Only showing first epsiode (1 Viewer)

[dir]

I'm using RC3 and 1.2.9.34282. I deleted my database and all files in the thumbs subdirectory and re-ran the importer. Provided I don't choose to skip a series or permanently ignore (which crashes it), and provided the internet connection doesn't lose a packet or something (which causes a timeout and halts the import), it finds all episodes.

Because my actual videos are on a network connection I have "Keep reference to files..." ticked under Online Data Sync and "AUtomatically Choose series" ticked (which doesn't really work for about 12 out of 100 series).

It's great and leaves me with only a few suggestions:

- allow for manually specifying the banner to use (via file browser)
- strip out special characters from series names before doing comparisons (like colons and question marks)
- if the series name exactly matches one of the retrieved searches, then pick it automatically even if more than one came back (choose the EXACT one, stripped of special characters of course)
- add an "OK" or "Close" button to the configuration screen so I don't grimmace every time I spend 2 hours updating things and only have an "X" button to close the window down with (which classically means "abort what I was doing and kill this thing" in standard Windows user terms
- make the log window cut and pastable (well, copyable anyway)!

love it, need it, will donate to it!

 

[cool_myll]

I am using RC3 and latest svn of tvseries and it only scan the first import path you set.

 

[Mavoc]

- allow for manually specifying the banner to use (via file browser)

not sure what you mean by file browser, but you can pick the banner manually in the config and in MP. what else would you need?

- strip out special characters from series names before doing comparisons (like colons and question marks)

use the string replacement option to replace a colon with <empty>

Because my actual videos are on a network connection I have "Keep reference to files..." ticked under Online Data Sync and "AUtomatically Choose series" ticked (which doesn't really work for about 12 out of 100 series).

i have a wireless connection to my shares and i drop packets all the time but i do not need to use Automatically Choose series. what is wrong with manually selecting them.


i am using RC2, maybe RC3 isn't as compatible as RC2

 

[fforde]

I am using RC3 and latest svn of tvseries and it only scan the first import path you set.

I think the problem might be that the additional Import Paths you specify are not getting saved. There is a bug with the new removable media functionality that causes this. It will be fixed soon, but as a work around, if you click and then unclick the removable checkbox for a new Import Path you just created, the path should then save properly, which should in turn allow you to scan as many import paths as you need to.

EDIT:
This should now be fixed in the latest SVN.

 

[dir]

- allow for manually specifying the banner to use (via file browser)

not sure what you mean by file browser, but you can pick the banner manually in the config and in MP. what else would you need?

You can only select banners that it has already found via the Internet (I assume). You can't select, for instance, to use a banner you have in d:\mybanners\tv\fraiser.jpg. When the drop-down list is empty, I just want to navigate to the banners I already have.

- strip out special characters from series names before doing comparisons (like colons and question marks)

use the string replacement option to replace a colon with <empty>

You'd have to add in every special character into this list. That doesn't seem logical when everyone's using Windows file system, which doesn't allow these characters anyway. Why force every user to add these manually when it's already impossible to match them as it stands?

Because my actual videos are on a network connection I have "Keep reference to files..." ticked under Online Data Sync and "AUtomatically Choose series" ticked (which doesn't really work for about 12 out of 100 series).

i have a wireless connection to my shares and i drop packets all the time but i do not need to use Automatically Choose series. what is wrong with manually selecting them.

Not sure what you're referring to, but the manual selection method for large collections takes several days to complete. Here's why:

You start the importer running, and since it's going to take a while (usually an hour or so to get through the first pass), you go off and have a life doing other things. When you come back, it's prompting you to select "Allo Allo". You select it, and it goes off for a while to do some things. You don't know how long it's going to take, and after waiting about 5 minutes, you again have a life and do other things. You get back to it later, and it's prompting you for "Bionic Woman" because there's "The Bionic Woman" and "Bionic Woman" and a few other possible selections. You click "Bionic Woman", and again it goes off.

This repeats over and over and over and over and over and frikkin over, and it takes about 2 to 3 days to complete the entire exercise because eventually I have to go to bed, or work, or let the family use the TV. I can't afford to sit at my tv waiting for this to complete and be ready each time to click on the right selection, because I'd go mad waiting.

I accept that for some series there's some ambiguity that needs clarifying, but I've learnt over the years to name my directories and files as close to exactly correct as possible so that I don't get these sort of prompts.

So the solution, in my mind, is to have the logic "Strip out every special character first from the retrieved entries and compare it against the stripped out series name. If there is an EXACT (and I mean, truely, exact - case exact, spacing exact, but again after stripping !, ?, -, :, (, ), ampersand, $, and everything else that isn't A to Z (for english language anyway) and 0-9) match, then use it. Even if there are multiple possibilities.

Example:

My directory = "Bionic Woman"
Possibilities: "Bionic Woman" and "The Bionic Woman".

Use Bionic Woman. If I'd meant "The Bionic Woman", I would have named my directory "The Bionic Woman".

Example:

My directory: "Mr. Bean"
Possibilities: "Mr. Bean" and a few others.

Use "Mr. Bean". But it doesn't see these as equal because (I assume) of the period. Or quotation mark, or question mark, or a bunch of other things. If you ignored these characters, they're exactly the same. But Windows doesn't allow all these characters so I can't name my directories exactly the same, so I get penalised.

Sure, for new users with messy, unstructured directories, they have to standardise and cleanup. But I'm sure we've all gone through the pain of realising that it's really just better to clean up your media collection file names so that you don't have problems all the time. So if you're going to clean things up, you might as well get the names as close to correct as possible.

Therefore, it would be far better to have the option to automatically select exact matches rather than prompting the user, for those of us with clean systems and large collections. The current ability to tell it to automatically choose if there's only one choice doesn't work if there's multiple selections retrieved. You're forced to choose the correct one, even though it's spelled identically. It's nice that "Cash Poker" retrieves about 20 possibilities because there are lots of TV shows that happen to have "Cash" somewhere in their title, but honestly, it's overkill for those of us that have named our directories exactly correct.

My collection's always been larger than usual and I'm usually the first to feel the pain that others eventually feel. So I like to be vocal about these sorts of things early in the development cycle so that it's not so painful later on when a re-write is necessary once the majority of users' collections start getting large. Things like the speed of display and retrieval, concurrent database access, searches, installation, parsing, etc. are all performance issues that hit me especially hard even though they may not appear to be significant issues (yet) for others.

Apologies if this comes across as unduly harsh - I don't mean to be, nor critical. I'm just trying to give a clear rationale for something that causes me so much grief and thus I feel passionate about. I went through months and months of pain with Meedio because plugin authors with small collections didn't see the point of catering to users with large collections. Of course, I eventually learned that money talks louder than long rants, so I happily have contributed several hundred dollars over the last 2 years to Meedio authors, and I'll do the same again here!

I just want what everyone else wants - high WAF, low maintenance, more quality couch time, and my collection presented neatly, visually, comprehensively, and audaciously!

 

[fforde]

Therefore, it would be far better to have the option to automatically select exact matches rather than prompting the user, for those of us with clean systems and large collections. The current ability to tell it to automatically choose if there's only one choice doesn't work if there's multiple selections retrieved. You're forced to choose the correct one, even though it's spelled identically. It's nice that "Cash Poker" retrieves about 20 possibilities because there are lots of TV shows that happen to have "Cash" somewhere in their title, but honestly, it's overkill for those of us that have named our directories exactly correct.

There currently is an option to have the Config tool automatically select a series if it matches your local name exactly. It is not case sensitive, but it is picky about punctuations. It should automatically select a series though even if there are 5 or 6 (or 20) series returned, so long is there is an exact match. The option can be turned on in the Config tool under the Import Settings tab in the Online Data Sync subsection. For some reason it is turned off be default, this may be something we ought to change though...

But you are right, the import process is far too time consuming for larger collections, and something needs to be done to shift all the user interaction to one point in the process. There is going to be no getting around a bit of required interaction, sometime clarification is needed, but there is no reason that can't be done all at once for all series.

 

[dir]

Yeah, but no, but yeah, but...

The option in the menu is already selected. What I tried to explain is that this option is already selected, but it still prompts for at least a dozen shows, because of the reasons I gave -

- the option is worded to automatically choose one selection if there is only one selection. It isn't worded to select the exact match if there are multiple similar choices available. And it behaves the way it's worded. I think you're misinterpreting this option. It certainly does NOT select an exact match if there's multiple choices available. At least, not in every case. I'm not at home right now so I can't run it and tell you which ones it prompts for.

I know it prompts for shows like

Mr. Bean
Who's Line is it Anyway
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Of course, with those examples it's easy to see that the problem is with special characters. Perhaps all the ones I'm being prompted for fall into this situation. I'll have to have a look tonight!

D

 

[fforde]

You're right, the wording in the config screen is not very clear. Regardless of the description, the way the functionality works is it automatically matches any series with the first exact match, case is unimportant but special characters matter. So "mr. bean" would match to "Mr. Bean" but "mr bean" (without the period) would not match to "Mr. Bean". The number of possible matches is unimportant though, so if you have 5 possibles but one exact match, it will automatically select. But if you only have one possible match, and that's it, it will still prompt you to ask if that single series is the one you are looking for because the plugin feels that is an ambiguous match. It could be it it could not.

The whole punctuation thing is kind of silly though in my opinion, so for the next SVN I will try to modify the functionality to strip punctuation before comparing. I'll update the description in the config screen as well to more accurately match the functionality. As far as going with a possible match when there is only one result, we could probably add that in as an option, I would want to talk to Inker about that first though.

I think the real solution here though is to modify the import process to have all user interaction at one specific point, preferably at the very beginning. It really shouldn't be necessary to keep coming back to the import process over and over over the course of three days. It should be a setup and go process. This will take a bit more work to fix, but I will start looking at this this week.