Top 10 Media Companion Tips for Organizing Movies and TV Shows

How Media Companion Streamlines Metadata & Artwork for Your CollectionManaging a large digital media collection—movies, TV shows, and bonus content—can quickly become overwhelming. Files scattered across folders, inconsistent naming conventions, missing posters, mismatched artwork, and incomplete metadata make browsing and playback clumsy. Media Companion is a specialized tool designed to solve these pain points by automating metadata fetching, organizing assets, and giving you control over how your collection is presented. This article explains how Media Companion streamlines metadata and artwork for your collection, the key features that make it effective, practical setup and workflow tips, and troubleshooting advice to keep everything tidy.

What Media Companion Does

Media Companion is a local metadata manager for movie and TV collections. Instead of relying solely on media center software to fetch metadata on the fly, Media Companion lets you prepare complete, consistent metadata and artwork files ahead of time. It supports multiple online metadata sources and can download posters, fanart, actor images, and NFO files that media players and servers (like Kodi, Plex, Emby) can read. The benefits include faster browsing, consistent library appearance across devices, and offline access to metadata.

Core Features That Streamline Metadata and Artwork

• Multi-source metadata scraping: Media Companion can pull information from several databases (e.g., TheMovieDB, TheTVDB, IMDb) so you get comprehensive and accurate metadata.
• Bulk processing: Scan entire folders and update metadata and artwork in batches, saving hours compared with manual tagging.
• Customizable naming & file output: Define naming conventions for NFOs, poster filenames, fanart, and thumbnail sizes to match the requirements of different media centers.
• Automatic artwork selection and resizing: Download multiple artwork types (posters, banners, clearlogos, thumbnails) and resize them to preferred dimensions.
• Manual editing & overrides: Edit scraped metadata locally to fix errors or customize descriptions, titles, or artwork choices.
• NFO and local asset generation: Create local NFO files and embed or link artwork so your media server reads consistent metadata without re-scraping.
• Watchlist and missing-info reports: Identify missing posters, duplicate entries, or mismatched metadata quickly.
• Profiles and presets: Save scraping/configuration profiles for different libraries (e.g., movies vs. TV shows) to speed repetitive setups.

How It Integrates With Media Players and Servers

Media Companion outputs standard metadata formats (NFO, XML) and common image files (JPEG, PNG) that are compatible with most media players and servers. Typical workflows:

• Kodi: Media Companion creates per-item NFO files and artwork images placed alongside media files. Kodi reads these files and displays your chosen artwork and metadata without additional scraping.
• Plex/Emby: While Plex/Emby often prefer their own online metadata, supplying local NFOs and artwork can help when using the “Local Media Assets” agent or when you want to preserve custom metadata and images.
• Backup & portability: Exporting metadata and artwork ensures you can move or back up your library while retaining consistent presentation.

Recommended Setup & Workflow

1. Prepare your library
   • Use consistent folder structure and file naming (e.g., MovieName (Year)/MovieName (Year).mkv). Media Companion relies on filenames to match scraped entries.
2. Create a profile
   • Set preferred metadata sources, artwork types, and naming conventions in a profile for movies and another for TV shows.
3. Run a full scan
   • Let Media Companion scan folders to identify items. Review unmatched results and manually search if needed.
4. Scrape and download artwork
   • Choose which artwork types to download (poster, clearart, fanart). Use automatic selection or manually pick preferred images.
5. Generate NFOs and save assets
   • Output NFO files and image files alongside media. Confirm sizes and naming meet your media center’s expectations.
6. Review & edit
   • Open problematic entries in the editor, correct metadata, change artwork, and re-save.
7. Sync with your media server/player
   • Point Kodi or your server at the library and force an update. Verify that artwork and metadata appear as expected.

Tips for Best Results

• Use reliable naming tools (FileBot, Advanced Renamer) before scraping to reduce mismatches.
• Prefer TheMovieDB or TheTVDB for modern, community-curated metadata; use IMDb IDs when you want canonical references.
• Configure preferred artwork resolution to balance quality vs. storage and performance.
• Regularly re-scan for new items and use incremental updates to avoid full rescans.
• Keep a backup of NFOs and artwork; they’re small but valuable for migration or recovery.

Common Issues and Fixes

• Mismatched or duplicate entries: Ensure filenames are consistent and include the year for movies. Use manual search within Media Companion to pick the correct match.
• Missing artwork: Check that Media Companion can access the internet and that the selected artwork types are enabled. If an image won’t download, try a different source or manually save the image and point Media Companion to it.
• Incompatible NFO format: Different media centers expect slightly different tags. Adjust the NFO format template in Media Companion to match your player (Kodi, Plex, etc.).
• Performance with very large libraries: Break the library into smaller batches or run scraping overnight. Increase the frequency of incremental scans.

Example: From Chaos to Clean Library (Short Case Study)

• Situation: 1,200 mixed movies with missing posters and inconsistent titles.
• Action: Standardized filenames with FileBot, created a Media Companion movie profile (TMDB primary, download poster+fanart+clearlogo), ran batch scrape, manually corrected ~25 mismatches, generated NFOs.
• Result: Library loaded into Kodi with consistent artwork, faster browsing, and accurate descriptions; server metadata sync reduced playback hiccups.

When Not to Use Media Companion

• If you prefer your media server to fetch metadata dynamically from its own source and don’t care about local control.
• If you rely exclusively on cloud-based libraries managed by services that overwrite local metadata.

Conclusion

Media Companion is a powerful, local-first solution for anyone who wants control over their media library’s presentation. By automating scraping, organizing artwork, and producing standardized local metadata files, it reduces manual work, ensures consistency, and improves the browsing experience on media players and servers. With careful setup and periodic maintenance, Media Companion can transform a chaotic collection into a polished, browsable library.