Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Yammm - Yet Another Media Meta Manager

Yet Another Media Meta Manager (Yammm)

YammmSetup.msi

Not that we need another meta manager but none of the ones available that I've tried (quite a few) really suited my needs so I developed Yet Another Media Meta Manager (Yammm). Please leave feedback and\or feature requests.

Yammm runs as a Windows Service and will download meta data, artwork, rename folders, rename files and\or create playlists. Metadata can be any combination of dvdid.xml, mymovies.xml and\or XBMC nfo file. All meta information and artwork is provided via either themoviedb.org or thetvdb.com. If you haven't checked them out please do so and contribute where possible.

I created Yammm because I haven't used any meta manager that runs "headless" without ANY user interaction and used folder.jpg instead of custom artwork locations. This is important to me as I use various htpc software depending on the situation and development. I also found that most did not match well. Yammm uses various checks other than the provider's score value.

Movie Posters

Yammm can optionally resize movie posters. This was added per request to help reduce lag opening your Movie Library. My recommended size is Medium with a quality of 92. The visual different between 100 and 92 is minimal but the file size is significant. You can play with different resolutions to see what you find is acceptable. As long as you have Yammm create a backup of the original (enabled by default) it will not have to redownload the artwork if you choose to increase or decrease the image size as it will use the original image for resizing.

Folder Structure

Yammm currently only looks as movie folders (TV support is currently being tested). This means as a folder is checked the name will be used for matching. A folder name is broken into three parts. The title, year and "tags". i.e. For "Cidade de Deus (2002) [City of God] [Director's Cut]" the year is 2002, the tags are City of God and Director's Cut and the title is "Cidade de Deus". Yammm will ignore any tags when searching for a matching movie but will preserve them when renaming the folder.

Folder Rename

Yammm will optionally rename matching movie folders to "Title (Year) [Tags]". If the movie is a foreign film Yammm will also attempt to append the local title as a tag. i.e. "City of God" will be renamed to "Cidade de Deus (2002) [City of God]".

File Rename

Yammm determines the "primary" movie in a folder by grouping similar named files togethor. The largest combined size is considered the primary movie. This is to prevent trailers and samples files from being touch.

If it a single file then it renames it to "Title (Year)". If there are multiple files then they are renamed to "Title (Year) [# of ##]". All associated files are also renamed.

To give an example:

Seven Swords (2005) [1 of 2].avi
Seven Swords (2005) [1 of 2].idx
Seven Swords (2005) [1 of 2].sub
Seven Swords (2005) [2 of 2].avi
Seven Swords (2005) [2 of 2].idx
Seven Swords (2005) [2 of 2].sub
Seven Swords (2005).dvdid.xml
Seven Swords (2005).wvx

The files were renamed and the playlist created for it. Thoughts?

Playlist Create

Yammm will optionally create playlists for movies spanning over several files. It can also optionally hide the actual files so only the playlist is shown and not the individual files.

Media Center DVD ID Metadata

If enabled Yammm can create dvdid.xml files for matching movies. When possible it will use the real ID (CRC64) otherwise it will create one. When enabled you must specifiy which accounts to create the corresponding cache files. This allows you to keep your HTPC and media center extenders Movie Library metadata in sync. If present Windows 7 (RC1) Movie Library will display the metadata as well.












In the works....

The below items are currently being tested

  • Renaming files Done
  • TV Series support
  • Custom folder\file renames
  • Media Center plugin (MCML) for selecting artwork
  • Better DVR-MS support, it will check DVR-MS for meta data prior to checking provider
  • Optional embed metadata into artwork and\or dvr-mr
  • Option to add a layer on the top of artwork before saving

Note:

  1. Required .NET Fx 3.5 SP1
  2. Rename and image overwrite is disabled by default.
  3. Requires admin rights to the movie folders and admin rights to run Yammm Config.
  4. Currently only detects movies (TV series is in testing
  5. Currently only supports a single rename format: "Title (Year) [Tags]
  6. Run the Yammm Config application to Add\Remove Watched Folders
  7. Meta XML files will not be overwritten, I will update soon with an option to update missing information for existing meta files (i.e. dvdid.xml, mymovies.xml, ...
  8. I purposely did not include a way to manually edit the meta data. Please help the community and contribute to The Movie DB.

If you currently have all your movies in a single file you can use the below command to create a subfolder for each movie and move the file into it.

FOR %i IN (*.*) DO (IF NOT EXIST "%~ni" MD "%~ni") & (MOVE "%i" "%~ni")

Mikinhosoft

34 comments:

Luis said...

Mikinho,

Your project has come a long way, in just the last few days you added many features I could only dream about having. Just like you, I tried a few of the media meta managers out there but I was never satisfied; with Yammm, you added many features I was looking for, most important, is user friendly, runs as a service, you never see it and does not slows your computer down. With your latest release, it seems like it runs faster and smoother with media center. I also noticed that it was able to download the meta data for some movies that previous version did not and one of the best feature of all is the ability to create a play list for multiple movie files, that along saved me hours.

Thanks a lot for this great application,

Luis

jeremychild said...

Im actually developing software similar to Yammm, then after seeing Yammm I abandoned my work. RegEx expression and giving my software a mind of its own were a little out of my legue. I did however manage to create a .net app that you drag folders too and it gets the Meta and folder.jpg using filenames alone.

The problem is, we all use .rar and .zip and sometimes multiple rar files like .001. Anyway I'd love to throw some of my ideas into Yammm.

Feel free to contact me: jeremychild@gmail.com

Thanks!

Genius-Part Time said...

When will you release a new version and do you have some more details on how I should name a movie folder in order for YAMMM to process a folder?

right now, it seems ilke it's only working on single word movie folders

An example I have \videos\defiance and \videos\fightclub

YAMMM processed defiance but did not process fightclub.

Right now out of my 250 movies, YAMMM has only processed 3 of them and those 3 had single word movie titles as the folder name.

Anonymous said...

Do we need to have movie folders already created (i.e. Super Troopers (2001)) for Yammm to begin work on the movie metadata? Also do we need a pre populated metadata file for it to work? I am asking, since it doesn't appear to be working on my movies and I have them all in a single folder (i.e. Movies\Super Troopers (2002).avi)

Unknown said...

Yes you need to have folder for individual movies. if you have a lot of movies, there is a file floating around called files to folders or such that will create a folder for every file with the same name.

I have a quick question though. does anyone know if this wakes a computer from hibernation... I recently started using it...but the machine seems to wake up every 10 mins.

Luis said...

Anonymous, Yes you need to have a folder for each individual movie. if you have a lot of movies, you can use the following command (scroll to the bottom to see command), which i also got from mikinhosoft. You need to run the command from CMD (command prompt) and needs to be run from the same location where you have your movies, for example if your movies are on C:\movies\ go get and get to the directory on the command prompt, then paste the command there and press enter, that will put each of your movies on its onwn folder, each folder will be name just like your movies; one thing you might have to do is name each of your movies as "Movie Title + (Year it came out)", for example: Toy Story (1995).

I hope this helps.

Luis

for %i in (*.*) do (IF NOT EXIST "%~ni" MD "%~ni") & (MOVE "%i" "%~ni")

possy said...

How do you calculated the Media Center DVD ID Metadata?

Anonymous said...

this is a great program like it alot its been about 3 months sense any new vers


will there be anything new added soon

mikinho said...

Yes, sorry for not posting updates here. I've been making updates available at http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/t/73390.aspx and will be setting up a dedicated website this evening.

Anonymous said...

Your download links are dead.

Anonymous said...

Another download source here: http://unkool.com/download/yammmsetup.msi

mikinho said...

My host is currently down, should be back up by Monday. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

jeremychild said...

Monday is a good day. New Big Bang Theory too!

Unknown said...

Is anyone getting timeouts in the event log?

Error - WriteImage: The operation has timed out

Many Thanks

Anonymous said...

This software is great. All it is really missin gin my opinion is TV Episode support. I know it says coming soon, but any idea when that might happen?

Lee Rogers said...

First, absolutely great tool. With this automation, my days are now free for other things :-)

I have a very large number of movies (+800) so I am not sure if the "Movie Library" is the best option. But, the deal breaker currently is sort by date added will show the dates for TV movies recorded but "Unknown" for movies it finds in my library fixed up by YAMMM. Do we know where the date added field comes from? Anyone else seeing this issue?

Anonymous said...

Is this safe? I mean i know it only renames folders, files, download info, etc. But how can i be sure that these are the things it will only do? What if it sends data from my pc to another?

Unknown said...

This is fab. I'm interested in how to get synopsis data readable by other machines on the network. I have my master PC with the DVD's, where I am logged on as Tom on a Domain. My TV PC seems sometimes to see the synopsis, sometimes not, and certainly takes a long time (30 secs?) to load the cover art. I've got Synopsis in mymovies.xml and only the film name and number in filmName (2009).xml.

I do not see the logon of the TV PC as a choice in Users in the Metadata tab...

Anonymous said...

Mikinho,

Really like what you've done with Yammm. Does a nice job of finding metadata and pulling the appropriate artwork and metadata. Can't wait for you to add:

* TV Series support
* Custom folder\file renames
* Optional embed metadata into dvr-ms/wtv

Thanks again for all the hard work.

Anonymous said...

Hi Mikinho,

Is there a way to change the database that is used to collect data? Instead of themoviedb.org, I would like to use www.moviemeter.nl, as I'm a Dutch citizen.

Thanks in advance for your response.

Regards,
Marco

Anonymous said...

Hi Mikinho,

Could you please respond to my question about using the 'moviemeter.nl' database for Ducth movie info?

Thanks in advance,

Marco

Mikinho said...

Hi Marco, sorry for not responding but I don't check or use this blog anymore.

A new version of Yammm is due out soon. It will have the ability to pick different metadata providers. It won't be available initially but what I'd like to do is provide different locale providers as requested, so www.moviemeter.nl could be added pretty quickly.

Check mikinho.com for updates.

Anonymous said...

Hi Mikinho,

Thank you for your response.
I am really looking forward to the new version which makes this possible.

Do you have any idea when this new version is due?

Thanks again,

Marco

HackitZ said...

Hi,

Do you think or have you planned on adding a print option?

Printing with thumbs of the covers would be perfect.

jeremychild said...

HackitZ,

consider making your own application that cycles through your directories for folder.jpg images or the like.

Very simple to do in VB.net.

http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?t=341919

(half way down the page).



I am not sure how Yammm stores its data, but it does has a class called 'Artwork'. This suggests that printing out artwork *could* be possible (if the artwork URL's are stored in the Yammm database).

Once again I am uncertain of this.

Jeremy.

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Vincent said...

Hi there,

great project and many thanks. I use your program mainly for the renaming and reorganising of the files.

I look forward to the tv series support as it will be a great addition to the other project i use (www.mediabrowser.tv).

Keep it up!!

Marcus said...

When Yammm updates my xmls it is only putting the name, no other information such as genre, rating or overview. How do I get that into the xml file so wmc7 will read it?

Anonymous said...

Hello Mikhino. I love YAMMM only tool I use for meta data. The only request that I have is the ability to choose how many backdrops are captured for each movie. For example it would be great to have 3 backdrops available. I use media browser and the functionality with this is pretty cool. Well just my 2 cents.

Thanks JJHTPC

Scott said...

Your application is great, thank you. The MPAARating is always missing from the xml, is there any way to fix this?

Thanks,

Scottt

Adit Group said...

Thanks for post this article. its very informative to me. i m working in Digital Video Recorder company, which is India's leading company in supplying DVR.

Unknown said...

Mikinho,

This is a great project, i notice you haven't released a new version since 2010, are you still developing it?

If not, are you interested in providing the source so I can develop it further?

Thanks,
James

Unknown said...

Is this software dead / no longer supported? Mine seems to be no longer working.

Thank you.