Boxee offers several ways to browse and play your personal media files. One option is to use Files from the Boxee home screen. Within Files, you can browse the Iomega TV shared folders, network shares, UPnP devices available on the network, or the contents of external USB devices connected to the Iomega TV. You can also access the Music and Photos sections from files.

You can also use Boxee's content search feature to access your personal media files. If you selected the setup option to watch mostly your own files, content from your identified sources will be available from the top level menus on the content search screen. If you selected mostly internet sources, you can still access media content from your identified sources using the submenus. See Using Content Search for more information.

Adding Media Sources

Media Sources are folders, volumes, or shares that Boxee scans for media content to add to Movies, Shows, Music and Photos. You can add as many sources to Boxee as you like from an attached hard drive or your network, and you can make them as specific as a single folder or include an entire volume. If the media you want to share is on a networked computer, make sure it's located in shared folders you can access. If the media source is on a Mac computer, you can add it with AFP, for Linux Boxee supports NFS.

Here's how to add a media source:

1. Press the Back button on the remote control to display the Menu Bar.

2. Press the up arrow to move the highlight to the top of the screen.

3. Highlight the gear icon and press OK to access settings.

4. Select File Sources from the settings menu and press OK.

5. Add Sources will be highlighted. Press OK, choose the protocol you want to use in order to add the source (AFP, NFS, UPnP,SMB).

6. When Boxee lists the available shares, highlight the one you want to add and select Add this directory.

7. Highlight the media type you want Boxee to look for in this directory and press OK.

8. Select the type of scanning you want Boxee to use and press OK. Select Never if you do not want Boxee to scan the content in this source (the recommended sacn interval is daily).

9. Highlight Add and press OK.

The directory you have added will now appear under Files. After Boxee has scanned the contents, the identified media files will also show up under content search and also will be added to the correct location under Movies or Shows (In order to view just the local files use Movies/ Shows -> Files)

Naming Media Files

After setting up your media sources Boxee will start to retrieve artwork and information, based on how your media files are named.
There is a specific way you must name your movie files and your TV shows and episodes for the function to work correctly (Naming Convention).

Movies

It is recommended to place a single movie inside a directory. Boxee currently supports the followingstyle naming convention for movies:

Title.extension

Examples:

• Die.Hard.avi
• Toy.Story.2.avi

It is recommended that you add the movie's release year for greater accuracy, especially when dealing with remakes.

Title.(YEAR).extension
Examples:

• The.Day.the.Earth.Stood.Still.(1951).avi
• The.Day.the.Earth.Stood.Still.(2008).avi

For multi-part movie both part# and cd# are supported.

Title.part#.extension
Examples:

• Seven.Pounds.cd1.avi
• Seven.Pounds.cd2.avi
• The.Simpsons.Movie.part1.avi
• The.Simpsons.Movie.part2.avi

All parameters can be used in conjunction - Title.(Year).part.extension
Examples:

• The.Stepford.Wives.(2004).part1.avi
• The.Stepford.Wives.(2004).part2.avi
• The.Stepford.Wives.(1975).cd1.avi
• The.Stepford.Wives.(1975).cd2.avi

TV Shows

TV Shows' file names are usually consisted of the show's name, the season (usually indicated by the letter "S", or just the number), the episode (usually indicated by the letter "E", or just the number), the episode's title, and some more info regarding the quality and source of the file.

Boxee currently supports the following types of naming conventions for tv shows.

Show.Title.S##E##.info.extension (double digits are required: S#E# will not work.)
Examples:

• The.Sopranos.S02E01.avi
• Entourage.S05E01.avi

Show.Title.#x##.info.extension
Examples:

• How.I.Met.Your.Mother.1x01.Pilot.avi
• The.Office.02×02.stuff.avi

NOTE:  Adding the series' release year in the file will help resolve remakes and TV shows with similar names
(please refer to IMDB.com to find the correct release year of the show)

Extra/Special episodes:

Season number should be '00', episode number should be 01-##. The episode number should be assigned according to  thetvdb.com listings.

Example:
South Park extra episode called "The Spirit of Christmas (santa vs frosty)" is:
http://www.thetvdb.com/?tab=episode&seriesid=75897&seasonid=23356&id=333905&lid=7
should be named South.Park.S00E02

Music

With music, the most important issue is the id3 tags.

These tags hold all the information such as album name, artist, year, genre and even artwork. Whatever is there, will be presented in Boxee, so be sure to include as much info as possible in your id3 tags.

If you do not want to keep the artwork as part of the id3 tag, you can also put a picture file of the artwork in the relevant folder, and name the file 'folder.jpg'.

Resolving Unidentified Videos

When Boxee scans your identified storage sources for media files, it uses file names to connect videos to cover art and other metadata so it knows how to list them in content search. If Boxee finds video files that it cannot connect to metadata, it puts them in "Unidentified Videos". You can browse these files and manually connect them to the information Boxee needs to display them correctly. Here's how:

1. Open the Menu Bar and choose the Gear Icon (Settings)
2. Navigate to File Sources and Click OK
3. Navigate to Unidentified Files and Click OK
4. Choose the file you want to identify and Click OK
5. Press up and open the Icon with the Magnifying Glass and press OK
6. Type the name of the Movie/ Show and click on search, choose the correct option from the list 

If the movie or show is not in the online databases that Boxee uses for indexing media (IMDB/TVDB), then Boxee will not be able to recognize the media. In this case, you can access it by browsing to it on the source location in Files and play the video from there, you can also use NFO files to manually and permanently resolve the file, use this article for assistance  on how to create an nfo file.