Thread: 12 Step Program to Organize your Movies

As an avid movie collector and neat freak I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to pull my hair out while working on organizing a large collection of movies from different sources. Enter Ember Media Manger...

This application has pretty much answered my prayers.

From EMM's website:

Ember Media Manager (aka EMM or Ember) is an open source movie and TV Show collections management tool which initially has been created to use with XBMC, but it contains YAMJ specific options, moreover it should virtually support most of the other media center application out there. It empowers home theater enthusiasts to manage and organize their entire movie and TV Show collections. EMM will scrape movie and TV Show information (plot, cast, genre, studio, mpaa certification, etc) from various sites, together with posters, fanart, actor photos and even movie trailers. It also automatically extracts media meta data like resolution, codecs, audio and subtitle streams. EMM can also be used as a standalone movie organizer/cataloger, but the primary aim is to export all the data and images to a format which can then be imported into your favorite media center application. In order to achieve this, EMM stores all data and images in files which are saved next to the media files. Media center applications can pick up those files and import the information to their own internal database.

As I already have an automated system to handle naming and organizing my TV shows I wasn't too interested in that side of Ember, but I may give it a look later. Note that I've only been using Ember for a week or so and haven't really gone too deep beyond having it organize my collection. So this guide will cover the basics, I may add more on some of the advanced features later. All information is relevant to version r1103.



DISCLAIMER: Ember will be modifying and moving your movie files. If you screw up or the application decides to kill itself and destroys your collection in the process I'm not responsible. With that said I've had zero trouble with Ember and have used it to organize several hundred movies.

1. Download Ember here.
2. It doesn't require an install so you can place the folder wherever you want.
3. Once you have the application running set your media folder(s) by going to Edit>Tools.
4. Navigate to the "Files and Sources" tab under the "Movies" header.
5. Click the "Add Source" button and point it the folder containing your movies. Adjust any of the other options to preference.
6. While still on the "Files and Sources" page be sure to adjust the "Skip files less than" setting if you have any video files (like samples) with your movies that you don't want Ember to worry about.
7. You can adjust any of the other settings as you see fit, most are personal preferences dealing with naming conventions and info sources.
8. Close out of the settings and hit "Update Library" from the main window. This should populate the left column with your movies if it hasn't already.
9. Now click "Scrape Media" and go through to Moving Missing Items>Ask (Require Input If No Exact Match)> All Items. This process will take quite a while, especially if you have a large collection. You can do other stuff while this is going on, but be sure to check on it as it will prompt you for movies that it can't find. When it prompts just type the name of the movie in the search box and it will search based on that.
   
10. Once the scrape is complete be sure to go through and double check everything is correct.
11. To rename your movies with the new info go to Tools>Bulk Renamer.
12. Once renamed you'll want to make sure everything is sorted properly, do this by going to Tools>Sort Files Into Folders.

Your movies should now be properly identified, named, and sorted. This is really the tip of the iceberg of what you can do with Ember, but for now that's what I'm using it for. Once I have more time I'll dig deeper into the other settings.

UPDATE: Despite the website saying Ember supports TV shows it actually only supports movies currently. This will be expanded in new versions to include TV shows and possibly music.

that looks legit. does it add cover art as well?

Originally Posted by djR3Z

that looks legit. does it add cover art as well?

Yep cover art and what it calls fan art, which is pretty much a big splash type thing. If you look at the screen cap of the app on the website you can see the cover art (tiny) in the top left of the file's window and then the big shot of Brad Pitt and the rest of the cast is the fan art.

Omg, finally! My media center is complete. With this and XBMC I can't go wrong.

looks reall nice, I may have to have a dabble with it and see what it can do, thanks folks ;)

Tried this out tonight, worked amazingly! Will definitely be recommending it to friends!

Originally Posted by Synth

Omg, finally! My media center is complete. With this and XBMC I can't go wrong.

It's worth mentioning that although the developers made it with XBMC in mind, Boxee seems to be able to pull in the info just fine. I remember reading that Boxee is a fork of XBMC so they're probably pretty similar under the hood.

Hey Hasdiel,

Thanks for the awesome info on this program. I tried reading on there site but im un-able to find anything so I have a question > Say u have your collection on all dvd's and nothing on your HDD, Does this program work for that as well? Can i manually put my movies in myself? I need a program like that cause unfortunately im still a little behind the times and have almost 1000 movies. Its a real pain when trying to find one title to watch.

Originally Posted by MikeD

Hey Hasdiel,

Thanks for the awesome info on this program. I tried reading on there site but im un-able to find anything so I have a question > Say u have your collection on all dvd's and nothing on your HDD, Does this program work for that as well? Can i manually put my movies in myself? I need a program like that cause unfortunately im still a little behind the times and have almost 1000 movies. Its a real pain when trying to find one title to watch.

Honestly I haven't poked around Ember enough to know if you could do that. In any case I think you'd be happier with DVD Profiler. You can put all of your DVD's in by entering the UPC (it even supports a bar code reader if you have one) and then it will find the exact copy/version you have. You can also manually enter each movie in if you'd like. Once you have your database built you can search through them by pretty much any criteria you want. It even has a really cool recommendation feature that tracks which ones you've watched and who watched it.

The recommendation thing is pretty cool, it just starts showing you DVD's from your collection and you give it a thumbs up/down and based on that it tries to find a movie that fits your current mood. There may be a trial version, or maybe you can a legally blurred copy elsewhere, but I loved the app so much I sprung and purchased a license.