How exactly do you classify collections of old shorts? (not tv...not movies)

General Discussions
1

OK, so I have a couple of collections of old shorts -- that is, the little things like cartoons or live action entertainment that they used to show in front of movies in the 1920s - the 1950s (I think).  You know, stuff like The Little Rascals or Looney Tunes.  Because they are just little things, when I was growing up, they would show them in random groupings on weekday afternoon kids' tv.  So, they aren't really movies, but they aren't really tv episodes either.  And now that they have been brought together in 'collections,' I like to put them in my personal collection and watch them, but I'm having trouble separating them in a good way that pulls the metadata down properly.

 

For instance: I have The Little Rascals Collector's Edition DVDs, which include 88 classic episodes.  This is just one of at least 3 collections of Little Rascals shorts, none of which are complete and apparently all of which are in a different order.  This collection leaves out the silent shorts (from what I can tell) and possibly others as well, and I have no idea what order they are in (but they are definitely not chronological).  

 

Now, each DVD had only one 'Title' file, divided into chapters.  The chapters each represent individual episodes/shorts, plus 1-2 chapters of extra crap (less than a minute each) which I left off when I ripped the disk.  I have tried naming them like a series, with each disk representing a 'season' and each short an 'episode,'  Plex then tries to pull the metadata from theTVDB.com, which is in a completely different order (understandably) and is therefore labeled incorrectly.  If I try to find the metadata on the Movie Database, it can't find any.  

 

Now, I can go through the collection and re-label each individual short with the correct title, but that is tedious, time consuming, and incomplete (unless I copy and paste the 'first aired' date and synopsis from theTVDB.com for each individual short, which is even MORE tedious and time consuming). 

 

So, it seems to me that there should be somewhere I can find the metadata for this particular collection, since it is a commercially produced edition.  But I am at a loss as to how to do that best.  

 

Any ideas?  I'm having a similar problem with my Looney Tunes Golden Collection.

2

If you are not going to follow the tvdb order of things then I would do a fix incorrect match on the series and choose "Personal Media Shows" as the agent. then it will not try to get metadata from anywhere and you can fill out metadata manually as you see fit.

Even if you find some online source that has the data, there will probably not be any agent built for that site to get that data automagically.

3

Siiiiigh.  That's exactly what I was trying to avoid.  But I'm OCD enough that I'm doing it. :P

4

If anyone has the Looney Tunes Collection, would you be willing to send me a dump of the directory listing with proper names for metadata?  :)

5

If anyone has the Looney Tunes Collection, would you be willing to send me a dump of the directory listing with proper names for metadata? :)


I have this ripped, just not named yet. I was going to make that my project this weekend. I'll send you the list if I decide I'm in the mood to organize it all :-P
6

I have a library called "Cartoons". It also holds Disney and Warner Bros. cartoons from the early days up until today. The library type is "Movies", the scanner is Plex Movie Scanner and the agent is XBMCnfoMoviesImporter. I use ViMediaManager to make the nfo files for each cartoon. Some of them are indeed listed as movies on IMDB and I can pull details from there with VMM. Others I have to search for posters to use or just make my own. The advantage to using nfo files is you can input them once and then you have the file permanently, so if you have to re-do the Plex library you don't need to re-input all the details manually again.

I have a separate library for short films, but you could combine them into something called "Old Movie Shorts" or something like that.

![post-4283-0-04900700-1431566245.png|494x499](upload://viWGmCsiCY863kpPl0ascbMicul.png)

7

If anyone has the Looney Tunes Collection, would you be willing to send me a dump of the directory listing with proper names for metadata?  :)

Look up the episodes here: (it has them all on one page - easier to search)

http://looneytunes.wikia.com/wiki/Looney_Tunes_and_Merrie_Melodies_filmography

You can compare this to TheTVDB, but I think they're identical.

http://thetvdb.com/index.php?tab=series&id=72514&lid=7

Looney Tunes specialty: it uses the year as season number:

TV Shows\Looney Tunes\Season 1962\Looney Tunes - s1962e02 - Quackodile Tears.ext
8

I have all of the Looney Tunes from a classic DVD collection named correctly per TVDB, I should be able to provide a list, but not for a couple of weeks until I'm back at my media server.  If there's a way to do it remotely logging into my server via Plex (I don't have any kind of remote desktop already set up) let me know and I'll give it a shot from here.

EDIT:  Something else you might try.  If you have already named the episodes similar to their titles WITHOUT any season or episode info in the file names, create a folder called "Looney Tunes", dump the files into it, then dump that folder into Filebot, Filebot will know you are working with the Looney Tunes TV show and without season/episode info it will attempt to identify the episodes by filename and rename them.  You might try 5-10 at a time and check each one in the Filebot UI to make sure they are correct, and if so have Filebot do the renaming.  If your names are close, it might work pretty well.

9

I got it working with Filebot.  I think a couple are wrong, but I'll have to play each one for a few seconds to be sure. 400+ renames though.  Impressive!

10

I have a library called "Cartoons". It also holds Disney and Warner Bros. cartoons from the early days up until today. 

I have been trying to get as many of the old Disney cartoons as I can.  Can you give me some info about where you got them?  My wife and I have found a good number of the Disney shorts as extras on the movies when they are released.  She has put them in a TV Show library because they are found in The TVDB

http://thetvdb.com/?tab=series&id=78988&lid=17

It has worked well so far.  But we would like to ave a lot more of them.

11

I have been trying to get as many of the old Disney cartoons as I can.  Can you give me some info about where you got them?  My wife and I have found a good number of the Disney shorts as extras on the movies when they are released.  She has put them in a TV Show library because they are found in The TVDB

http://thetvdb.com/?tab=series&id=78988&lid=17

It has worked well so far.  But we would like to ave a lot more of them.

Like you, most of mine are rips from DVD collections. Some of the Road Runner ones are actually from videotapes I ripped years ago. A few are from the Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/TheMadDoctor1933MickeyMouseSoundCartoon). The others I can't really recall, but I'm sure they were somewhere on this big old internet.

12

Did you name them using the year as the season? I tried this (which worked for Looney tunes - as someone already mentioned) but with this database it just gives the title (I believe it’s just reading the file name) with no description. I have Mickey, Pluto, goofy, and Donald duck but it is just putting them all as 1 season even though I used different years as seasons. I’m having a similar issue with Popeye… Any help would be appreciated.

13

Yes, we have used the year as the season number. You need to follow the naming here
https://www.thetvdb.com/series/disney-animated-shorts

14

I use the above methods and they show correctly. When I ripped from DVDs I verified the episodes on the disc. I then used thetvdb.com, went to looney tunes>all seasons> hit ctrl F on the PC And found the episode. Named it accordingly.

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1 Like
15

Exactly what @quickspade said!!