File naming recommendations?

[Empgamer]

Recently bought one of these players.  Quite impressed so far.  It was a toss up between this and the AC Ryan Plaoy On but the WD shop was closer, product has a better warranty and the user intefrace seems OK now (which seemed to be a problem before).

Anyway, all that aside, just wondering if there are any suggestions with regard to file naming for movies etc. I'm contemplating either just the name and year or a longer title including:

Name, year, format, audio etc.

If choosing the latter, does it need to be in a specific format (e.g. punctuation wise)?  I ask because I've borrowed a friend's external HDD and with all his movies every word is separated by a full stop (period).  Is this because the WD Hub needs that?  Or maybe it's how he downloaded them??  A site convention maybe??  So (and this is just a random example), could a file name be:

Kingdom of Heaven  2007 Blue Ray Dolby Digital

or something like

Kingdom of Heaven _2007_Blue Ray_Dolby Digital (which I think might look / work better)

or even

Kingdom.of.Heaven.2007.Blue.Ray.Dolby.Digital

In any event I suspect some form of rename from the file download / copy (e.g. from legit DVD) would need to be renamed to keep some form of standard and commonality to avoid a messy library.

Finally, where, if you want to do it, do you assign the thumbnails and / or any film info / metadata.  I've seen the suggested use of the following folders so assume that's where you'd do it.  Just need to work out how?

MOVIES

  Movie XXX

     Movie File

     Thumbnails

     Movie Info

Any help appreciated.

[JoeySmyth]

If you are going to be getting metadata and thumbnails in the near future, your filenaming is going to make the task frustrating i suspect.

eg.

Kingdom of Heaven _2007_Blue Ray_Dolby Digital.mkv

Kingdom.of.Heaven.2007.Blue.Ray.Dolby.Digital.mkv

Meta scrapers will get confused and wont automatically find the info unless you type:

Kingdom of Heaven  into the search box. 

Naming your file Kingdom of Heaven.mkv  (Just the Movie Title) 

Will make the task easier in the long run.

p.s. there's no 'e' in Blu-Ray

[Kazgor]

i always put a e in blue-ray.. can't help it... lol

how about tv shows? i find thumbgen is not able to do the lookup and i always have to type the name into the popup box... and the popup box always default to the toplevel foldername or to the drive letter... so annoying.

ive tried...

showname - 02x04 - title

showname.s02e04.title

with no luck.  i surely can't be the only one?

[Empgamer]

Hmmm.  Thanks.  I guess just the name will be OK.  I suppose the date could always be added if essential as part of the title:

e.g. 'War of the Worlds 1958.mkv'  or even 'War of the Worlds (1958).mkv' to distinguish an earlier version from a remake (which in this case could be called 'Dakota Fanning Screaming for 2 Hours.mkv').

Must admit I always hate the 'underscore' naming of files when I see it on Windows files, irritates the **bleep** out of me for some reason.

Noted re Blu-Ray.  Can't say I've ever noticed, then I never bought many Blu-Ray discs, never really thought they were worth the premium.  I'm probably not enough of a Video/Audiophile

[Empgamer]

Something else I noticed, I may have misread this, or may just not have got my head round it yet.  I THOUGHT I saw a suggestion to have several folders per movie:

Root

MOVIES (Folder)

  Goldfinger (Folder)

      Movie File (Folder) containing the movie

      Thumbnails (Folder) containing the .jpg file (s)

      Info (Folder) containing (I think) the meta data stuff

When displaying the movies by folder though (accept there may be a better way to look / view the titles (still going through it all) it looks a right mess.

What seems to work better is:

Root

MOVIES (Folder)

   Goldfinger (Folder)

       Goldfinger.mp4 (movie file in whatever format)

       Goldfinger.jpg (the thumbnail)

That way the movie shows up as the Movie name in folder view with the jpg as the folder cover (albeit it has the green icon in botttom right hand corner of the jpg image).

Not sure if there is a better way to organise it all??

[JoeySmyth]

hmm .... placing all of your movies into individual folders ?

"Folders"  Dont display "MetaData" .. (unless you resort to my trick discovered a while ago)

http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-Hub-Themes/Folder-Metadata-trick-for-FW2-04-13/m-p/254820#M40...

Secondly,  "Folders"  wont and dont display Moviesheets or Streaming Backdrops via the Hub.

I Recommend ....

MOVIES  ..... Main Folder

ACTION ...... Sub Folder containing all your "Action" Movies

BOND ......... Sub Folder containing all your "James Bond" Movies

etc etc etc

This way, you will have a Folder Thumbnail, (MetaData for the Folder using the above "Trick")

Once you "Enter" any of the "Subfolders" with your Movies ... eg

Goldmember.mkv

Goldmember.xml

Goldmember.jpg

These will display a Thumbnail, Metadata and Backdrops in Gallery View if Connected Online.

(if you are not online ... then you can store a local Moviesheet ... eg. Goldmember_sheet.jpg  but the Movie XML ...

must "link" to it ... eg.  <backdrop>Goldmember_sheet.jpg<backdrop/> )

If you are unsure, keep reading, do small tests ... before committing to arranging your entire collection.

[Tinwarble]

Actually, the best way to have you file structure is to have the least amount of folders possible, and to sort them by Genre rather than have each movie in it's own individual folder.

So if you want to sort your movies by Standard def & Blu-ray (this is how I have mine), you would start off by having a Standard def folder & a Blu-ray folder.  By the way, who ever named it Blu-ray probably did so because they couldn't spell, since the name is derived from the blue-violet laser used to read Blu-ray discs.

Anyway, so after you start with those 2 folders you can add you structure like this.

Action (folder)

   movie1.mkv

   movie1.xml

   movie1.jpg

   movie2.mkv

   movie2.xml

   movie2.jpg

   etc.

Comedy (folder)

   movie1.mkv

   movie1.xml

   movie1.jpg

   movie2.mkv

   movie2.xml

   movie2.jpg

   etc.

You will find that this is the best and easiest way to display you movies.

[JoeySmyth]

Yeah Tinwarble, that's what i was saying...

MOVIES  ..... Main Folder  (sure, you dont really need this)

ACTION ...... Sub Folder containing all your "Action" Movies

BOND ......... Sub Folder containing all your "James Bond" Movies

Anyway, so after you start with those 2 folders you can add you structure like this.

Action (folder)

   movie1.mkv

   movie1.xml

   movie1.jpg

   movie2.mkv

   movie2.xml

   movie2.jpg

   etc.

Comedy (folder)

   movie1.mkv

   movie1.xml

   movie1.jpg

   movie2.mkv

   movie2.xml

   movie2.jpg

   etc.

You will find that this is the best and easiest way to display you movies.

[Tinwarble]

Yeah, apparently we were posting at the same time, you just beat me to the punch (or Post as it were).

[JoeySmyth]

  sorry