Hey guys, My VideoLibrary.dll.config looks like so:

<configuration>
  <appsettings>
    <add key="CombineDuplicateFolders" value="true">
    <add key="WatchedFolders" value="\\whs\videos">
    <add key="ArchivedTVExpression" value="(&lt;seriesname&gt;.+?)(\.[sS])(?&lt;seasonnumber&gt;\d{1,2})[eE](?&lt;episodenumber&gt;\d{1,3})\.(?&lt;episodename&gt;.+?)(?&lt;extension&gt;\.avi|\.mpg|\.rmvb|\.mkv)">   
  </add>
</add>

All of my files are name like so:

mad.men.s01e01.720p.hdtv.x264-bia.mkv

Upon going in to the app, I click into the "TV Shows" folder and nothing but a regular list of folders. No metadata whatsoever. There's a .metadata folder in each directory with one single file, Foldername.folder.xml. For (Mad Men, for example) the content of this file look like the following:

<metadata>
  <needsmetadata>false</needsmetadata>
  <needsuserselection>false</needsuserselection>
  <status>
  <subtitle>
  <description>
  <imagetype>NotSpecified</imagetype>
  <sortorder>NotSpecified</sortorder>
  <spannedfolders>
  <getmostrecentvideo>false</getmostrecentvideo>
  <cleanup>false</cleanup>
</spannedfolders>

Does anyone know how I can get metadata to work? THANKS!

---

--
Travis Bell
themoviedb.org | The open movie database

Travis:

That's the regex I wrote. I've updated it a bit, but it's basically the same logic:

<add key="ArchivedTVExpression" value="\\(?&lt;seriesname&gt;.+?)\.[sS](?&lt;seasonnumber&gt;\d{1,2})[eE](?&lt;episodenumber&gt;\d{1,3})\.(?&lt;episodename&gt;.+?)(?&lt;extension&gt;\.avi|\.mpg|\.mkv)" />

All I really did was modify one of the other ones someone posted and I can't figure out what some of the regex codes do (like +?) but this works for my stuff and I have the exact same file naming conventions (scene/warez). I don't have my stuff on a network share currently but I could test that out if you want.

Remember to put each "season" in a folder called "Season" followed by a space and the season number. Nothing really worked properly until I did that. Couldn't even work out a regex to make anything else work.

I like the idea of having a few types of regex available. Like say you have five slots for regex's, the code would then cycle through them all and if none match, do something else, either ask the user for input or assume the file isn't an episode. I'd still like them to be configurable though.

I really don't see the problem in archiving your sh%& ..er stuff (Long Live George Carlin!) properly. I appreciate the pain in doing it after you've accumulated alot of stuff but as you rip or download, it's quick and easy enough to do it then. The upfront pain is minimal at that time.

Are I gotta say, as enlightening as this discussion as been, I'm beginning to see a little bit of why Microsoft design things they way they do.  In my humble, under-rested opinion, the microsoft approach to this dilema would most likely be to say "Hey, we provided a scheme of 'tagging' your non-WMV videos properly so you can search for the right metadata. What more do you want?" It comes down to how much time should be invested in trying to account for everyone's unique situation or provide a low-level foundation that can be built-on later..... ah dunno...

...one question for all testers: what percentage of your movie content did the app find the correct metadata for? What percentage of your tv series did the app find the correct metadata for?

 

ahelseth:

What you have to remember though is that not everyone knows what a RegEx is. Heck, half the people who know what it is doesn't know how to write one. Which is why I recommended what I did - it will allow everyone to get up and running in minutes whilst still providing that extra edge for power-users.

In terms of performance, there's not much to be had or lost either way (although, in my initial tests it was [very slightly] faster having a single RegEx than several different ones and checking the file against each one until it found a match) as you'll only iterate through your collection during the initial setup/startup - once it's done it only has to check new files, which even for a serious 'collector' would be a maximum of ~40 a week.

I have a good few TBs (more than I like to admit TBH - Chenbro RM41416b case anyone) of television shows archived myself, and as I said, in the past I duly renamed the files to my preferred format of Showname SxxExx - EpisodeTitle.ext, however after starting my project I just don't bother anymore - I never go looking for something to watch by digging through the filesystem, so spending time organizing it just seems like a waste of time. My experience is that most people fall into this category and the only reason they bother renaming files at the moment is because they have to - which IMHO should not be the case when using a media manager such as this one.

JackLuminous:

...one question for all testers: what percentage of your movie content did the app find the correct metadata for? What percentage of your tv series did the app find the correct metadata for?

if found about 50% of my movies with the latest version.... and ~1% of my tv shows (just one episode was found) out of my 200 or so shows.

JackLuminous:

I really don't see the problem in archiving your sh%& ..er stuff (Long Live George Carlin!) properly. I appreciate the pain in doing it after you've accumulated alot of stuff but as you rip or download, it's quick and easy enough to do it then. The upfront pain is minimal at that time.

Well, everyone has a different definition of "proper", right? To me, proper means preserving the format/release group/etc data in the filename.

JackLuminous:

Are I gotta say, as enlightening as this discussion as been, I'm beginning to see a little bit of why Microsoft design things they way they do.  In my humble, under-rested opinion, the microsoft approach to this dilema would most likely be to say "Hey, we provided a scheme of 'tagging' your non-WMV videos properly so you can search for the right metadata. What more do you want?" It comes down to how much time should be invested in trying to account for everyone's unique situation or provide a low-level foundation that can be built-on later..... ah dunno...

Yeah, I feel your pain. I worked on a fork of a "DAOC server emulator" and yeah every server admin had all these wishes and wants and we were always like "well it's open source, update the code and send us patches!" Guess how many patches we got?

It's times like these when I REALLY wish Microsoft hadn't killed WinFS. With WinFS we could just tag the files with real metadata and that data would live in the filesystem. This plugin could simply rely on that data instead of messing with regex's or whatever. Real metadata and original filename preservation! It worked too, (I have a beta around here somewhere...) still have no idea why they killed it.

Having said all that, it's your project, dude, do whatever you want. I'd remind you that you could open the code and let people add their own features but you already know that, so do whatever you want. Set some goals for what the thing is going to do and what it's not going to do and stick to those goals, trying to accommodate everyone's wishes means you'll never finish.

JackLuminous:

...one question for all testers: what percentage of your movie content did the app find the correct metadata for? What percentage of your tv series did the app find the correct metadata for?

Movies: None, but that's because I never rename anything (which is why I suggest folder names for identification).
TV Shows: All that I tested after changing my folder structure (and doing some matching on thetvdb site).

well, I don't wanna say "waaahH! my feelings hurt, I am going to take my toys and go home" or nothin' like that. While the app ultimately did I needed to support my original purpose (back in december 2007 or so, i wanted a nicer plug-in to watch all of Heroes --I had never seen the show and wanted to watch the whole bloody series but have episode descriptions availalbe) I wanted to provide some value to everyone else. I completely acknowledge that this is not nor will ever be the be-all-end-all but could be enough to never have to look at Microsoft's video library again :-D.

I just want to establish some common ground or something that can give us at least 50% identification rate out of the box. In this back and forth, what inch would you guys consider giving? If I were to ask , "what 4 or 5 regexs should this app support automatically out of the box",  what could you agree on?

JackLuminous:

...one question for all testers: what percentage of your movie content did the app find the correct metadata for? What percentage of your tv series did the app find the correct metadata for?

 

Movies was about 60% (I have a large number of movies that require years, ie: all Batman, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, etc.., so they all come up with choices, which is expected).

TV Shows was 100%, and nice and fast.

I'm with you JL.  You can't cater for every single option, and the standard scene rules are actually covered by the default regex.  I have a fairly good understanding of Regular Expressions (which I knew nothing about before playing with this plugin and Ben's Library mangement app) by simply reading up on it and playing around with a number of options.  I have a post further back in this thread with the examples at my disposal at the time, and JL has posted these examples in the opening post of the thread.  I am happy to post a few others for people (and update the existing ones) if people are still struggling with them.  Feel free to post them and I'll try to find a minute to write an expression.  If you follow the ones in the first post, minor changes should be pretty easy, as applying a bit of logic to them makes changes fairly easy.

I've setup a test folder so I can rename the folder and it's contents to what people want me to test and apply.  After I've made some changes, I'll create a new thread so I can update the opening post with peoples specifics.  With about 5-10 expressions, I imagine it should cover almost all people library setups, as I think mine is possibly the most challenging to work out.

I still stand by the fact that you're doing a fantastic job JL, and keep it up.  My needs appear to be very similar to yours, and this plugin covers it off.  The only thing I'm lacking is the ability to ID movies by ID tag that was there before, cause about 3 of my movies have anothe rmovie of the same name released in the same year (read: Chaos - 2005).

Cheers,

Schlep.

Cool man, I changed mine over to match yours and added some new episodes and it starting picking up the data.

What I ended up doing because it seemed to be the quickest way to fix it is deleting all of the created .metadata folders and simply getting the app to run from scratch again. What I think happened was because the first time it ran, my regex was wrong and didn't find anything, it assumed we were all in the clear... it wasn't until I added some new videos and it went to add new stuff that anything started happening.

Thanks guys!

---

--
Travis Bell
themoviedb.org | The open movie database

Oh yeah, I guess I should have mentioned that. Whenever I change anything, either a reinstall or a simple regex change, I use Vista's search stuff and delete every ".metadata" folder I can find. I just sorta assumed everyone else would be doing that too. Sorry about that.

Sorry about that. I haven't gotten a chance to add that back in but I will try to get to that sometime this weekend . I'm actually doing Real Work™ from home this weekend so I can't do much of what I wanted on the plug-in :-D.

schleppel:

  The only thing I'm lacking is the ability to ID movies by ID tag that was there before, cause about 3 of my movies have anothe rmovie of the same name released in the same year (read: Chaos - 2005).

Cheers,

Schlep.

Okay,

I am now officially stumpted.  I completely removed all .metadata folders from my TV shows folders and allowed them to be created from scratch.  This worked fine, everything was showing in Thumbnal view and I've left it that way.  I left the 'my videos.folder.xml' as default and added the following:

  <SpannedFolders>
 <SpannedFolder Content="\\STUART\My Videos 2" Enabled="true"/>
  </SpannedFolders>

I am still not getting spanned folders.  This exact scenario worked in all previous versions, just doesn't seem to be working for me now.  No permissions have changed along the way, the only things that has been done is the installation of Video Library+ instead of TVLibrary and I copied my old .config file into the new directory.  It picks up all my TV and Movies, but I can't seem to span folders.

The two directories I an trying to span are \\STUART\My Videos and \\STUART\My Videos 2.  They are on the same PC so I can't give them the same name and set them to combine duplicate folders, I am stumped.  Below is my videolibrary.dll.config file in case I'm missing something obvious. (I've gone through this a heap of times)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
  <appSettings>
    <add key="CombineDuplicateFolders" value="true" />
    <add key="WatchedFolders" value="\\STUART\My Videos, \\STUART\My Movies, \\STUART\My Comedies\, \\Stuart\My Music Videos" />
    <add key="ArchivedTVExpression" value="(?:\w*)\\(?&lt;seriesname&gt;.+?)\\(Season)\s(?&lt;seasonnumber&gt;\d{1,2})\\(?&lt;episodenumber&gt;\d{1,2})\.\s(?&lt;episodename&gt;.+?)\.(?&lt;extension&gt;[avi|mpg|rmvb])" />
  </appSettings>
</configuration>

Cheers,

Schlep. :D

Schlep,

Inside \My Videos\.metadata, is there a *.series.xml or a *.season.xml file in addition to the my videos.folder.xml? This is the only thing I can think of right now because my recorded tv and videos spannedfolders are setup just like yours. If there is a *.series.xml or *.season.xml file in there, they take precedence over the folder.xml. The order of precedence comes into play when the engine 'identifies' the type of folder and is: series > season > folder. In other words, if all 3 of these files are in the same folder, the folder will be identified as a series folder. The problem is manifested when episode/archived tv files are mixed in at the top-level of a folder that contains other folders or non-archived tv files.

schleppel:

Okay,

I am now officially stumpted.  I completely removed all .metadata folders from my TV shows folders and allowed them to be created from scratch.  This worked fine, everything was showing in Thumbnal view and I've left it that way.  I left the 'my videos.folder.xml' as default and added the following:

  <SpannedFolders>
 <SpannedFolder Content="\\STUART\My Videos 2" Enabled="true"/>
  </SpannedFolders>

I am still not getting spanned folders.  This exact scenario worked in all previous versions, just doesn't seem to be working for me now.  No permissions have changed along the way, the only things that has been done is the installation of Video Library+ instead of TVLibrary and I copied my old .config file into the new directory.  It picks up all my TV and Movies, but I can't seem to span folders.

The two directories I an trying to span are \\STUART\My Videos and \\STUART\My Videos 2.  They are on the same PC so I can't give them the same name and set them to combine duplicate folders, I am stumped.  Below is my videolibrary.dll.config file in case I'm missing something obvious. (I've gone through this a heap of times)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
  <appSettings>
    <add key="CombineDuplicateFolders" value="true" />
    <add key="WatchedFolders" value="\\STUART\My Videos, \\STUART\My Movies, \\STUART\My Comedies\, \\Stuart\My Music Videos" />
    <add key="ArchivedTVExpression" value="(?:\w*)\\(?&lt;seriesname&gt;.+?)\\(Season)\s(?&lt;seasonnumber&gt;\d{1,2})\\(?&lt;episodenumber&gt;\d{1,2})\.\s(?&lt;episodename&gt;.+?)\.(?&lt;extension&gt;[avi|mpg|rmvb])" />
  </appSettings>
</configuration>

Cheers,

Schlep. :D

(un)fortunately my shows and movies are all extremely organised.  Every Episode is in a Season folder under a show folder, so there are no errant files anywhere.  The .metadata folder in the \My Videos share is completely empty except for the myvideo.folder.xml file in it, and I have removed the .metadata folder a number of times and allowed re-creation (which has allowed me to confirm identification of all shows still works fine in the later versions, as I've removed ALL .metadata folders from the folder structure).  I've even tried adding the spanned folder without a share (ie: S:\My Videos 2) and it doesn't pick it up...

I'm about to try another complete re-install of the application, I'll report back if anything changes...

P.S. the \My Videos 2 folder has absolutely no metadata in it, only 3 series folders, all of which also have no metadata in them..

Hmm ok. so let's see:

1. it will write the myvideos.folder.xml each time if you remove it manually.

2. My videos is a folder on your local media center PC (along with my videos 2.

3. You were trying to add my videos 2 as a span for my videos.

4. Because the span is not being recognized, it doesn't pull in ANY of the content from my videos 2; thus, you don't see this content in the UI and no metadata is generated.

Can you post the entire my videos.folder.xml with the span stuff included ?

FYI, you never ever need to reinstall to debug these types of things. Just nuke the .metadata folders like you've been doing  :-)

schleppel:

(un)fortunately my shows and movies are all extremely organised.  Every Episode is in a Season folder under a show folder, so there are no errant files anywhere.  The .metadata folder in the \My Videos share is completely empty except for the myvideo.folder.xml file in it, and I have removed the .metadata folder a number of times and allowed re-creation (which has allowed me to confirm identification of all shows still works fine in the later versions, as I've removed ALL .metadata folders from the folder structure).  I've even tried adding the spanned folder without a share (ie: S:\My Videos 2) and it doesn't pick it up...

I'm about to try another complete re-install of the application, I'll report back if anything changes...

P.S. the \My Videos 2 folder has absolutely no metadata in it, only 3 series folders, all of which also have no metadata in them..