mVids - Music Video Database (2 Viewers)

[zOnk.oNe]

Database skips all subfolders...

Yo...I just installed this plugin a bit ago and have read through this entire thread hoping that there would be an answer to my dilemma. For some reason when I scan my music video folder (/tower/video/music_videos) none of the videos that are in their own folders show up. Well, it says 'added to update que', but I don't see any of them once MP is launched.
Almost all (besides 4) of my video files are all in folders labeled: artist-title-source-format-year and the files inside them are labeled the same. I don't have any special characters or foreign languages.
I used the version 968 from main repository.

Any idea as to why this is happening?

Nice plugin (once I get it fully functioning..hehehe). I been lookin for something like this

thanks

**My apologies if I missed something written previously in this thread that coulda helped me.

 

[bounguine]

Haven’t yet test full-structured DVDs copied to HDD.

But with the extensions like *.mpeg, *.avi, etc listed your plugin I found this:
1) No scanning of files with capital letters used in extensions (*.AVI, etc);
2) No *.asf extension > no files scanned (it’s better for a user to distinguish the extensions he has like in MyVideos);
3) Info retrieved is only in English although you can choose you language on Last.fm page (it’s funny to read info about Russian groups in English – the same is “Дэвид Боуи – известный музыкант…” for you – try to understand that it’s about David Bowie), as a result, I miss tags for Russian groups;
4) Many thumbs of songs are missing (thumbs for the artist although are retrieved);
5) No scanning of pictures with the mask like “folder.*” from HDD;
6) Pressing “update artist info…” causes an exception;
7) If you change dbManager window size, you see that fields are still on the place they’ve been before it and the whole window becomes a mess.

And there’s still one feature I still waiting for.
Stop adding artists into DB only after Last.fm scanning.
Change it to scanning files names.
I can live with playing files I have without any thumbs, but it’s really a torture to watch only what Last.fm can recognize.
Can you agree that the main purpose is to play all files from HDD.

So, as it’s not implemented up to now:
1) I was asked to put a name for “Bjork”, as it was not found on Last.fm; I did but no luck; still missing her songs;
2) I was not asked to put any new name (scanning was in the background), but I miss “Bouncing Souls”, “Kid Rock”, “KMFDM”, “Kittie”, etc;
3) As there’s no chance to put a mask for scanning files, “Beastie Boys - 2 dollar bill - 09 - Skills To Pay The Bills.mpg”, “Beastie Boys - 2 dollar bill - 02 - Root Down.mpg” and “Beastie Boys - 2 dollar bill - 03 - Right Right Now Now.mpg” all turned to “Beastie Boys - 2 dollar bill” in DB (I’d love to put a mask “artist(space)–(space)song” for it);
4) The plugin has no masks for scanning and as a result it doesn’t see “space”; that is why “Beastie Boys - Ch-check It Out.mpg” turned to “Beastie Boys – Ch” and the artist in “Fermin Muguruza & Afro-Basque Fire Brigade - Sarri SArri (Vina Rock 2007).avi” turned to ““Fermin Muguruza & Afro-“;
5) Last.fm doesn’t always know “double” artists like “La Phaze & Mouss & Hakim”, so I had to put a new name “La Phaze”, which it knows, to have these artists in DB, but in DB window I can’t change it back to a true name.

As a result, I miss ½ of my videos.
Agree that’s a bad result.
And yet full concerts from copied DVDs are not scanned.

Best regards

 

[jburnette]

Sorry guys, I've been out of the state because of work for the past week so I'm just now back to polishing up the next version. I hope to get it out this weekend as it is much improved.

For some reason when I scan my music video folder (/tower/video/music_videos) none of the videos that are in their own folders show up. Well, it says 'added to update que', but I don't see any of them once MP is launched.

I'm almost positive this is a result of a bug that was limiting the actual adding to only go 1 level deep in a folder structure. This is fixed (I think) in the next version. Try it out when I upload it and let me know if it fixes this problem.

But with the extensions like *.mpeg, *.avi, etc listed your plugin I found this:
1) No scanning of files with capital letters used in extensions (*.AVI, etc);
2) No *.asf extension > no files scanned (it’s better for a user to distinguish the extensions he has like in MyVideos);

The plugin copies the extensions you have setup in the Videos section of MediaPortal configuration, so if you haven't specified .asf in it's configuration, it won't pick it up. You've got a good point though so I'm going to go ahead and add a field in the configuration that will be pre-populated with those extensions and allow you to add your own. As far as the uppercase problem, that's a pretty easy fix and I'll go ahead and take care of that now for the next version.

3) Info retrieved is only in English although you can choose you language on Last.fm page (it’s funny to read info about Russian groups in English – the same is “Дэвид Боуи – известный музыкант…” for you – try to understand that it’s about David Bowie), as a result, I miss tags for Russian groups;

First of all, keep in mind that the information in the first release was all pulled from allmusic, not last.fm. The next version will pull all information from last.fm. Unfortunately though the language is out of my control. With last.fm you may see language specific bios for groups that are native to that country (depending on what language the person who wrote the bio speaks, I guess). With allmusic, which is where your data was originally being pulled from, it was all english regardless. HOWEVER, last.fm is working on adding support for pulling down descriptions in a specific language. A last.fm developer has said he's going to implement it but hasn't yet. See this thread on last.fm's developer group:

Artist bio summary language ? Last.fm Web Services Discussions ? Last.fm

4) Many thumbs of songs are missing (thumbs for the artist although are retrieved);

This is a ffmpeg problem. You could try downloading a more recent build of ffmpeg here:

SourceForge.net: Files

But it may come down to a problem with the video codec of the specific video not being compatible with ffmpeg. If that doesn't work, use something like gspot and let me know what the actual codec is and I'll see if I can find another tool to use that would support it. I've got the same problem with a few of my poor quality/badly encoded videos, but I haven't had a chance to sit down and look at what codec was used to compress it.

5) No scanning of pictures with the mask like “folder.*” from HDD;

I'm working on this.

6) Pressing “update artist info…” causes an exception;

I take it you're using one of the random builds I've attached to a thread previously? That button wasn't (and at the moment still isn't) fully implemented. It will be though. I just went ahead and put the button there when I was redoing the manager window.

7) If you change dbManager window size, you see that fields are still on the place they’ve been before it and the whole window becomes a mess.

Yeah, nothing is anchored yet to deal with resizing that window. That's one of the last things I'll do before I upload the next version, but I appreciate you reminding me about it.

And there’s still one feature I still waiting for.
Stop adding artists into DB only after Last.fm scanning.
Change it to scanning files names.
I can live with playing files I have without any thumbs, but it’s really a torture to watch only what Last.fm can recognize.
Can you agree that the main purpose is to play all files from HDD.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Can you elaborate a little?

So, as it’s not implemented up to now:
1) I was asked to put a name for “Bjork”, as it was not found on Last.fm; I did but no luck; still missing her songs;
2) I was not asked to put any new name (scanning was in the background), but I miss “Bouncing Souls”, “Kid Rock”, “KMFDM”, “Kittie”, etc;
3) As there’s no chance to put a mask for scanning files, “Beastie Boys - 2 dollar bill - 09 - Skills To Pay The Bills.mpg”, “Beastie Boys - 2 dollar bill - 02 - Root Down.mpg” and “Beastie Boys - 2 dollar bill - 03 - Right Right Now Now.mpg” all turned to “Beastie Boys - 2 dollar bill” in DB (I’d love to put a mask “artist(space)–(space)song” for it);
4) The plugin has no masks for scanning and as a result it doesn’t see “space”; that is why “Beastie Boys - Ch-check It Out.mpg” turned to “Beastie Boys – Ch” and the artist in “Fermin Muguruza & Afro-Basque Fire Brigade - Sarri SArri (Vina Rock 2007).avi” turned to ““Fermin Muguruza & Afro-“;

Customizable search patterns is something I'm working on. You can obviously understand the difficulty here since many videos have garbage after the second hyphen (like artist-song-xvid-, etc.). I have the same problem with videos from groups like Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. My temporary workaround was to just remove the hyphens from the name since it will still get matched correctly without them. How would you suggest I handle this? Would you want a report shown after scanning that allows you to check the parsed names of all videos that had more than one dash in it? Or would you rather choose during scanning? This is something I'm not sure on the best way to implement.

5) Last.fm doesn’t always know “double” artists like “La Phaze & Mouss & Hakim”, so I had to put a new name “La Phaze”, which it knows, to have these artists in DB, but in DB window I can’t change it back to a true name.

Yeah, I agree complete with this. Something I've got to finish up before this next release is the ability for you to have a "displayed name" that is different than the name that matches last.fm's. Just like with TV-Series, I have to have some type of unique identifies for every video that matches out data source. One thing you can do is just play that song in MediaPortal's music section and make sure you've setup the last.fm options for it. That will add it to last.fm's database making it visible to this plugin.

As a result, I miss ½ of my videos.
Agree that’s a bad result.

Definitely not good, but this was the first version so bear with me - we'll get up to 100% coverage pretty soon.

And yet full concerts from copied DVDs are not scanned.
Best regards

On the todo list still.

Again, thanks for the great detailed feedback. You always give me plenty of things to look at . I appreciate it, though, as you have been a great help in pointing out problems I otherwise wouldn't have come across. Keep it coming.

 

[bounguine]

OK.
What I meant here is changing the whole scheme of adding videos into DB.
Now it’s done something like this:
scanning for files > looking info for each one in the online DB > if info found correctly, artist, track and picture are added to the DB, if not, no record’s made in the DB.

My proposal was different (it’s more like scanning files in MyMusic and many music progs or movie catalogues):
putting mask(s) for scanning > scanning folders and files > adding artist, album, track records into the DB by retrieving info from the name of each folder/file found > if Folder.(picture extension) found, adding it as an artist’s picture, if (name of the folder/file).(picture extension) found, adding it as an album’s/song’s thumb.

This way we’ll have:
- ALL videos from HDD registered in the DB (if, of course, a user put all the extensions before scanning),
- a user is not dependant on the online DB (he’ll have artists, which are not in the online DB),
- artists from the registered videos would have correct names (remember my example of “double” artists, like “La Phaze & Mouss & Hakim”, which I had to change to “La Phaze”, only because the online DB didn’t have any variant).

Of course, after scanning there wouldn’t be any info (except pictures found on HDD).
To attach bios, tags and pictures a user might do this:
1) simply watch a video and scanning would be made in the background (!!! info is added only if there’s no multiple choice after seeking the online DB, if there’s, the artist gets no info),
2) open dbManager window and press “get info for all artists from online DB” or the same button for a particular artist – here a user would manipulate multiple choices if this occurs (!!! but the name of the artist registered in DB after scanning files shouldn’t be changed, as this operation is used only for getting an info and a picture, which was not found in Folder.(picture extension) or (name of the folder/file).(picture extension)).

I didn’t have much time to think it over, so let’s think together.

STEP 1 – putting a mask for scanning folders or files and retrieving names from them.

Definitely, the four main parameters for filtering music are:
- artists – for getting songs or albums,
- genre – for getting songs or albums
- albums – for getting albums of a particular artist/genre or all artists/genres and playing them once,
- songs - for getting songs of a particular artist/genre or all artists/genres and playing them once or making a playlist.

Copied DVDs (with the full DVD structure) in most cases deal with artists and albums.
Files (like *.avi, etc) deal with artists, songs or albums (if it’s a DVDRip).

Here’s the first problem – albums are to be played once in most cases, songs – once or in a playlist.
That’s why a user should keep full movies and songs separately not to be messed up when scanning is done.
The plugin in the skin should have at least two filters:
1) Filter by (artist, genre, year),
2) Filter by (all, only songs, only albums).

So, the four main operators used in mask are (like in mp3 tags): %ar (artist), %g (genre), %al (album), %t (track)
If there’s no “%” in the mask, “t” should be treated as a letter “t” but not as a song.
And some more optional operators can be also used: %ix (number of the track), %y (year) and %ig (ignore a part of a file name).

If someone defines a mask, %ar and %al (or %t) are obligatory.

Names, which can be used as artists, albums, songs or genres, are most likely to be:

- (for DVDs)
in the folder name (or in the name of the folder(s) of upper level(s)), example:
\Classical\Bach\Concierto Italien (or Bach - Concierto Italien)\VIDEO_TS,
(folder name for the genre)\(folder name for the artist)\(folder name for the album – in the second case the operator “%ig” may be applied to exclude “Bach – “)
or
\Bach - Concierto Italien)\VIDEO_TS
(folder name for the artist and the album).

- (for files)
in the file name and the folder name (or the name of the folder(s) of upper level(s)), example.:
\Manu Chao\ Manu Chao - Tempo Latino 2006\ Manu Chao - Tempo Latino 2006.avi
(folder name for the artist)\(folder name for the artist and the album – both can be excluded)\(file name for the artist and the album)
or
\Manu Chao\Me Ilaman Calle.avi
(folder name for the artist)\(file name for the song).

Here comes the second and the third problems:
- DVDs has name info in most cases in folder names, files – in file names and optionally in folder names,
- folders used for retrieving names may be of one or even of different levels in hierarchy depending on the user’s folders structure.

So, when pointing out root folders for scanning a user should:
- point out a complex mask for each root folder (each root folder should have a complex mask of its own),
- distinguish between “songs” and “albums” for each root folder,
- apply two masks inside one complex mask per each root folder – one for full-structured DVDs, the second – for files,
- be able to add as many folders used for retrieving data both for DVDs’ mask and files’ mask (by default – “file name” and “folder name”, others to be added manually).

Here’s the example – I have three root folders for scanning:
1) C:\Opera\(artist name)\(artist name) – (album name)\(artist name) – (album name).* only for files – genre is in the upper folder, only albums, both DVDs and files,
2) C:\Concerts & movies\(artist name)\(album name)\(album name).* only for files – no genre defined, only albums, both DVDs and files,
3) C:\Clips\(artist name)\(song).* - no genre defined, only songs, only files.

This might be my three complex masks:
1) 1st root folder
“albums” – checked,
Mask for DVDs:
“file name” – left blank,
“folder name” – a) %ar - %al, b) %ig - %al,
“folder name +1” – a) left blank, b) %ar,
“folder name +2” - %g
Mask for files:
“file name” – a) %ar - %al, b) %ig - %al, c) left blank,
“folder name” – a) left blank, b) %ar - %ig or left blank c) %ar - %al or %ig - %al,
“folder name +1” – a) left blank, b) left blank or %ar - %ig, c) left blank or %ar - %ig,
“folder name +2” - %g

2) 2nd root folder
“albums” – checked,
Mask for DVDs:
“file name” – left blank,
“folder name” – %al,
“folder name +1” – %ar,
Mask for files:
“file name” – a) %al, b) left blank,
“folder name” – a) left blank, b) %al,
“folder name +1” – a) %ar

3) 3rd root folder
“songs” – checked,
Mask for DVDs:
“file name” – left blank,
“folder name” – left blank,
Mask for files:
“file name” – %t,
“folder name” – %ar,

It’s very useful to have a button for testing predefined masks (for example, to test on the first folder found with a DVD or with a file).

STEP 2 – scanning root folders

After the masks are predefined the plugin starts scanning folders, retrieves names and writes them into DB.
If in the folder of the lowest level Folder.(picture extension) is found, it stands for the artist’s picture in the DB (the artist's operator is in the mask).
As there may be several folders of one artist (eg. several concerts of one artist), the first Folder.(picture extension) found is considered to be the artist's thumb.

If (name of the folder/file).(picture extension) found, it’s used for the album’s/song’s picture (album's and song's operators are in the mask).

STEP 3 – retrieving data from the online DB

a) When watching a video.

The plugin goes to the online DB and tries to get info.
If it’s a case of multiple choice or the artist is not found, no data is retrieved.
If the artist is recognized:
- (only if pictures where not added during scanning) artist’s thumb is downloaded from the online DB and album’s/song’s thumb is retrieved from the file,
- bio is added - it’d be great, if a user could predefine: “add only if the field is blank” (default), ”add before old bio” (new article is added above the old one, something like “* * *” is used as a line between articles) or “substitute old bio”,
- tags (genres) are added – again with a feature like: “add only if the field is blank” (default), “add more tags” (adding new tags after the ones defined in the DB) or “don’t add tags”.

b) In dbManager window (a user presses “get info for all artists from online DB” or the same button for a particular artist).

If a user in the window of a multiple choice is asked to choose an artist from a list or to put a new name, it’s used only for getting info from the online DB for the record in the local DB, which is not recognized (no data is changed in the local DB, all names stay the same as they were after scanning).
The whole further procedure is the same is described in (a).

STEP 4 – editing info

A user can edit all fields:
- change artist’s name,
- change song’s or album’s name,
- change file’s location (“Filename”) through browsing to the actual file’s location,
- change bio,
- delete thumbs and add new ones through online DB or through uploading picture locally,
- change other fields,
- delete the whole record,
- add a new record manually.

STEP 5 – filtering data in MP

To treat albums and songs correctly the plugin in the skin should have at least two filters:
1) Filter by (artist (default), genre, year),
2) Filter by (all (default), only songs, only albums).

This way it’d be easier to filter out songs for making a playlist.

 

[zOnk.oNe]

Originally Posted by zOnk.oNe View Post
For some reason when I scan my music video folder (/tower/video/music_videos) none of the videos that are in their own folders show up. Well, it says 'added to update que', but I don't see any of them once MP is launched.

I'm almost positive this is a result of a bug that was limiting the actual adding to only go 1 level deep in a folder structure. This is fixed (I think) in the next version. Try it out when I upload it and let me know if it fixes this problem.

^^Cool. Thanks for the info. Looking forward to checkin out the next release

 

[MartinH32]

Hi,
This is just what I have been looking for. It's only working on a handful of videos though.
Some videos get around 10 -12 seconds in, break up and the machine hangs. I've tried it with a couple of skins and get the same problem. I'm using RC3 under XP service pack 3. Normal ISO dvd's play fine.
Any ideas what the problem could be?

thanks

 

[jburnette]

Sorry guys, I've been away with work and have recently started back into college so I've been a bit busy. I know I had promised a new release a while back so I'm going to try to get that finished up ASAP as it should solve pretty much all of the problems people have been having (hopefully).

My proposal was different (it’s more like scanning files in MyMusic and many music progs or movie catalogues):
putting mask(s) for scanning > scanning folders and files > adding artist, album, track records into the DB by retrieving info from the name of each folder/file found > if Folder.(picture extension) found, adding it as an artist’s picture, if (name of the folder/file).(picture extension) found, adding it as an album’s/song’s thumb.

....

Yeah, I will definitely in the future start using the directory structure to better organize the videos. I really don't like the idea of automatically adding ANY video that can not be matched against the last.fm database. The reason is that it will inevitably lead to multiple entries for the same artist when multiple videos have the same artist named differently (for example, "The Rolling Stones" and "Rolling Stones"). With last.fm any artist who is at least popular enough to have a video should definitely be in their database. One of the problems right now is that my database functions were written based on allmusic.com's way of doing things which was very confining. With last.fm I now have a unique id for every artist. I still have to change a lot of things to make it so that it's more flexible as far as you being able to change more of the stored info.

I'm going to add the ability to preview how videos will be parsed like you suggested and preview what information is being taken from the filename itself and the directory structure. I'm just going to use a simple grid view like TVSeries does for it's parsing test. That should allow you to fix the parsed video names that are currently always wrong when an artist has a dash in their name. It will also allow you to add/change information like year or artist before you even scan. I'll also add the ability to see videos currently in your database the same way so it should be quicker to make changes and add information.

You're right that it's constricting right now since it doesn't use the folder structure which would allow a really easy way to have things like year, genre, tags, etc added based on what folder you drop a video in later on so I'm going to work on adding thay. Being able to filter based on this information will be easy once it's actually stored in the database.

The biggest problem is that there is absolutely no GOOD data source that I can find to get information about just music videos and artists themselves. The biggest flaw with last.fm is that they have so many bad artist names because of the mass number of mp3s scrobbled with bad ID3 tags. Something like thetvdb or themoviedb is definitely needed for music, especially if it would allow you to enter information specifically about videos and upload a good relevant thumb for each video. I'd definitely be interested in helping out if someone decided to create something like that.

Hi,
This is just what I have been looking for. It's only working on a handful of videos though.
Some videos get around 10 -12 seconds in, break up and the machine hangs. I've tried it with a couple of skins and get the same problem. I'm using RC3 under XP service pack 3. Normal ISO dvd's play fine.
Any ideas what the problem could be?

thanks

Could you post your Mediaportal.log after this happens so I can see what's happening? I'm just using MediaPortal's built in video player so I'm not sure how this plugin is causing that but I'd like to find out.

 

[thesystemera]

Hey how that new version coming along Don't worry mate, know what it's like to be flat out... Gotta say very cool plugin, and quite usable as is.. Thanks

 

[bounguine]

Yes, it's great.
Without possible bugs it could be even a great movie catalogue.
Still waiting for the next version to test

 

[Jedfordski]

Help I'm having trouble updating the database. Originally I thought the plugin wasn't seeing some new VOB files I added, as all the other files were showing correctly. I went into config and cleared the database so nothing showed. I cliced on refresh and it found all the files and said they were added to update queue. However, they don't appear \when I look in the Music videos DB section in Mediaportal. I've also gone back into config and manually added a couple of the VOBs that I thought were a problem and it pics them up fine. How do I get the plugin to refresh all my entries without me having to go in and manually add them all?