I would like some way for a video file to be accompanied by a simple info file that contains the IMDB number for that video and for MythTV to populate the database automatically when it reads the number from the file.

I have a very large DVD collection that I have converted to Xvid and put on my MythTV box.
I like the feature to have the database populated with info and a thumb nail of the movie just using the IMDB code number. What I do not like is the awkard GUI that I have to use to do this. The other thing is that as my collection grows, my hard drives change, mount points change, videos get moved around or renamed and when this happens the IMDB info for that video is now lost and I have to go back into the GUI and do it all over again.

I would like to have a text file for each video file where the name of the files match except for the extention, where a movie would be SomeShow.avi the text file would be SomeShow.nfo and in that file could be the IMDB code. Then I could have a cron job look for files that have changed or moved and update the database from the IMDB site at night.

Does somthing like this already exist?
If not can someone point me to some examples on how to populate the IMDB info to the database using the command line?
I am more then happy to write a Perl script to do this and upload it for others to use, I just don't want to start this if someone has already done it.

I don't know if anyone has already created such a beast, but you can look through the imdb.pl Perl script for the DB particulars - See Russ's posts here http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=14279 and do keep us posted, this seems like something that many could be interested in.

imdbbatchgrabber.pl -A

the -A can be changed to -N to just update new files (or probably moves files as in your case.

This script isn't perfect though, you'll still need to do some tweaking