MediaTitles.xml and how to read it

[razrsharpe]

I've updated my MediaTitles.xml file to correctly identify a couple shows that have the same title as shows a loong time ago (ie Castle, Parenthood, The Good Guys, and The Defenders). From my reading of the BMT docs (and my observation) when doing this the Title of show is changed to include the year (ie "Castle" becomes "Castle (2009)") because that is how tvdb is naming that show. This leads to a couple of problems:

• if "Castle" is currently recording it will not get grouped with other pre-recorded "Castle (2009)" shows until the show is completed and bmt updates the metadata.
• When I search for future recordings of the group "Castle (2009)" I get no matches because the title in the EPG is "Castle".
• Similarly, when on the Group Options I should be able to adjust/view its favorite settings... When on "Castle (2009)" I can not because the Title is not "Castle" (which is what the favorite is... So sage doesn't know what do with "Castle (2009)"
• Probably some other quirks too

So to get around this problem a couple things could be done

• At the STV (display level) all years are dropped from the title display. This would be a problem if users had both versions of the show because now they would all be grouped together.
• BMT could not edit the year and associate a title of "Castle" with "Castle (2009)". I thought this is might be the purpose of the mediatitles.xml file when "preserve original recording metadata" is checked...
• At the STV level smarts are added to deal with displaying "Castle (2009)" as the title of the show but still have the smarts to associate it with the favorite "Castle" and future recordings of "Castle"

Assuming updating the title to include the year is not a bug I think the third option is the way to go.... So on to my question.... I think the best way to do this is to parse the title for "SHOW_TITLE (YEAR)" and then match it against the mediatitles.xml file. If a match is found then behind the scenes (for grouping, other episode lookups, favorite settings, etc) i would use the SHOW_TITLE.

I could also do this without looking up the mediatitles.xml file and just parse out the year but not sure if that's the most robust method.

Soo... onto my question (I know it took awhile to get here )... assuming you agree that matching against the mediatitles is the way to go... are there phoenix methods to do this matching for me ?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by razrsharpe

I've updated my MediaTitles.xml file to correctly identify a couple shows that have the same title as shows a loong time ago (ie Castle, Parenthood, The Good Guys, and The Defenders). From my reading of the BMT docs (and my observation) when doing this the Title of show is changed to include the year (ie "Castle" becomes "Castle (2009)") because that is how tvdb is naming that show. This leads to a couple of problems:

• if "Castle" is currently recording it will not get grouped with other pre-recorded "Castle (2009) shows until the show is completed and the metadata updated.
• When I search for future recordings of the group "Castle (2009)" I get no matches because the title in the EPG is "Castle".
• Similarly, when on the Group Options I should be able to adjust/view its favorite settings... When on "Castle (2009)" I can not because the Title is not "Castle" (which is what the favorite is... So sage doesn't know what do with "Castle (2009)"
• Probably some other quirks too

So to get around this problem a couple things could be done

• At the STV (display level) all years are dropped from the title display. This would be a problem if users had both versions of the show because now they would all be grouped together.
• BMT could not edit the year and associate a title of "Castle" with "Castle (2009)". I thought this is might be the purpose of the mediatitles.xml file when "preserve original recording metadata" is checked...
• At the STV level smarts are added to deal with displaying "Castle (2009)" as the title of the show but still have the smarts to associate it with the favorite "Castle" and future recordings of "Castle"

Assuming updating the title to include the year is not a bug I think the third option is the way to go.... So on to my question.... I think the best way to do this is to parse the title for "SHOW_TITLE (YEAR)" and then match it against the mediatitles.xml file. If a match is found then behind the scenes (for grouping, other episode lookups, favorite settings, etc) i would use the SHOW_TITLE.

I could also do this without looking up the mediatitles.xml file and just parse out the year but not sure if that's the most robust method.

Soo... onto my question (I know it took awhile to get here )... assuming you agree that matching against the mediatitles is the way to go... are there phoenix methods to do this matching for me ?

MediaTitles.xml is in the scrapers section because it's used by the scrapers to fill in the search criteria based on the information in the file.

There are phoenix apis that do the matching, but not in the sense that you want. Basically I pass a filename to the scrapers, and they apply the regex filters from the mediatitles to the filepath, and if i get a match, then I update the Title, Year, etc, from the media titles.

I think for your case, I'm not sure using the MediaTitles.xml is the best approach, but I have not objections to you using for how you want. You can get the parsed media titles using Phoenix.getInstance().getMediaTitlesManager(), and from there you can iterate over the items.

I am considering adding an option to bmt to parse out years from TV titles. It do this already for Movie titles.

But for your needs, all you really need is a simply properties file (or user record) that maps CurrentTitle=DesiredTitle. Again, you can probably do this using the MediaTitles.xml but a simple properties file might work better. I do something like this now for the ratings. I use a properties file (which is like a map) and I set the rating something like
rating=ratings.getProperty(CurrentRating,CurrentRating)
This way, rating will either be CurrentRating or a value the properties file.

I'm a little hesitant, in bmt, to simply stip out the year from the title, but that may be the best approach. It just means that you'd have to check the series info to get the year, if you needed it.

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by stuckless

MediaTitles.xml is in the scrapers section because it's used by the scrapers to fill in the search criteria based on the information in the file.

There are phoenix apis that do the matching, but not in the sense that you want. Basically I pass a filename to the scrapers, and they apply the regex filters from the mediatitles to the filepath, and if i get a match, then I update the Title, Year, etc, from the media titles.

I think for your case, I'm not sure using the MediaTitles.xml is the best approach, but I have not objections to you using for how you want. You can get the parsed media titles using Phoenix.getInstance().getMediaTitlesManager(), and from there you can iterate over the items.

I am considering adding an option to bmt to parse out years from TV titles. It do this already for Movie titles.

But for your needs, all you really need is a simply properties file (or user record) that maps CurrentTitle=DesiredTitle. Again, you can probably do this using the MediaTitles.xml but a simple properties file might work better. I do something like this now for the ratings. I use a properties file (which is like a map) and I set the rating something like
rating=ratings.getProperty(CurrentRating,CurrentRating)
This way, rating will either be CurrentRating or a value the properties file.

I'm a little hesitant, in bmt, to simply stip out the year from the title, but that may be the best approach. It just means that you'd have to check the series info to get the year, if you needed it.

My initial reasoning for wanting to use the mediatitles.xml file was because this is something that users are doing already and wouldn't need to be updated separately... a specific TVE Title property file may be the way to go however because then its a generic title matcher that could fix other potential issues in people's setups (can't think of any at the moment).

Adding the option to remove the titles would be nice (especially if its part of the automatic process so people would never have to think about it after the first run to process already recorded shows)... Would be especially nice for those of us that have never heard of or recorded the previous series. What i really wish thetvdb would do is to include the year in the previous series and leave the currently airing series without the year.... but i digress

Why are you hesitant to strip the year from the title? Rather then striping the year the other way to look at it would be to preserve the title populated by the sage epg and just the mediatitles as a map to the correct tvdb id.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by razrsharpe

Why are you hesitant to strip the year from the title? Rather then striping the year the other way to look at it would be to preserve the title populated by the sage epg and just the mediatitles as a map to the correct tvdb id.

I'm a little hesitant only because I know when I change that, then I'll get a stream of complaints from people that the the older shows as well, and now they are all being grouped together

I'll give this some thought as well. Maybe an option would be best.

[gplasky]

I think an option would be good. I would prefer to strip the year. Even if old series and new series with the same name end up grouped together I can sort them properly in that group. If I don't like the way it works for me I can go back to the yea in the titles.

Gerry

[bialio]

There is a recent bug as well that has to do with titles - if you have 'preserve original metadata for recordings' set, in theory the title of the show should stay "Castle" instead of being changed to "Castle (2009)".

This is broken currently - will be fixed in the next bmt release. SO if you would like to not deal with the years at all, after that fix you can enable 'preserve original metadata' and you should see most if not all of your issues go away.

btl.

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by bialio

There is a recent bug as well that has to do with titles - if you have 'preserve original metadata for recordings' set, in theory the title of the show should stay "Castle" instead of being changed to "Castle (2009)".

This is broken currently - will be fixed in the next bmt release. SO if you would like to not deal with the years at all, after that fix you can enable 'preserve original metadata' and you should see most if not all of your issues go away.

btl.

sean released bmt 4.9.7 last nite that supposedly fixed the "preserve original metadata"... so we will see if its fixed this week....

however, the bmt users guide says that this "replacing" of the title is normal behavior when using the mediatitles.xml file. from the bmt users guide

Keep in mind that MediaTitles are used when searching, so the titles that you specify, if any, are used during searching, but the title that the media file will finally get will be determined by the data returned in the search results

My reading of that says that the title will always be updated to whats returned by tvdb...

Originally Posted by gplasky

I think an option would be good. I would prefer to strip the year. Even if old series and new series with the same name end up grouped together I can sort them properly in that group. If I don't like the way it works for me I can go back to the yea in the titles.

Gerry

ya i think the option is the way to go too...

[stuckless]

Actually I don't replace the show title but I do replace the fanart title. With preserve metadata enabled the original title should still be preserved.

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Actually I don't replace the show title but I do replace the fanart title. With preserve metadata enabled the original title should still be preserved.

sweet... so the fact that bmt was replacing both the show title and fanart title was the bug that was fixed in 4.9.7? If that's the case then i think my problem will go away... i dont have that many titles to fix... but a batch operation tool to strip the year from those shows in the mediatitles.xml file might be nice for those users with lots of shows to fix when their shows no longer group properly after upgrading to 4.9.7

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by razrsharpe

sweet... so the fact that bmt was replacing both the show title and fanart title was the bug that was fixed in 4.9.7? If that's the case then i think my problem will go away... i dont have that many titles to fix... but a batch operation tool to strip the year from those shows in the mediatitles.xml file might be nice for those users with lots of shows to fix when their shows no longer group properly after upgrading to 4.9.7

Yeah, so the Fanart title which is used to resolve fanart would still contain the year, but the show title should only display what was in the EPG, as long as preserve original recording metadata is enabled.

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Yeah, so the Fanart title which is used to resolve fanart would still contain the year, but the show title should only display what was in the EPG, as long as preserve original recording metadata is enabled.

sounds like that will work for me....

As a side about preserve original recording metadata... what might be nice in the webui when browsing an individual episode would be a method to override the preserve original metadata flag to update things like the description... might be useful when browsing shows that have terrible/lacking descriptions of the episode... (minor i know )

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by razrsharpe

sounds like that will work for me....

As a side about preserve original recording metadata... what might be nice in the webui when browsing an individual episode would be a method to override the preserve original metadata flag to update things like the description... might be useful when browsing shows that have terrible/lacking descriptions of the episode... (minor i know )

You should check that out in the current release It's only available for Recordings and if you have preserve original metadata enabled.

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by stuckless

You should check that out in the current release It's only available for Recordings and if you have preserve original metadata enabled.

missed that check box... sweet

I think i might have found a bug though... or i just dont know the proper way to use it...
BMT had previously (this weekend 4.9.6) updated my episodes of 24, overwrote some metadata, and choose the episode poorly.... therefore i have several (11 of 16 episodes for season 8) episodes that are listed as s1e1... So i thought i would update the metadata.. this is what i did (i have the preserver recording metadata flag checked)

-navigate to a show (filename: \\svr1\tv\24-Day8600AM800AM-2037242-0.mpg, bmt id'ed it has s1e1).
-uncheck the preserve original metadata box
-fix the metadata (remove the season/epsidoe #, change the episode to be correct (Day 8 - 6:00 A.M.-8:00 A.M.), remove the description and the original air date)
-click save. At this point the preserve original metadata box rechecks (expected), the now uneditable fields gray out (expected), the modified episode and original air are back to what they were before (not expected), the season/episode number and description are blank (expected).

I was thinking that if i get the show title and episode name to match the filename (manually), then i can click "find metadata" to update all the rest of hte information


EDIT: similarily, if i uncheck the preserve original metadata, then do a lookup and manually fix the title to be correct, and delete the season/episode and original air date, it populates the same information as what i just removed...

[stuckless]

ok... i'll do some investigating. Could verify this with other files as well.

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by stuckless

ok... i'll do some investigating. Could verify this with other files as well.

all of the 24 episodes ive tried so far dont seem to want to save their updates.... heres some more info


Find Metadata Lookup... Updating
updating this episode of 24 (\\svr1\tv\24-Day8800PM900PM-1542053-0.mpg, s8e5)

1. uncheck preserve original metadata
2. click Find Metadata
3. fill in search title (24), season, and episode (manually determined by looking at the file name and comparing to tvdb episode list)
4. click search, click 24, 2001. This populates all the correct data, rechecks the preserve original metadata box, regrays out the uneditable fields (showtitle, episode name, description, oad, etc)

Doesn't work
-Follow 1-4 above
5. Clicking Save. All the grayed out fields default to original wrong values, and the season, episode stay correct.

Does Work
-Follow 1-4 above
5. Uncheck preserve original metadata and click save. All the grayed out fields are the new correct values

I've updated a couple of the 24 episodes now with the "Does Work" procedure and they all seem to work...

Manual Updating by entering metadata manually
this is what ive noticed:
-Episode Name - Can not update (if its blank or different it will always default to the previous wrong entry)
-Description - Can update to blank or description
-Original Air Date - Can update to a value. If its blank it will revert to the previous (removed) entry.

[stuckless]

Ok, i've added bug. I'll take a look at this throughout the week, and hopefully have a build for the weekend.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by razrsharpe

all of the 24 episodes ive tried so far dont seem to want to save their updates.... heres some more info


Find Metadata Lookup... Updating
updating this episode of 24 (\\svr1\tv\24-Day8800PM900PM-1542053-0.mpg, s8e5)

1. uncheck preserve original metadata
2. click Find Metadata
3. fill in search title (24), season, and episode (manually determined by looking at the file name and comparing to tvdb episode list)
4. click search, click 24, 2001. This populates all the correct data, rechecks the preserve original metadata box, regrays out the uneditable fields (showtitle, episode name, description, oad, etc)

Doesn't work
-Follow 1-4 above
5. Clicking Save. All the grayed out fields default to original wrong values, and the season, episode stay correct.

Does Work
-Follow 1-4 above
5. Uncheck preserve original metadata and click save. All the grayed out fields are the new correct values

I've updated a couple of the 24 episodes now with the "Does Work" procedure and they all seem to work...

Manual Updating by entering metadata manually
this is what ive noticed:
-Episode Name - Can not update (if its blank or different it will always default to the previous wrong entry)
-Description - Can update to blank or description
-Original Air Date - Can update to a value. If its blank it will revert to the previous (removed) entry.

I fixed a bug in the bmt web ui that was preventing the EpisodeName from being updated. Actually it could be updated, but it was seemingly random (based on how the hashmap stores entries). This will be in the next release 4.9.8.

As a general rule, when preserve metadata is checked, those fields will not be updated. So if you uncheck preserve metadata, then update a field, and the check preserve metadata, then that value will NOT be stored, and it will revert back to original values. (that covers your Doesn't Work and Does Work scenarios)

As a general rule, bmt inconsistent about clearing metadata. It may do it in some cases (ie, the description), but in other cases it probably won't. The reason is that bmt uses the same code from the web UI as it does when automatic scan happens. When an automatic scan happens and it returns empty values, I try NOT to update fields that have values with empty values.

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I fixed a bug in the bmt web ui that was preventing the EpisodeName from being updated. Actually it could be updated, but it was seemingly random (based on how the hashmap stores entries). This will be in the next release 4.9.8.

cool, thanks

As a general rule, when preserve metadata is checked, those fields will not be updated. So if you uncheck preserve metadata, then update a field, and the check preserve metadata, then that value will NOT be stored, and it will revert back to original values. (that covers your Doesn't Work and Does Work scenarios)

I think there is a bug in some logic though from a users perspective (yes the work around is easy)....

what a user (i believe) expects to do:
1. uncheck preserve original metadata
2. click Find Metadata... dialog box pops up
3. fill in search title, season, and episode (manually determined by looking at the file name and comparing to tvdb episode list)
4. click search. This drops you back to the metadata detail page with all correct details filled in.
5. Click Save

That doesn't work... because at the end of step 4 when you drop back to the metadata detail page preserve original metadata is checked again so clicking save doesn't work (everything reverts back to the wrong data, except the season/episode number)

You need to add a step 4a. where you reuncheck preserve original metadata before saving. Now everything saves the way it should.

As a general rule, bmt inconsistent about clearing metadata. It may do it in some cases (ie, the description), but in other cases it probably won't. The reason is that bmt uses the same code from the web UI as it does when automatic scan happens. When an automatic scan happens and it returns empty values, I try NOT to update fields that have values with empty values.

ahhh... makes sense, thanks

EDIT: My recording of Castle last nite correctly did not modify the airing title (did get scanned by bmt because the season/episode was updated) so i can confirm that that bug is fixed... now i don't have any issues ... i think some form of batch tool to fix old recordings (expunge the year... probably using the mediatitles.xml as a guide) would be nice... or would the batch "remove year from tv shows" tool work for this? EDIT2: nevermind about the "remove year from tv shows" working... just read the popup when trying to run the tool and it wont work

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by razrsharpe

I think there is a bug in some logic though from a users perspective (yes the work around is easy)....

what a user (i believe) expects to do:
1. uncheck preserve original metadata
2. click Find Metadata... dialog box pops up
3. fill in search title, season, and episode (manually determined by looking at the file name and comparing to tvdb episode list)
4. click search. This drops you back to the metadata detail page with all correct details filled in.
5. Click Save

That doesn't work... because at the end of step 4 when you drop back to the metadata detail page preserve original metadata is checked again so clicking save doesn't work (everything reverts back to the wrong data, except the season/episode number)

You need to add a step 4a. where you reuncheck preserve original metadata before saving. Now everything saves the way it should.

Ok, i see the issue now... the preserve metadata check resets after you do the search... which is because it makes a round trip to the server to fetch the updated metadata. I'll add a bug for this as well... there is no such thing as a 'quck enhancement'... they always translate into more work for me

I'll also add a request to create a tool that cleans the year from titles.

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Ok, i see the issue now... the preserve metadata check resets after you do the search... which is because it makes a round trip to the server to fetch the updated metadata. I'll add a bug for this as well...

thanks

there is no such thing as a 'quck enhancement'... they always translate into more work for me

oh that i fully understand... i get "how long will it take to do x?" "you mean its not just 5 min" all the time I was saying that the work around to it not saving metadata was easy (once you know the workaround )

I'll also add a request to create a tool that cleans the year from titles.

I already fixed mine... took me all of 20 min for the 4 shows that had a problem..... so unless lots of people start clamoring and complaining or its really easy to implement, i might be tempted to just put it on the way back burner...