present in any media section) will be re-scanned and re-imported. With a slight importing performance impact, this feature will resolve two problems:

1) Items which were removed by mistake will be re-imported.

2) If any of the root media folders are set to a location for incoming downloads and the download is not completed before MediaFairy scans the media file for the first time, it may not be detected as a media file and thus not imported. Having this option enabled however will force a re-scan of this media file on all subsequent runs until it is finally analyzed correctly and imported. If none of the above functionality is needed for your routine usage, you may disable this option for a slight importing performance gain.

Import media information

Modern themes for Meedio/MeediOS frontends have the capability to graphically display digital media information for films or series, for example the video/audio format or quality. Would you like the plugin to automatically import this information?

Additional Tags to Import

This section appears if the option 'Enable media importer' is enabled. The options here allow you to import additional tags which describe the media file, such as file creation or modification dates.

:

Import file creation date

Imports the date the media file was created.

Import file modification date

Imports the date the media file was modified.

Import date added to library

Imports the date the media file was added to the library.

Media Watcher

This section appears if the option 'Enable media importer' of Media Importer in Advanced mode is enabled. Media Watcher can monitor your media folders for newly added media files in real-time and import them into library almost instantly as they are created. This feature requires the MediaFairyWatcher Windows service to be installed and running.

NOTE: Please avoid setting to watch a folder where incomplete or damaged files may reside. Doing so may compromise the performance of media importing and online identifying, since the media properties of incomplete or damaged files sometimes cannot be read properly.

:

Enable Media Watcher

Enables or disables the Media Watcher. This setting will also start or stop the Windows service accordingly.

Use root media folders as directories to watch

Enable this option for Media Watcher to use your already defined media sources as the folders to watch for new media. Disable it to seperately define a different set of folders to watch.

Include subdirectories

Enable this setting to also watch inside subdirectories of the root media locations.

Addition mode for new items:

Controls if newly found media files will be imported and updated, or imported only.

Organize imported files using Media Organizer settings

Check this option to automatically rename/move the new media file after it is imported according to your Media Organizer preferences.

Archive Extractor

This section appears if the option 'Enable media importer' of Media Importer in Advanced mode is enabled. Archive extractor can automatically extract .ZIP and/or .RAR archives contained in your specified media sources and import the media files they may contain.

Auto-extract compressed archives

Enables or disables the archive extractor.

Delete archive after extraction

When an extraction process is succesful, the original archive can be optionally deleted, in order to free the disk space used by that archive.

Maintain at least this amount of free space

Specify here the amount of free disk space (in Megabytes, MB) you would like the plugin to always mantain. When this limit is exceeded, the extraction process in question will be skipped.

Advanced Configuration Mode - Media Updating

Media Updaters

Media Updaters are responsible for identifying, downloading metadata for (details, images, subtitles or other) and organizing your media after they are imported from disk into your library.

Here you can select the media types you want MediaFairy to update.

Checking the Enable Media Updaters option will show all settings relevant to Media Updating.

Unchecking it will hide these settings and also disable updating for all media types, regardless of your selections below to update or not a certain media type.

Video Identfier

This section appears if the option Enable Media Updaters of Media Updaters settings group in Advanced mode is enabled.

Video Identifier is assigned with the task of uniquely identifying you videos, in order for the plugin to be able to later download details or other metadata for them. In this settings group you can select which methods you want MediaFairy to use to identify your videos and also set the priority these methods will be used.

NOTE: As of v0.6, the only setting that applies to both movies and tv shows/series, is the Enable video fingerprint identifier setting. All other settings of the Video Indentifier apply to movies/films only.

User Interface

Advanced Usage

Known Bugs / Issues / Limitations

-Addittional files in the media file's folder do not get transferred after the AutoSorter moves the main media file to the new location.

- The description tags of WMA audio files are not being read properly according to user report.

Changelog

v 0.6 - 10 Sep 2010

[New feature] New ability to choose priority of video identifying methods (identifying by video fingerprint or IMDb identifying by film title). MediaFairy will switch to to the secondary method in case the primary method fails.

[New feature] Added another video fingerprint identifying source: themoviedb.org. This source will be now used first (by default) in the priority to identify films by video fingerprint.

[New feature] Added ability to choose the priority of video fingerprint identifying sources. (opensubtitles.org and themoviedb.org)

[New feature] Added an alternative IMDb title matching engine based on the web-based IMDb API located at www.deanclatworthy.com/imdb .

[New feature] Provides ability to choose the priority of IMDb film title matching engines. (the internal engine or the new web-based engine).

[New feature] Implemented orphan metadata remover.If you have configured the plugin to remove library entries of which the main media file was deleted ('delete missing library items' option), optionally the plugin can also delete their associated left-over coverart or fanart images.

[New feature] Added Image Resizing capability for film covers and fanart images. Always mantains the aspect ratio of the original image.

[New feature] New film details downloader (in the Greek language) using videoseven.gr film database.

[Optimization] Disabled video identification by hash for TV episodes. (episode identification by file hash did not prove reliable because the returned IMDb ID does not always refer to the particular episode, but sometimes to the series itself)

[Optimization] Fixed IMDb details downloader to get film Overview.

[Optimization] Optimized metadata extractor from filenames (on TV series library) for faster performance.

[Optimization] Updated OSDb interface for the latest OSDb API changes.

[Optimization] Imrpoved importer behavior when internet connection is unavailable. (internet connection diagnostic)

[Optimization] Made a few improvements to the downloaders. (RSS news and music artist fanart downloader, general image downloaders)

[Optimization] Added partial meePopupProvider compatibility. (copies each library field's id to the 'meePopupProvider' field)

[Optimization] Added option to specify the folder where the torrent files found in RSS feeds should be stored.

[Optimization] Now allows the user to specify the RSS News and Games media sections to update.

[Optimization] Improved help tooltips.

[Optimization] Improved debug.log.

[Optimization] Minor bugfixes and optimizations.

v 0.5.5 - 02 Jun 2010

[Optimization] Added support for MetadataFolders general plugin.

v 0.5.4 - 31 May 2010

[Optimization] Now uses (and requires) MediaFolders plugin to retrieve or set user's media locations.

v 0.5.3 - 27 May 2010

[Optimization] Improved logic for the media importer.

[Optimization] MF will now proceed downloading subtitles and performing other OSdb related functions even if login to OSdb was unsuccessful at startup.

[Optimization] Now the subtitle zip file will be deleted after extraction.

v 0.5.2 - 12 May 2010

[New feature] Implemented automatic version updating. (optional)

[Optimization] Removed html code from song lyrics.

[Bugfix] Fixed an issue where missing media items were not removed by the library cleaner.

v 0.5.1 - 11 Mar 2010

[Optimization] Translated all settings of the plugin.

v 0.5 - 19 Dec 2009

[Optimization] Updated the CustomProperties assembly to 0.6.2.

v 0.4.9 - 25 Aug 2009

[New feature] Added offline media importing mode, capable of online identifying DVD and/or BluRay films or tv series. (thanks to ccrocker)

[New feature] Added lyrics downloader for music, using LyricsFinder library by UFGrayMatter.

[New feature] Added capability to download artist backdrops from meediofr.org.

[New feature] Added ability to import PC games and download game information from MobyGames database.

[Optimization] Added BeatsPerMinute, Comment, Copyright, Disc, DiscCount, Composer, Performer, AlbumArtists to ID3 tags for audio files.

[Optimization] Improved the series indexes extractor for more accurate episode identifying.

[Optimization] Optimized the tv series identifier for faster updating.

[Optimization] Numerous other bugfixes and optimizations.

v 0.4.8 - 04 Aug 2009

[New feature] Added an RSS news downloader which is also able to retrieve and download the feed's images.

[New feature] Implemented XML Backup/Restore feature for Movies,TV Series and Music media sections.

[New feature] Added an Import Sequencer which is able to run additional importers after MF finishes.

[Optimization] Added XBMC compatibility for xml film descriptors

[Optimization] Implemented instant updating for tv series.

[Optimization] Updated tag names to be compatible with TVShows Importer.

[Optimization] The plugin's settings will be written on the start of the debug.log for easier debugging.

[Optimization] Simplified logic and optimized performance for the TV Series updater.

[Optimization] The following episode naming structure is now supported (in this example second episode of first season): [102].

[Optimization] BluRay disc images for films can now be imported.

[Optimization] Film directors, actors and writers were not getting retrieved from IMDb due to a recent change in the website's source.

[Optimization] Whenever the plugin's media organizer was renaming a video file, a filename disparity might be caused between the video file and it's associated subtitle, rendering most media players unable to display the subtitle. Now the subtitle will automatically be renamed according to the video file's name.

[Optimization] No modification of the cover image's filename was possible for music album covers.

[Optimization] Clones of DVD filesystems in the hard-drive were not imported unless a "VIDEO_TS" directory existed under the main DVD film's directory.

[Optimization] Items removed from media library do not get re-imported without manually removing their location from the media snapshots.

[Bugfix] A '404 not found' error was produced if a SeriesID was invalid or not present in TVdb.

[Bugfix] Certain properties were sometimes not populated resulting in the raise of an exception while loading the properties screen.

[Bugfix] A Series entry in TvSeries section was duplicated when the series name extracted from the filesystem was not an exact match to TVdb's Series entry.

[Bugfix] The .nfo parser erroneously included an extra slash in the IMDbID of a film if the line which contained it had more than 1 slash (/).

[Bugfix] A bug in the film's Year extractor was causing error in parsing season and episode indexes when an episode or season number was 19 or 20.

[Bugfix] The film descriptor reader was producing an error if the requested tag was not present in the xml file.

[Bugfix] A conversion error was produced for video files the audio bitrate of which could not be retrieved.

[Bugfix] Fixed a bug which caused erroreous addition of folder.jpg to the image tag of some library items.

v 0.4.7 - 12 May 2009

[New feature] Introduced Instant Updating engine. Instantly skips the updating of library entries which are fully meta-tagged resulting in tremendous decreasing of importing time for large media libraries.

[New feature] Now the film posters downloading system presents to the user all found posters from all sources so he/she can preview them collectively before selecting the desired one.

[New feature] Added ImpAwards to the film poster sources. All credit goes to ccrocker for this feature.

[New feature] 2 new online sources can now be used for adittional (extra) film details: TheMovieDatabase (themoviedb.org) and AMG (allmovie.com).

[New feature] The Media Importer can now import file (creation and/or modification) dates. (the dates will be imported in normal and system ticks format)

[Optimization] Optimized multi-part detector.

[Optimization] Updated the poster and backdrop downloaders to use V2 of themoviedb.org API.

[Optimization] Updated the scene release parser's dictionary for better name filtering.

[Optimization] Removed NiceCovers from film poster sources.

[Optimization] Optimized the media content type detector for disc images.

[Optimization] Updated the bakcdrops naming convention setting to now accept custom tag masks.

[Optimization] Added an option to manually override the automated film title locator in case the plugin fails to correctly detect the location of film titles in path. (folder name or filename).

[Optimization] Now the plugin won't try to save the online identified metadata in an audio file's tags if the file cannot be accessed.

[Optimization] Media Sections were automatically being created regardless of user's media importing or updating preferences. Now you 'll have to specify a section in order for the plugin to import or update media files in that section, and it will not use default section name.

[Optimization] According to the current conventions of meeTVShows Module, the banner should be in <image> for each Series and Fanart should be in Fanart, but they are currently in <banner> and <backdrop> respectively.

[Bugfix] The case insensivity of AutoSorter's file moving method was causing it to skip moving the media file in a new folder named after the film's Title, but nevertheless updated the item's location field to this folder in cases where the articles 'Of','The','And' were lowercased after IMDb identification. This resulted in possible duplication of library entries which were created by 3rd-party file importers.

[Bugfix] New items contained in the specified media locations sometimes did not get imported.

[Bugfix] The video files chaining method was sometimes removing media items the location of which was changed during the updating process by the AutoSorter.

[Bugfix] Trying to normalize an empty value of a tag contained in the AutoSorter's folder tag mask was producing an exception.

[Bugfix] The 'Season' keyword in a film's parent folder was being misunderstood as the Season index of a TV series.

[Bugfix] Trying to update the locations of multiple part films was producing an error if the parts were more than 3.

[Bugfix] Fixed an issue of previous versions regarding importing of mkv files.

[Bugfix] Fixed a bug of the AutoSorter which caused incorrect renaming to multi-part video files.

v 0.4.6 - 04 Apr 2009

[New feature] New dynamic Settings system which enables/disables options on the fly based on user's actions.

[Optimization] Updated the IMDb details downloader for the recent changes of IMDb website.

[Optimization] More detailed (and now optional) logging system.

[Optimization] Better handling of exceptions and connection issues.

[Optimization] User interface improvements.

[Optimization] Improved progress updating.

[Optimization] Cleaned up program code.

v 0.4.5 - 16 Mar 2009

The TV Series updater is now complete and integrates the following functionality:

[New feature] Parses the imported episodes and extracts the series name, season number and episode number from the filename. Supports multiple naming conventions.

[New feature] Identifies series and epsiodes and downloads meta-information from TVdb.

[New feature] Optionally downloads episode thumbnails, series banners, backdrops and season posters.

v 0.4.4 - 12 Mar 2009

[Optimization] Optimized the decision algorithm which locates a film's title in the filesystem path. (film's folder or video filename). It should be more accurate now.

[Optimization] The media importer now writes the 'externalID' tag for frontend media modules which require it.

[Optimization] The 'Override media analyzer' optional settings can now accept multiple directories.

[Optimization] ISO images of dvd films will now be recognized and imported.

[Bugfix] Fixed an issue of the OriginalTitle tag being overwritten after the first run.

v 0.4.3 - 24 Jan 2009

[New feature] New simple / advanced settings system: Every important setting exists in the main screen, but now there is also an 'Advanced' screen in which more experienced users can configure every plguin's feature.

[New feature] There is now the ability to disable automatic media type detection to greatly increase importing performance: The automated media analyzer is a unique feature implemented in v0.4, which gives MediaFairy the ability to automatically detect and import media files without requiring any configuration from the user. With this feature, the plugin is also able to distinguish films from tv episodes, and songs from audiobooks or other audio material, effectively eliminating the need of manual media collections organizing. However, this feature requires analyzing of the physical media file, a process which introduces a performance impact if the physical files reside on a network location. For this reason users have now the ability to disable the automated media type detection feature increasing performance for the media importing phase. Please note however that if you disable this feature you will have to provide to the plugin the root folders of your films and tv series. (This setting is different from the 'Media Root Folders' setting, and that setting still needs to be set).

[New feature] New film duration matching algorithm: When the film title exact matching is unsuccessful, the plugin will compare the film duration information from imdb with the video file's duration to automatically identify the correct film.

[New feature] The Music Updater now has the capability to automatically download covers for your music albums from Amazon.com.

[New feature] New film posters online source: nicecovers.com: The new source is implemented into the existing posters downloading system which respects your source preferences.

[Optimization] New option for the Video Identifier to automatically skip films which the film title matcher wasn't able to identify. This option is useful if you want the plugin to never prompt you for unknown films but also disable automatic film selection. (in other words: if no exact match is found for a film, the film won't be identified)

[New feature] SortTitle and OriginalTitle library tags implemented: The SortTitle tag contains the film's title with the diferrence that if the first word of the film's title is 'The', it will be moved to the end of the film's title, providing better title sorting capability to the frontend. The 'OriginalTitle' tag will contain the original film name extracted from the video filename, before the film's title gets replaced by the IMDb title. This tag is normally useful in cases where the original film title is diferrent from the IMDb title, and you prefer to keep the original title.

[Optimization] The RSS Releases Updater now includes support for compressed RSS feeds. ('gzip' and 'deflate' data streams)

[New feature] New Archive Extractor: With this feature enabled, the plugin will be able to automatically extract any .zip and/or .rar archives found in your specified media directories, optionally deleting the original archive after succesfull extraction. Multi-part rar archives are supported and an option to specify desired free space is also available.

[Optimization] There is now the ability to re-import your library from scratch, simply by deleting all items in your media sections. When the plugin finds the media sections empty, it will delete the existing media snapshots and re-import your media files from scratch.

[New feature] The plugin now has the capability to import existing local images (posters, covers or backdrops) found for your media files.

[New feature] The media importer will now be able to recognize and import ripped DVD films. (a valid video_ts.ifo file contained in a video_ts directory will need to exist for each film)

[New feature] New film descriptors writing capability: Film descriptors are standrard .xml files which contain a film's identifying information and details. If this feature is enabled, a film descriptor will be saved (in the film's directory) for each film the plugin successfully identifies. This procedure will offer greatly increased updating performance if/when the film needs to be imported again, because if a film descriptor is found, the plugin will use this file to obtain the film's details, thus skipping the video identifying phase.

[Bugfix] All critical issues reported by users have benn fixed.

[Bugfix] Numerous other bugfixes and optimizations which increase the plugin's stability and performance.

v 0.4 - 29 Nov 2008

[New feature] New Automated Media Importer:

- The new buit-in media files importer will automatically detect all media files existing in a root folder you specify (currently movies, tv shows and music. Books and games coming soon), recognize their type (movie, tv show or music track) and import them in their approrpiate libraries. - No preparation, configuration, tag masks or other filters are required to import your media, and the media importer will also operate succesfully on a root folder which contains mixed and/or unsorted media types. - A mechanism will use the media and file information to distinguish movies from tv episodes and aid MediaFairy in performing the importing operations appropriate for that type of media. - Built-in multipart videos detector, will automatically detect and chain together multi-part videos.

[New feature] New Smart Name Filtering feature:

- Now MediaFairy will recognize an Imdb ID existing in the video's filename (if the name field includes the video filename) and use it to easily identify your film. Now you don't have to use any tag mask to import the IMDBid into your library. (actually, with the new fully automatic file importer you don't have to do use any tag masks at all) -This feature wil also automatically clean up the 'name' field from the 'release' naming format, leaving a clean 'name' field containing only the actual film's name, which will then be used by the buit-in IMDb grabber to identify the film if the video fingerprint identifying mechanism is unsuccessfull or disabled. - The film's production year (if found) will also be extracted (and removed) from the 'name' field and used for an exact film match by the IMDb grabber. - This algorithm will also parse the series SxxExx naming format, and extract the episode's Season number & episode number.

[New feature] Audio Tag Importer:

- All the standard features you would expect from an Audio Tag importer, plus is able to extract the album image from inside the audio file and save it to an image file into the album's folder. - Removes unmeaningful data like song titles with names like "Track 01" etc. This will ensure that the MusicDNS autotagger won't assume that the track name is known just because it's filled with data which has no meaning.

[New feature] Automated Series Recognizer:

- MediaFairy will first use the video fingerpint and try to recognize the series name, episode name, season & episode numbers and use those data to download details and images from TVDB. - If the recognition of episode by the video fingerpint is not succesfull, it will try to recognize the season and episode numbers from the video filename. eg. House S03E01 or Heroes 3x09 . -if the season number is not present in the filename, it will try to extract the season number from the episode's parent folder. (usually when the season number is not contained in the filename, it is contained in the parent folder which contains all the episodes of that season).

[New feature] MusicDNS identifier & auto tagger:

- Automatically identifies and gets metadata (like artist, album, genre etc.) for your music, using the free MusicDNS service. (by the same company who created MusicIP). -On succesfull audio track identification, it will write the metadata into the audio file. - Supports any audio format the LAME encoder supports + the flac format.

[Optimization] Re-wrote the video fingerprint mathcing algorithm from scratch, now the matches will be 99.99% accurate in any circumstance.

[Optimization] A new 'file in use' checker will conveniently recognize if an item's media file is locked by another application and will temporarily skip identifying it if so, to avoid identification failure by the video and audio fingerprint algorithms.

[Optimization] changed the default tag name for films backdrop/fanart locations from 'Backdrop' to 'fanart' to mantain compatibility with other plugins which use this tag.

[Optimization] The subtitles downloader can now detect if the daily anonymous subtitles download limits is exceeded and will skip downloading subtitles if so.

[Bugfix] fixed a bug where in certain conditions the user was not asked to select a movie from possible matches when no exact match was found.

[Bugfix] fixed a bug where the subtitle existing check failed to detect an existing subtitle under certain location conditions.

[Bugfix] fixed the error 'Cannot find central directory' when the downloaded zip archive containing the subtitle was corrupt. Now corrupted archives will be downloaded again.

v 0.1.9.4 - 08 Nov 2008

[New feature] Now MovieFairy includes a full-featured IMDb grabber, based on the IMDb C# Library by walts81. All credit goes to him for this feature. The importer will now use this grabber to recognize your films based on the already existing item's 'name', 'Title' or 'Year' fields, when the video fingerprint mechanism isn't able to identify a film or it is disabled.

[New feature] New auto Sorting & Archiving features:

- MovieFairy has now the ability to automatically rename or move (sort) your films when and only when they are succesfully identified, based on your criteria.

- 'Simple' or 'Advanced' sorting configuration lets new users sort their films in a default directory structure, and advanced users define their own folder structure using tag masks.

- Multipart items (or file chaining) support recognizes multipart items and handles them accordingly.

v 0.1.7

New Library Cleanup features:
- MediaFairy can now detect and remove library items which the video files they are reffering to are missing or deleted.
  The NAS (file server) diagnostic will ensure that any files which reside on your file server won't be accidentaly deleted
  if the file server is offline.
- A new empty tags deleting function will detect the empty tags in your library and (when enabled) automatically
  remove them, ensuring a cleaner library and faster library access operations.
- You can now specify any number of unwanted/unneeded library fields (tags) created by any importer,
  and have MediaFairy automatically delete them. 

v 0.1.6

- MediaFairy has now the ability to automatically download any file from the web or ftp address
  which is contained in a specific library field (specified by you), and save it into the directory of your choosing.
  The downloaded file wil have the same name with the online file.
  You can use any importer which imports online content links (like online images or videos) in any Meedio library field,
  and then have the plugin download them to your specified location.
  (but first you must specify in which library field those links are contained for MediaFairy to find them)

v 0.1.5.9

- Added delayed informative message when a film cannot be identified by its video fingerprint.
  The user will now know in runtime if a film was identified.
- Added library field "OSdb matched". This field will contain "True" when the film was successfully identified
  and "False" when not. The user will know which of his/her films were mathced (exist) in the OSdb database.
- Added option under "Advanced Settings" to change informative messages display time.
  Insert 0 to disable informative messages completely.
- Fixed a bug where MediaFairy in some conditions incorrectly tried to match a film on the OSdb database
  even when the video fingerprint was not known.
- Fixed a bug where the NAS diagnostic incorrectly decided that NAS was online.
- Fixed a bug where an item's location was not recognized properly on multipart items.

v 0.1.5

- Fixed a bug where details and posters were not downloaded when certain NAS diagnostics conditions were true.
- Fixed a runtime error produced when TMdb did not respond timely to data request by adding retrying capability.
- Fixed a bug where in certain conditions, the poster downloader was saving duplicate images. 

v 0.1.4

- Fixed a bug where video fingerprint was not computed when the library field to save it in was missing.
- Added a check to determine if the video file can be found and accessed before trying to compute it's fingerprint.

v 0.1.3

- Added multipart films support.
- Fixed minor bugs. 

v 0.1

- Initial release.

Planned Features

NOTE: This list here is just a reminder for the developer of the plugin.

There is no guarantee that any of these features will be implemented in the future.

The entries in bold are considered high priority. For all other entries, their position in the list is not an indicator for their implementation priority.

Merge Episodes and Series libraries.

Allow selection of language for the built-in IMDb scraper

Allow user to change the priority of film details sources / ability to use themoviedb.org or NetFlix as the main film details source.

Further improvements to the TV Series Updater.

Optimize the Music Updater for faster performance.

Option to import local trailers into each item's 'Trailer' tag instead of ignoring them.

NetFlix film details grabber. (almost there)

Give user the ability to choose which library tags to be populated by each online source.

Acquisition of film Review score from RottenTomatoes.com website. (almost there)

Ability to download multiple fanart images for each title.

Populate Actor information and images.

Get aditional information about a film by parsing it's .nfo file.

XML descriptors for TV episodes.

XML descriptors for music tracks.

Download Music Artist backdrops from HTBackdrops

Download Game backdrops from HTPCBackdrops

MoviePostersDB scraper

MoviePicturesDB scraper

Further improvements to the lyrics downloader.

Option to save lyrics in text files (outside the library).

Further improvements to the MusicDNS music identifier.

Search for synchronized subtitles even if unsynchronized ones are already downloaded.

Option to not download subtitles for a video of which the audio track is in the same language as the user's primary language.

File masks for the Media Organizer.

Complete Media Archivers. (almost there)

Support Offline Mode for TV Series.

Local pictures importing with their related metadata.

Importing of e-books and populating their details using Amazon.com (almost there)

Importing of music videos.

Importing of audiobooks.

Importing of documentaries.

Importing of stand-up comedy.

Scraping plugin architecture.

Ability to natively use XBMC scrapers.

Ability to natively use MDI scrapers.

General file importing capabilities, ability to use tag masks or regural expressions to import files.

Automated creation of an RSS feed which will contain newly added media for use with the flash news ticker of Meedio.

Stand-alone version.

Windows Home Server version.

Frequently Asked Questions

The plugin says at startup that it can't connect to OSDb (opensubtitles.org). Can it still get susbtitles or identify videos by hash?

- Yes, in this case MediaFairy will resort to an alternative method of performing these tasks instead of using the standard OSDb API.

What is the purpose of those media snapshots the plugin creates the first time I run it?

- The media snapshots contain the list of files that the plugin analyzes the first time it is run. This keeps the plugin from re-analyzing the same files, thus reducing significantly the import time on subsequent runs.

I deleted all items from my library and started to re-import them but the media snapshot was recreated. I thought this should only happen the first time?

- When all items are deleted from a library, the media snapshots will be re-created from scratch. This behavior is intentional.

The Media Watcher service is included in the Meedio version of your plugin but not in the MeediOS one. What gives?

- Short answer: Laziness from my part. Long answer: I'll have to re-write the Media Watcher service to support MeediOS because it's current implementation uses a quick-and-dirty hack which I'm too embarassed to explain here.

I changed some settings in Simple configuration mode but when I switched back to Advanced mode some settings disappeared! What can I do to bring them back?

- Uncheck and recheck again the parent setting of the option you are missing. In most cases, the "Enable Media Importer" and "Enable Media Updaters" parent settings are the culprits.

In previous versions the plugin could distinguish different media types in directories which contained mixed content. Why did you remove this feature?

- I removed it because the automated media type detector was not 100% accurate and sometimes confused some users. Besides, after I added support for MediaFolders general plugin, the user would have to explicitely define the locations of their diferrent media types anyway, so there wasn't much use of this feature anymore.

I'm receiving a weird error when i try to open the plugin's configuration screen. Why so?

- Most probably you have installed a Windows GUI changer/styler (Windowblinds or similar). Add the MeediOS/Meedio configuration application to the program's exlusions list, temporarily disable it or uninstall it.