Media Centre for Linux that browses m4v metadata?
 

I have a rather large iTunes movie collection I've build from DVDs to play on my AppleTV.

I've play'd around xbmc which is exactly what I'm looking for from an interface but it doesn't sort and browse by the metadata.

Anyone know of a program I could look at? I want to bring my iTunes video collection to Linux in something that sorts like it. My naming of S01E01_Show.m4v doesn't tell much.

I've been using XBMC for 8 years now and I'm really confused about the question here. You name your file S01E01_show.m4v and then scan it into the library which will fetch all the metadata from thetvdb. Once in the library you do everything by metadata. For example, in my daughter's room we have movies filtered to Genre: Children > Studio: Disney so when she clicks the 'Movies' button on her remote control it only displays Disney movies (and they are then sorted by year and title).

Can you ellaborate further on your issue?

From what you said above I needed to change my thinking.

I have all the information about the show, even thumbnails, inside the m4v files. The first show I tried the scraper went bananas and miss labelled everything. Which is why I thought it wasn't working... turns out it works for some of my shows.

So few questions from that:

1. How do I manually specify what the show is for the scrapper? (ie my Battlestar Galactica collection it thinks is the 1970's version when it's not)

2. Is there any "official" way of distributing the database? I need to get it on three computers (and I realize I can just copy the .xbmc folder)

This isn't the right place to ask these questions. Head on over to XBMCForums and start reading the Linux user guides.

Here are some quick answers to your questions:

1. If you 'scan new content' one at a time and there is a conflict on a show with the same name then you will get prompted to select the correct one. You can also, and preferably, use an external scraper tool (I use Ember Media Manager --windows) to scrape all my data and that data gets stored as XML files. Then whenever I'm ready to scan the new comntent into the database it can add thousands of new records in a matter of seconds because it doesn't need to scrape data from the internet, if pulls it from the NFO/XML files.

2. My XBMC database is stored in a MySQL database. This means that I scrape my metadata from the web once and then I scan it into the mySQL database and all 5 of our TVs has instant visibility into all our content. This has the added benefit of allowing all XBMC installations to share music star ratings, playcounts, etc as well as be able to start watching a show in one room and continue watching it in another room.

Here are some useful links:

Howto: Whip your XBMC Movie/TV Art into Shape
http://lifehacker.com/5505849/how-to...xbmc-and-boxee

Howto: Ultimate Start to Finish XBMC Guide
http://lifehacker.com/5536963/the-ul...c-media-center

Howto: Syncronize your XBMC Across Every Room in the House
http://lifehacker.com/5634515/how-to...m-in-the-house

Howto: Customize XBMC with the Five Awesome Skins
http://lifehacker.com/5198009/custom...-awesome-skins