Hello everyone. I had a very difficult time learning how to write my own NFO files so that the TV show episodes, episode information, posters, fanart & clearlogo would display properly when scraped by the Zidoo. It took me weeks of research and trial and error, but I think I finally got it. For your benefit, I have created this "How-to" guide. Please review it carefully, ask any questions you'd like and provide any feedback for improvement too. Before We Get Started My family has taken many vacations throughout the years. So, I wasn't sure how I wanted to break them up. I decided that I would make each vacation a TV show with each day being a season and each video being an episode. I then put all the vacations/TV shows into a category. Step 1: File Naming Convention Pay close attention to the folder path in the bar at the top. I call my Media folder "Entertainment" and created a sub-folder just for home movies called "Family Vacations". This keeps my custom TV shows separate from my actual TV shows' folder. Note that this TV show actually has 9 seasons (each with varying number of episodes), but I am only showing a couple of seasons in this screenshot to keep it small). Special notes: fanart.jpg is the background for the entire TV show and the file name should always be as shown. poster.jpg is the poster for the entire TV show and the file name should always be as shown. clearlogo.png is the clearlogo for the entire TV show and the file name should always be as shown. season1-fanart.jpg, season2-fanart.jpg, etc. are the backgrounds for each season. I used the same background image for all 9 seasons, but you don't have to. The file naming should always be as shown. season1-poster.jpg, season2-poster.jpg, etc. are the posters for each season. The file naming should always be as shown. Each Episode has its own background/fanart image. The naming should be TV Show Title - S01E01-fanart.jpg. In my example, it's Disney World Family Vacation - S01E01-fanart.jpg You can also see the mkv and nfo naming convention respectively. Finally, the tvshow.nfo file contains the data required for the entire TV show. Step 2: The tvshow.nfo File I have attached the NFO files to this post for your reference. I even added comments to the XML code for ease of use. All of them were composed by using a real TV show as an example. I had the Zidoo create NFO files for all of my TV shows and referenced them to create my custom TV show. I know this is a big screenshot, but it does not include the comments within the XML like the actual NFO files. Instead of making notes here, please check out the comments within the code and ask questions if you have them. The only real notes I'd like to point out are... The <showtitle> MUST match the folder name and mkv title names. If they don't match perfectly, the Zidoo won't scrape them properly. If you have spaces in your folder and file names, be sure to swap the spaces for %20 where noted. Step 3: The Episode NFO Files There must be one NFO file for each episode, but the format of them is the exact same. You only need to edit the information between the tags to correspond with the episode. Step 4: Zidoo Scraping Once everything in your file naming and NFO files is absolutely perfect, it's time to let the Zidoo find your TV show. If everything is successful, you're done (I think I had to manually find a poster for the TV show, but everything else populated correctly). Here's the catch: If everything is not perfect and you have to change some code or rename a file, I haven't been able to figure out a way for the Zidoo to rescrape and use the updated NFO files. I have tried removing the show, updated the metadata, unsyncing, resynching, you name it. Nothing and I mean NOTHING seems to work. I think the Zidoo copies things onto the local storage and then references that. Keeps things around in cache. Something! I don't know. But the only way I've been able to get around it is by totally renaming the TV show EVERY TIME I want to make an update. This means renaming the mkv files, nfo files, fanart files, folders and even updating ALL of the links within the NFO files. It is a MAJOR pain in the @$$. If anybody knows how to get the Zidoo to read the updated files instead of the files that it stores in cache, please let me know. I haven't been able to figure it out. Step 5: Reboot and Review Your Work Reboot the Zidoo (otherwise posters will pulsate and glitches will occur). Here are screenshots of my first family vacation as a TV Show. Everything shown is as a result of the above information:
Also, if anybody figures out how to add custom Director and Cast, I'd love to hear it. I tried and couldn't get it to work.
There was an intention to add an Update NFO along with meta update but only meta made it. Maybe if there is an update in the future? Excellent work btw
Thanks. An Update From NFO feature would be a welcomed feature. Would have saved me loads of time. I haven't. Can you please provide more details?
This was very helpful, thanks! Were you using HT4 by any chance? I ask because HT5 seems to be broken as far as nfo files goes and doesn't seem to read them correctly.
Hello @ckenisell Many thanks to share this with us. Great work. I'm always since years not happy with Zidoo/HT4 and now HT5 in using private video stuff, special concerts, documenations, dolby atmos trailer and so on. So I search and search again for solutions using this kind of videos in Zidoo. Did you wrote the aboved shown NFO complete manually? Or did you used a NFO generator. I tried to use TinyMediaManager. It generates the NFO very easy. BUT: in the Zidoo poster view the files are flickering/blinking in the text and also the posters. I tried also to use a simple NFO generator: same result of flickering/blinking video file names and posters. Do you use also HT5? Does HT show your TV show construct the files and posters as normal without flickering/blinking?
