Media Import - more detailed control? (1 Viewer)

[TheBatfink]

Well movpicnfo is giving me errors about file paths. Found MovingPictures Import Export GUI but that doesn't seem to want to do anything other than 'movie name'.nfo or 'movingpictures'.nfo.

Honestly I'm about ready to give up, way too painful to move to MP2. Spent hours and got no where.

 

[TheBatfink]

So 3 hours of messing around I now have NFO's named as per my files. Still doesn't work right or I guess my NFO's are not in the correct format (whatever that is). Even the most fundamental functionality of importing and managing media is so hard (although maybe I am too tough on it being beta / alpha and all). From what I can tell it isn't even possible to 're-import' something let alone change or manually make a correction. It provides no feedback at all about what it is doing or what it has or hasn't done, I don't know if it's importing or not, what worked and what didn't, what needs my attention etc. Feel completely lost with it and just far too much effort overall when coming from MP1.

I really can not understand how you can use this as main software for over a year. You must spend more time administering than watching media. Maybe check back another time when it's been fine tuned some more.

 

[Lehmden]

Can not understand why you have such issues. For me the transfer from MP1 to MP2 was straight forward. And it's working absolutely flawless, never had anything that reliable before.

NFO's are not in the correct format (whatever that is).

MP2 is supporting every .nfo type that is available out there. At least every type we could get hand on. I had a 100% perfect match with my .nfo created with MovPicNfo 18 month ago. Each and every movie was imported correct on first run.

Even the most fundamental functionality of importing and managing media is so hard

Never had importing of media that easy. No fiddling, every video is perfectly matched. More than 22.000 series episodes and not a single failure, not even one. Same ist for my 2.000 movies and 200.000 songs. Rebuilding my Database from scratch with more than 300.000 media files (lots of pictures too) takes only a few hours and MP2 is working completely alone without any further interaction. So you must doing something terribly wrong.

It provides no feedback at all

It gives feedback in the media shares area, the same place where you trigger an re-import with a single mouse click. And you can look at the log files too, if you want. But normally I have better things to do than watching my pc importing media into my media library. So I don't want to have any feedback and definitely no popping requester or similar crap.The machine should do it's work without nagging me. And it did.

Feel completely lost

Spoiled by the nerdy MP1 behavior. Saw this often, long time MP1 user has much more issues to set up MP2 than absolute beginner or former WMC user.

You must spend more time administering than watching media.

I never spend that less time in managing my media. I have a perfect workflow from raw material (recordings, downloads, rips,...) to final media imported into my media library. It's so easy and simple and reliable. And I don't need to manually do anything excerpt for cutting TV recordings. This always will need manual work if you want to have it perfect. ComSkip or similar are not precise enough, not even near to what I want. Everything else is done fully automatic. All the hard and boring work is done by my PC without me having to do anything...

 

[TheBatfink]

Well I must be doing something completely wrong then. I couldn't get movpicnfo to work as it gave file path errors. MovPic Import Export GUI wouldn't save the files matching the filename. In the end I loaded in the MovPic Import Export GUI nfos with Tiny Media Manager and rewrote them with that software.

Maybe it was getting late and frustration was setting in. Would you mind casting an eye over an example nfo when I'm back at my machine to upload?

I do agree the change from MP1 is a jarring one as far as this goes. But I stand by the fact the lack of feedback from the scraper is strange. How do you know what it's missed etc.?

Thanks

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.

casting an eye over an example nfo

Of course I do. Just upload the .nfo and I have a look at it.

How do you know what it's missed etc.?

I have prepared my media in such a way, that the importer always, without any exception, can handle the media perfectly correct. I even have written a tool to do this, MKV-Buddy. Videos prepared by MKV-Buddy always will import correct. And MKV-Buddy is doing it's magic also with an minimal amount of work for me.
I definitely know nothing is missing at all. I can see it in series when looking into the MP2 client and movies I simply can count the movie- folders and compare it with the imported movies. But this is not necessary at all. There simply is no error.

 

[TheBatfink]

Hi Lehmden take example here. Nfo is named as per the file inside the same folder. I re-ran the import, this is what I see in MP. Incorrect description (although fan art is correct). Year of movie is incorrect and rating is not correct. But I can't see if it is ready the Nfo or something else..



Any ideas?

Thanks

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.
The nfo looks very strange. Never saw such an "empty" one before. And your naming scheme is definitely noting that can deliver any results while importing. This is guaranteed to fail. But as the IMDB-ID is included in the .nfo (nearly the only data available) even this should help identifying the movie.
I've attached my .nfo for "Aliens". All names and texts are in German but you easily can see the difference nevertheless. Also tMM generates slightly different .nfo than MKV-Buddy they normally have much more in common (about 99%) as it is the case here...
So not only your naming, even your .nfo are completely strange...

 

[TheBatfink]

I'm not sure how long we are going to keep doing this dance. I am NOT changing how I structure my files after they have worked fine for the last 10 years in MP1.

First you tell me to use an NFO, I spend all day makig NFO with IMDB link inside.. it still does not work. What the hell does my naming format matter if I provide NFO with IMDB link inside?! You haven't answered the question at all.

For info my folders are structured <MoveTitle> <(Year)> does MP2 have an option to use folder name and not filename?

 

[Lehmden]

What the hell does my naming format matter if I provide NFO with IMDB link inside?

Not much but it did not help a bit. Nothing more I told.

I spend all day makig NFO with IMDB link inside.. it still does not work.

The .nfo are somehow damaged and I don't know why. Never saw such before. But nevertheless they are working here. Just did a test with your .nfo and a video named exactly as the .nfo and now I have "Aliens" twice in my ML, with fanart and all metadata. And if I start playing the first entry it plays the test video and if I use the second entry the "real" movie is playing. Exactly as it should be.

I don't know what you have done to make this not working. On a "normal" MP2 system it definitely is working, even with such "exotic" .nfo.

does MP2 have an option to use folder name and not filename?

It tries to identify the movie on both, if no .nfo or metatags are available. But your naming is not useful at all. Too much crap in the names, how on earth an importer should know "FANDANGO" is the name of the pirates group that has released this video and is no part of the movie name??

they have worked fine for the last 10 years in MP1.

This did not matter anything. MP2 is a completely different product. You also expect MP2 not to wait a minute before the GUI shows up at start as MP1 did the last 10 years very "nicely".

One last hint and then I'm out here. Did not like your behavior that much to spend even more time on helping you instead of playing my nicely managed media...

Stop the MP2 server. Then remove the Database. It can be found in "c:\ProgramData\Team MediaPortal\MP2-Server\Database\Datastore.s3db" and after that start MP2 Server again. Now start a client and add your media shares again. Maybe there are too much "leftovers" from your previous useless tries.

 

[TheBatfink]

So yesterday I spent 13 hours merging all split file media (part 1 + part 2 etc.) so MP2 can use them. Also took the time to merge in the subtitles whilst I was there both with mkvmerge. I still have not renamed 'all' movies as it's just a huge job, the newly merged files are now named correctly at least. However having said this, as my folder names are all perfect "<movie name> (<year>)" MovingPictures & imdb+ is able to scrap all 1750 objects OK without me having to do any manual selection.

So I dropped my MP1 database and rescraped the lot from scratch with UNC file path so that nfoMovPic would work. All movies now have a properly formed .nfo from nfoMovPic and they are all named %filename% in the same folder as the media (one movie per folder). It also reported successfully exporting 1750 .nfos.

So I went in MP2 and selected 'reimport' from my movie share. It completed (very quickly actually) but I only have 1400 movies in my collection. I can see something happened as example Aliens above is now OK with nfoMovPic .nfo after reimport.

Questions:

- Is there some trick to show which 350 it did not import so I can investigate why it is having trouble? Maybe some filter in the browse media view or something? Will there be some entry in logs I can search for to find them?

- Considering I have perfectly structured folder names (as I always forced MovPics to use folder name) of "<moviename> (<year>)" is there some tool that can rename my media files to match the name of the folder? Can mkvbuddy do this? If not then I guess I'll have to write something.

Thanks
Batfink