Utility: Batch Metadata Importer 3.x

[Skybolt]

I have got BMT working and files renamed to it's liking for the mmost part.

But, I use folder mode in "My Videos" for SageMC and prior to BMT I had no issues with viewing/listing files in there respective folders.

After using BMT all of the files are all over the place, not being listed in there folder just scattered as if it er sorted by date or something (just an example). My downloaded/ripped files are being mixed with my recorded ones and all listed wrong, they however correct on the disc, just not the ui.

Is there any way of fxing this?

Thanks,
-Skybolt

[superdodge]

I've got a big problem. My bmt installation is no longer pulling episode specific information for my recordings. For months now everything has worked correctly, but suddenly when is scans a recording the synopsis becomes a generic synopsis of the entire season not that episode, the title becomes the series name and the season and episode numbers are all changed to 0.

This happens even if I go into the web interface and do "Find Metadata" and put in the correct season number, episode number and title.

Has anyone else experienced this?

[ChaOConnor]

Originally Posted by superdodge

I've got a big problem. My bmt installation is no longer pulling episode specific information for my recordings. For months now everything has worked correctly, but suddenly when is scans a recording the synopsis becomes a generic synopsis of the entire season not that episode, the title becomes the series name and the season and episode numbers are all changed to 0.

This happens even if I go into the web interface and do "Find Metadata" and put in the correct season number, episode number and title.

Has anyone else experienced this?

I think theTVDB.org is down... i've noticed it this weekend. I don't think it's a problem w/ BMT, but the website it uses to pull TV info. Hold fast, hopefully when the site comes back up you'll be good to go.

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by ChaOConnor

I think theTVDB.org is down... i've noticed it this weekend. I don't think it's a problem w/ BMT, but the website it uses to pull TV info. Hold fast, hopefully when the site comes back up you'll be good to go.

Here's a nice little link which allows you to see if a website is down for everyone or just you. TVDB is now working for me just fine.

http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/

Cheers

Ben

[ChaOConnor]

Originally Posted by jaminben

Here's a nice little link which allows you to see if a website is down for everyone or just you. TVDB is now working for me just fine.

http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/

Cheers

Ben

Yes, it's back up now. Thanks for that website, very helpful!

http://www.geektonic.com/2009/11/the...er-outage.html

[superdodge]

Originally Posted by superdodge

I've got a big problem. My bmt installation is no longer pulling episode specific information for my recordings. For months now everything has worked correctly, but suddenly when is scans a recording the synopsis becomes a generic synopsis of the entire season not that episode, the title becomes the series name and the season and episode numbers are all changed to 0.

This happens even if I go into the web interface and do "Find Metadata" and put in the correct season number, episode number and title.

Has anyone else experienced this?

I am still experiencing this problem even though the tvdb is back up. Anyone have any ideas?

-RL

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by superdodge

I am still experiencing this problem even though the tvdb is back up. Anyone have any ideas?

-RL

In your SAGETV home folder, there is probably a cache directory. Delete the cache directory and try again.

[superdodge]

Apparently the tvdb is once again down. I deleted the cached directory. We'll see if that worked when the tvdb comes up again.

Thanks for the recommendation, stuckless

[superdodge]

Deleting the cache folder did it.

Thanks for the help!

[mrdrbdt]

I've been using an old commandline only version of BMT ever since, well, stuckless started developing it (1.6?). I also haven't been updating sageTV since then since everything was working (more or less).

Well, major hardware failure and I had to rebuild the HTPC from scatch.

So, now that I'm on the latest version of BMT I have a few questions.

Does BMT store the metadata in the movie directories still or somewhere in the SageTV folder, or both?

Also, on the status page, it occurs to me that it highlights in orange settings that aren't optimal (correct?). My JVM Heap Size is highlighted in orange at ~350M. Is this ok, or should I be bumping that heap size up?

New HTPC hardware is a Q6600 w/ 4gb of RAM, need to update my sig....

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by mrdrbdt

Does BMT store the metadata in the movie directories still or somewhere in the SageTV folder, or both?

Metadata is store in .properties files that have the same name as the video file. Sage will then read these .properties files when the media file is imported, or if the timestamp on the mediafile changes.

If you are using the web ui, then it will also directly update the sage wiz.bin by calling the various sage apis to do so. This is dangerous and could result in a corrupt wiz.bin. There is no undo. By far the safest way to use bmt is from the command line, or via the automatic plugin, since it ONLY writes .properties files in those cases.

Also, on the status page, it occurs to me that it highlights in orange settings that aren't optimal (correct?). My JVM Heap Size is highlighted in orange at ~350M. Is this ok, or should I be bumping that heap size up?

Yeah, red/orange highlighted values on the status page is just meant to get you to notice that perhaps something is not optimal. As for jvm memory size, that's a very subjective value. Sage ships with 256mb as default, but if you are running lots of plugins (sagemc, bmt, webserver, etc) and you have more than 1 concurrent user watching tv (extenders, etc), then you should probably increase your jvm memory settings. On my system (a 4gig box), I tend to dedicate 1g to sagetv jvm. 1 gig is probably overkill, but i have lots of memory.

[mrdrbdt]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Metadata is store in .properties files that have the same name as the video file. Sage will then read these .properties files when the media file is imported, or if the timestamp on the mediafile changes.

If you are using the web ui, then it will also directly update the sage wiz.bin by calling the various sage apis to do so. This is dangerous and could result in a corrupt wiz.bin. There is no undo. By far the safest way to use bmt is from the command line, or via the automatic plugin, since it ONLY writes .properties files in those cases.

Does the webui also create the fanart in whatever directory I specified for the fan art? It seems to be full of fanart now, and I was wondering what populated it.

EDIT1: After some more reading, I think I may have answered my own question, but I'd just like if someone could confirm.

1) BMT WebUI scan updates both the .jpgs in the video folder and the .properties file in the video folder. It also then creates fanart in whatever dir is specifified for fanart (this is required to make SMW work, since it doesn't support folder jpgs).

2) I read something about BMT auto updating metadata, but then I think I also read that it only updates metadata if a scan is kicked off from the webgui(or a scan from the console) or if the STV plugin is manually called. Which one?

3) I keep my imported videos folder read-only to the HTPC because I don't trust my HTPC to not inadvertently delete everything on it (more specifically, the users of said HTPC, but I digress). Previously, I would run the BMT console scan from a different computer to generate the .properties file and folder jpgs. Does this mean that if I want to use SMW and keep the import folder readonly to the HTPC that I'll have to both run the WebUI scan (to create the fanart in the sagetv folder) and then the console version (from a different computer that can write to the import folders) to update the .properties and folder jpgs?

4) Is BMT = BMI? People seem to just use the two acronyms interchangeably.

Thanks in advance for all the work you've done! I've tried to get the information I need from this thread, but at 2111 posts it's getting tough to find the info I need and determine if it's still even valid for the version of Sage/MC/BMT/phoenix I have.

EDIT2: *SIGH* I was trying to figure out why my sage service kept locking up at startup.... It seems that BMT is scanning all my recorded TV files and creating banners and backgrounds for them in the folder where the recorded tv files are stored. Is this normal? It didn't do this for the first 10 or so restarts of Sage. Is there a setting I may have set somewhere that kicked off this behavior? Also, is it normal for it to make a seperate copy of each banner/background for each episode of a series?

[bluenote]

^^ Thanks for this and previous questions (and answers, stuckless !) because I recently started looking to use the webui, and I've been really really confused about the differences between the sage automatic plugin, the commandline (well not so much there), and the webui functionality. So a little primer on the .properties files, .jpg files, fanart, and when you can possibly remove .properties files and .jpgs is really welcome. (And I've spent quite a bit of time going through the thread, but, with so many posts covering so many versions, its hard to get the "this is the way it is, today" answers.

Thanks for this great software. I'm sort of slowly converting away from cable being my primary input source, and this is really invaluable.

thanks

Cory

[can3gxw]

When I'm going through the WebUI to clean up some metadata that I know is wrong (for whatever reason...) or I want to look up some episode/movie information from somewhere other than my Sage client, I use the "BROWSE" and get the dialog box "browse media" where I can enter a search term and then the media type.

The problem that I find is that I can't use a specific search string here. If I am looking for an episode of "Ghost Hunters", I can only key in "Ghost" and then select "videos". What then is returned is EVERYTHING that has "GHOST" in the title or description. If I use more than one word ("Ghost Hunters"), I get the message "service returns an error".

Am I missing something, or doing something wrong? Is there a way to perform an "AND" search, or is BMT limited right now to what it can do?

Don't get me wrong here - this is a FANTASTIC plug-in, and Stuckless has done some amazing work. Just throwing something out that I haven't seen mentioned before... maybe Stuckless can comment on that.

Thanks!!

[can3gxw]

Can you tell that I'm really cranking on my poor BMT install?

I was missing the metadata/episode names for a couple of shows, so I logged in to TVDB and updated the series information, and added the two new shows. After reading through the TVDB forum, they state that the database updates itself about every 5 minutes, and the APIs should be pulling the information after that time.

When I tried to update my episodes through the WebUI (about 20 minutes after I added the episodes on TVDB), it does not update the metadata.

There is a comment about an XBMC scraper that has a cache that needed to be cleared for the newest information... does BMT have a cache of some sort? If so, where is it? If not, why would I not be able to pull the latest information from TVDB once I've updated it and it's readily available online?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by can3gxw

Can you tell that I'm really cranking on my poor BMT install?

I was missing the metadata/episode names for a couple of shows, so I logged in to TVDB and updated the series information, and added the two new shows. After reading through the TVDB forum, they state that the database updates itself about every 5 minutes, and the APIs should be pulling the information after that time.

Glad to see people are doing thier part to keep the information up to day. great job.

There is a comment about an XBMC scraper that has a cache that needed to be cleared for the newest information... does BMT have a cache of some sort? If so, where is it? If not, why would I not be able to pull the latest information from TVDB once I've updated it and it's readily available online?

Check out this post...

[can3gxw]

Good Lord... no wonder I didn't see that post... it was SOOOOO long ago! LMAO!

Thanks, Sean. I'll give that a shot tonight.

[mkanet]

Hi Sean, I've been thinking... I am getting the feeling we wont be seeing the next BMT release which fixes the TV movie bug anytime real soon. So, I was hoping maybe it would be possible for me to supplement a temporarily workaround by executing a special command line specifically for TV movies after a movie starts recording. I have a pretty cool application that can execute a batch file if new files are added to a directory, called, "WatchDirectory".

I already setup an automated task with WatchDirectory to have sageTV refresh it's media library as soon as certain file types are added/deleted/renamed in a couple of folder/sub-folders (such as my movie downloads folder). It's actually very quick, I can delete or add a movie; and, sageTV "My Videos" movie thumbnails will popup or disapear on-the-fly in a split second.

Anyway, I dont really understand the details of why TV movies aren't automatically getting their fanarts downloaded; even though I tried reading that relatively lengthy discussion identifying the problem with a couple of ways to fix it.

I would really appreciate your (or anyone else's) help with this if its at all possible.

Thanks in advance,
Michael

[lash]

How do I tell the command line not to strip out the "-"? I'm digging into my massive files directories now and there a bunch of shows that the web UI is missing becaus ethe title requires the "-". I read that the manual import keeps it in, however the command line seems to be stripping it out. Thanks!

Alternatively, is there a way to specify via an argument to use a specific TVDB id?

[gabe1475]

Originally Posted by stuckless

If you are using the HD200 in standalone mode, then you can use the bmt commandline and specify the central fanart folder to be another folder on the usb drive. Then in the HD200 menus, you'd need to set your central fanart folder to be the folder on the usb drive.

As for which provider your need, you can leave it blank (ie not specify it from the commandline) and it will use the defaults, which is imdb and themoviedb.

Sorry, but somwhat of a newbie here. How do I get to the bmt commandline and what do I have to type (am I doing this on the server or the HD 200)? After I do this would this show up in the menues as I do not see it there now?