Utility: Batch Metadata Importer 3.x

[rmccoy]

Originally Posted by razrsharpe

or the latest version of BMT supports adding tv to the sage database... yes its expermintal... yes its a pain to fix if the metadata is wrong... but it does work

Is there any way for this to be done automatically? I'm using the plugin currently, and I've enabled that function, but as far as I can tell, the only way to invoke it is to go to Fanart/Metadata in the options when you select that specific show... far from automatic. Is there a string I can add to have BMI run this experimental feature when it fetches metadata/fanart?

[rmccoy]

Stuckless, if I were able to get MediaScraper to put tv shows in the "recorded shows" area, and they didn't have a .properties file associated with them... would your plugin fetch metadata and album art for those files? Or can they not be in that area when BMI is doing it's thing? I'm asking because if I add a file to the recorded tv shows section, but then delete the .properties file that MediaScraper generates, BMI won't go and get the fanart for it. Is this just the way it's going to be?

Perhaps in your next release, you might consider adding an option to automatically move TV shows to the Recorded Shows area when BMI is doing everything else... I've been messing with it with MediaScraper for a while and it seems rock solid, I'm not sure if your implementation is different, but I'm sure you could make it work well.

[rmccoy]

I know this is getting a bit ridiculous, and I'm sorry for posting so many questions... I just keep coming up with different ways to do things.

So this is my first time ever dealing with Java or .jar files. I keep hearing you guys talk about running this in the command line... how do you run metadatatool.jar in the command line? Am I supposed to use command prompt? Is that even the file I need to be running? I can't figure it out for the life of me... Even the step by step install instructions fail to tell me this basic bit of information (probably because they thought everyone knew how to...) Anyways, any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by rmccoy

how do you run metadatatool.jar in the command line? Am I supposed to use command prompt? Is that even the file I need to be running? I can't figure it out for the life of me... Even the step by step install instructions fail to tell me this basic bit of information (probably because they thought everyone knew how to...) Anyways, any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

open up a command prompt.. Start Menu -> Run -> type "cmd" no quotes.. this opens up a command window

then change the directory to where you have BMT installed (usually your sage directory... type cd "PATH_TO_BMT_DIRECTORY")

you are now at the point where you can run the program and use the examples in the instructions or on seans wiki... for example "java -jar metadatatool.jar" lists all of the switches that you can use (basically everything that you can place after this to change the way BMT works)

its a little daunting at first especially if youre not familiar with command line interface (CLI) programs.. but once you get the hang of it its not so bad...

[rmccoy]

@Razrsharpe

Thanks so much for the help, I was trying to execute the .jar file, not run the commands in the same directory as it... newb mistake I suppose.

Anyways, I definitely think I'm going to be able to accomplish what I want with this tool now! However, I'm having trouble implementing the option "RefreshSageTV." Whenever I try to run a command with this option in it, I get an error at the end that says "SageAPI provider is not set, will try to find the server..."

Thing is, I've already installed the Sage TV API that gplasky mentioned in post 353 of this thread... so I was under the impression that this would work now. Did I miss something? Thanks!

[ghostlobster]

OK, things are a little weird on my front. It appears that fanart is being populated automatically somehow, however, the .jpg images are being droppe into the recorded TV directory instead of into my fanart folder??
I did all of my configuration via the GUI, and did not manually enter any info into any properties files.
So, my question is, how do I get my fanart to populate folders in the following structure:
\\server\sagetv\Fanart
Also, does BMT by default automatically grab the extended metadata required for using the Grouped Recordings plugin? Things like season and episode number, or do I have to make a manual change? How can I check to see if that data is there?

[reggie14]

I need to rename a lot of my files before I can start using BMI. I know the expected TV series naming convention is "SeriesName - SxxExx.avi", but I like the episode names in my file names. Will it work to name them "SeriesName - SxxExx- EpisodeName.avi" ?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by rmccoy

Is there any way for this to be done automatically? I'm using the plugin currently, and I've enabled that function, but as far as I can tell, the only way to invoke it is to go to Fanart/Metadata in the options when you select that specific show... far from automatic. Is there a string I can add to have BMI run this experimental feature when it fetches metadata/fanart?

For now, it's only done as a manual operation. The reason is that i still need to do some more work on it, and as as razrsharpe pointed out, it's a PITA if you accidentially import incorrect data. There is no undo feature. I think before I allow this to be an automatic process, i'd want to have a way to "undo" a bad import.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by rmccoy

Stuckless, if I were able to get MediaScraper to put tv shows in the "recorded shows" area, and they didn't have a .properties file associated with them... would your plugin fetch metadata and album art for those files? Or can they not be in that area when BMI is doing it's thing? I'm asking because if I add a file to the recorded tv shows section, but then delete the .properties file that MediaScraper generates, BMI won't go and get the fanart for it. Is this just the way it's going to be?

Perhaps in your next release, you might consider adding an option to automatically move TV shows to the Recorded Shows area when BMI is doing everything else... I've been messing with it with MediaScraper for a while and it seems rock solid, I'm not sure if your implementation is different, but I'm sure you could make it work well.

BMT should process any files that you give it... or any file for which Sage's metadata plugin system requests metadata. When you say "move" do mean a physical move, or just a "virtual move" where the file remains in the same physical location, but shows up in the sage tv recordings? I don't think it matters either way.

When a media file is skipped, it will be logged. So the log is your best bet to figure out why something is not being scanned by bmt.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by rmccoy

@Razrsharpe

Thanks so much for the help, I was trying to execute the .jar file, not run the commands in the same directory as it... newb mistake I suppose.

Anyways, I definitely think I'm going to be able to accomplish what I want with this tool now! However, I'm having trouble implementing the option "RefreshSageTV." Whenever I try to run a command with this option in it, I get an error at the end that says "SageAPI provider is not set, will try to find the server..."

Thing is, I've already installed the Sage TV API that gplasky mentioned in post 353 of this thread... so I was under the impression that this would work now. Did I miss something? Thanks!

commandline args are case sensitive... so RefershSageTV != refreshSageTV. If you use the --refreshSageTV then you should see a message that a request has been sent to sage to tell it to rescan its media. This is basically the same as hitting the rescan media button from within the UI. It does require that the sage remote apis be installed and working. If you get a message on the console indicating that a remote server could not be located, then the remote apis are not working. You can also test the remote apis by using the --report=quick command line arg... that will give you a quick report about your sage server and tell you about any potential problems it may find.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by ghostlobster

OK, things are a little weird on my front. It appears that fanart is being populated automatically somehow, however, the .jpg images are being droppe into the recorded TV directory instead of into my fanart folder??
I did all of my configuration via the GUI, and did not manually enter any info into any properties files.
So, my question is, how do I get my fanart to populate folders in the following structure:
\\server\sagetv\Fanart
Also, does BMT by default automatically grab the extended metadata required for using the Grouped Recordings plugin? Things like season and episode number, or do I have to make a manual change? How can I check to see if that data is there?

If you are running from the commandline, then you will need to manually pass the fanart folder location using --fanartFolder=YOUR_FOLDER_LOCATIOn on the command line. This is an issue because bmt, from the command line does not use the sage.properties, where the fanart folder is stored. This will be addresses in the next release, since all properties will go to the sage.properties (or sageclient.properties) for consistency.

Yes... bmt does pull down Season and Episode information, but you'll need to be running a recent sagetv beta (6.5.14+) since it requires the newer sagetv apis in that build.

If you have the remote apis installed, You can check a file from the commandline, by using
java -jar metadatatools.jar --report=quick YOUR_FILE_NAME

This will report information about that file, telling you it's percieved type, and whether it knows about any fanart, etc.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by reggie14

I need to rename a lot of my files before I can start using BMI. I know the expected TV series naming convention is "SeriesName - SxxExx.avi", but I like the episode names in my file names. Will it work to name them "SeriesName - SxxExx- EpisodeName.avi" ?

basically anything like "seriesname - SxxExx - episodename.ext" should be fine. Episidodename will be ignored and only seriesname ans SxxExx are used for lookups.

[ghostlobster]

Originally Posted by stuckless

If you are running from the commandline, then you will need to manually pass the fanart folder location using --fanartFolder=YOUR_FOLDER_LOCATIOn on the command line. This is an issue because bmt, from the command line does not use the sage.properties, where the fanart folder is stored. This will be addresses in the next release, since all properties will go to the sage.properties (or sageclient.properties) for consistency.

I might not have described my situation well enough. This was not a command line result. It appears that BMT is automatically grabbing fanart for new recordings, and things watched live. That fanart is being placed in the recorded TV directory and not in the fanart folders I've specifed within the interface. Is there a .properties setting to specify where it should place fanart or did I set something incorrectly within the interface?

[stuckless]

@ghostlobster - i just assumed you were doing a command line test... that's the only time i've seen bmt put fanart in the same dir as the media. It is normal for the .properties to be there, but fanart should not be there unless you have not configured the central fanart folder in SageMC or if you are running from the commandline and you haven't passed the --fanartFolder arg.

[ghostlobster]

Originally Posted by stuckless

@ghostlobster - i just assumed you were doing a command line test... that's the only time i've seen bmt put fanart in the same dir as the media. It is normal for the .properties to be there, but fanart should not be there unless you have not configured the central fanart folder in SageMC or if you are running from the commandline and you haven't passed the --fanartFolder arg.

Understood...the times that the .jpg files were created were around 6:00 AM this morning. I did not run any command line tests at that time, so it had to be automatic. I must have missed a setting somewhere. what properties file should I edit and what needs to be added to it to point it to the right directory?
By the way, I'm running a command line test now, using the fanartFolder parameter and it's working, but I have to change the automatic updating somehow.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by ghostlobster

Understood...the times that the .jpg files were created were around 6:00 AM this morning. I did not run any command line tests at that time, so it had to be automatic. I must have missed a setting somewhere. what properties file should I edit and what needs to be added to it to point it to the right directory?
By the way, I'm running a command line test now, using the fanartFolder parameter and it's working, but I have to change the automatic updating somehow.

did you set the central folder in the server properties file?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by ghostlobster

Understood...the times that the .jpg files were created were around 6:00 AM this morning. I did not run any command line tests at that time, so it had to be automatic. I must have missed a setting somewhere. what properties file should I edit and what needs to be added to it to point it to the right directory?
By the way, I'm running a command line test now, using the fanartFolder parameter and it's working, but I have to change the automatic updating somehow.

They fanart folder may have to be set at multiple locations... ie, if you are using the automatic plugin, then bmt is running on the server, so using SageMC on the server, you'll need to set the centralFanartFolder, or set the following in your Sage.properties

phoenix/mediametadata/fanartCentralFolder=YOUR_FOLDER
phoenix/mediametadata/fanartEnabled=true

If you are running a client connected to the server, using the on-demand lookups, then you'll need to bmt installed on the client as well, and you'll need to those same properties in the SageClient.properties either manually or using set using SageMC.

And lastly, if things are not working as you think they should, logging will be in mailcheck.log (see first post for configuring logging) for most logging events, but the automatic plugin will log some brief log statements to the sagetv_0.txt log file.

[ghostlobster]

OK, very cool. Something must be messed up with my SageMC install on that box. the fanartfolder line was not in my .properties file, and the fanartEnabled line was set to false. Although, last night at some point after Mythbusters was recorded, the .jpgs were added to the recorded TV folder! I confirmed that the SageMC GUI had fanart enabled, and had the fanart folder properly identified, but the lines in the .properties file were in the above state.

Anyway, I just added those to lines, so we'll see how it goes.
Thanks again!

Originally Posted by stuckless

They fanart folder may have to be set at multiple locations... ie, if you are using the automatic plugin, then bmt is running on the server, so using SageMC on the server, you'll need to set the centralFanartFolder, or set the following in your Sage.properties

phoenix/mediametadata/fanartCentralFolder=YOUR_FOLDER
phoenix/mediametadata/fanartEnabled=true

If you are running a client connected to the server, using the on-demand lookups, then you'll need to bmt installed on the client as well, and you'll need to those same properties in the SageClient.properties either manually or using set using SageMC.

And lastly, if things are not working as you think they should, logging will be in mailcheck.log (see first post for configuring logging) for most logging events, but the automatic plugin will log some brief log statements to the sagetv_0.txt log file.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by stuckless

TV Scanning is slower than Movie Scanning because of how the "searching" happens. ie, for TV, there are is always 2 searches, one for the showname and one for the title name. TV will always be slower to download metadata. Once it's downloaded, there should be no difference in the performance of showing the metadata in the UI.


Not much to go on here.... check they the plugin is installed on the server. Then when you add new items to your media library, you see entries in the sagetv_0.txt log file indicating that a scan is taking place and whether or not the file was skipped. You may have to force a rescan before sage will scan for new media.


The sagetv_0.txt log file may contain some information about why this is happening... ie, are there execptions in there?

I've been working with sage support on this issue and the new beta was supposed to fix it. It did not. I will post my log and see if it tells you anything.

EDIT: I fixed this problem by disabling BMT and rescanning. I thought I had done this, but I guess not.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

I've been working with sage support on this issue and the new beta was supposed to fix it. It did not. I will post my log and see if it tells you anything.

EDIT: I fixed this problem by disabling BMT and rescanning. I thought I had done this, but I guess not.

I hope you didn't open a sagetv support ticket for bmt related issues.... That's not going to earn me any goodwill with the sagetv folks What was your issue? Was is slow scanning... which will happen if bmt is installed as a metadata plugin, since it will have process every file before sagetv will actually add it to the library.