The quickest and easiest way I have found to keep my video library under control is by using an automatic file naming tool called Filebot. You can view the website HERE.
From the creators website:
FileBot makes organizing your movies and TV shows a breeze! We’ll automatically match your files with information from various online databases. How you want your media files to be named and organized is completely up to you. Our groovy format engine supports pretty much anything!
What I like best about it is being able to customize the output in anyway you please. I arrange my files in folders, so I have no need for the show title to be in the filename, I just like the season and episode number, as well as the episode title. But you can make your filenames include pretty much anything you want by adjusting the output formula.
Heres My Filebot Formula {s00e00} - {t.replacePart(' Part $1').replaceAll("&", replacement = "And").replaceAll("'", replacement = "").replaceAll("!", replacement = "").replaceAll(",", replacement = "")}
Also from the Filebot website, here are some sample naming options:
{n} [{y}] {vf}{af}The Man from Earth [2007] 720p 6ch
Filebot is free to download and use from their website HERE. MAC USERS – If you try to download Filebot through the app store it is not free – It costs $4.99US, but you can get the latest version for free from Filebots Sourceforge file repository HERE. Just open the folder for the latest version and download the app.tar.gz version of the file.
From time to time most of us see something on Youtube that we would like to download and save.
In my case this week, I found a Youtube channel that has the video broadcast from every NHRA drag racing event of the 2012 season. As my wife and I flew from Australia to attend the Sonoma round of racing, it makes a really great souvenir for us to have the video broadcast. The problem is though, Each days racing is split into about 9 or 10 pieces, and it was a three day event. Thankfully though, KMan2100 has arranged the videos into playlists, so they can be viewed in order.
Now, you could download the videos one at a time using the method described in my post about Video Download Helper HERE, but that will take a LOT of time. If you want to download all of the videos in a playlist quickly and easily, you need to make a download list, then download them all!
To do this, you need to be using the Firefox web browser. Its free, it runs on Windows, Mac and Linux, and if you are not already using it, you should be. You can get it free HERE.
With Firefox open and running, select “Add-ons” from the “Tools” menu in your menu bar. The first Add-on you need is the one that takes all of the videos in the playlist and turns them into a series of links. It is called BYTubeD, Bulk Youtube Downloader. To get it, type “BYTubeD” into the search bar in the top right corner.
Click the “Install” button to the right of it when you see it in your “results” list. This will download and install it. When this is finished, go back to the search bar and type “Download Them All”. As before, click the “Install” button to the right to install it.
To make your new add-ons active you need to restart Firefox. To do this, simply click the text that says “Restart now”
Once you have clicked restart, you can close the Add-ons window, and any other windows that may have popped up.
And now the fun starts!
To get downloading, go to Youtube and find your channel, and click the playlist you want to download.
As you can see, there are 28 videos on this playlist. To download them all, open your “Tools” tab on your menu bar and select “BYTubeD”. It should be at the bottom. This will open a new window.
**BEWARE** – Not only does this window contain info for all the videos you want, it also contains the info for other playlists and videos that are on this page that you may not want as well! As highlighted below, you can see the Sonoma videos I want, but I am not interested in Phoenix or Gainsville etc etc…..
For the next step, you need to tell BYTubed which videos you DO want to keep. To do this, simply highlight them. To select multiple videos (Which is kinda the point of this article) hold down your control key, then click each one if your using Windows, or your command key and click if you’ve got a Mac. Once you have highlighted the videos you want to download, click the start button.
BYTubed will now chew through the playlist and open up a new web page with links to all your videos.
Now’s where the magic happens. To download them all, open “Download Them All” from your “Tools” menu in your menu bar.
All that is left to do now is to check mark (click the circles to the left of the names) the videos you want to keep, choose your download location (I usually download to my desktop) then click “Start” to watch those babies start loading down!
Almost all of us were, and are still using Windows based computers, even though we have locked ourselves firmly into the Apple world by buying iPhones and iPads. I am sure you have noticed (Like I Have) there are definitely some issues that arise by being “Multi Platform”. Slowly but surely, the software writers of the world are delivering apps that allow your iPhone and Windows 7 Laptop to co-exist a little more seamlessly.
For over a decade now, all of the home video I have, all of my DVD backups, TV programs I have recorded, in other words, my entire video collection is in AVI format. My movies are in DIVX format (I bought Dr DIVX years ago to rip my DVD’s and have stuck with it), and everything else is in XVID. That’s just the way it has ALWAYS been! And I sure as heck aren’t going to convert them all to Quicktime, I’ll be dead before it finishes re-encoding.
Enter Buzz Player, or in my case, Buzz Player HD for iPad. Buzz Player is an app for your iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad (Even iPhone 3GS) that will allow you to create folders, copy movie files to your device, and play them seamlessly without the need for jail breaking your device! And my favorite part, it will even stream from your network shares!
To get started watching AVI files on your iPad/iPod Touch/iPhone, download the correct version of Buzz Player for your device from the iTunes app store, and in my opinion, the nominal fee of $2.99 for this app is ridiculously low for the functionality it provides.
Once it is installed and open, you can start creating and organizing folders for your local media (media that is physically on your device), or if your like me, your gonna want to start watching stuff from Desktop and your Media Server. To watch stuff from other devices (In my case, my Western Digital WDTV Live Hub) click the icon that says “SMB/FTP”. This will query your home network and display a list of all devices that are set up to serve media on your home network. It also tells you the protocol they are using to serve.
I noticed that some devices appear more than once, and I expect that is because they broadcast different services that they are able to provide. I selected my WDTV’s Samba feed, and was asked to input credentials.
As my network shares are not password protected within my own home network, I used “Guest” as my username, and left the password blank, and was able to connect easily. I tried to click “Connect As Guest” but that didnt work. I guess my WDTV needed to have at least the username of Guest. If your shares are password protected, this is the place to enter them to gain access. Don’t worry, Buzz Player can remember your devices and logins if you want it to, so you only have to do it once. Just remember to add it to your source list before you disconnect.
Once you have connected, you can see a list of all of the available drives/folders/files being shared.
Now, Its just a matter of selecting the file you want to watch from the appropriate directory, and selecting it. What comes next is pretty cool! Buzz Player asks you if you want to copy the file to your device, or if you want to watch it from a stream! YEAH BABY!
In my case, Im happy to watch the stream, so when you click play, it spends a few seconds buffering the file, and then starts to play your video!
As you can see from the above screen cap, I’m streaming Family Guy “Death Has A Shadow.AVI” over Samba, and watching it flawlessly on my iPad!
Buzz Player supports: .mpv, .mov, .mp4, .m4v, .3gp .avi, .divx, .dat, .vcd, .wmv, .bin, .iso, .vob, .mkv, .rmvb, .ogg, .flv, .swf, .rm, .ts, .nsv, .ram, .vfw, .mpg, .mpeg, .m1v, .m2v, .dv3, .gp, .mqv, .ogm, .ogv, .asf, .dvr-ms, .m2t, .m2ts, .rec, .bik, .dv as well as many audio codecs.
**HINT** – If your playback is choppy and/or breaks during playback, CHECK YOUR NETWORK!!!!!! I’ve seen a lot of people slagging this app because they cant stream a 2GB 720HD video over their 802.11g networks! VIDEO FILES ARE HUGE! Your network might not be capable of streaming it in real time, so COPY it to your device, and then watch it uninterrupted.
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The quickest and easiest way I have found to keep my video library under control is by using an automatic file naming tool called Filebot. You can view the website HERE.
