Tom's Life Bits

I've done a lot of what you are attempting and figured out how to get it to work for just about anything. I use the bare minimum .nfo files and they work. I suppose more items could be added but I simply want the files to show up in library mode. I am less concerned about all the metadata.

My setup is:

  SOURCE.FOLDER.for.TVshows
  ---Name.of.TVshow.folder
  ------s1e1.name.of.video.file.avi
  ------s1e1.name.of.video.file.nfo
  ------s1e1.name.of.video.file.tbn (picture shown for episode 1)
  ------s1e2.name.of.video.file.avi
  ------s1e2.name.of.video.file.nfo
  ------s1e2.name.of.video.file.tbn (picture shown for episode 2)
  fanart.jpg (background image for the tvshow)
  folder.jpg (banner or movie poster that shows up in library mode)
  tvshow.nfo

  "tvshow.nfo"
  Code:
  <tvshow xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
    <title>TV SHOW TITLE</title>
    <rating>10.0</rating>
    <plot>SHOW PLOT</plot>
    <genre>Documentary</genre>
    <premiered>1969-07-14<premiered />
    <studio>International</studio>
  </tvshow>

  s1e1.name.of.video.file.nfo
  Code:
  <episodedetails xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
    <title>EPISODE TITLE</title>
    <season>1</season>
    <episode>1</episode>
    <aired>2011</aired>
    <plot>EPISODE PLOT</plot>
    <displayseason />
    <displayepisode />
    <watched>false</watched>
    <rating />
  </episodedetails>

These should work for you. Sometimes when I get something wrong I have to remove my source, clean the library, and re-add the source to get it to take. For this reason I use a separate folder source for test purposes so I dont have to delete my whole library to fix a mistake with a few files.

~~~~~

SOURCE.FOLDER.for.TVshows —Name.of.TVshow.folder ——s1e1.name.of.video.file.avi ——s1e1.name.of.video.file.nfo ——s1e1.name.of.video.file.tbn (picture shown for episode 1) ——s1e2.name.of.video.file.avi ——s1e2.name.of.video.file.nfo ——s1e2.name.of.video.file.tbn (picture shown for episode 2) fanart.jpg (background image for the tvshow) folder.jpg (banner or movie poster that shows up in library mode) tvshow.nfo

~~~~~