Article by Ey@el

Original en français

How frustrating to have built up an extensive collection of books and DVD/Blu-rays (or VHS tapes!) and being unable to remember which items you have and where to find them because it takes so much space on your shelves that most often, you need to store them in double or even triple storing. Nearly a decade ago, I had explained how to catalogue your collections with Ant Movie Catalog but ever since it became quite obsolete as much easier and more effective (multiplatform) new software such as Calibre for books and Kodi for films are now available (see Related articles). However, these applications have been developed for digital media. So how do you add your physical media to manage all your collections in the same place?

Well, luckily I've found a way!

The following tutorials assume that you already know how to use Calibre and Kodi and that have created digital libraries for all your books and movies. If not, please, refer to relevant online tutorials.

How to add your printed books to Calibre

1. Configure Calibre's importation pattern

You need to do that as shown in the animated GIF below (sorry it's all in French, but you should recognise the steps as described right after).

• Click on Preferences (Ctrl+P).
• Import/export - Adding books section.
• Read metadata tab.
• In the Regular expression field, in the drop down menu, select the following pattern:
  (?P<title>.+) - (?P<author>[^_]+)
• Enter a file name (do not forget the file extension) to check it does work and that everything before the dash ends up in the Title field while everything that comes after ends up in the Authors field. Make sure to add a space on both sides of the dash.
• If your Test is okay, then Apply and Close.

2. Create dummy digital books

This second step assumes that you have already created a list of all your printed books according to the preset pattern above.

• Open your file manager and Create New Folder (which you may delete after use) in which you will add all your dummy digital books.
• Right click Create New Document - Blank Document (on Windows it may be New Text Document).
• Rename this text file according to the preset importation pattern and do not forget the TXT extension.

I recommend creating a generic Title - Author.txt file and duplicating it as many times as you need and rename it accordingly.

3. Add books to your library

When you're done, you'll have to import your dummy books in Calibre.

• Click Add books - Add books from a single folder (A) and select your temporary folder.
• Then proceed as you would do for digital books.
• When the importation is done, you may delete your temporary dummy book folder as Calibre has copied them in your library.

NOTE: I advise you to use Edit metadata individually so as to be able to choose the correct information and the book cover that suits you best. I also recommend adding new metadata sources (Preferences - Advanced - Extensions - Metadata Sources) such as Goodread and Babelio for instance. you may also note that I have created custom columns to indicate printed book formats (hardback/paperback). I intend to create another to keep track of where my printed books are stored on my shelves. Shouldn't take too long with the Edit metadata in bulk function.

How to add your DVD/Blu-rays to Kodi

1. Create dummy videos

Creating dummy videos is about similar to creating dummy books except that you cannot create blank video files from your file manager. I have therefore made one you may download (right click to Save):

dummy-ENG.mp4

Unlike with Calibre, the folder you're going to create to add your dummy movie files will not be temporary. So you'll need to create it directly in your video library. The next steps are the same as for books but renaming will only use Title and optionally date (see relevant online tutorials for Kodi).

2. Add a new video source to Kodi

You may now tell Kodi where to look for your dummy video folder just like you did for your other sources. Select Movies as a category for scrapers.

Then right click on this new source to Scan for new content.

3. Specific cases

Some of your videos may not be found by metadata scrapers. Either because such data for your movie doesn't exist or because it is regarded as a mini series.

In the former case, you'll need to create a NFO text file named exactly as your movie file and add your own artwork in the same folder (see online Kodi help documentation to find out how to do that).

In the latter case, you'll need to create another folder as a new source for Kodi and use TV Series as category to use the appropriate scraper. Then move all the relevant dummy video files to that folder.

If you have series on discs, proceed the same way using a folder per season and a dummy.mp4 per season folder. Name our dummy file same as the series title adding S for season plus the season number followed by E for episode followed by the episode number dash another episode and episode number and so on. Kodi will fetch the thumbnails and information for each episode you indicate in the filename even if you only have one dummy file.

Series (Year) S01E01-E02-E03.mp4

NOTE: In the above example, I only had a couple of episodes per season so I looked up the correct number on TMBD and named my dummy files accordingly and Kodi does display the right episodes and not those I do not have on my DVD.

My only regret is not being able to add a custom field to indicate where my DVD's are store on my shelves unlike with Calibre.

Ey@el