MP2 does not sort videos correctly (1 Viewer)

[Jon Mitchell]

Hi,

As I am soon to update to Windows 10, I uninstalled MP1 and installed MP2. The first thing I noticed after setting up the TV was that .MP4 videos are not sorted into the proper categories. I have added the required resources and have given the correct designation - ie. My encoded films are saved as 'Movies', my encoded TV Programs as 'Series, Video', etc. However, when I go to the appropriate option in the Main Menu ('Movies' 'Series'), there is nothing there.

I can quite easily play them from the 'Browse Media' Media option, so it is not down to their file type format. This is a bit clumsy however as all my TV programs and Films are mixed together.

Is this down to 'Playlists'?

 

[MJGraf]

Hi Jon,

However, when I go to the appropriate option in the Main Menu ('Movies' 'Series'), there is nothing there.

This is most likely caused by MP2 not finding enough information about your movies / series so that it cannot identify them as movies or series.
First of all, I assume that when you select the Main Menu option "Videos", you can see all your movies/series. Is that correct?
Secondly, how did you organize your movies / series? Are they all MP4 files? If so, did you tag your MP4 files? Or do you use nfo-files? If none of them, what is the naming pattern you use for your directory / media files?
For movies e.g.: Media files are only recognized as movies, if either (a) there is a nfo-file with the required information of the movie in the same directory as the movie file or (b) MP2 can identify your media file as a movie on TheMovieDb. For the latter, it can e.g. use an IMDB ID (which it may take from tags or the file or folder name) or the movie name (also e.g. from the media file or folder name - but finding a movie via its name is the less secure way because there may be multiple movies with the same or similar names).
Michael

 

[Jon Mitchell]

Hi.

Thanks for your reply.

All of my videos have been fully tagged. However, I'm not sure that this is relevant as when I am setting up the particular source, I chose the appropriate option from 'Choose the category of media contents located in the media source' option - i.e. 'Series' for my encoded TV shows and 'Movie' for my encoded films. Surely this would mean that any video in these folder sources would show in the appropriate Main menu?

When I view the particular main menu option ('Movies' or 'Series') using the 'To folder view', the correct folder shows up. However the contents of the folder is blank, even though the folder has videos in it and these videos show through the 'Browse Media' main menu option.[DOUBLEPOST=1440078077][/DOUBLEPOST]As a matter of interest, I have a message on the Media Source menu option that reads as follows: 'The home server is located at the same machine, so only server media sources can be configured.' Is this relevant?

 

[MJGraf]

All of my videos have been fully tagged. However, I'm not sure that this is relevant as when I am setting up the particular source, I chose the appropriate option from 'Choose the category of media contents located in the media source' option - i.e. 'Series' for my encoded TV shows and 'Movie' for my encoded films. Surely this would mean that any video in these folder sources would show in the appropriate Main menu?

Nope, not really
When you select e.g. "Movie", it only means that it tries to identify the items in this source as movies - if it doesn't succeed, they will not show up there. Same goes for Series.

As a matter of interest, I have a message on the Media Source menu option that reads as follows: 'The home server is located at the same machine, so only server media sources can be configured.' Is this relevant?

Relevant insofar, as I now know that you added "Server MediaSources", which is the only kind of MediaSource you can add when MP2-Server and MP2-Client are located on the same computer. It means that the MP2-Server process takes care of importing your media.

Now if you have tagged all your mp4-files and they do not show up in the movies section, something is wrong with (a) either your tagging or (b) MP2's importer. To help you further, please do the following:

• Remove the movie MediaSource
• Stop MP2-Client and MP2-Server
• Start MP2-Server and MP2-Client
• Add the movie MediaSource again
• Wait until the import has finished
• Post all the log files from your MP2-Server's log directory here.

(sorry, I don't know your background, if you don't know how to do any of the above, please ask - happy to help...)

Thanks!
Michael

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.

Now if you have tagged all your mp4-files

Metatags are only read from Matroska videos atm. MP4 is not supported. We haven't found a free tool like mkvinfo (for mkv ofc.), that can handle metatags of mp4 files... MediaInfo is no proper replacement as it doesn't handle metatags very well.

So if it comes to mp4 you need to have a proper naming scheme or, much better some proper .nfo files alongside your movies / series...

One of the millions of reasons why mkv is the much better container. Lately I've tried to add mp4 support to MKV-Buddy but I gave up. About 80% of the videos I have are not muxing properly to mp4 but 100% are easily muxing into mkv...
WIth the upcomimg MKV-Buddy V2.0 you will be able to recode videos to mp4, download fanart and metadata and generate 100% MP2- compatible .nfo files for all of your mp4 files, but the optimizer functions and the fast remuxing is impossible to realize for mp4. Tagging may be possible, but this is something with very low priority...

 

[MJGraf]

Thanks, Lehmden!
But we actually DO extract metadata from MP4 tags - at least we try, no idea if it works, though, as I don't have MP4-fíles.
Here in the VideoMDE we extract title, year, genres and performers from MP4 tags using TagLib#.
Have you ever tried whether or not this works?

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.
TagLib is used for reading tags from audio files. And here it's working properly. Reading tags from videos isn't the goal of it, as far as I know... (but not 100% sure)
Personally I don't have any mp4 videos in my collection, but I know some who have. Mainly the users of Apple computer and/or software (like iTunes) are using mp4 due to the lack of MKV support by Apple. None of them has reported MP2 to be able to read tags from .mp4 video files so I'm pretty sure that is is not working on Videos atm.

For MKV we have an extra plugin (MatroskaLib) that reads the matroska tags to identify the video during import into the ML... By the way, after the MIA rework we also should have an eye on this plugin, as it can be used to extract attached fanart and .nfo files from MKV videos too, but this isn't used inside MP2 atm. In fact it only uses data that is 100% needed for identifying the video only (IMDB-ID on movies and TVDB-ID, Season and Episodes Numbers from Series) nothing more... ATM I'm not sure if this is a good behaviour or not. Tags couldn't get lost like e.G. nfo files so it would be good to read them all, but on the other hand they are not that easy to edit if something is changing on the metadata. Imagine an ongoing series that is translated with some delay so maybe the time you tag the videos there is no localized name and description available. If the Tags would be preferred you need to manipulate the video file itself to get this updated metadata..

When I'm finished porting all known functionality from MKV-Buddy V1 to V2 I will try to fiddle around with "AtomicParsley" a bit (a CLI tool to tag MP4 files). Maybe there is a way to use it inside MKV-Buddy too. Then I can test myself if tags from mp4 videos are read properly also I don't believe this... But first I need the new Buddy to be able doing all things the old one could do... Maybe two or three weeks before I can start this.

 

[MJGraf]

Reading tags from videos isn't the goal of it, as far as I know...

I tend to agree - but nevertheless we do so here.

All of my videos have been fully tagged.

What program did you use to tag your files?

 

[dfraga]

I recently was having similar issues, some of which were with MP4 and some not. For what it's worth, what I found was with movies the easiest way to get everything working was to put the IMDB ID number in the folder name. I just put it after the tile in parentheses and it worked great. With the series, I was having issues when there is more than one available option. For example, shows that have the same title but are versions from different countries. With this problem, it didn't seem to work to just have the country ID ( for example (US) ) in the folder name. However, when I added (US) to the name of each episode the correct information was scraped. I found this through a bit of trial and error and a lot of help from @Lehmden. I tried using the TVDB numbers in the folder name, but it didn't seem to work. I don't think I tried the IMDB numbers for series though now that I think about it. View the thread here if it helps - https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...iaportal-2-media-library-editor.129078/page-9

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.

but it didn't seem to work

This is a limitation of the TVDB API. The API don't find anything if the TVDB- ID is used as a search string. And same is for IMDB-ID. This also did not work. So there is nothing we can do from our side.