on a side note, I added back the ability to set the ID if you know the exact ID you want. I am testing it now. The only additional burden is that you have the set NeedsUserSelection=false.

I've successfully tested it on movies. Now I am going to test it on series.

 

Edit - Settings series ID manually works again. You can now fake out both movies and series. I'll post a new build tomorrow evening with this fix (and a bugfix that led to no metadata being saved if there were no actors defined for a series )

side note 2: any one point this to dvd collection?

DVDs are playing fine for me, although metadata is not showing... to be clear though, I haven't gone in and messed with IDs and what-not... just haven't had any time to remote in a play yet. So they might be if set to grab the right info. I will see if I can find time to play with that tonight.

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Travis Bell
themoviedb.org | The open movie database

if you use dvdxml.com files it'll pull down metadata automatically and store it in \[dvd folder]\.metadata

 

Hello all, I have come up against a problem with this amazing tool and wonder if anyone could help?

I have basically installed Video Library 1.3 and when it is downloading the covers and banners, they are all coming down completely white/blank, 43 bytes and the dimensions a 1x1 px? Anyone got any ideas?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers,

Edit - Not sure if anyone read my question but i found out that it was somehow caused by my firewall, Kaspersky. Although it was letting all traffic through, It was somehow doing something to the images? Solved by removing the rule and letting it detect the app again.

I've fought with this most of the day and am finally asking for some help.

I'm on 1.3 and actually have metadata and episode thumbnails working perfectly.  What I don't have are series covers and banners.  For example, I'll use my "Chuck" series folder.  The relative path is: 

\\mediasvr\disk3\videos\Chuck\S1

I have metadata folders in both the Chuck and S1 directories.  In Chuck\.metadata I have the Chuck.series.banner.jpg and Chuck.series.cover.jpg.  However, in the interface, I can't get them to show up for the root Chuck folder or for the S1 folders.  I've tried placing these images directly in both folders, renaming them (to various filenames suggested in this thread) and editing the XML files residing in both locations with no luck.

I'll be the first to admit I know next to nothing about this program as I only started using it today, but I never realized I'd have this much trouble with it.  Any suggestions, or what am I doing wrong (or not doing, for that matter)?

Thanks!

EDIT:
I was able to get season covers to show up by naming the image s1.series,jpg, but I still can't find the right filename for my main title folder.  I also finally noticed the banner image is showing up (I'm remoting in and the color depth made it hard to see).

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theHTPC.net

Sorry for the late response, Jon. When a series is recognized  for the first time, it will and should have created [season folder name].season.cover.jpg in each season folder if no season.cover.jpg image exists. For the record, it only looks for metadata in the .metadata subfolder.

I don't understand what you mean by 'main title folder'. Do you mean your series root folder ie. \Chuck?

If you are up for running a test, blow away your .metadata folder in \Chuck\. Blow away your \Chuck\S1\.metadata folder then close/launch app and, in the app, browse to folder containing chuck

If Chuck is recognized as a series, the following things will happen

• \Chuck\.metadata created
• \Chuck\.metadata\providercache created
• \Chuck\.metadata\providercache\Chuck.seriescache.xml created
• All Chuck images downloaded to \Chuck\.metadata\providercache\
• \Chuck\.metadata\Chuck.series.xml created
• \Chuck\.metadata\Chuck.series.cover.jpg created
• \Chuck\.metadata\Chuck.series.banner.jpg created
• \Chuck\S1\.metadata created
• \Chuck\S1\.metadata\S1.season.xml created
• \Chuck\S1\.metadata\S1.season.cover.jpg created -IF a season image is defined in the tvdb.com info downloaded into the providercache

PS. what the hell is "Chuck". I keep hearing that name and the problems people have w/ getting metadata for it.....keep thinking of "Chucky"....

1.4 uploaded. See Changes.txt in the zip. I am too lazy to type.

New to the program, been playing around with it for a couple hours now. I *think* I have everything configured properly, as I have metadata for Movies and TV shows working good. However, some quick questions

1. When viewing the TV series folders, the image is squashed. However, once I click on the squashed image and the TV show details are displayed, that pages' images and all others look fine. What did I do wrong?

2. How do I get the dvd-cover style gallery view for TV series, as shown in the following image http://www.flickr.com/photos/26106575@N03/2449807241/. I beleive this would be the same page I am getting the squashed images on.

3. Regarding movies -- it appears that all movies can reside in a single folder (when each movie is an .avi, .mkv or similar), unlike most other apps that require each movie to be in their own folder. Is this corret?

4. When viewing the metadata for a movie, anwhere there is an apostrophe, it has a preceding backslash (forwardslash?). I know this is common when using XML data due to the need for escape characters, but is there a way around this? Or is this a per-movie issue (for example, "The Simpson's Movie")

5. TV series... Let's say I have Seasons 1 and 2 of a TV series, and later on add Season 3. It doesn't seam to be recognizing Season 3 properly -- no Season 3 art is shown, and the thumbnails for the episodes are the default movie-reel thingy and wrong aspect ratio. The only way to correct this is delete all .metadata folders for that series, which will cause everything to refresh. Is this by design or did I do something wrong?

6. TV series... when going from the screen with the name of the tv series, it goes to the screen that lets you pick either "Browse Episodes" or "Watch Series". Is there any way to bypass this screen and go directly to "Browse Episodes"? I understand the point of the screen, and it has it's place, but just wondering if I can automatically jump past it.

Sorry if these have been answered somewhere in the 32+ pages of the thread.. I got confused with different version numbers, individual user issues, and what was what after the name of the program seamed to change... I could have missed an installation guide as well I can post images if this would help clarify, though so far this looks to be a great program!

Another *REALLY* annoying bug I've noticed is that after playing some TV through tvlibrary+ and then say, I go and play some music at the end of a playlist (queue up one song as an example) it whips back to the last viewed TV show in tvlibrary+.

Does it every bloody time and only after I've been watching in tvlibrary+.

The squished image thing is kind of annoying as well... are we able to switch them to covers like the old version? I haven't tried as of yet...

---

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

notyouraccount:

New to the program, been playing around with it for a couple hours now. I *think* I have everything configured properly, as I have metadata for Movies and TV shows working good. However, some quick questions

1. When viewing the TV series folders, the image is squashed. However, once I click on the squashed image and the TV show details are displayed, that pages' images and all others look fine. What did I do wrong?

2. How do I get the dvd-cover style gallery view for TV series, as shown in the following image http://www.flickr.com/photos/26106575@N03/2449807241/. I beleive this would be the same page I am getting the squashed images on.

3. Regarding movies -- it appears that all movies can reside in a single folder (when each movie is an .avi, .mkv or similar), unlike most other apps that require each movie to be in their own folder. Is this corret?

4. When viewing the metadata for a movie, anwhere there is an apostrophe, it has a preceding backslash (forwardslash?). I know this is common when using XML data due to the need for escape characters, but is there a way around this? Or is this a per-movie issue (for example, "The Simpson's Movie")

5. TV series... Let's say I have Seasons 1 and 2 of a TV series, and later on add Season 3. It doesn't seam to be recognizing Season 3 properly -- no Season 3 art is shown, and the thumbnails for the episodes are the default movie-reel thingy and wrong aspect ratio. The only way to correct this is delete all .metadata folders for that series, which will cause everything to refresh. Is this by design or did I do something wrong?

6. TV series... when going from the screen with the name of the tv series, it goes to the screen that lets you pick either "Browse Episodes" or "Watch Series". Is there any way to bypass this screen and go directly to "Browse Episodes"? I understand the point of the screen, and it has it's place, but just wondering if I can automatically jump past it.

Sorry if these have been answered somewhere in the 32+ pages of the thread.. I got confused with different version numbers, individual user issues, and what was what after the name of the program seamed to change... I could have missed an installation guide as well I can post images if this would help clarify, though so far this looks to be a great program!

1. In the <foldername>.folder.xml change the image type to Cover (<ImageType>Cover</ImageType>)

2. See point 1

3.  Yes, this is correct, I have all movies in a single folder, no folder levels at all.

4.  If there's an answer, it would be great, I seem to recall the older versions weren't doing this, it's only the latest few versions that I've noticed it in.  Must be something to do with the new API being used.

5.  Hmm.. This might be part of the reason my spanned folders aren't working..?  JL?  I don't appear to be re-scanning the folder after I add spanned folders, unfortunately, I don't have the luxury of deleting the .metadata folder, as I then need to recreate the folder.xml, and this could be the cause :)

6.  No help here, I like this page, it's nice to get a quick run down, and sometimes I browse seasons, and others I watch the "next episode".

EDITED: On that note... JL, future feature request..  Any chance you could add a "play random" button the the page mentioned (Browse Episodes, Watch Series, Play Random).

JackLuminous:

Sorry for the late response, Jon. When a series is recognized  for the first time, it will and should have created [season folder name].season.cover.jpg in each season folder if no season.cover.jpg image exists. For the record, it only looks for metadata in the .metadata subfolder.

I don't understand what you mean by 'main title folder'. Do you mean your series root folder ie. \Chuck?

If you are up for running a test, blow away your .metadata folder in \Chuck\. Blow away your \Chuck\S1\.metadata folder then close/launch app and, in the app, browse to folder containing chuck

If Chuck is recognized as a series, the following things will happen

• \Chuck\.metadata created
• \Chuck\.metadata\providercache created
• \Chuck\.metadata\providercache\Chuck.seriescache.xml created
• All Chuck images downloaded to \Chuck\.metadata\providercache\
• \Chuck\.metadata\Chuck.series.xml created
• \Chuck\.metadata\Chuck.series.cover.jpg created
• \Chuck\.metadata\Chuck.series.banner.jpg created
• \Chuck\S1\.metadata created
• \Chuck\S1\.metadata\S1.season.xml created
• \Chuck\S1\.metadata\S1.season.cover.jpg created -IF a season image is defined in the tvdb.com info downloaded into the providercache

PS. what the hell is "Chuck". I keep hearing that name and the problems people have w/ getting metadata for it.....keep thinking of "Chucky"....

No worries - I'm only doing this on my test box until I can get everything working correctly.

Main title folder is my root.  I know I wasn't clear, but it was strange for me to say that was root because all of my TV series and movies are in a \\mediasvr\Videos folder - which is root to me (and that may seem odd considering I showed my path as being \\mediasvr\disk3\videos\etc..., but I'm using an unRAID NAS and that's a whole other story :) ).

Everything you bulleted was created except for the S1.season.cover.jpg, which is fine because I know how to get that to show up.  However, I still get no root cover image for Chuck.

This was the only folder I attempted this on, but I have also just tried Arrested Development and Scrubs.  Same issues with them.  Banners work, thumbnails work and all metadata is present.  I just get no series or root cover images.

P.S.
Chuck was a new show from last season that got ended prematurely due to the strike.  It's supposed to continue this season...it's pretty good and I'm not a big TV fan (TV is a small percentage of my collection - I have over 2000 movies though).

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theHTPC.net

Okay,

1.4 is broken for me.  I added a new Top Gear episode, and it wouldn't get metadata for me.  I thought this might have been a one-off glitch, so I removed the .metadata for the entire season, and attempted reload after removing the new episode from the folder.  This caused it to grab the metadata it already had in the cache(?) but now won't show any thumbnails.  I then re-added the new episode to the folder, and it didn't get any metadata at all.  Also, after removing the season metadata, the season now doesn't show a folder image, just the standard Vista one..

I also did a test with Weeds, and it added the metadata from this one, but it's not the metadata from the tvdb.com website, it looks like it's grabbed it from the cache folder, as it's called Season 4 Episode 5, instead of the name it should be (No Man is Pudding).

Not sure if this is a tvdb.com issue with the API or a video library+ issue, but I'm getting it all the same.

I'm now about to try to go back to 1.3 and see if that fixes the issues..

UPDATE: Had the problem all the way back to the first release of video libray+, so I went back to 1.4.  A complete removal of .metadata from the entire series allowed everything to be happy again, but as mentioned above, if you add a season to a series, you don't really get anything (doesn't create a .season.xml or a .season.thumbnail) other than the info already in the cached file, so no thumbnails or images, and no new metadata...  Hopefully that makes sense, if it doesn't, I could try explaingin it in english ;)

the squashed image is a 'thumbnail', edit the series.xml and ensure that the ImageType is "Cover". I haven't cleaned up the default imagetypes and release dates.

4. This is exactly how the data is on thetvdb.com or moviexml.com.  I have not looked at cleaning this up.

5. I am aware of this issue but just haven't gotten around to coding it. Basically, I need to do handle a "needsmetadata" scenario for season folders as well. For now, you can go back to the series folder\.metadata\providercache and copy out the image you want and name it as [folder name].season.cover.jpg and [folder name].season.banner.jpg (if you want a different banner when browsing into that folder)....wait, is this from the v1.3? What's the series name?

notyouraccount:

4. When viewing the metadata for a movie, anwhere there is an apostrophe, it has a preceding backslash (forwardslash?). I know this is common when using XML data due to the need for escape characters, but is there a way around this? Or is this a per-movie issue (for example, "The Simpson's Movie")

5. TV series... Let's say I have Seasons 1 and 2 of a TV series, and later on add Season 3. It doesn't seam to be recognizing Season 3 properly -- no Season 3 art is shown, and the thumbnails for the episodes are the default movie-reel thingy and wrong aspect ratio. The only way to correct this is delete all .metadata folders for that series, which will cause everything to refresh. Is this by design or did I do something wrong?