The kodi-nfo-generator is a simple Python-based command-line tool that allows you to generate .nfo files for movies/TV shows that Kodi can use for its library.
This tool is aimed at people that manually curate their movie databases, in order
to avoid using scrapers that may pull in the wrong information (or none at all).
All the user has to do is place an ID file alongside their movie files,
the default is *.imdb, containing the unique IMDB movie ID (or full IMDB movie URL).
The tool will then scour the movie directories for these files and pull in the
information and create the .nfo files in the same location.
It is also possible to pull in information about episodes of a TV series (--episodes).
Though this is slow due to a lot more API calls. In this case, .nfo
files for TV episodes are being generated. The video files need to have the pattern
S01E01 in the file name to be recognized by kodi (and the generator). The episodes
can either be in the same directory of the .nfo file of the series or in sub-directories.
See the following repository for integrating this tool with Kodi:
https://github.com/fracpete/kodi-nfo-generator-addon
You can install the tool with pip as follows:
pip install kodi_nfo_generator
The kodi-nfo-gen tool can be used for pulling in the information from the
web using the IDs stored in the ID files.
The following parameters can be supplied to the tool:
usage: kodi-nfo-gen [-h] --dir DIR [--type {imdb}] [--recursive]
[--pattern GLOB] [--delay SECONDS]
[--preferred_language LANG]
[--fanart {none,download,download-missing,use-existing}]
[--fanart_file FILE] [--episodes]
[--episode_pattern [EPISODE_PATTERN [EPISODE_PATTERN ...]]]
[--season_group SEASON_GROUP]
[--episode_group EPISODE_GROUP] [--multi_episodes]
[--dry_run] [--overwrite] [--verbose] [--debug]
[--interactive] [--user-agent USER_AGENT]
Generates Kodi .nfo files with information retrieved from IMDB using local
files containing the unique IMDB movie ID.
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--dir DIR the directory to traverse (default: None)
--type {imdb} what type of ID the movie ID files represent, ie the
website they are from (default: imdb)
--recursive whether to traverse the directory recursively
(default: False)
--pattern GLOB the pattern for the files that contain the movie IDs
(default: *.imdb)
--delay SECONDS the delay in seconds between web queries (to avoid
blacklisting) (default: 1)
--preferred_language LANG
the preferred language for the titles (ISO 639-1, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-1_codes)
(default: en)
--fanart {none,download,download-missing,use-existing}
how to deal with fan-art (default: none)
--fanart_file FILE when downloading or using existing fanart, use this
filename (default: folder.jpg)
--episodes whether to generate .nfo files for episodes as well
(default: False)
--episode_pattern [EPISODE_PATTERN [EPISODE_PATTERN ...]]
the shell pattern(s) to use for locating episode files
(default: *S??E??*.*)
--season_group SEASON_GROUP
the regular expression to extract the season (first
group) (default: .*S([0-9]?[0-9])E.*)
--episode_group EPISODE_GROUP
the regular expression to extract the episode (first
group) (default: .*E([0-9]?[0-9]).*)
--multi_episodes whether to store the episodes info in a single file
(default: False)
--dry_run whether to perform a 'dry-run', ie only outputting the
.nfo content to stdout but not saving it to files
(default: False)
--overwrite whether to overwrite existing .nfo files, ie
recreating them with freshly retrieved data (default:
False)
--verbose whether to output logging information (default: False)
--debug whether to output debugging information (default:
False)
--interactive for enabling interactive mode (default: False)
--user-agent USER_AGENT, --ua USER_AGENT
User agent for HTTP requests (default: Mozilla)
The kodi-nfo-guess tool can be used for generating, e.g., the .imdb
meta-files used by kodi-nfo-gen. It looks for directories that are missing
the meta-files, then uses the particular movie database to look up titles
that may match the directory name and the user then gets prompted to select the
appropriate title. If there is a successful hit, the meta-file gets written.
The following parameters can be supplied to the tool:
usage: kodi-nfo-guess [-h] --dir DIR [--type {imdb}] [--recursive]
[--pattern GLOB] [--delay SECONDS]
[--preferred_language LANG] [--dry_run] [--overwrite]
[--verbose] [--debug] [--user-agent USER_AGENT]
Generates output files for the kodi-nfo-gen tool.
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--dir DIR the directory to traverse (default: None)
--type {imdb} what type of ID the movie ID files represent, ie the
website they are from (default: imdb)
--recursive whether to traverse the directory recursively
(default: False)
--pattern GLOB the pattern for the files that contain the movie IDs
(default: *.imdb)
--delay SECONDS the delay in seconds between web queries (to avoid
blacklisting) (default: 1)
--preferred_language LANG
the preferred language for the titles (ISO 639-1, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-1_codes)
(default: en)
--dry_run whether to perform a 'dry-run', ie only outputting the
.nfo content to stdout but not saving it to files
(default: False)
--overwrite whether to overwrite existing .nfo files, ie
recreating them with freshly retrieved data (default:
False)
--verbose whether to output logging information (default: False)
--debug whether to output debugging information (default:
False)
--user-agent USER_AGENT, --ua USER_AGENT
User agent for HTTP requests (default: Mozilla)
Simple renaming tool, e.g., to be used for renaming episodes of TV shows to a format that kodi recognizes.
The following parameters can be supplied to the tool:
usage: kodi-nfo-rename [-h] --dir DIR --find REGEXP --replace PATTERN
[--recursive] [--dry_run] [--verbose] [--debug]
Simple renaming tool using regular expressions.
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--dir DIR the directory to traverse (default: None)
--find REGEXP the regular expression that files must match in order to
be renamed (excluding path; must specify groups to
identify season, episode and extension) (default:
([0-9]?[0-9])x([0-9][0-9]).(.*))
--replace PATTERN the pattern for assembling the new file name (default:
S\1E\2.\3)
--recursive whether to traverse the directory recursively (default:
False)
--dry_run whether to perform a 'dry-run', ie only outputting the
.nfo content to stdout but not saving it to files
(default: False)
--verbose whether to output logging information (default: False)
--debug whether to output debugging information (default: False)
Using the kodi-nfo-export tool, you can export your ID files in a CSV file,
associating them with the directory that they were located in. The tool also
looks for .nfo files, in case you already have meta-data stored for your movies.
The following parameters can be supplied to the tool:
usage: kodi-nfo-export [-h] --dir DIR [--recursive] [--type {imdb}]
[--pattern GLOB] --output CSV [--verbose] [--debug]
[--interactive]
Exports Kodi ID/.nfo files to CSV, associating directories with IDs.
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--dir DIR the directory to traverse (default: None)
--recursive whether to traverse the directory recursively (default:
False)
--type {imdb} what type of ID the movie ID files represent, ie the website
they are from (default: imdb)
--pattern GLOB the pattern for the files that contain the movie IDs
(default: *.imdb)
--output CSV the CSV output file to store the collected information in
(default: None)
--verbose whether to output logging information (default: False)
--debug whether to output debugging information (default: False)
--interactive for enabling interactive mode (default: False)
With the kodi-nfo-import tool, you can import IDs from a CSV file and create ID
files in your movie directory structure.
The following parameters can be supplied to the tool:
usage: kodi-nfo-import [-h] --input CSV --dir DIR [--type {imdb}] --col_id COL
--col_dir COL [--col_file COL] [--dry_run]
[--overwrite] [--verbose] [--debug] [--interactive]
Imports IDs from CSV, storing ID files in the associated directories.
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--input CSV the CSV output file to store the collected information in
(default: None)
--dir DIR the top-level directory of the movies if relative
directories are used in the CSV file (default: None)
--type {imdb} what type of ID to create, ie what website the IDs are from
(default: imdb)
--col_id COL the column that contains the ID (name or 1-based index)
(default: None)
--col_dir COL the column that contains the directory (name or 1-based
index) (default: None)
--col_file COL the column that contains the file name (name or 1-based
index) (default: None)
--dry_run whether to perform a 'dry-run', ie only outputting the ID
file content to stdout but not saving them to files
(default: False)
--overwrite whether to overwrite any existing ID files or leave them be
(default: False)
--verbose whether to output logging information (default: False)
--debug whether to output debugging information (default: False)
--interactive for enabling interactive mode (default: False)
For the following examples, we assume your movies are structured like this:
./mymovies
|
+- Metropolis
| |
| +- Metropolis.mp4
| |
| +- Metropolis.imdb # content: tt0017136
|
+- Spies
| |
| +- Spies.mkv
| |
| +- Spies.imdb # content: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0019415/?ref_=nm_knf_i2
|
+- movies
|
+- Nosferatu.mp4
|
+- Nosferatu.imdb # content: tt0013442
|
+- Sunrise.mp4
|
+- Sunrise.imdb # content: tt0018455
And for each movie an .imdb file with either the unique IMDB ID
or the full IMDB URL is present.
Then you can the tool for generating the .nfo files like this:
kodi-nfo-gen \
--dir ./mymovies \
--recursive \
--verbose
If you also want to download fan art (e.g., as folder.jpg), then
you can use the following command-line:
kodi-nfo-gen \
--dir ./mymovies \
--recursive \
--fanart download \
--verbose
The following command-line exports all the movies from the ./mymovies directory
as a CSV file ./list.csv:
kodi-nfo-export \
--dir ./mymovies \
--output ./list.csv \
--recursive \
--verbose
Assuming this CSV file (./list.csv) containing movie IDs and their associated
directories (and optional file name):
ID,File,Dir
tt0017136,,Metropolis
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0019415/?ref_=nm_knf_i2,,Spies
tt0013442,Nosferatu,Movies
tt0018455,Sunrise,Movies
Then the following command-line imports the IMDB IDs from the CSV file using
./mymovies as top-level directory for relative paths in the CSV file:
kodi-nfo-import \
--input ./list.csv \
--dir ./mymovies \
--type imdb \
--col_id 1 \
--col_file 2 \
--col_dir 3 \
--verbose
Note: If a file name should not be present in the CSV, the import will then look
for files in that directory (.nfo, .mp4, .mkv, .avi). If it cannot find such a file,
it will use the base name of the directory (Spies and Metropolis in the above example
directory structure).