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[8139david]

I want to do a 'Get Movie and TV Info' for a 2000 movies, under certain conditions.
Each movie already has some information in my local database, including the IMDb field.
If I just do 'Get Movie and TV Info', then MC selects automatically the first match, which is typically the lastest movie with the same name.
Is there a way to force MC to select the movie that has the same IMDb field (and NOT the latest movie with the same name)?

[RoderickGI]

MC actually looks up https://www.themoviedb.org/ for movies. It just happens to return the "IMDb ID" from the lookup as well.

If you are selecting multiple movies and running the "Get Movie & TV Info" function, I believe that MC picks the best match it can find, and uses that. If there are movies that have exactly the same title ( [Name] tag ) I think it uses the [Year] tag, if known, to try to pick the best match.

For example I have the movies "The Day the Earth Stood Still" from 1951 and 2008. If I do a lookup on either one, it finds the correct one and lists it first in the list of results MC returns, and lists the other version second. In fact it lists a third option "Giant Robo: The Day the Earth Stood Still" from 1992 as well. But if the year is correct, it selects the correct movie.

If I select both versions of the movie and run the "Get Movie & TV Info" function on them both are still given the correct information, because they already have the correct [Year] tag, and are therefore the best match.

You can spot check which movie will be selected by running the "Get Movie & TV Info" function against just one movie, and check the list of returned results. The one that is going to be returned if you run the "Get Movie & TV Info" function against multiple movies is always going to be the first on the list of results.

But if you want to lookup multiple movies at once, you are going to have to get the [Year] tag correct first. As always, check this with just a few movies before you do a whole lot, just in case something doesn't work right. Back up your library before you start as well.


BTW, I also tried changing the Search Criteria in the "Get Movie & TV Info" function to just the "IMDb ID" to see if that would force selecting the correct movie. It doesn't. I don't think the lookup takes the "IMDb ID" into account. It just returns that value along with other metadata when it finds a match.

[8139david]

Thanks.
If so, the problem is when several movies have the same title on the same year.
(I had the impression it selected most recent by default, but I'm probably wrong.)
I will do some trials.
But it must be completely reliable, otherwise it will mess up my database.

[8139david]

Would there be a way to run the operation with the command line and additional parameters (eg forcing IMDb value)?
That's the question I was asking.

[RoderickGI]

I understood that was your question. I'm afraid I can't answer that one.

But I thought with the correct year against each movie the lookup would work fine.

Do you really have multiple movies with the same title and from the same year? Can you provide examples? (Just out of interest.)

If you do have such movies, how many of them do you have? Couldn't you exclude those movies from a mass update? It sounds like you may be looking for a solution for a (very?) small number of problem movies.

[8139david]

OK thanks.
I will look at that tonight.

[8139david]

Well, this kind of search (film "Mother" in 1952) suggests results can easily go wrong:
https://www.themoviedb.org/search/movie?query=mother%20y:1952
In this case, it seems to put "Mother" first. But I'm not sure it always does so.

[8139david]

The API itself can be used in various ways:
https://www.themoviedb.org/documentation/api
There is a /find option.
Maybe it can be used in connection with MC?

[RoderickGI]

Well, this kind of search (film "Mother" in 1952) suggests results can easily go wrong:
https://www.themoviedb.org/search/movie?query=mother%20y:1952
In this case, it seems to put "Mother" first. But I'm not sure it always does so.

In the search above MC would have done the correct thing, and picked the exact name match, and would not have picked the second movie, "Mother Riley Meets the Vampire".

Try using some of the examples you have in your library. The problem you have may be real, but the occurrence of the problem must be infequent.

[8139david]

There are problems also with foreign titles. Often, the movie is not found with the English title, even though the English title is in the database!

Sometimes, it's not in TMDB but in Rotten Tomatoes or Wikipedia (eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_%281969_film%29).

Then when that's ok, it's a problem for me with French movies: their titles are put in English (no option to chose the original title).

Also, many names of Asian directors are wrong, eg:
https://www.themoviedb.org/person/64992-hou-hsiao-hsien
The Name is put before the First name.
That's how names are pronounced in many Asian countries.
But with JRiver at least, the consequence is that Name (eg Hou) is seen as First name, and First name (eg Hsiao-Hsien) is seen as Name.

Anyway, I backed up my library, duplicated all important fields (Director -> Director2, Name -> Name2, etc), and did a general Get Movie & TV Info.
Since I had the old fields (eg Director2) and the new ones (eg Director), I could more easily find the mistakes.
But I did spend a few hours correcting them...