Importing physical media via EAN barcode into collection

Trakt Questions & Help
1

Hi,

currently I’m using a product called “My Movies” for keeping track of my physical media (DVDs and BluRays). I like their app since it’s extremely easy to add newly bought discs just by opening the “add media” feature and scanning the EAN barcode on the back of their cover.

But, I would like to have these items alongside with my digital collection in one media system, so I’m wondering if there’s any app out there that has the same functionality, but with trakt integration.

I see lots of apps that are just frontends to keep track of watched episodes and movies, but something for managing the collection catalogue wasn’t on the list of the website.

So… does anyone know how to import several hundred DVDs into my collection without manually searching and adding them via trakt.tv one after another?

2

An API call would do the trick, but you would need a way to export your collection from your current application. Do you know if you can export you collection to a machine-readable format? (.xls, .txt or .json I’d say - i.e. not a proprietary encrypted archive ou binary)

3

Hello again,

long time no see, but I recently got the ability to export my physical media collection from the other app I’m using.

Now I happen to have a CSV file with IMDB ids and media type (DVD, Blu-ray, etc.) which I would like to import and finally ditch the other app.

So I went to the import page, but I realized that I can only import either to “watched date” or “watchlisted date”. It seems that marking imported data to “collected at” is impossible.

Any ideas how I get my physical collection imported to my “owned items” list?

4

The importer does not work with collection yet. The Trakt API can be used to import collection with meta-data though.

5

Hi @frank42

I have been in the process of getting my digital library added to my collections and this is now complete. I then wanted to get my phsyical library added too. Like yourself, I also use ‘My Movies’ to track my collection as it’s nice and simple to scan the barcode and build the collection.

As @justin said, the relitively new import utility doesn’t support adding to Collections yet, only the Watchlist but i’m hoping this feature will be available soon! You can use the API as Justin stated and I’ve managed to do this with my exported collection from ‘My Movies’ that gives you a CSV output.

I used this utility to import my CSV which was fairly straight forward to do. After following the setup to get the Python script running and the config for my Trakt API, I just needed to modify my exported CSV to tidy it up a little and end up with a long list of IMDB IDs in the format the utility can read in. I then used the import utility script to add the CSV items to the ‘collection’ list on Trakt instead of the ‘watchlist’ list and everything is now added as a collection item :slight_smile:

1 Like
6

This is awesome - thanks!

7

Hi @tom_amylee

What format did you find worked? I have a really simple export (from MediaElch), but the import untility doesn’t like it. It throws the error :

Invalid file format, id (row) must exists and is not blank (has a format).

The CSV is just a list of the IMDB IDs. e.g.:

imdb
tt0114746
tt0450232
tt8579674
…

Any guidence much appreciated.

8

The import expects a column with an “id”, as the error message states :wink:

My file looks like this:

id,type,title,ean,media,year,imdb,runtime,director,actors,empty
1,"Disc Title","Pandorum",4011976872788,"DVD",2009,tt1188729,104,"Christian Alvart","Dennis Quaid,Ben Foster,Cam Gigandet,Antje Traue,Cung Le,Eddie Rouse,Norman Reedus,André Hennicke,Friederike Kempter,Niels-Bruno Schmidt,Christian Alvart,Travis Milloy,Travis Milloy",
2,"Disc Title","Jumper",4006680048703,"DVD",2007,tt0489099,85,"Doug Liman","Hayden Christensen,Jamie Bell,Rachel Bilson,Diane Lane,Samuel L. Jackson,Michael Rooker,AnnaSophia Robb,Max Thieriot,Jesse James,Tom Hulce,Doug Liman",
3,"Disc Title","From Paris with Love",0886976610494,"DVD",2010,tt1179034,88,"Pierre Morel","John Travolta,Jonathan Rhys Meyers,Kasia Smutniak,Richard Durden,Bing Ying,Amber Rose Revah,Eric Godon,François Bredon,Chems Dahmani,Sami Darr,Pierre Morel,Adi Hasak,Luc Besson",

So, you have to add a second column named “id” with a consecutively numbered id, then it should work. Example:

id,imdb
1,tt0114746
2,tt0450232
3,tt8579674
2 Likes
9

Hi @neilcgardner

@frank42 has pretty much summed it up in his response how to use the import with a CSV; however I found I could just name a single column “imdb_id” and a list of IMDB IDs worked.

In theory with your example, change the column heading from “imdb” to “imdb_id” and it should work :grin:

2 Likes
10

Thank you both for your help.

@tom_amylee, changing the column name to imdb_id unfortunately did not work, however,

@frank42, adding an index column did work. In the error message, I read the use of ‘id’ as being the imdb id, not a unique index for the dataset :slight_smile:

On Git, there is no mention of the need for an added index, and the examples given are exactly as I had, which is why I couldn’t work out what it was expecting.

From trakt/import.md at master · xbgmsharp/trakt · GitHub :

Movies to add watchlist

Header line as format must be one ‘imdb’ or ‘tmdb’ or ‘tvdb’ or ‘tvrage’ or ‘trakt’ Other colums are ignored One ‘imdb’ or ‘tmdb’ or ‘tvdb’ or ‘tvrage’ or ‘trakt’ by line

imdb
tt22239XX
tt11712XX
tt12728XX