Video library/Naming files/Movies

General topics

Videos

Management

Naming files

Movies

In order for the media scrapers to pick up the correct information your file names must follow a certain format:

• Movie naming conventions
• TV show naming conventions
• Music video naming conventions

1 Naming conventions

In order to be scanned correctly, movie file names should only have the title and the year (optional) followed by the file extension. Media source flags can also be added via file names to indicate source/quality of the movie (see link for more info).

To improve matching add the year within parenthesis to the end of the file or foldername, depending on your scanning method and folder structure (before the extension, if filename), this naming standard seems to yield the best results.

\Movies\Pulp Fiction (1994).avi
\Movies\Reservoir Dogs (1992).avi
\Movies\The Usual Suspects (1995).avi

\Movies\Avatar (2009)-cd1.mkv
\Movies\Avatar (2009)-cd2.mkv

\Movies\Avatar (2009)\somefilename.mkv
\Movies\The Usual Suspects (1995)\somefilename.avi

\Movies\The Usual Suspects (1995)\somefilename-cd1.avi
\Movies\The Usual Suspects (1995)\somefilename-cd2.avi
\Movies\Avatar (2009)\Avatar (2009)-cd1.mkv
\Movies\Avatar (2009)\Avatar (2009)-cd2.mkv

And for DVD-Video movies stored in file-mode on the harddrive or SMB NFS:

\Movies\Alien (1979)\VIDEO_TS.IFO
\Movies\Léon (1994)\VIDEO_TS.IFO
\Movies\Scarface (1983)\VIDEO_TS.IFO

2 File stacking

XBMC's file stacking feature handles your multi-part videos in a clean, intuitive manner. File stacking combines your multi-part files into a single item in the file list or library. Playback of stacks is completely transparent to you as the user, all parts are automatically queued for playback in order. Stacking is a view option available in videos file mode window. It is always applied when scanning movies into the library.