NFO files/Movies

Video .nfo Files containing XML data
1. The *.nfo file is an XML file containing the data for inclusion in the library.

movie.nfo will override all and any .nfo files in the same folder as the media files if you use the "Use foldernames for lookups" setting. If you don't, then moviename.nfo is used. If there is only one .nfo file in a folder, The scraper will use it for all media files in that folder. If there are multiple media files in a folder, the *.nfo should be named exactly the same as the video file it is representing (ie. moviename.avi and moviename.nfo). In the case of multi-part (stacked) video stacking, name the file either moviename.nfo or moviename-CD1.nfo where the first filename is moviename-CD1.avi. Note, if your movie is ripped as VOB's and stored in a 'VIDEO_TS' folder, you will have to name the file 'VIDEO_TS.nfo' and place it in the same directory with the VIDEO_TS.ifo file.

Additionally the 'set' tag can be used to help sort movies that are part of a series or collection (ie Harry Potter, James Bond films). This sort of collection tagging must be done in the .NFO file before the movie is scanned into the library.

Video .nfo files containing a URL
2. The *.nfo file contains a URL of the information page to scrape. The file can include other information (i.e. scene info), XBMC will scan through it and use a relevant URL if a match is found.

The scraper tries to match URL's to all scrapers of the content type a directory is set to. e.g. if you set the content type to movies, all movie scrapers check .nfo files for a matching URL. This means that .nfo files override the scraper setting. I.e. a directory is set to use the IMDB scraper but you have a German movie in it. Simply create an .nfo for that movie with the OFDB link in it and you are sorted!


 * placed next to Moviename.avi where Moviename is the name of the movie file.


 * if you use the "Use Foldername for Lookups" option, movie.nfo takes priority over any other .nfo files.

If you use the "Movies are in separate folders that match the movie title" scraper setting XBMC will use the first nfo file it finds in the folder (other than the .nfo files described above) and apply it to any valid video file it finds in the same folder.

Video .nfo files containing a mix of XML and URL
You can also create .nfo files that contain both XML data and an URL. This is useful for instance, if you want the entry in your database to have another name than the one officially provided by the scraper, for the movie to sort differently or the movie to be a part of a movie set.

Example:

By default the xml entry is added to the scraped entry in the database and may result in some duplicates. If you want to completely override the scraped result you need to set a clear attribute for the relevant xml tag in the .nfo file.

Example:

Currently supported tags for the clear attribute are genre, director, studio, actor, credits and artist for Music Videos.

Movie sets
This is especially helpful for example for the themoviedb.org, which does not recognise "Uncut", "Extended Version", etc. in the movie title.
 * Get the URL at the end by searching the movie on your favorite movie DB site (but you need a scraper for XBMC of this site) and copy the link from the address bar of the browser.
 * Doing it this way has the advantage, to get all other information like cast, poster, fanart, rating, etc. automatically from the movie DB site, while being able to specify the exact title.
 * Only single movie sets are supported

Editing the .NFO file
The two tags we’re interested in are shown on the NFO files/movies page, but not really explained. They are: Since XBMC also remembers views for different folders, you could also just sort this folder by movie year, rather than name, and achieve the same result.
 * &lt;sorttitle>: This tag is used to give a secondary ’sort title’ that will be used to order the movies when sorting the movies by name. The easiest way to handle this is to just use “Die Hard 1″, "Die Hard 2″, etc.
 * <&lt;set>: This tag is used to give a name to the set, or series, so that it can be listed in your Movies view.

For the Die Hard example we would add the following tags to each .NFO file in the movie series. ''Note that the sorttitle tag is an option tag that is not specific to sets. You only need it if you want your movies to sort by a different name other than their actual title. It is safe to leave it out if you would rather just use the date sort.''

Movie tags
To add a movie to one or multiple tags an NFO file can be created and for every tag an XML tag can be added like this If there's no tag with the specified name it will be automatically created and the tag will be attached to the movie. A movie can be added to multiple tags by adding it multiple times.