My TV show Metadata keeps getting messed up

[WhiskeyLover]

This keeps happening to me, every few weeks, and it's driving me crazy.

I get all of my TV shows nicely arranged with Seasons, Episodes, and Metadata. I enjoy them for a little while when suddenly they are all messed up again. I spend a couple of weeks working on them every night and then in a few weeks, their trashed again. I'd love to get to the bottom of what's happening so I can either stop doing something if I'm causing, correct my config if I've got it wrong, or whatever else could be making this happen adding to my, and my families frustration. (Last week I got the dreaded "You spend more time on fixing our shows now than it's worth. Shouldn't we just go back to the Tivo?" <shudder>

I'm running SageTV 7 lastest build running on a v1 WHS with 14TB of storage. I use BMT 4.9.7. I have an HD200 and an HD300. I don't think I'm doing anything too far out here, though I do use SickBeard and Sabnzbd+ to import a few things. I have a few shows that I have the DVDs of which I have ripped to my server. There are a few shows that I keep the entire collection on the server. We watch weekly sitcoms or dramas as they happen, but the shows where the whole season tells a story, we usually watch them as a marathon over a weekend. We love the convenience of the SageTV for this….when it's working properly.

All of my videos (movie and TV) are in a single share //server/Videos and the Sage recording folder is under there at //server/Videos/SageTV.

Let's take the show Weeds as an example. Looking at an episode in BMT after it is "messed up", BMT shows the name of the show in bold at the top as "
Weeds/Season 06/Weeds - Weeds." So now I'm going to "Find Metadata" and change the Search Type back to TV (because it has changed to Movie somehow), change the Source back to thetvdb.com and the Search Title I have to change what it has "Weeds/Season 06/Weeds" to simply "Weeds". I add the Season 6 and Episode 2 back in, search, and everything is repopulated. I save it as a Sage Recording and the title is now "
Weeds - Felling and Swamping". All is right with the world.

Now it shows up in Sage Recordings just fine and life is good. But in a few weeks, it will be back to being messed up again and I'll get to go through my entire collection and do it all again.

I'm sure I've done something wrong, or I'm doing something periodically that causes this, but can someone point out to me what it might be? I'm so tired of redoing the Metadata on literally hundreds of shows ever time this happens. (And in spite of what the family says, I have no desire to go back to Tivo!)

[stuckless]

From my own experiences, I've never seen this happen. I have 100s of shows that I've imported, and I've never had a show lose its metadata.

Are you seeing any Wiz.bin.corrupt files? If so, it could be that something is corrupting your Wiz.bin, and then you are losing data.

What other plugins do you have installed? You could try disabling some plugins and see if it still happens.

Do these files have a corresponding .properties? If so, is the data in the .properties correct? Maybe, sagetv is reloading these files (for whatever reason) and when that happens if there is a .properties then sagetv will use that for the metadata. You can disable the .properties creation, and BMT does not require them at all.

When this happens, do you see any information in the phoenix-metadata.log. BMT will log an entry for every file scanned, updated and errored in that log. Also, BMT does not run in the background periodically updating your collection. Instead BMT ONLY RUNS when sagetv tells it to run, and even then, it only runs on each file that SageTV tells it to, not all files. So, if BMT is doing this, then SageTV is telling it to run.

BMT does not overwrite the metadata for items that have metadata. So, if you have items with complete metadata and then later it is gone, then BMT does not do that. BMT will log a SKIPPED action for items that have metadata.

[rtrski]

Are you ever clicking the "Refresh Media Titles" option in the web interface of the metadata tools? (Under Configure - Refresh Configurations I think)

I mistakenly did that and shows got renamed things like "Dollhouse -S1E01 - Pilot - Dollhouse - S1E01 - Pilot ..." etc depending how many times I'd clickied that button.

Took a while to get them all cleaned up. I should note, these are TV episodes pulled from the season DVDs and sorted per folder structure by show name, then season, then episode number, individually. So it may not be the same thing you're seeing...?

After I do manual changes like fixing descriptions or the like, I'll hit the top two buttons (Dynamic Menus, Virtual File System) then browse back through my directories to 'verify' my changes, but I've learned to stay AWAY from that "Refresh Media Titles" button.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by rtrski

Are you ever clicking the "Refresh Media Titles" option in the web interface of the metadata tools? (Under Configure - Refresh Configurations I think)

I mistakenly did that and shows got renamed things like "Dollhouse -S1E01 - Pilot - Dollhouse - S1E01 - Pilot ..." etc depending how many times I'd clickied that button.

Took a while to get them all cleaned up. I should note, these are TV episodes pulled from the season DVDs and sorted per folder structure by show name, then season, then episode number, individually. So it may not be the same thing you're seeing...?

After I do manual changes like fixing descriptions or the like, I'll hit the top two buttons (Dynamic Menus, Virtual File System) then browse back through my directories to 'verify' my changes, but I've learned to stay AWAY from that "Refresh Media Titles" button.

All 3 of those buttons do nothing more than reload xml files. That's why they are in the configuration section. ie, Refresh Media Titles, simply reloads the MediaTitles.xml file. Refresh VFS refreshes the VFS xml files and the Refresh Menus will reload the menu xml files. You never need to use any of those options unless you are manually making changes to the VFS, Menu, or MediaTitles xml files.

You can hit them 1000 times and it will never affect metadata, since they are totally different systems. I suspect that you have another issue that conincidentally showed up when you clicked "Refresh Media Titles".

[WhiskeyLover]

Thanks for the response.

I don't have any Wiz.bin.corrupt files that I can find. I do have .properties files for pretty much everything. I do run MyMovies and I should probably check my configuration there, too. I have noticed that I see both the .avi file as well as the .avi.properties files listed in BMT and in Diamond Wall/Flow when I look, which seems odd.

I'm sure it's something I've done. I'm going to redo my whole installation this next week and only turn on the plugins that I really need, one by one, and see how things go. Again, thanks for getting back to me.

[ohpleaseno]

I have this same problem and need to spend some time tracking it down. I've got two nights without the wife in town, so I can breakdown Sage a little more than usual in her absence.

There is no other purpose to this post other than saying "you are not alone".

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by ohpleaseno

I have this same problem and need to spend some time tracking it down. I've got two nights without the wife in town, so I can breakdown Sage a little more than usual in her absence.

There is no other purpose to this post other than saying "you are not alone".

When it happens again, check the phoenix-metadata.log file to see if it is logging any activity. It will log an entry for every media file that it handles or SKIPS.

I suspect in these cases... one of several things is happening (in no particular order)
1. Another metadata process (not bmt) is changing the metadata
2. You have .properties lying around that have incorrect metadata (bmt does not create .properties), and sage thinks the files are modified for some reason, and so it loads and overwrites the old metadata, replacing the good metadata that bmt had once fetched.
3. There is core issue where the wiz.bin 'forgets' the metadata. Perhaps a sagetv core 'cleanup' process is accidentally changing the metadata (that's going to be real hard to track down without help from sagetv)
4. BMT is being told to run on a file that has metadata, and even though BMT will not update a file that has metadata, it somehow does it anyways. All this will be fully logged in the phoenix-metadata.log

[ohpleaseno]

After a little research...

I used to have some shows in one import directory and others in a second. I got tired of having two directories, so I combined them. The moved files now have metadata that looks like this

TV/Make/Make:

When I update metadata, it goes back to

Make:

And this was done weeks ago, so the log has flushed since then.

[ohpleaseno]

Originally Posted by ohpleaseno

After a little research...

I used to have some shows in one import directory and others in a second. I got tired of having two directories, so I combined them. The moved files now have metadata that looks like this

TV/Make/Make:

When I update metadata, it goes back to

Make:

And this was done weeks ago, so the log has flushed since then.

Actually, not all things find themselves when I update. Is there a way to just batch update a field for a search group?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by ohpleaseno

Actually, not all things find themselves when I update. Is there a way to just batch update a field for a search group?

I'm not sure what you mean, but there is no manual batch updating of fields at the moment.

As for the titles, if you are seeing titles with paths in them, then that's a good indication that bmt did not find any metadata for a item. Since after bmt runs, titles should just be titles without a path.

[ohpleaseno]

I guess what I'm saying is that if I browse my library and search for "TV/Make/Make" it will pull up all of the affected shows. It would be nice to be able to edit all of those mislabeled instances at once by editing the show title for all of them.

I don't know if I made it clear that all of these shows with the path in the title existed in an import folder that was showing correct metadata. After moving the files physically to another import folder, they now show up with the file path.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by ohpleaseno

After moving the files physically to another import folder, they now show up with the file path.

The act of moving a file strips it's metadata, and would force bmt to try an fetch new metadata. If there were existing .properties, then bmt will simply skip the file. It sounds like, either bmt couldn't find metadata for the shows, or bmt skipped the files, if they have paths in the titles. One thing is for sure, bmt did not find metadata for the files, or else it would have set a Title that did not include a path. SageTV by default will append a Path to a title, but bmt strips that out.

[ohpleaseno]

Originally Posted by stuckless

The act of moving a file strips it's metadata, and would force bmt to try an fetch new metadata. If there were existing .properties, then bmt will simply skip the file. It sounds like, either bmt couldn't find metadata for the shows, or bmt skipped the files, if they have paths in the titles. One thing is for sure, bmt did not find metadata for the files, or else it would have set a Title that did not include a path. SageTV by default will append a Path to a title, but bmt strips that out.

So in the future if I have to move files that BMT already found metadata for, what would you recommend I do?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by ohpleaseno

So in the future if I have to move files that BMT already found metadata for, what would you recommend I do?

I don't really have a good answer. I've done this myself, and I typically just move the files, and let the bmt automatic scanner re-scan them (I don't have .properties).

I've been meaning to deal with this issue directly in bmt web ui, which is why I have the export .properties and the clean .properties in the batch tools area. You could try export .properties, and then move the files and .proprties, and then sagetv would pick up the new files with the exported .properties, and see what happens. I'm not sure if you'll get the same title issues or not. I've done this myself as well, but I've never noticed any issues with the titles. When you use this method, the bmt doesn't touch the file on re-import, since there is an existing .properties. But since the .properties is generated from bmt, then it should be correct.

[rtrski]

Well I figured out what was borking mine.

I *did* have properties files after all. (Had them in v6, never really thought about it). The option in the BMT web UI to "update .properties files after changes" or something to that nature was checked. Don't recall if I did that or if it was default.

Anyway, basically if I hit the button in the SageTV Setup to "Rescan Existing Library Files", and I have .properties files...it appears to do the doubling-up on the filename, e.g. "Series -Ep - Title" becomes "Series - Ep - Title - Series - Ep - Title".

The downside is stripping out all the .properties files (using the BMT) and then trying to auto reimport all metadata just thought my "Battlestar Galactica" episodes were from the original 1978 season, not the 2003 redo.

So on the bright side I think I've figured out why mine were going wonky - it was my rescan operations (NOT hitting the "refresh media titles.xml" thingy as stuckless corrected me on). The downside is I have to clean it all up again, but hopefully this time without .properties files being created, it won't recur if I do a Rescan again in the future? Might just fix one season of one show first and try it out to see.

[stuckless]

You can probably fix the Battlestar issue using the MediaTitles.xml. Maybe someone can post their version, since I'm guessing others have already dealt with it.

[bigjaco]

Originally Posted by stuckless

The act of moving a file strips it's metadata, and would force bmt to try an fetch new metadata. If there were existing .properties, then bmt will simply skip the file. It sounds like, either bmt couldn't find metadata for the shows, or bmt skipped the files, if they have paths in the titles. One thing is for sure, bmt did not find metadata for the files, or else it would have set a Title that did not include a path. SageTV by default will append a Path to a title, but bmt strips that out.

Following this thread. I recently moved all my TV to a new drive. Until the move all was peachy and working properly. I have BMT, Pheonix and CVF as my only plugins. After the move my files (with .properties) displayed as <SeriesName> (<episodenumber>). In following some of this thread I believe I have everything now being stored in the wiz.bin (I have no property files).

All the meta data appears to be correct yet I cannot get what used to be <EpisodeName> (<episodenumber>) to display. Only thing I've changed to this point was the storage location and now within BMT web utility Tools - Remove Properties files.

it's not earth shattering but having it work as well as it has till now again would be "peachy" any further suggestions would be welcomed and pre-thank you

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by bigjaco

Following this thread. I recently moved all my TV to a new drive. Until the move all was peachy and working properly. I have BMT, Pheonix and CVF as my only plugins. After the move my files (with .properties) displayed as <SeriesName> (<episodenumber>). In following some of this thread I believe I have everything now being stored in the wiz.bin (I have no property files).

All the meta data appears to be correct yet I cannot get what used to be <EpisodeName> (<episodenumber>) to display. Only thing I've changed to this point was the storage location and now within BMT web utility Tools - Remove Properties files.

it's not earth shattering but having it work as well as it has till now again would be "peachy" any further suggestions would be welcomed and pre-thank you

Keep in mind that bmt simply fetches metadata and stores each piece of data in a separate field. Unlike bmt3, bmt4 does not format the titles for display, but rather it's up to the display plugin to format the titles. Now if you use a plugin like CVF, I think it uses the phoenix_media_GetFormattedTitle() to display the title. This api uses a format string to control how the title will display, and that format string can be configured via the bmt web ui, under Configure -> Phoenix -> Media Configuration. But before playing with these format masks, you should confirm that CVF does use the GetFormattedTitle api.

[VikingCrown]

Sorry to ressurect this thread but i seem to be having similar issues. I was cataloging all my ep's of The Office on one drive and decided to move them to a new location. Prior to the move, I manually edited the file, moved it to its location and did the search for metadata on each file since it was failing looking for Show Title of The Office instead of The Office (US)

After the move some of the files are showing up as The Office and some as The Office (US) even after i have repeatedly changed it back to The Office (US).

I tried to fix the floating metadata by:
1. removing all import paths and restarting
2. adding both the old and new locations back, then rebooting and then removing both locations.
3. tried using the batch function to remove them as an imported recording
4. tried moving them to another location

None of these will wipe clean all references from the files in the wiz.bin and re-write them so far. All episodes still show as recordings and are split in their categorizations.

Also my files are named The Office (US) S01E01.mkv . . .

Here are my SW Versions:
Sage 7.0.23.246
Java 1.6.10_23
BMT 4.9.11
Phoenix: 2.3.23
sagex.api 7.1.5.3

Any help would be appreciated!

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by VikingCrown

Sorry to ressurect this thread but i seem to be having similar issues. I was cataloging all my ep's of The Office on one drive and decided to move them to a new location. Prior to the move, I manually edited the file, moved it to its location and did the search for metadata on each file since it was failing looking for Show Title of The Office instead of The Office (US)

After the move some of the files are showing up as The Office and some as The Office (US) even after i have repeatedly changed it back to The Office (US).

I tried to fix the floating metadata by:
1. removing all import paths and restarting
2. adding both the old and new locations back, then rebooting and then removing both locations.
3. tried using the batch function to remove them as an imported recording
4. tried moving them to another location

None of these will wipe clean all references from the files in the wiz.bin and re-write them so far. All episodes still show as recordings and are split in their categorizations.

Also my files are named The Office (US) S01E01.mkv . . .

Here are my SW Versions:
Sage 7.0.23.246
Java 1.6.10_23
BMT 4.9.11
Phoenix: 2.3.23
sagex.api 7.1.5.3

Any help would be appreciated!

Just so I understand... When you moved to a new location, you lost some metadata (which would consider normal), and now you can't manually update them using BMT (which is not normal).