Movies integrates with SyncDocs in order to provide an out-of-the-box backup & restore procedure. By making a backup and populating the database yourself, you can import any movie collection you already have!
Backup
- Download the SyncDocs Client on your desktop computer (either Mac or Windows) and start it.
- Now go to the settings screen of Movies and tap the backup button. It will show a Bonjour browser and if your iPhone is connected to the same network as your desktop computer, you should see 1 entry listed, SyncDocs.
- Tap on the SyncDocs entry and the backup process will start.
As soon as it's finished (this can take a while if you have lots of movies), it will shows a message stating how many files it backed up.
Restore
- Start the SyncDocs client on your desktop computer (either Mac or Windows). Don't touch anything.
- Now go to the settings screen of Movies and tap the Restore button. It will show a Bonjour browser and if your iPhone is connected to the same network as your desktop computer, you should see 1 entry listed, SyncDocs.
- Tap on the entry and then tap the backup you wish to restore. Hold your breath as the backup is getting restored. This may take a while if you have a big backup.
Technical
Currently, Movies exports its raw data. Movies uses an sqlite database, and stores the covers as JPG images on disk. SO if you're making a backup of your movie collection with 55 movies, SyncDocs will download 56 files (1 sqlite database and 55 covers).
If you wish to import your own movie library into Movies , you can make a backup of your (empty) Movies database using the approach described above. Once that's finished, you can browse the downloads folder in the SyncDocs folder on your desktop and locate the icollector.sqlite database file. You can now populate this database using your preferred sqlite client and provide cover thumbnails (where the name of the thumbnail should be the id of the entry in the sqlite database).
In a later version of Movies, we will provide movie imports of popular movie collection applications on the desktop (like Delicious Library, All My Movies, Collectorz, ...).