Menu Items

🧭 Interface & Menu Reference

This guide walks through every menu item, toolbar control, sidebar filter, and workspace tab in Metadata Editor.

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1. Top Menu Bar

📂 File Menu

• ➕ New NFO (Ctrl + N): Creates a clean, pre-structured NFO template for your chosen media type. Selecting the right format ensures media servers (Kodi, Emby, Jellyfin, Plex) read the proper root XML element:
  • 🎬 Movie NFO (<movie>)
  • 📺 TV Show NFO (<tvshow>)
  • 🎞️ TV Episode NFO (<episodedetails>)
  • 💿 Music Album NFO (<album>)
  • 👤 Music Artist NFO (<artist>)
  • 📄 Plain Text / Scene NFO (Monospace release notes)

• 📂 Open File... (Ctrl + O): Opens the Windows file dialog to load a single .nfo, .xml, or .txt file.

• 📁 Open Folder...: Opens the folder browser dialog to scan an entire media directory (including subdirectories) and populate the Files in Folder sidebar.
• 🔄 Reload Current File (F5): Discards unsaved changes (after confirmation) and reloads the active file fresh from disk.
• 💾 Save (Ctrl + S): Writes your edits back to the original file, preserving its character encoding and custom XML nodes.
• 💾 Save As... (Ctrl + Shift + S): Saves a copy of the active metadata as a new .nfo or .xml file.
• 🚪 Exit (Alt + F4): Closes the application. If you have unsaved edits, you will be prompted to save before exiting.

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📥 Import Menu

• 📥 Open / Import External NFO...: Opens an external .nfo or .xml file into the editor.
• 🖼️ Scan Folder for Artwork & Posters: Scans the current NFO's folder for all local artwork images (poster, fanart, clearlogo, landscape, banner, clearart, discart, keyart) and refreshes the Artwork & Details gallery.
• 🔗 Link Local Artwork into NFO XML: Automatically writes <thumb aspect="..."> and <fanart><thumb>...</thumb></fanart> XML tags into the NFO for all detected local artwork files in the folder so players like Kodi, Emby, Jellyfin, and Plex NFO agents have explicit XML references.
• 🔀 Convert Active Format To: Converts the active file's metadata format on the fly between:
  • 🎬 Movie
  • 📺 TV Show
  • 🎞️ TV Episode
  • 💿 Music Album
  • 👤 Music Artist
  • 📄 Plain Text / Scene ASCII

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⚙️ Settings Menu

• ⚙️ Preferences & Settings...: Opens the Settings modal window (Appearance, Updates, General Defaults, and About).
• 🎨 Theme: Switch the UI color scheme immediately:
  • 🌙 Dark Slate (Default)
  • 🌌 Midnight Blue
  • ☀️ Light Clean
• 🔄 Check for Updates...: Queries GitHub Releases for a newer version of Metadata Editor.
• ℹ️ About Metadata Editor...: Displays version details, license info, and quick links to GitHub Releases and issue reporting.

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2. Top Application Header & Toolbar

Directly below the menu bar, the header bar displays at-a-glance status and format controls for the active file:

• Active File Badge: Shows the current filename (e.g., movie.nfo) and an orange modified indicator (●) whenever there are unsaved changes.
• Format Dropdown: Displays and switches the active NfoFileType (Movie, TvShow, Episode, MusicAlbum, MusicArtist, GenericXml, PlainText).
• Encoding Dropdown: Displays the detected character encoding (UTF-8 (Standard), UTF-8 with BOM, CP437 (DOS / Scene ASCII), Windows-1252 (ANSI), UTF-16 LE (Unicode)) and lets you convert encodings before saving.

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3. Left Sidebar: Folder Files Browser

When you open or drag-and-drop a folder, the left sidebar lists all discovered .nfo files:

• Search Box: Filter files in real time by filename or parent folder name.
• Category Filter Dropdown: Filter the list by media type:
  • All
  • Movies (🎬)
  • TV Shows (📺)
  • Episodes (🎞️)
  • Music (💿)
  • Plain Text (📄)
• File List: Displays an icon for each file's detected type, the filename, its subfolder name, and an orange dot (●) if modified.

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4. Center Workspace Tabs

Tab 1: 📋 Metadata Form

A structured, card-based visual editor organized into logical sections:

1. Primary Information: Title, Original Title, Sort Title, TV/Episode or Music-specific fields, Year, Premiered Date, Runtime, Rating, Votes, and Certification/MPAA.
2. Story, Plot & Overview: Tagline, multi-line Plot/Overview, and Short Outline.
3. Genres & Production Details: Interactive tag chips for Genres, Studios / Networks, and Directors with quick + Add and ✕ remove buttons.
4. Cast & Characters: Full interactive table for Actors (Order, Actor Name, Character / Role, Photo URL) with ▲ / ▼ reordering and ✕ deletion.
5. Album Tracklist (visible for Music modes): Track #, Track Title, and Duration.
6. Online IDs & Web Links: IMDb ID (with one-click 🔗 browser launch), TMDb ID, TVDb ID, Trailer URL (with 🔗 test button), and Movie Set / Collection name & overview.
7. Custom & Extra XML Tags: Expandable table preserving all additional or specialized XML tags (<fileinfo>, <uniqueid>, <thumb>, <fanart>, <lockdata>, etc.).

Tab 2: 📝 Raw Text / XML Editor

A direct monospace source code editor (Consolas / Cascadia Mono) featuring:

• 🔄 Format / Indent XML: Pretty-prints and indents XML cleanly.
• Word Wrap Toggle: Switch between horizontal scrolling and wrapped lines.
• Quick Find Bar: Type any search term and press Enter or click Find Next to jump through occurrences.
• Bidirectional Sync: Edits made in the Raw XML editor automatically parse back into the visual Metadata Form when you switch tabs!

Tab 3: 🖼️ Artwork & Details

• Left Pane: Large high-resolution preview of the selected artwork image, along with its classification badge (Poster, Fanart / Backdrop, ClearLogo, Landscape / Thumb, etc.), pixel dimensions (Width × Height), file size, XML link status, and an 🔍 Open Image button.
• Right Pane (Top): Detected Folder Artwork Gallery showing thumbnails of every image in the media folder, plus 🔄 Rescan Folder and 🔗 Link All Artwork in NFO XML buttons.
• Right Pane (Bottom): File Technical Information card showing the full file path, character encoding, format mode, root XML tag, and an 📂 Open Folder in Windows Explorer button.