Home Theater 4 overview

New to Zidoo Z9X. Have serious difficulties in forcing HT PosterWall to show proper posters to proper movies with proper names. Noticed, that some users recommend to make a scan on movies collection with ZDMC and after that export NFO files to be used by Posterwall and that this worked well. As a totally new with Zidoo and android in general (came from Apple system) ask your help. Please tell me if this method really works, and if yes - please advice in which directory ZDMC keeps NFO and to which directory should I export those files to be used by HT PosterWall?

 

@vaskorn ZDMC is a fork of Kodi.

https://kodi.wiki/view/Import-export_library/Video

You can choose in the scan setup of HT if it should prefer the local nfo informations or not.



In case you want to have more control of the scraping you could install Kodi on your PC/Laptop. My preferred alternative is to use tinyMediamanager for downloading the movie/tv show infos and artwork.

 

Thanks a lot. Will try all your advices. I'm afraid I'll have further questions

 

Where do I copy the files created by tinyMediamanager on my Z10, I use an internal hard drive.
Thanks.

 

tinymediamanager saves the files like Kodi in the same directory where your movies/tv shows are located. But your internal hdd has to be accessable by tinyMediaManager as share to your PC.

 

Thanks for the info, it worked a treat.

 

Well, I am quite satisfied with home theatre. There's just 1 annoying thing for me. As soon as I watch 1 episode, the entire series is marked watched. So it will disappear from the list with all the movies and series I didn't watch yet. I am on the recent official version 4.0.11 (Z9S)

 

You could try version 4.0.25.
This might fix your problem.

Code:

9. Fix the problem of incorrect TV viewing history.

https://www.mcbluna.net/wp/zidoo/zidoo-home-theater-v4-0-25/

 

Is there a way to assign movies to multiple collections? In Plex it's easy. It seems like HT won't let that happen. For example: I would like Iron Man in the Iron Man Collection but also the Avengers Collection and the Marvel Collection.

 

Hey McBluna, I am using TinyMediaManager and have all of my posters, backgrounds, etc... in the local folder but when I scrape/update my source it never pulls the local images. I'm running ver 4.0.32 and have the exact same settings selected as you have above. Is there a way to force the use of local images? When I go into the menu option to select new image, it shows my locally stored images but those are not what is being used. Any help would be appreciated. Also, It seems to be scraping for banner and Movie Collections, which I also have managed with TMM but it keeps wanting to rescrape for the movie set. I have tried to clear my source and then rescan. I have also removed the source, deleted the poster/background folders and readded and resccaned and it still doesn't use the local images. Thanks again.

 

McBluna, one more question. Is there a certain configuration for your Tiny Media Manager? HT4 still doesn't use my local images when it scraps but I noticed that when scanning it says that there were unmatched movies. It then "matched" them and I'm assuming that is why it didn't use the same artwork in the local directory, even though they are correct. I have HT4 set to parse the NFO file (Alternative) just like your settings above. Is there a specific configuration for your scraper in TMM? This is the only reason I can come up with that it would not use the local artwork in the folder. Everything is labeled the same and every movie/artwork is in their own named folder. I'm at a loss but this is frustrating that whenever I change poster art then rescan for additionally added movies it converts back to the the "wrong" artwork.

 

@Hizzle HT4 uses a internal cache for images. Create a backup. Clear data. Restore the backup.


What setting do you've for "poster image save directory". I recommend to use custom directory.

 

@McBluna I use a dedicated movie server, so set up the Custom Directory as well. That way I can also check and see what the downloaded artwork looks like. It seems that when it scraps my NFO files (created by TMM) sometimes it doesn't read the NFO file correctly and thinks it a different movie. It then "rematches" the movie and scrapes new artwork to cache and overwrites the artwork I have in my local folders. I understand what we said about exporting the NFO file. I did that as well so now I have a "known good" HT4 NFO file.
So I guess my questions are:
1) Can HT4 handle a TMM created NFO file correctly? (Since it is supposed to be based on Kodi I would think it could. I also use Kodi latest revision in TMM for my NFO files. Should it be another selection?)
2) If so, is it a scraping configuration setting in TMM that will work? (Scrape, Directors but not Writers etc...)
3) I want to manage my collections in TMM because it's much easier. Will HT4 know how to build this collection without having to use the web/UI interface? I was able to get some of the collections managed correctly (Aliens had all of the standard Alien movies plus Prometheus and Alien Covenant, which are defined as Prometheus collection in HT4 in an initial scrape.)

Maybe you can type up your quick setup, if you don't mind. I purchased a second Z9S so I could try this all out and get the movie management corrected. My movie server runs Plex which is superior in catalog management to HT4 but I really like the environment and movie wall / movie sheets of HT4 better. I'm happy to manage it in TMM but I'm getting frustrated at it rescraping and changing my artwork after I've already curated it.

 

I'm working on a TMM/NFO to Zidoo loader. It's works already pretty well for weeks. It inserts, updates and deletes the entries in the backup file of HT and copies the images to the Zidoo image folder.
Currently I'm reworking the command line options. I'd like to start a closed beta soon.

 

That's good to hear. As I mentioned, I've got a second Zidoo I'm using to test things out and I'll be happy to participate and provide feedback. Do you know if we can create "valid" NFO files from TMM that HT will understand parsing? I was going to look at the exported NFO from HT and see if I can scale back the amount of scraped information from TMM that goes into the NFO file (Remove directors, writers etc...) and see if that works but it sounds like you've been doing this for a while and have a better handle on what HT will accept.

 

Awesome! Look forward to using it

 

Another thing I realized is that when the HT runs the initial scrape of a full directory, it doesn't scrape everything into the NFO file until the movie is actually selected. It then adds actors, trailers etc to the NFO file. I ran a scrape and then immediately exported all the NFO files. These NFO files only have the movie name and plot in them. Then I selected a few movies and let the trailer play. After that I exported the NFO files again and noticed that actors, trailer etc were finally added into the NFO file. Also, when I manually "re-matched" individual movies they included the "full" NFO file. Is there a way to force a "full scrape" for all NFO files?

 

Yeah the thing I really, really want in HT 4 is the "Folder → sub-folders → files" architecture" same as Kodi (ZDMC), Windows... I want to have my movie collection organized the way I WANT IT, not like HT4 does it. For me without it it's a deal breaker. All my movies are all over the place and disorganized. I hate it.

 

And AppleTV, and WDTV(unfortunately abandoned at all). I came from WD and Apple. Of course, the way how Zidoo organise the library is sort of torture, created by poor professionals. It doesn't work even the way how THEY want (at least declare) and you want it to work how YOU want it. But Apple also is not (REALLY NOT) perfect. Yes, it supports normal computer logic of library structure and not the logic of modern wheel reinventors, but they have AFR, which ignores the difference between 23.xxx and 24.000 and plays everything as 23.xxx, and I, at least on the moment, stay with Z and trying to find the ways to bypass their logic (or better to say absence of it) or perform dances with tambourine to force it work. And it's a pity, because from all other points of view it is, probably, the best box on the market. BTW AppleTV can not play 24.000 not only with AFR, but without (switched off) as well. So, there is no perfect box on the moment on the market, and we have the only option to choose, which problem we prefer to have - with playback, with UI, with library organising or with some hardware (number of in- and outputs) limitations.

 

Hi McBluna, do you have an ETA for your beta?