Load personal video files into repository?

[brathnach]

Hey guys,

I have a set up whereby I want to use XBMC on a raspberry pi to play up to 4 different files from NAS (custom installation-same video but 4 different languages). However this is a DVD that is made by myself and as such has no metadata to speak of. I created the DVD menu and have the 4 audio options available in its main menu. Up until now I have been serially controlling a DVD player and sending various navigation controls to select the correct language and play the video....very messy unreliable solution.

I am now trying to extract it out so that I will have 4 seperated video files (mp4) so that I can select a specific file to play from the CQC IV and have xbmc playback the file from NAS.

Looking through XBMC driver fields it does appear that alot more control is offered if the media is making use of the CQC repository. Cookies, length, enqueue media etc. as compared to brute force PLAYFILE and select the MP4 I want to play.

So my question is just that. How can I load an MP4 into the repository so that I can maximise the control I can gain over it with CQC? If it was required to somehow edit the MP4 and add metadata to it before burning it to a DVD before ripping it back into the media repository I would have no problem doing this.

I know this is not the conventional way of using a media repository but as XBMC offers an excellent rendering solution on the raspberry PI I want to maximise the control I have over playback of the file and it appears the best way of doing this is by utilising CQC's media repository.

I hope I explained this query clearly, and of course if someone can suggest a more elegant solution I am all ears :-)

jim

[Dean Roddey]

If you are using our respository use the main menu of the repository manager. One of the options is to manually add a title. That will let you enter all of the info manually.

[brathnach]

Thanks dean,

Will this let me somehow just add mp4 files or does it have to come from a DVD?

Jim

[Dean Roddey]

You can point it at anything. Just indicate that you want to point it at a file, not to rip a CD, and it should let you just select the file path. Be sure to put the file where it can be accessed by other machines if you are going to play it from any other machine besides that one. So on a shared directory somewhere, and enter the path relative to that shared directory.

[Dean Roddey]

Oops, I take it back. For music it allows it, but currently it won't allow a movie path to be entered manually. I'm not sure why that restriction is there, since it's been a while. I'll have to look at that. Most likely it should be able to allow that.

[Dean Roddey]

Double oops, I was in music mode when I tried that above. It DOES allow it for movies, but not for music currently. So you are ok.

[brathnach]

Gottcha,

Thanks a million Dean. You had replied to my OP before I'd even finished it! . I think I'm going about this the right way but I'll plough ahead and learn as I go. That I can do it is a great start.

Jim

[wuench]

Just to clarify, the XBMC driver will populate the fields from the CQC repo and if they are blank try to populate them with the info from the XBMC repo. The XBMC repo typically has more info than CQC is able to store, so more fields are populated that way.

But this does only works if you play the movie/music file from the XBMC interface, (i.e. selecting it through XBMC's menus, not via PlayFile). For some reason XBMC is not able to lookup data from a filename, even if it is in the repo.