I have a ton of movies in a number of different formats (DVD folders, avi, mpg) and I have no idea whether they are all worth watching. So I was looking for a program to scan through the files, add the rating from IMDB and help my find the good, the bad and the ugly movies. Here is what I did …

1. Install XBMC
2. “Add source”- the root folder on my external hard drive
3. XBMC can now scan all files and folders and retrieve IMDB’s movie information. Problem: some of the filenames are so cryptic, that XBMC cannot find them. So I had to manually correct the filenames. Ideally, filenames adhere to “Titel (Year)”. Helpful was a little tool that renames files with the help of regular expressions. A number of filenames can be easily stripped of unnecessary information with simple \[Nero\] or \(DE\).
4. Set the source format of the root folder
   1. Set content to “Movies”
   2. Always choose “imdb.com” as scraper. If you pick more than one scraper (themoviedb.org, etc.), the ratings get mixed up.
5. If XBMC cannot find a movie (the cover icon has not been replaced), go back to step #3. Maybe add “part 1”, “part 3” or change the scraper from akas.imdb.com to german.imdb.com. Don’t forget to re-scan the source.
6. Your’re done.