Best way to audit/manage media against roms

[X1pheR]

I've got a lot of rom sets and lately I've been downloading the emumovies video packs as well as cartridge scans, screenshot packs, title packs, etc here and there.

For every system I created the below folder structure, for example SNES;

+ Nintendo SNES

|- Boxes

|- Cartridges

|- Roms

|- Titles

|- Videos

My goal is for each media set to get a complete one compared to the rom set. And ofcourse maintaining it with future updates of the rom set.

Going through this manually is ofcourse a no go I've collected quite some media files for each folder and dumped them there.

But now I'm wondering what is the best way to sort these out? So I would need to know what media files I:

• HAVE: so I know how far I am with getting everything complete
  
• MISS: so I can search for them of course
  
• UNKNOWN: meaning files which don't match against any rom so they are obsolete and I can delete them. Or try running FatMatch or FuzzyRename against them so maybe some will match.
  

So what are you all doing to maintain your media sets? I would love to hear from anyone...

Thank you in advance...

[IMBerzerk]

I've got a lot of rom sets and lately I've been downloading the emumovies video packs as well as cartridge scans, screenshot packs, title packs, etc here and there.

For every system I created the below folder structure, for example SNES;

+ Nintendo SNES

|- Boxes

|- Cartridges

|- Roms

|- Titles

|- Videos

My goal is for each media set to get a complete one compared to the rom set. And ofcourse maintaining it with future updates of the rom set.

Going through this manually is ofcourse a no go I've collected quite some media files for each folder and dumped them there.

But now I'm wondering what is the best way to sort these out? So I would need to know what media files I:

• HAVE: so I know how far I am with getting everything complete
  
• MISS: so I can search for them of course
  
• UNKNOWN: meaning files which don't match against any rom so they are obsolete and I can delete them. Or try running FatMatch or FuzzyRename against them so maybe some will match.
  

So what are you all doing to maintain your media sets? I would love to hear from anyone...

Thank you in advance...

You're basically asking the million dollar question. As far as I know, you have to simply go through each emulator and check them one at a time. Hence the reason to dump a lot of the versions and clones. If there is a better way, I hope someone will post it.

IMBerzerk

[fetts]

The best method is to find a program called FatMatch. You can find it here http://www.gameex.info/forums/index.php?showtopic=7020

With that program, you tell it where your roms are at and you can have it compare that to your snaps, titles, videos etc.. and it will tell you which ones are missing (Make sure to check to see if they are actually missing and

not just titled wrong. An example would be having a rom called battletoads doubledragon and having a title be "Battletoads and Double Dragon - The Ultimate Team Up". You'll have to change the name of the snap to that of the rom)

It takes a bit to get used to, but its helped me A LOT. It says it only does pics, but ignore that. Ive had it compare roms to videos and .pdf instruction manuals and its worked great.

[X1pheR]

Hi fetts, thank you. In my post I already mentioned FatMatch. I already tried it out. And though it displays the files you are missing it does not tell you how many you do have. And more importantly it doesn't report files which were in the media folder which couldn't be matched. So you know that way they can probably be deleted.

I did however came acress a program called ShotReporter v1.0 and this one does generate a have, miss and an unmatched list. Maybe this is the best thing to use first. And afterwards only run FatMatch against the unmatched list. Development of the program was stopped a long time ago unfortunately. It seems to be case-sensitive and you can't give extensions up to run against like FatMatch. Also too bad it doesn't run through command line. That would be really awesome. Then I could generate a html page of all my rom sets with their have, miss and unmatched lists.

[bkenobi]

FatMatch is being developed currently. If you have suggestions, you should definitely post them in the thread. I think your comments would be valuable additions over there. Ideally, there would be a way to list what you have in a quickly reviewable table to see what you have, don't have, etc (like you suggested). It seems like this data should be available in the same program that matches/renames the files for you.

[IMBerzerk]

FatMatch is being developed currently. If you have suggestions, you should definitely post them in the thread. I think your comments would be valuable additions over there. Ideally, there would be a way to list what you have in a quickly reviewable table to see what you have, don't have, etc (like you suggested). It seems like this data should be available in the same program that matches/renames the files for you.

Thank GOD something is being worked on for this!! All this renaming, checking, checking again... etc.. etc. is killing me... even with the image renamers, it's still not better than the over-seeing human eye.

[bkenobi]

There's a bunch of projects that have been worked on for a fuzzy match to do this task. I haven't seen a "perfect" app yet, but FatMatch is getting close. I used Stu's app a few months back and it worked ok, but it didn't do the renaming for me. I was able to match the files and create batch files to rename. It also took 3 reviews for each list to make sure I didn't have any mistakes. The FatMatch tool uses the same basic logic as Stu's app and enhances it to automate the renaming phase. It also makes some improvements on display of the output. I haven't used it in a few weeks, but when I get around to renaming a few new sets of extras I will definitely use FatMatch!

[X1pheR]

FatMatch is being developed currently. If you have suggestions, you should definitely post them in the thread. I think your comments would be valuable additions over there. Ideally, there would be a way to list what you have in a quickly reviewable table to see what you have, don't have, etc (like you suggested). It seems like this data should be available in the same program that matches/renames the files for you.

Thank you and I will surely do that. It would be nice if it gets implemented. Because right now I'm in hell getting my collections sorted out...

Thank GOD something is being worked on for this!! All this renaming, checking, checking again... etc.. etc. is killing me... even with the image renamers, it's still not better than the over-seeing human eye.

Indeed, I also find myself reviewing everything myself in stead of the apps. But doing it manually isn't doable. Let alone over so many collections!

There's a bunch of projects that have been worked on for a fuzzy match to do this task. I haven't seen a "perfect" app yet, but FatMatch is getting close. I used Stu's app a few months back and it worked ok, but it didn't do the renaming for me. I was able to match the files and create batch files to rename. It also took 3 reviews for each list to make sure I didn't have any mistakes. The FatMatch tool uses the same basic logic as Stu's app and enhances it to automate the renaming phase. It also makes some improvements on display of the output. I haven't used it in a few weeks, but when I get around to renaming a few new sets of extras I will definitely use FatMatch!

FatMatch looks like a better app to use indeed. Though it looks like it's slower. But that could just be me.

[Circo]

I am slowly using fatmatch to audit and rename the sets over at emumovies, and though it can be a bit tedious and slow on the large sets it does get the job done well. (Slow and Tedious is nothing against the software it just is what it is, a wonderful program really) I can recommend nothing else.