Adding a movie from a video file
If the film lives on your hard drive as a file, add it from the file: the program reads everything the file itself knows and links the card to it, so later a double-click on the title starts playback.
- Ctrl+Ins, or , or simply drag the file from Explorer onto the movie list.
- Pick the file. AVI, MPEG, VOB, WMV, DivX, IFO, MP4, M4V, MKV, TS, M2TS, ISO and WebM are recognized.
- The card opens with the technical details already filled in and the file name proposed as the title. Correct the title and press Enter to fetch the rest from an online database.
- Click OK.
What is read from the file
On the Media info tab of the card: duration, file size, resolution, aspect ratio, frame rate, video codec and bitrate, every audio track with its codec, channels and sample rate, and the subtitle tracks. The path itself goes into Local path, and that is the field everything else hangs off — playback, playlists, renaming and copying files all work from it.
Frames as screenshots
Because the card knows the file, it can take pictures from it. Capture from video grabs the current frame; with Use batch capture function switched on in Preferences the program grabs a set of frames by itself when the movie is added — either at random or at equal intervals through the film, as you prefer. See Covers and screenshots.
Films split across several files
A film in two parts, or a disc rip in several files, is one movie card with several media. Fill in the first file, then click Next media and choose the next one; the card keeps the film details and adds the second file. The Media count field shows how many there are.
A folder full of files is not worth adding one at a time — use the drive scanner, which finds them all, works out the titles from the file names and looks them up online in one pass.
Relative paths
If your video lives on an external drive whose letter changes, or on a NAS you reach by different paths from different computers, turn on Use a relative path for the video located in the folder below on the Expert options tab of Preferences and name the root folder. Paths are then stored relative to it, and the collection survives the drive letter changing.
Deleting a movie normally leaves the video file alone. Two things change that: in the right-click menu (Shift+Del), and the Delete video file upon movie deletion option in Preferences, which makes it the default behaviour. Be careful with the second one.
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