Movie Importer not getting all movies (1 Viewer)

[Alan Honeyman]

Thanks, all good input. Converted “Darkest Hour” to MKV and MP2 accepted it. Got a fresh copy of the other, converted to MKV and MP2 imported it. Your help much appreciated.

 

[Alan Honeyman]

Apologise for the delayed response. Converting to mkv resolved the issue for this video but some others will “play” without audio or video yet can be played with Plex without problem. There must be some critical difference between the codec used by Plex and that used by MP2.

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.
In MP2 you can choose what codec to use, opposite to Plex and Kodi for example. Default codec is set to LAVF for everything. Kodi and Plex don't use the Windows DirectShow system so you can not change or extend the codecs to use... They are using FFDShow. FFDshow is more forgiven regarding corrupt videos than anything else but it has a visible lower playback quality than DirectShow, at least on Windows systems. For Kodi I always would prefer a Linux based system as here the PQ is much better. And FFDShow needs different compile options depending on the possible features (e.g. bitstreaming of DTS-HD Master or Dolby Atmos) you want to have. If the release you use don't have those features you've lost..

With DS you can do much more fine tuning so in the end it is the better way. But DS needs not too much damaged videos to work. 80 - 90% of all videos offered somewhere to download (and the same value is valid for TV recordings) are more or less corrupt. Most of them are nevertheless playable even with DS. Nearly all of them can be fixed if needed. VLC, Kodi and so on are playing the more damaged videos too, but they are scarifying picture quality for easiness.

If you want to test if there is an issue with MP (no matter if MP1 or MP2) than you need to test the video with WMP or MPC-HC or similar DS players using the same codecs as set in MP. If a video is playing flawlessly in those players but not in MP, then there is something wrong on the MP side...

That's one of the reasons why I never use any recorded or downloaded videos without prepare them before using. This way I never have such issues in no program, whatever I try. If a video is too faulty I discover this during preparation and can try to repair or replace it with a better one. If this is not possible, I dump it and wait until a better version is available.

 

[Alan Honeyman]

Excellent response, thank you. You mentioned preparing videos before use, what form does that take?

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.

what form does that take?

TV Recordings I cut with VideoReDo before working on them any further. VideoReDo is not free but it is the only available solution that cuts h264 videos frame accurate without transcoding the whole video. Any other tools I know are transcoding the whole video or cut on keyframes only. Or only supports Mpeg2 or so...
After cutting or downloading every video that I get will be prepared with my own tool "Media-Buddy" (formerly known as MKV-Buddy, link in my signature). For this I collect all videos in some folders. One folder holds all movies to prepare and another folder holds all series. In the series inbound folder I have separate subfolders for every series I have episodes to prepare. Episodes are named like s01e01 (real season and episodes numbers for sure) and placed it the matching series subfolder. Movies I name like "tt1234567" (use the real IMDB- ID number for sure) and place them directly in my movies inbound folder.

For movies the output subfolder is generated while processing them. Same is valid for Series. But for series I prepare the output sub-folders before starting to process the videos. This is because I can place an existing "tvshow.nfo" file in the output folder so the series matching is 100% save. If no "tvshow.nfo" is existing already a simple text file named like "TVDB-123456.txt" with or without any content will do the same. (123456 is to be replaced by the real TVDB ID for sure). Or, if the series is not available on TVDB but on TMDB the this file needs to be named "TMDB-12345.txt" where the number has to be the real TMDB ID of this series. This way the matching of movies and series is working 100% perfect without any errors or mismatches...

Media-Buddy decides if a video needs to be transcoded (big files, size and quality is decreasing) or remuxed (smaller files, size and quality stays the same) on giving values configured by the user. Those values are personal taste so you find the best compromise between file size and quality.

Aside this Media-Buddy renames the video to a configured naming scheme and adds fanart, .nfo files and mkv tags to the videos. And this with a single mouse click for a whole bunch of videos.. Even for "non movies or series" videos it can generate fanart from various video frames and .nfo from media info and or given values to use in MP, Kodi, Plex,...

If a video is damaged too much the transcoding normally fails. Remuxxing most often fixed a damaged video already.

So I can see if a video is not or not completely transcoded and I know I need to do more work to get it fixed. Most often it then is enough to remuxx the video before transcoding it again. If this is not enough then things are getting complicated. The next steps are depending on the video type and the issue it has... This has to be figured out for every damaged video separately so no general solution available... But this did not happen often.

When the videos are prepared you even can modify the downloaded fanart and/or metatdata if the automatically grabbed fanart and metadata is not like you want them...

Nevertheless I start playing every finished video for a few seconds before I move them into my collection. This way I'll catch 99,99999% (to not saying 100%) of all faulty videos before they are stored in my media library...

Using videos prepared this way I never have any issues with playback or importing them into any HTPC software I know. Only exception is the MP1 plugin TVSeries. This plugin still don't support local fanart or .nfo files also this feature is requested since many years already. Here you need to download all fanart and metadata from TVDB over and over again. For movies (MyVideos, MovingPictures) this is working in MP1 too. All others, MP2, Plex, Kodi, Emby,... are supporting local fanart and .nfo for both, movies and series...

That's the way I prepare all my videos and that's how I eliminate any issues before I start importing anything into MP2 (or similar)... There are other ways to achieve the same but I only use this way since many years now with great success...

 

[pünktchen]

@[member="Lehmden"]
You're always making the same mistake: FFDShow is a Windows DirectShow Codec!
Kodi and the others use ffmpeg.

 

[Alan Honeyman]

Ok, I’ll do some testing. Thanks.

 

[Alan Honeyman]

Ran one of the problem video files using MPC-HC and it played flawlessly.