Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is a scraper?

A: Web scraping (or Web harvesting, Web data extraction) is a computer software technique of extracting information from websites. Usually, such software programs simulate human exploration of the Web. Web scraping focuses more on the transformation of unstructured Web content, typically in HTML format, into structured data that can be stored and analyzed in a central local database or spreadsheet. Media scrapers are used to go online to automatically retrieve movie information and images (aka artwork) from the Web.

Brand X media center already scrapes movie information on its own. Why would I want to use a standalone media manager?

A: Media center applications usually have their own built-in scraping tools, however they are quite slow and if you need to reinstate your media library for any reason, you will have to re-scrape and manually fine tune all your media information from scratch again.

The advantages over the built-in tools in general are as such:

1. All of your movie information and images will be locally stored alongside your movies in a media center friendly format so they can easily import them. This means that once you setup your media library, you will never have to scrape it again. If you lose your database in your media center application for some reason, you only have to re-import your local information from the accompanied files generated by Ember.

2. Full control over your collection to tailor all information according to your taste. Media center applications’ built-in scrapers just grab the first available images for a movie or TV Show and most do not allow you to edit the movie information (such as plot, tagline, actors, etc). Using Ember, you can download every available information, select images and modify information on a full screen display.

After processing all my media in Ember Media Manager, the changes I made do not show up in XBMC. What am I doing wrong?

A: There are 2 common causes for this issue:

  • You have selecting an improper naming scheme in Ember's settings. Only the following file names are supported in XBMC:
    • NFO: movie.nfo, <movie>.nfo
    • Poster: movie.tbn, <movie>.tbn
    • Fanart: fanart.jpg, <movie>-fanart.jpg
  • You have modified the files after they have been added to XBMC's library. XBMC does not re-check a file after it has been scanned the first time. To force XBMC to reload the modified files, you can either reload each movie individually (view the movie information and hit "Reload") or use the Set Content hack: navigate to the list of sources, highlight the proper source entry, open the context menu (usually 'c'), hit Set Source Content, change the content to "None" and hit "OK", then Set Source Content again and change it back to movies. At this point, XBMC will rescan all of your movies and load the new information.

Ember Media Manager does not scan meta data for some of my files. Why does it not work?

A: Disc images are not supported by MediaInfo.dll so meta data will not be scanned for file types such as iso, img, bin, etc. using the version that's included with Ember Media Manager. v0.7.11 of the dll does scan disc images for meta data, but it is more than likely incorrect (a "false-positive", as described by the developer of the MediaInfo library). If you would like to use it anyway, download one of the following and extract MediaInfo.dll from the archive into the Bin folder of your Ember installation (overwriting the current dll):

EMM >1.0 is not scanning in my previously created folder.jpg, fanart.jpg, movie.nfo and doesn't create them either. Also why don't Extrathumbs and Frame Extraction work?

A: Ember only enables these features for folders containing only one movie. To tell Ember your media structure is organized like this, you have to enable "only detect one movie from each folder" in movie source configuration window.

What do the colors on the media list mean?

A:
Green: New Movies - Ember will mark new movies with green until the next restart or library update

Red: Marked Movies - Either marked by you manually or by Ember automatically if you enabled "Mark New Movies" option in settings

Red(ish) background color: the titles are out of tolerance when matching to the file name (Title Match Confidence in Settings).

Why is the "Scrape Media" button grayed out for TV Shows? I cannot scrape any TV Show.

A:
Because there is no automatic bulk scrapers are implemented for TV Shows (yet). For scraping a TV show, you have to right click on the specific show and choose "(Re)Scrape Show" option.

I can get posters and fanarts, but no trailers get downloaded. How do you get trailers?

A:
http://embermm.com/projects/embermm/wiki/Movie_Scraping#Trailer-scraping

I have an .nfo file alongside my media file which includes the IMDB ID. Will Ember use this to identify the right movie?

A:
Yes, Ember looks into all files with .NFO and .INFO extensions for IMDB ID during the initial scan and if found, then it will use this to scrape instead of the cleaned file/folder name.

I have copied some episodes for a TV Show previously scraped with EMM into the shows folder but XBMC won't detect them. Why?

A:
This is because you have not included a TheTVDB API Key in your settings for EMM to include the <episodeguide> url in the tvshow.nfo. XBMC will use that to look for information regarding episodes but if it does not exist it will rely on each episode having a .nfo file. The solution is to scrape the episodes with EMM first and then update your library in XBMC and the new episodes will be detected.

Most of the tools and plugins have disappeard following the upgrade from 1.1 to 1.2. Where can I find them?

A: Addons Manager

After clicking the Update Library Button I only get the message "Performing Preliminary Tasks (Gathering Data) in the bottom left corner and thats it. When I make a fresh new install of EMM the Library Scan works only the first time but when I restart EMM I have the same problem again.

A: Check permissions on Ember installation folder and files. EMM from v 1.2 doesn't request elevation of privileges (UAC) at runtime, like previously in v1.1, so it's now the user's responsibility is to ensure write access to Ember folder for himself! Alternately you can also copy/move Ember folder to your home folder where is usually no permission issues. (First time it works, because EmberSetup ask elevation of privileges, and then run Ember under the same privileges)