Advanced Usage - RatingPosterDB/rpdb-folders GitHub Wiki

Various options from this documentation may only be available depending on the subscription Tier that you have chosen from the RPDB Patreon Page.

This is the Advanced Usage Guide, if instead you would prefer to set up the RPDB Folders app quickly you can check out the Quick Start Guide

• Adding Media Folders
• Poster Settings
• Backdrops
• Scan Settings
• Folder Specific Scan Settings
• Poster Specific Settings
• Adding Badges
• Adding Labels
• Creating Backups
• Restoring Backups
• Checking Requests
• Security

To add a new media folder (which will then be scanned periodically in order to add posters to the movies or series that are within the folder) you will need to press the "Add Movie Folder" or "Add Series Folder" from the Main Menu.

Within the newly opened menu, you can either browse for the media folder or alternatively press the top most rectangle box (which includes the word "None" when you open the menu, or alternatively the currently selected path) in order to paste the path of the media folder directly.

You can remove a media folder from the RPDB Folders app at any time in the future by pressing the "Remove Media Folder" button from the "Edit Media Folder" menu.

Within this description, "RT" will refer to "Rotten Tomatoes" and "MC" will refer to "Metacritic"

The poster settings page allows you to choose between various options of how the RPDB posters will be displayed.

Poster settings are split between Movie poster settings and Series poster settings, both of which include the same settings, but have been separated for more flexibility regarding how posters should be handled for each of these types.

• Preferred Poster Language: this setting will change the language of the text displayed on the posters (when available)
• Prefer Textless Posters: when enabled, the RPDB Folders app will try to download textless posters if it finds any (not all posters have textless alternatives) (see example)
• Poster Type: this allows to choose between 4 poster rating types:
• With Ratings (default option, will include IMDB, MC and RT ratings) (see example)
• With Ratings + Certifications (same as "With Ratings", but will also change the icons of MC or RT to display if it's a "Must See", "Certified Fresh" or "Rotten" score) (see example)
• With Rotten Tomatoes + Audience Ratings (will display IMDB, RT + Certification and RT Audience score) (see example)
• With Metacritic + Audience Ratings (will display IMDB, MC + Certification and MC Audience score) (see example)

Enabling backdrops (from the Main Menu) will download backdrops also (see example). Backdrops are useful as some TV apps (such as Plex) have a setting to enable showing random backdrops of Movies and Series while in screen saver mode, thus making it easy to discover new media that way.

The scan settings will allow you to choose how your media folders will be scanned, as well as give actions to starting different types of scans.

• Scan Status: the status indicator will state the current action of the RPDB Folders scanner, this can either be "Idle, not scanning" or "Scanning (X items in queue)"
• Run Full Scan: pressing this button will initiate a full scan, this type of scan will not overwrite any previous posters, it will only add posters where they are missing
• Force Overwrite Scan: pressing this button will initiate an overwrite scan of all folders, this type of scan will overwrite all posters with new ones, this scan type will also take into account the "Only Overwrite Items from the Last 2 Years" setting, which, if enabled, will make this type of scan only overwrite posters of Movies / Series that have been released within the last 2 years
• Overwrite Images: if this setting is disabled, there will be no automatic overwrite scans done periodically
• Only Overwrite Items from the Last 2 Years: when enabled, all overwrite scans will only overwrite posters of Movies / Series that have been released within the last 2 years
• Overwrite Frequency: there are two options: "Monthly" and "Bimonthly", depending on the selection, and if "Overwrite Images" is enabled, this will determine the frequency of the automatic overwrite scans
• Scan Type: there are two options: "FS Events" and "Polling", for any situation where the device that runs RPDB Folders has direct access to the hard disk, "FS Events" should be used; alternatively, if the Hard Disk is used through a network (such as a Network Drive), or remotely through the internet, or when RPDB Folders is ran in Docker, "Polling" should be used
• Polling Interval: this setting will only take affect if "Scan Type: Polling" is enabled, and determines the frequency with which the remote disk should be polled for changes
• Matching Order: this determines the order of the metadata matchers that match folder or video file names to RPDB folders, it is recommended to use the default setting of "IMDB > TMDB" for this setting
• Do not scan on app start: this setting determines if a normal scan (to populate missing posters) should be done whenever the RPDB Folders app is started, it is recommended to leave this setting enabled as it might have unpredictable consequences in the future (such as missing posters for some time if items have been added while the RPDB Folders app was off)
• Skip Folders that do not Include Video Files: the name explains it quite clearly
• Cache Previous Successful Matches: the RPDB Folders app will remember previous matches for folder / video file names (to RPDB folders), disabling this option will make it always rematch these folders / files, it is recommended to leave this setting enabled in order for scans to run faster
• Overwrite Video Probe Data: when using the "Automatic Badges" setting, the app will probe videos to get detailed video data and save this data as "rpdb.json" (or "[Video-File-name]-rpdb.json"), this will (by default) only be done once per video file, unless this setting is enabled in which case the videos file will be probed again on every new scan

You can also access scan settings for specific media folders (after you added them), to reach these scan settings you need to:

• press the "Edit Media Folder" button in the Main Menu

• select a media folder from the lists

• The folder specific scan settings offer the following options:

• Add Badges / Labels: edit the badges / labels that will be displayed for all the Movie / Series folders or video files within this media folder

• Scanner Status: the status indicator will state the current action of the RPDB Folders scanner, this can either be "Idle, not scanning" or "Scanning (X items in queue)"

• Run Full Scan of Folder: pressing this button will initiate a full scan of the currently selected media folder, this type of scan will not overwrite any previous posters, it will only add posters where they are missing

• Force Overwrite Scan: pressing this button will initiate an overwrite scan of the currently selected media folder, this type of scan will overwrite all posters with new ones, this scan type will also take into account the "Only Overwrite Items from the Last 2 Years" setting set in the main "Scan Settings" menu, which, if enabled, will make this type of scan only overwrite posters of Movies / Series that have been released within the last 2 years

• Remove Media Folder: pressing this button will remove the media folder from the RPDB Folders app, it will not scan this media folder in the future anymore (this action will not remove any media or files that are within the media folder, it will simply make RPDB Folders not scan it, and can be added in the future again by using the "Add Media Folder" features)

You can access poster specific settings by:

• pressing "Edit Movie Poster" or "Edit Series Poster" in the Main Menu
• choosing how to select your poster (either by searching, or by IMDB URL / ID)

Poster specific settings include:

• Fix Match: used to fix the match if a wrong poster was downloaded for the media, this is done by pasting an IMDB ID / URL for the correct media
• Choose Poster: this allows you to choose a different poster, the posters list can also be filtered by language
• Custom Poster: allows changing the poster by giving an image URL for a custom poster Update Ratings: when pressing this button, the poster will be updated (and thus update the ratings from the poster too)
• Create Poster: use this option if a poster is missing, this allows you to give both an image URL for the poster as well as add ratings manually that will be included in the poster
• Add Badges / Label: edit the badges / labels that will be displayed on the poster

In order to add badges, you will need to access the "Add Badges / Label" menu, which can be found in various places around the application, such as: Folder Specific Scan Settings; Poster Specific Settings; Add Movie Folder; Add Series Folder.

There are 2 ways to add badges:

• Manual: presumes that you choose exactly which badges should be shown for poster or for all the posters in a Movie / Series folder
• Automatic: this will probe videos to find out what badges should be added to the Movies / Series, in this mode, you choose what type of badges should be added and if the badges qualify to be added to a Movie or Series they will appear automatically on the posters; because the automatic feature needs to probe videos, it is not advised to enable it on cases where the videos are accessible online and bandwidth is paid for; the videos will only be probed once, and an rpdb.json file will be created to remember the probing data in the future

Labels are plain text that will be added at the top of the poster (see example), the text of the label can be any text that is defined by the user.

In order to add labels, you will need to access the "Add Badges / Label" menu, which can be found in various places around the application, such as: Folder Specific Scan Settings; Poster Specific Settings; Add Movie Folder; Add Series Folder.

Once in the "Add Badges / Label" menu, select "Label" from the top most select box and enter your desired text.

To create a backup of all your current settings (backups do not include the posters as well, these will be re-created on the first scan after a backup is restored) you will need to press the "Create Backup" button at the bottom of the Main Menu.

On the newly opened menu, press the "Download Backup" button and a .json file will be downloaded. The downloaded file is your settings backup.

In order to restore a backup, first make sure that the RPDB Folders app is not running, next you will need to replace the config.json file with the .json backup file you downloaded from the Backups Menu.

The config.json file is located in different places depending on your OS:

• OSX: ~/Library/Application Support/RPDB-Folders/config.json
• Win: %localappdata%\RPDB-Folders\config.json
• Linux: ~/.config/RPDB-Folders/config.json
• Docker: <data path>/config.json
• Once the config.json file has been replaced, you can start the RPDB Folders app and all the settings from your backup will be restored.

The RPDB API has a monthly request limit, in order to check if you have reached the monthly limit or not, you will need to press the "Check Requests" button in the Main Menu.

You can set a password for your RPDB Folders app by pressing the "Choose Password" button in the Main Menu. Once you set a password, you will need to provide this password whenever you access the RPDB Folders app with a browser. Alternatively you can also check the "Remember Me" checkbox from the Login screen so this password can be remembered by your browser.