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Note: ZRatings was previously called MCRatings
Features
Requirements
Installation and updates
Quick Start
Configuration
How to use ZRatings
The Poster Browser
UI elements
Keyboard and mouse shortcuts
Screenshots
Download
ZRatings is a companion tool for JRiver Media Center to help tag a movie collection. It retrieves IMDb, TMDb, Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes movie ratings, along with other movie metadata such as Actors, Director, Studios, Tagline, etc from Open Movie Database (OMDb) and The Movie Database (TMdB). You can decide what changes to keep/skip, and which JRiver fields to update.
This is what ZRatings can do for you:
- Get movie metadata including IMDb Rating, TMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic scores ...
- ... Actors, Director, Writers, Awards, Plot, Tagline, Trailer, Website... and a few more!
- Poster selection and download, courtesy of the embedded Poster Browser
- Actor and Crew thumbnail downloads for each movie
- Uses the JRiver API to load and update movie tags, so there's no need to mess with Sidecar XMLs.
- Mapping of which JRiver fields to use and which ones to allow overwrite
- Color coding of changes for review of new vs previous value before committing it to JRiver
- Easily revert changes to a movie field, movie row, or entire column of data
- Very functional UI with search/filtering/sort, batch update, click-to-open IMDb page and movie folder, etc.
- Easter eggs!
- .NET Framework 4.6.2 or above (Windows 10 should have it by default)
- JRiver MediaCenter must be installed on the same PC (client or server)
- OMDb API key (free or otherwise) - get it from here
- TMDb API key (free) - get it from here (you may need to register a TMDb account first)
ZRatings was developed and tested alongside JRiver MC 24, 25 and 26 on Windows 10.
JRiver does not need to be running when you start ZRatings. If it's not running ZRatings will start it (as a hidden process). For practical purposes we recommend you run both applications simultaneously.
ZRatings does not have an installer - just download the latest release and run it directly. You can copy the executable to any folder and create a shortcut to it on your desktop, or just pin it to the Taskbar.
ZRatings will automatically check for new versions at startup and notify you if a new release is available. To update to the latest version, open the About window (big "?" on the lower right) and press the "Update" button. It's a quick and seamless process and you'll be running the new version in no time.
- Backup your JRiver library.
- Go back to step 1 and really do it this time.
- Start ZRatings - at first run time, the Settings UI will automatically open
- Check the ZRatings<->JRiver field mapping. For any fields marked RED you need to either:
- create the missing fields in JRiver (with type = string)
- disable them if you are not interested in the information they provide.
- Register for an OMDb Key and enter it on "OMDb API Keys"
- Register for a TMDb Key and enter it on "TMDb API Keys"
- Save Settings
- Check the ZRatings<->JRiver field mapping. For any fields marked RED you need to either:
- Select a JRiver Playlist to load
- Select a few movies and click "Get Movie Info"
- Review the info downloaded and save it to your JRiver DB using "Save to JRiver"
- Rejoice that you now have a whole lot of metadata per movie in your collection and enjoy it!
The Settings panel allows you to control which metadata fields you want to use and what are the corresponding JRiver fields where the info should go. You can enable/disable each field individually and specify if overwrite is allowed on each field. Other configuration settings for ZRatings can also be found here.
Here you can enter API keys for OMDb/TMDb and define other API settings:
OMDb API Keys - Please supply one (or more) OMDb key(s) in the "OMDb API Keys" field
TMDb API Keys - Please supply one (or more) TMDb key(s) in the "TMDb API Keys" field
Max number of Actors, Writers, Directors, etc - limits the corresponding lists to the chosen value. For instance, it will only get 5 top-billed actors instead of the full list, which might have 50+ entries.
TMDb preferred language - Language to fetch data from TMDb (OMDb is english-only). You can select one of the choices from the drop-down box, or enter your own country code (a valid ISO-639 2-letter code). This choice affects TMDb data for a number of fields, which will return data in the selected language if available. These include movie Title, Description, Tagline, Genres, Trailer, Website, Runtime, and possibly others. It also defines the preferred language when automatically selecting a Poster from all TMDb posters available.
Here you can control which metadata fields you want to use and what are the corresponding JRiver fields where the info should go. You can also select the data-source for each field, enable/disable it, and specify if overwrite is allowed.
The table shows one-to-one mapping between ZRatings fields (as they appear on the main app window) and JRiver DB fields. Confirm that the field names in the yellow column are the ones you want to have on your JRiver DB. If you prefer you can specify alternate field names for ZRatings data so that you can preserve both the native JRiver info and the new ZRatings data. For some fields which are available on both TMDb and OMDb, you can chose your preferred datasource.
If a given field name is RED, it means that it doesn't exist in JRiver. You have three options to handle this issue:
- Specify a different field name (one that already exists in JRiver)
- Create a new field in JRiver to hold this data (Tools->Options->Library & Folders->Manage Library Fields->Add New Field). Note that the JRiver field data type should be set to 'string'
- Disable this field - the associated data won't be written to JRiver
Overwrite checkbox - check to allow overwriting of existing field values with new data coming from OMDb/TMDB. Uncheck to prevent overwrites on this field (updates only empty fields)
Enabled checkbox - Enable or disable fields you want or don't want to use. Disabled fields are removed from the main UI grid.
Reset mappings - Resets all mappings back to default
Poster support and Cast/Crew thumbnail support settings can be adjusted here. These settings control which posters are automatically selected, the download folder location, image post-processing options, image viewing options, etc.
Poster Support Enabled - Select to enable Poster functions. When disabled, the "Poster" column on the main datagrid will also disappear, and Poster Browser will not be available.
Save posters to this folder - If checked, posters will be saved to the chosen folder. This path will be used when setting the Poster filepath in JRiver, so you can have all posters saved to the same location. This can be useful to prevent your movie disks/NAS from spinning up to load the poster while you are browsing movies in JRiver. If this option is unchecked, posters will be saved to the respective movie folder.
Also save posters to the movie folders - Save an additional copy of the poster to the respective movie folder. The poster filepath saved to JRiver will still be the location set above, this is just an extra copy.
Select poster based on TMDb preferred language - When doing Get Movie Info, this option selects the best poster among posters in the language you defined as Preferred Language (API Settings tab). If unchecked, all posters are considered for automatic selection.
Select poster with highest vote average - When doing Get Movie Info, this option selects the poster with highest voting average. If unchecked, the poster with highest resolution is selected instead (default). Note that TMDb posters don't receive many votes, so the average scores are often meaningless.
Load full-size Poster in Poster Browser - Check this option to display the full-res poster by default on the left side of the Poster Browser (current poster). If unchecked, only the thumbnail will be displayed. You can still click on the thumbnail to trigger the full-res poster load. When the posters are linked to their movie folders, you may want to uncheck this option so that your disk/NAS doesn't spin-up to load the poster.
Show small thumbnails - Display small thumbnails on the Poster tooltip (hover the mouse over the Poster cell to see the tooltip). Uncheck this option to display large thumbnails instead.
Run post-processing command on downloaded posters - Enter a command to execute for each downloaded poster. This can be used to perform changes to the downloaded images, such as adding a frame or jewel-case, converting formats, copy to other locations, etc. The command can be any valid Windows executable command line, with full path. You can add many special parameters to the command - right-click on the textbox brings up a menu with all available parameter variables.
Save actor/crew thumbnails to this folder - Set this option and enter a folder location to enable downloading actor/crew profile thumbnails for each movie when you do Get Movie Info. These thumbnails can be used on JRiver's Theater View and Movie Tooltips (see JRiver's Interact forum for details)
Save as PNG - Convert downloaded thumbnails to PNG (default is JPG). JRiver currently only displays PNG images in the Movie tooltip.
Thumbnail size - Select Small/Medium/Large thumbnail image size
Run post-processing command on downloaded thumbnails - Enter a command to execute for each downloaded thumbnail. This can be used to perform changes to the downloaded images, such as adding a frame, overlaying the person's name/job/role, copying to other locations, etc. The command can be any valid Windows executable command line, with full path. You can add many special parameters to the command - right-click on the textbox brings up a menu with all available parameter variables.
Additional options that don't really fit in the other settings tabs :)
Filename cleanup - Sometimes the filenames of your movies have extra/invalid information not related to the movie title itself. Insert the keywords you want automagically removed from your movie titles here. This helps matching and finding movie info by title/year.
Add role to Actor names - Appends the Character name to each Actor's name. So instead of "Keanu Reeves", it becomes "Keanu Reeves [Neo]". This affects only the Actors field.
Use "webmedia://" for trailer URLs - Select this option to use JRiver's URL format for trailer videos, instead of the standard http:// format. With webMedia you can then play the trailer directly on JRiver's Theater View. With regular http URLs, you can create a toolbar link to play the trailer on a browser.
Fast playlist loading - Check this option to make ZRatings start faster. When checked, ZRatings will only read the names of playlists from JRiver and will not check each playlist to determine the number of movies. As a side-effect, the playlist drop-down will not show the number of movies for each playlist.
Start maximized - Starts ZRatings on a maximized window (full screen).
Here you can change the appearance of the movie rows and fields. You can change the colors representing selected/unselected movies, changed/unchanged/updated fields, etc.
Click on each color item to select a new color. Some items will change only the foreground color (text color), other will change the background color. This is by design and is needed to keep the interface consistent.
Reset colors - Resets all colors back to default
When starting ZRatings for the first time, the Configuration UI will automatically open. After configuring which JRiver fields to use and getting an OMDb API Key and a TMDb API Key, you're ready to start using ZRatings.
On the top left of ZRatings' window you can see a drop-down selector with a list of your JRiver Playlists. Only playlists containing Movies are shown, i.e., only files tagged as [Media Sub Type = Movie] will be loaded.
Select a playlist from the list and load it. ZRatings will fill in the table with the current movie information from JRiver.
These columns with yellow background are special as they can be manually edited:
- File Title and FYear (File Year) are values that ZRatings extracts from the movie filename and path, performing some cleanup to try to get accurate names. Depending on how you name your files, these values may be 100% accurate or may be completely useless. These two columns do NOT map to any JRiver field, they are used to help find a movie on OMDb/TMDb.
- IMDbID is editable but is also mapped to a JRiver DB field. You can change it manually to force ZRatings to get a specific movie info for the given movie.
- Imported is editable but is also mapped to a JRiver DB field (Imported Date). JRiver does not allow you to change this field, but you can change it here.
- Lists contains the number of Playlists in JRiver that the movie belongs to. While you cannot edit it directly, you can COPY this field from a movie and PASTE on another - this makes the second movie belong to the same playlists as the first one.
When getting movie information from OMDb/TMDb, ZRatings will try to find a matching movie:
- If IMDbID is filled in, it will be used to find a unique match - this is the most accurate option;
- Otherwise, File Title/FYear will be used to find the most likely match. You can change the File Title/FYear manually to try to get it to successfully fetch the correct movie info. ZRatings will use either OMDb or TMDb to search for the movie depending on the Preferred setting for the "IMDB Id" field in Settings.
- If File Title/FYear is completely wrong, you also have the option to use the current JRiver Title/Year by checking the "Use JRiver Title/Year" checkbox.
- In the worst case, where a search by movie title and year does not return success you can just manually enter the correct IMDb ID.
Field values are updated from the Preferred source (TMDb/OMDb) selected in Settings for each field. When a field exists in both sources and the Preferred source returns an empty value, the value from the second source is used.
You can select which movies to process before clicking on "Get Movie Info". If you don't select any row, only the currently highlighted row will be processed. There are many ways to select/unselect rows:
- using the checkbox at the beginning of each row (toggles)
- hitting SPACE on top of the row (toggles)
- clicking on a first row, then SHIFT+LeftClick on a second row selects all rows in between.
- dragging the mouse from one row to another while pressing left mouse button will select the rows
- dragging the mouse from one row to another while pressing right mouse button will unselect the rows
- using the Context Menu (right click on table) to select/unselect based on different criteria
- using shortcut keys
After selecting rows, you're now ready to go! Click on "Get Movie Info" to connect to OMDb/TMDb and get the info. ZRatings caches query results for a few days to reduce server load, improve response time, and prevent rapid key exhaustion. This means you can revert changes and re-fetch multiple times with no penalty.
ZRatings will update each selected movie with the information fetched from OMDb/TMDb according to field Preference. If Poster Support is enabled in Settings, then poster information is also loaded from TMDb, and if a better poster is found than the one currently in JRiver (using the criteria defined in Settings) then the Poster cell will also be updated with the new Poster info. ZRatings will only suggest a new poster if its resolution is greater than the current poster resolution.
If enabled, Cast and Crew thumbnails are also downloaded in background. If any post-processing tasks are configured, they will run in background after Get Movie Info is done. This may take some time, depending on the configured script; for slow operations, a spinner will show up in the lower-right corner indicating the number of background tasks still pending.
Cell colors will be updated to highlight any changes (colors can be personalized in Settings):
- green background indicates that the field was previously blank and now has a value (new)
- orange background indicates that the previously existing value was overwritten with a new value (change)
- green text indicates that the current value is the same as returned from OMDb/TMDb (confirmed)
- blue text indicates that both OMDB and TMDb returned a blank value, but the field already contains some text (unconfirmed)
- fields which are disabled in settings will not get any update
- individual cells can be locked using the context menu; a locked cell is displayed in red, and will never be overwritten with a new value. Use can use cell locking to preserve a given value that you know is right, or to keep your current Poster for a movie without having ZRatings suggest a new one each time you refresh.
Fields with "overwrite" disabled in Settings will only get new values; existing values are preserved. if you uncheck the master "Allow overwrite" checkbox on the main window, no field value will be overwritten (only new values added)
You can opt to revert any change using the context menu options. Right-click over a cell and select the desired menu option to undo changes to a single cell, a movie row, or an entire column.
Hover over a field to see its full text value. On orange cells (changed), the tooltip will show both the new and the previous value for comparison. On the Poster column, the tooltip will display a thumbnail of the current JRiver poster (if any) and, in the case of a new/better poster being proposed, will also display the new poster's thumbnail side-by-side. You can click the Poster cell or the thumbnail to open the Poster Browser, where you can view all available posters and select a different one - view The Poster Browser section below for details.
You can see on the top right the number of changed movies that will be written to JRiver DB. If you click this "xx changed movies" label, ZRatings will apply a filter to show only the changed movies.
Press "Save to JRiver" once you are satisfied with the changes. Note that this button does not require selection of rows; all changed rows will be sent to JRiver.
PLEASE BE AWARE that within JRiver there are operations such as "Get Movie & TV Info" that can overwrite the data you just saved through ZRatings. BE CAREFUL when using "Get Movie & TV Info" and check if you wish to use or not options such as "Use Information" and "Overwrite" in single and batch processing mode.
When an updated Poster is saved to JRiver it's possible that JRiver will continue to display the previous poster as the movie thumbnail (and as a consequence, ZRatings will also still display the old poster in its own Poster Tooltip). This is because JRiver doesn't always automatically rebuild its thumbnail cache, so it still displays the previous one. To force it to display the correct poster, please right click on the Movie in JRiver and select Cover Art -> Rebuild Thumbnail.
Clicking on the Poster column field (or hitting CTRL+B) opens the Poster Browser, which can be used to see all available TMDb posters for a given movie and compare each one to the current JRiver poster, in order to select the best one. Note that Posters will only show up after doing Get Movie Info for the selected movie.
Left side: original poster
The left side of the Poster Browser shows the current Movie Poster. If the option "Load full-size poster in Poster Browser" is checked in Settings, this will load and display the full-size poster, otherwise it will display JRiver's thumbnail for the movie. You can click on the poster to toggle between full-size and thumbnail resolutions. SHIFT+Click will open the full-size poster in your default Picture viewer in Windows.
Right side: available posters
The right side initially shows all available posters as thumbnails; you can click on a thumbnail to open a larger version of the poster and compare it with the current poster on the left side. SHIFT+Click on a poster or thumbnail on the right side opens the original full-size poster from TMDb in an external browser.
You can select your preferred poster by using the select links under each thumbnail, or by using the Select/Select&Lock toolbar buttons. The selected poster will be now shown on the Poster Tooltip on the main grid, and will be sent to JRiver when you click Save to Jriver. Note that you might need to do "Rebuild Thumbnails" in JRiver to have it display the correct thumbnail for the updated poster, as JRiver sometimes doesn't automatically refresh the thumbnail. If this happens, ZRatings will also display the wrong/previous poster in its own Poster Tooltip, as that is the information provided by JRiver. After doing "Rebuild Thumbnails", the correct poster/thumbnail will show up.
Buttons on the toolbar allow you to (in order):
- home: go back to the thumbnail view (keyboard: up arrow or mouse Back button)
- back: open previous poster (keyboard: left arrow or mouse wheel)
- next: open next poster (keyboard: right arrow or mouse wheel)
- accept: set the current poster as the new poster for the movie
- accept and lock: set the new poster, and lock the cell to prevent future changes
- thumbnail size: toggle between small and large thumbnail view
- sort: toggle between thumbnails sorted by Votes or by Resolution
- Scaling mode: toggle between horizontal/vertical/original scaling modes. The left side has an identical button.
- Language filter: show only movies tagged with the selected language
As a bonus, you can click on the Oscar button (top-right corner) to toggle the Crew/Cast viewer. This view displays the main cast members and their roles in the movie, as well as the top Crew and their jobs (Director, Producer, Writer, etc). You can SHIFT+Click on any thumbnail to open the full-size version on an external browser.
Here's a list of elements on ZRatings main window and their function, from top left to bottom right:
| UI Element | Description |
|---|---|
| Settings | opens the configuration UI |
| Reconnect | reconnects to JRiver and refreshes Playlists. Does not change currently loaded playlist |
| Select JRiver playlist | select the JRiver playlist you want to load |
| Load | loads the selected JRiver playlist |
| Use JR Title/Year | use JRiver title/year instead of filename derived values for queries |
| Allow overwrite | master overwrite control, only empty cells are updated if this is unchecked |
| Get Movie Info | loads the metadata from OMDb/TMDb for the selected/highlighted movie(s) |
| Changed movies | shows count of updated movies. Click to enable filter and show only the updated movies |
| Save to JRiver | saves all the updated data to JRiver DB (green/orange cells) |
| Search box | type to search or filter the list, ENTER to jump to next match Fields included in search are: Title, Original Title, Year, IMDbID, Keywords, Series, Actors and Director |
| Filter | if set only rows that match the text on the search box will be displayed |
| View only selected (XX) | if set only the selected rows will be visible. (XX) is the number of selected rows. |
| Status | important info about the current state of the application / new version available |
| About | program information, and "check for update" button. You can update to a new version here, when available. |
On the context menu, accessible through right click over the grid, you'll find options to:
- Select rows using different criteria:
- movies with/without a valid IMDb ID
- movies which are currently missing ALL ratings
- movies with mismatched File Title/Year and JRiver Title/Year
- movies with mismatched File Title/Year and JRiver Title/Year (plus/minus 1 year)
- added today or in the last 3 / 5 / 7 / 30 days
- all changed or unchanged fields (after "Get Movie Info")
- with locked fields
- without Poster
- with Poster in common folder
- Revert changes to field / column / current row / selected row(s)
- Revert ALL changes (discard - similar to reloading the playlist)
- copy/paste a field value (you can only paste values on yellow columns)
- Save an URL shortcut on the movie folder pointing to its IMDb page
- Poster operations:
- Transfer to Poster Folder - copies the movie Poster from the Common Poster folder (defined in Settings) to the Movie folder (where the actual movie file is). JRiver is updated immediately with the new Poster path.
- Transfer to Movie Folder - copies the movie Poster from the Movie folder (where the actual movie file is) to the Common Poster folder (defined in Settings). JRiver is updated immediately with the new Poster path.
- Sync Movie and Poster Folders - copies the Poster from the Movie folder to the Common Poster folder (or vice-versa, depending on where the current "official" JRiver poster location is) so that both locations are in sync. JRiver poster path is NOT changed.
- Rebuild JRiver thumbnails - this is sometimes needed to force JRiver to display the correct Poster thumbnail after a poster change.
- Remove Poster - removes current poster. This change is only written to JRiver after Save Changes.
- Open:
- Poster Browser UI
- Movie Folder, in Windows Explorer
- IMDb page, in browser
- TMDb page, in browser
- Movie trailer, in browser - youtube, usually
- Statistics info for ZRatings usage
Keyboard shortcuts
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| ALT-L | (or F5) [re]load Playlist |
| ALT-G | (or F8) get Movie Info |
| ALT-S | (or F10) save to JRiver |
| ALT-O | toggle "allow overwrite" |
| ALT-T | toggle "use JR Title/Year" |
| ALT-F | toggle "Filter" |
| ALT-V | toggle "View only selected" |
| ALT-F4 | interlude |
| SPACE | selects/un-selects highlighted row. |
| CTRL-A | select all rows |
| CTRL-Z | de-select all rows |
| CTRL-C | copy current cell contents (last clicked cell) |
| CTRL-V | paste into current cell (only for yellow/editable cells) |
| CTRL-F | jumps to the search box |
| CTRL-I | open Statistics |
| F1 | open About dialog |
| F3 | find next match. |
| F12 | open Statistics |
Mouse shortcuts
| Mouse | Action |
|---|---|
| Left click and drag | select range of rows |
| Right click and drag | un-select range of rows |
| Double-click | copy cell contents to clipboard |
| Click column header | sort rows ascending / descending |
| Drag column header | move column to a new position |
| SHIFT + left click drag | un-select range of rows |
| CTRL + click on IMDbID field | opens IMDb page with that ID |
| CTRL + click on filename | opens folder where filename is located |
| Click any row; SHIFT+click other row | select range of rows |