VideoDrive and TV shows

I've been using VideoDrive for a while now, and it already has enough features to cover the basics of what I need. However, I'm mostly handling TV shows, and I think there's still room for improvement in that area.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, searching sites like IMDB and Amazon (which VideoDrive and MetaX do) is good for movies, but not very good for TV episodes. Being able to save and load manual preferences for TV shows was a breakthrough feature for me, as it allowed me to put together a set of tags (like cover art, show description, etc.) for particular shows which I could use again and again. This was much better than the online search feature, which was time-consuming and usually required making the same changes to the metadata over and over again as the same inadequate show details were downloaded repeatedly.

Doing things this way is currently the best approach for me, but obviously it would be better if the process could be more automated. It's already been suggested that TV episode data be searched for on a TV site like TVRage.com, rather than IMDB, and if this could be done then the automatic search feature would actually be worth using for TV.

Another compromise solution which would improve how I set the metadata now would be manual setting of metadata with the automatic setting of metadata from the file name. What I'm thinking of is this: I could set manual preferences with metadata common to all episodes of a given show, like show name, cover art, etc., but then have VideoDrive analyse the file name and automatically assign the season and episode numbers, and episode name if it were there. Even better would be if VideoDrive could choose the right saved preferences automatically, applying the preferences for 'Damages' if the first word in the file name was 'Damages', for example. But just setting things like episode number would be a big help. The manual settings already include the option to 'include file name' with 'cleanup', but as far as I can see this just names the episode after the filename, rather than using it to set correct metadata as happens in automatic mode.

The best outcome would be using a better online source for TV episode information, so that I could just throw a file in the hot folder and all the correct metadata would be found and applied. However, failing that, a more modest improvement would be just automating the information which can't be saved as manual preferences, namely episode number. That way, the manual preferences wouldn't need to be changed for each new file.

Thank you for your suggestions: you make some valuable arguments. We are aware that while the manual metadata setting is the most powerful one, the automatic one is more convenient. We are currently merging the two together (in version 1.6.1 you can already set the video kind when using the automatic option) so this will hopefully solve most of your issues. Version 1.7 will include the merged options.

More online sources will definitely be added in the future too, including better descriptions and higher resolution covers.

I mostly use this for TV shows as well and one thing I've noticed is that for certain files that follow the format showname.116.hdtv.avi doesn't get the info, where as showname.s1e16.hdtv.avi does.

This is correct behaviour. As dscribed at the metadata support page, the numbering must be present in the file name in one of the supported formats (S01E04, 01x04 or 01-04 to indicate episode 4 of season 1). The page also describes that if your files have another name, there is no need to rename all your files. Just put them in the folder structure /TV Show Name/Season 1/

ahh ok thanks must have missed that.
A lot easier to create 2 folders than rename every file haha
thanks!