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Adding Media

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Jacob Chirayath edited this page Jun 12, 2026 · 4 revisions

Adding media

Several ways to get titles into your catalog. All of them work in the admin console under mediahound app / serve --admin / the desktop app (the photo / scan / CSV options live under the ➕ Add menu; Discogs is under 🔗 Connect).

➕ Drag-and-drop photos (easiest)

Click ➕ Add photos, choose 🎬 Movies or 🎵 Music, and drag your cover pics in (or pick files). Each photo is validated, saved into the right folder, and catalogued automatically. No file copying.

📱 From your phone (QR)

mediahound app --phone

A QR code prints in the terminal. Scan it with your phone on the same Wi-Fi, tap ➕ Add photos → Take Photo, and the covers upload straight into your catalog.

  • Uploads are token-protected — only the phone that scanned the code can add photos.
  • Nothing leaves your network. Use it on a trusted Wi-Fi only.
  • API-key and Publish actions stay disabled in phone mode (localhost-only).

📷 Scan a barcode (exact, not fuzzy)

Click ➕ Add → 📷 Scan barcode. Point your phone/laptop camera at the UPC/EAN on the back of a case (or type the digits) and the exact release is identified — no cover photo, no OCR guesswork. Music resolves via MusicBrainz/Discogs; books by ISBN (a 978/979 barcode) via Open Library (auto-detected — no need to pick the type); movies via a product-name lookup, then the normal title path. Local decoding in a build needs the optional extra: pip install "mediahound[barcode]".

💿 Import a Discogs collection

Already keep your records/CDs on Discogs? Click 🔗 Connect → Import from Discogs (or mediahound import-discogs <username>) to pull the whole collection in with art and metadata. Add a Discogs token in Settings → API keys to raise the rate limit.

⬆ Import a CSV (no photos needed)

Click ⬆ Import list (or mediahound import yourlist.csv). Only a title column is required; extra columns (year, artist, format, …) fill in what they can, and --online enriches each row. See examples/sample-import.csv.

📁 The RawImages folders (CLI)

When you scaffold with mediahound init, photos go here and are routed by media type:

RawImages/
  video/   → movies (DVD, VHS, Blu-ray, LaserDisc)
  audio/   → music  (CD, vinyl, cassette)

Photos left directly in RawImages/ are treated as movies. Then run mediahound build (add --online to fetch cover art & metadata). Builds are incremental — only new photos (tracked by sha256) are processed.

What happens to an added photo

It's identified (OCR / vision), enriched (movies: TMDB / OMDb / Wikidata + JustWatch; music: MusicBrainz + Cover Art Archive), and added to the catalog. Couldn't identify it? It lands in the Unidentified queue where you can name it by hand. See Editing and Persisting Changes.

MediaHound

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