Metadata Tools 4.0 Beta Thread (aka BMT 4.0)

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by mkanet

PS: I'm having a similar problem with the news show "Nightline". In my sageTV Guide it's called "Nightline"; but under TVDB it's called "Nightline Face-off"; which CMT can fine in a search; but when I manually select it, I dont see any fanart for it. There seems to be an IMDB entry for it; which doesnt show up in the CMT search.

Is there a problem with BMT automatic fanart/metadata downloader for popular News shows? Does the latest BMT by default check IMDB entries for News shows?

Sean, since these are national shows, I think you might be able to reproduce this behavior; and, maybe offer a suggestion for automatically (or manually) getting fanart/metadata for these news shows (preferably automatically).

I dont have any problems with "60 Minutes" or "Good Morning America".

'Nightline' is in tvdb. (id=71392). The problem is it doesn't have any fanart. 60 Minutes, and GMA, however, DO have fanart. tvdb, being community driven.. the fix would be to generate a banner for it, and upload it.

EDIT: I just uploaded a banner for nightline to tvdb. a search should now result in it being downloaded.

[mkanet]

Thanks Fuzzy. Actually, I'm more curious about how BMT automatic / CMT handles missing fanart/metadata not available on tbdb; when some of the missing components already available on IMDB. I was under the impression that when fanart/metadata is not available on tbdb, BMT would automatically supplement missing items from IMDB. If the current behavior doesnt do this, it would be great if it would. I dont think IMDB does banners/backgrounds, but at least it has very complete poster and metadata for TV/movies (better than having no images at all).

Thanks again for uploading the banner.
-Michael

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

'Nightline' is in tvdb. (id=71392). The problem is it doesn't have any fanart. 60 Minutes, and GMA, however, DO have fanart. tvdb, being community driven.. the fix would be to generate a banner for it, and upload it.

EDIT: I just uploaded a banner for nightline to tvdb. a search should now result in it being downloaded.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by mkanet

I was under the impression that when fanart/metadata is not available on tbdb, BMT would automatically supplement missing items from IMDB.

Good thing you asked the question... because your assumption is wrong

BMT uses a list of metadata providers for fetching metadata. The providers are tested, in order, until a "good match" is found.

So, if your providers are "tmdb,imdb", then bmt will try tmdb first, and then ONLY try imdb if the tmdb fails.

For movies, this is exactly how this works, but for TV, there is ONLY ONE PROVIDER, tvdb. So, if a lookup to tvdb fails, then it's done. BMT only has a single tv metadata provider. When it comes to TV, BMT will not, (nor has it ever) use imdb. I have not written the scraper to parse out tv information from imdb, nor is it something that I will ever do. Screen sraping is painful to support....

and I'll re-iterate here, that given that I'm the only person working on this project, then the likihood of supporting a another tv provider is non-existent. My SageTV time, lately, due to other committments, is dwindling fast I've been trying to wrap up a bunch of things so that I can better focus on other projects. I'll always continue to work on sagetv, but not to the degree that I've been doing these past couple of years.

[mkanet]

Thanks for explaining perfectly. It's completely understandable to support tvdb scraping only for TV. I'm very happy the current state BMT/CMT manual downloading via sageTV interface is. Basically, anything I can throw at BMT automatic feature, it can handle. Some of the weirdest named titles BMT seems to handle without any issues for me.

Thanks,
Michael

Originally Posted by stuckless

Good thing you asked the question... because your assumption is wrong

BMT uses a list of metadata providers for fetching metadata. The providers are tested, in order, until a "good match" is found.

So, if your providers are "tmdb,imdb", then bmt will try tmdb first, and then ONLY try imdb if the tmdb fails.

For movies, this is exactly how this works, but for TV, there is ONLY ONE PROVIDER, tvdb. So, if a lookup to tvdb fails, then it's done. BMT only has a single tv metadata provider. When it comes to TV, BMT will not, (nor has it ever) use imdb. I have not written the scraper to parse out tv information from imdb, nor is it something that I will ever do. Screen sraping is painful to support....

and I'll re-iterate here, that given that I'm the only person working on this project, then the likihood of supporting a another tv provider is non-existent. My SageTV time, lately, due to other committments, is dwindling fast I've been trying to wrap up a bunch of things so that I can better focus on other projects. I'll always continue to work on sagetv, but not to the degree that I've been doing these past couple of years.

[bikesquid]

I see in the user guide TV show specials (between season specials like xmas, etc) aren't supported yet. Any idea if/when that might come? I kinda assumed that by putting in the original air date from thetvdb and episode title I'd get some success, but nothing....

[skiingwiz]

Originally Posted by bikesquid

I see in the user guide TV show specials (between season specials like xmas, etc) aren't supported yet. Any idea if/when that might come? I kinda assumed that by putting in the original air date from thetvdb and episode title I'd get some success, but nothing....

This issue ticket exists for this enhancement. Star it and Sean will know there is one more person looking for this feature.

[SWKerr]

I have started recording some HBO like movies and have noticed that Genre tag always starts with "Movie". I cant seem to change it. I suspect because Sage is imbedding this info into the file somewhere.

This is especially annoying because Diamond appears to only uses the first entry in its Genre view.

Is there a way to change this I have not discovered.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

I have started recording some HBO like movies and have noticed that Genre tag always starts with "Movie". I cant seem to change it. I suspect because Sage is imbedding this info into the file somewhere.

This is especially annoying because Diamond appears to only uses the first entry in its Genre view.

Is there a way to change this I have not discovered.

There is nothing in bmt to handle this... but you could probably use sjq and write a script that updates the genre based on a certain condition. The "Movie" genre is added by sagetv for recorded movies. It's how tools like bmt can know that a recording is in fact a Movie... without it, BMT would assume that the recording is a TV show.

[bikesquid]

I have a number of seasons of a series that bmt just isn't associating unless I manually go in and search. The file names/directory names are the same as other seasons that it does find so I've no clue what's going on. Any ideas? A clue is that the title field is showing the whole file name, i.e. title - SxxExx. I've removed relative path and removed the import directory, added it back and done a rescan without luck.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by bikesquid

I have a number of seasons of a series that bmt just isn't associating unless I manually go in and search. The file names/directory names are the same as other seasons that it does find so I've no clue what's going on. Any ideas? A clue is that the title field is showing the whole file name, i.e. title - SxxExx. I've removed relative path and removed the import directory, added it back and done a rescan without luck.

As a rule of thumb, if you are seeing the full path in the title, then that should be an indication that BMT is not handling the file (ie, it is skipped or errored).

Bmt willl only skip a file if the file has existing metadata at the time of import. The most likely cause of this is that this file has an existing .properties, and as a result, bmt skips it.

In the case of an error, it could be many different things.

Anytime you have a file that is not updating automatically, you should check the logs/phoenix-metadata.log file to search for the filename. This file, while technically a log file, is really a simplified file that is of more value to you, than me. It will write an entry for each file handled, and another entry if the file is skipped, or has an error. And if you don't see the filename in there at all... then bmt didn't receive a request to handle it.

[bikesquid]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Anytime you have a file that is not updating automatically, you should check the logs/phoenix-metadata.log file to search for the filename. This file, while technically a log file, is really a simplified file that is of more value to you, than me. It will write an entry for each file handled, and another entry if the file is skipped, or has an error. And if you don't see the filename in there at all... then bmt didn't receive a request to handle it.

That's helpful, thanks. Got it updating the majority of what it was missing as a result. Follow-up question, Is there a way to 'stuff' an answer when bmt does a search on a show that doesn't exist in tvdb? For instance, "Alys" doesn't exist, but I still want sage to show it in all recordings, I've got the series/episodes listed in the standard series - SxxEyy.ext format and just want bmt to pull that info and force the situation based on filename.... Any suggestions?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by bikesquid

That's helpful, thanks. Got it updating the majority of what it was missing as a result. Follow-up question, Is there a way to 'stuff' an answer when bmt does a search on a show that doesn't exist in tvdb? For instance, "Alys" doesn't exist, but I still want sage to show it in all recordings, I've got the series/episodes listed in the standard series - SxxEyy.ext format and just want bmt to pull that info and force the situation based on filename.... Any suggestions?

If it's a case where Alys does not exist in http://thetvdb.com/ then I'd add the series, and stub out the season/episode information. thetvdb.com is a community driven site, so that would be my suggestion.

[bikesquid]

Originally Posted by stuckless

If it's a case where Alys does not exist in http://thetvdb.com/ then I'd add the series, and stub out the season/episode information. thetvdb.com is a community driven site, so that would be my suggestion.

Doh! OK, well that's obvious, will do. Thanks for the suggestion!

What about something that does exist but bmt isn't finding it for some reason? Tropical Heat is an example... I've even tried copying the series title from the site to make sure I didn't have a typo....

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by bikesquid

Doh! OK, well that's obvious, will do. Thanks for the suggestion!

What about something that does exist but bmt isn't finding it for some reason? Tropical Heat is an example... I've even tried copying the series title from the site to make sure I didn't have a typo....

I'd need the complete filename, and then I can do a test to see why bmt doesn't like it (and maybe account for it, somehow). Of course, sometimes, thetvdb is just offline (usually overwhelmed by requests).

[bikesquid]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I'd need the complete filename, and then I can do a test to see why bmt doesn't like it (and maybe account for it, somehow). Of course, sometimes, thetvdb is just offline (usually overwhelmed by requests).

I did test 'other' names to make sure (as I understand it) that the search would return info for another file name.... so I think it's not a question of timing out, but could be wrong. Please give this file name a try:
F:\Tropical Heat\Season 1\Tropical Heat - S01E01.avi
Thanks!

[Fuzzy]

My guess would be that it's because there is no English entry for Tropical Heat on thetvdb.com

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

My guess would be that it's because there is no English entry for Tropical Heat on thetvdb.com

I agree. When BMT requests show info it passes the default language flag, which is en, unless you've configured it differently. Because of this bmt will not fetch metadata unless there is a language match.

Something that I could consider (down the road) is adding a <language> field to the media titles, so that you can override the language per show, if needed.

[bikesquid]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I agree. When BMT requests show info it passes the default language flag, which is en, unless you've configured it differently. Because of this bmt will not fetch metadata unless there is a language match.

Something that I could consider (down the road) is adding a <language> field to the media titles, so that you can override the language per show, if needed.

Thanks, that makes sense and something I'll be aware of in the future. With a mindset of any info is better than no info it would kinda cool if bmt had a global primary and secondary, where secondary would be used if primary doesn't exist and could be set to a specific language code or 'any' if so desired. Of coarse from where I sit it's easy to describe wish-list stuff. Thanks for BMT, it's very cool as is!

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by bikesquid

Thanks, that makes sense and something I'll be aware of in the future. With a mindset of any info is better than no info it would kinda cool if bmt had a global primary and secondary, where secondary would be used if primary doesn't exist and could be set to a specific language code or 'any' if so desired. Of coarse from where I sit it's easy to describe wish-list stuff. Thanks for BMT, it's very cool as is!

The problem with that approach is that I'd be hitting the tvdb server quite often (for cases where the primary fails for any reason). I don't like to send any more traffic than what is required, since they are a free service with limited resources.

[bikesquid]

Quick question... (famous last words).... I've got two directories, "movies" and "TV"... everything under each is as it would obviously be... only sage/bmt seems to put anything it can't find metadata for on thetvdb as a movie by default, which is usually not the case and I'd like it to simply be listed under the tv portion of the UI if it's under the directory. I put everything in the format "Series - SxxExx" so that's how I'd like it to show up if nothing is found.

Is there a way to force bmt to define mediatype as TV if it's under the parent directory TV when doing an automagic search??