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[BartMan01]

I just got a schedules direct subscription for WMC and set up TV in MC to record OTA data as a backup also using the SD feed. The data in WMC is fine in regards to Season and Episode, but it is messed up in MC. In MC the Season is the series year and the episode is either SSEE (season+episode) or garbage text.

Any thoughts on what might be configured wrong or where I can look to see why the Season/Episode tags contain the wrong data? I tried looking at the cached XML file in the settings folder but that is just a 1k file and doesn't have any real data in it that I can see using Notepad.

[CountryBumkin]

Are you running the stand-alone mc2xml ver1.6? If yes, when you set it up for Schedules Direct pick the Schedules Direct JSON. Then you put in your username and password, and in the next screen you pick the type of guide data you want (OTA, Cable, etc.).

Does this part of the setup work? If your running mc2xml "outside of MC" it will generate a XMLTV.xml file in the folder where mc2xml is run from. That xml file is viewable in notepad (probably with Excel too).
http://mc2xml.awardspace.info/

I use Schedules Direct (USA) and have no issues with Season and Episode data.

[BartMan01]

Are you running the stand-alone mc2xml ver1.6?

No, I am using the build in mc2xml. I will look at running the stand alone version. Thanks.

[BartMan01]

Switching to the external mc2xml program did the trick. Thanks.

[BartMan01]

Spoke too soon. Using the external mc2xml option I am still seeing the garbage data in MC. When I look at the downloaded XML file the season and episode data does appear to be there. Any thoughts on what I might be doing wrong?

For example, tonight's The Blacklist episode is listed in MC as Season 2017, Episode is blank. Here is the XML data for that episode in the file:

Code: [Select]

<programme start="20170223200000 -0600" stop="20170223210000 -0600" channel="I2.1.21250.schedulesdirect.org">
<title lang="en">The Blacklist</title>
<sub-title lang="en">Apothecary</sub-title>
<desc lang="en">After being given a dose of deadly poison, Red must find out which of his closest confidants betrayed him; Liz and the task force search for the toxin's designer in a desperate attempt to save Red.</desc>
<credits>
<actor>James Spader</actor>
<actor>Megan Boone</actor>
<actor>Diego Klattenhoff</actor>
<actor>Harry Lennix</actor>
<actor>Ryan Eggold</actor>
<actor>Hisham Tawfiq</actor>
<actor>Amir Arison</actor>
<actor>Mozhan Marnò</actor>
<actor>Jon Bokenkamp</actor>
<producer>Jon Bokenkamp</producer>
<producer>John Eisendrath</producer>
<producer>John Davis</producer>
<producer>John Fox</producer>
</credits>
<date>20170223</date>
<category lang="en">Crime drama</category>
<category lang="en">Action</category>
<category lang="en">Suspense</category>
<episode-num system="dd_progid">EP01738690.0085</episode-num>
<episode-num system="xmltv_ns">3.14.</episode-num>
<video>
<aspect>16:9</aspect>
<quality>HDTV</quality>
</video>
<audio>
<stereo>dolby digital</stereo>
</audio>
<new />
<subtitles type="teletext" />
<rating system="Australian Classification Board">
<value>MA 15+</value>
</rating>
<rating system="Canadian Parental Rating">
<value>14+</value>
</rating>
<rating system="Departamento de Justiça, Classificação, Títulos e Qualificação">
<value>14</value>
</rating>
<rating system="USA Parental Rating">
<value>TV14</value>
</rating>
</programme>

[Yaobing]

This: <episode-num system="xmltv_ns">3.14.</episode-num>, indicates "Season 4", "Episode 15".

We use year in season field only if there is no explicit season number.  I do not know what happened in your case.  I made a little change in the code so be sure to test again when a new build comes out in a few days.

[BartMan01]

Apparently this was user error. I chose the option to re-do setup and chose the external XML option. I assumed this would replace the existing configuration but it added to it instead. I went in today to confirm the setup and both guide configurations were out there. After deleting the internal entry and re-running the schedule pull the items corrected themselves.

[BartMan01]

Well, maybe not user error. I noticed that the guide wasn't getting updated. When mc2xml was being run the xml data file was not being updated. After trying a few things with no luck, I started over from scratch.

I deleted everything from c:\mc2xml except the executable and reran guide setup from inside MC. mc2xml ran and I set the parameters. It created the xml file and now that file gets updated each time I run from inside MC.

I was still seeing garbage in the guide so I chose the option to delete all guide data and then reran the guide fetch. MC is still full of garbage data.

The attached images show what I am seeing in the guide and what my guide setup looks like.

[CountryBumkin]

It looks like your back to the internal MC guide data retrieval.
You can't use (or don't want to) the MC "mc2xml" selection if your paying for Schedules direct data. You pick "XMLTV" data in the MC program, and run mc2xml (ver 1.6) outside of MC. Then import the xmltv.xml file into MC.

[BartMan01]

It looks like your back to the internal MC guide data retrieval.
You can't use (or don't want to) the MC "mc2xml" selection if your paying for Schedules direct data. You pick "XMLTV" data in the MC program, and run mc2xml (ver 1.6) outside of MC. Then import the xmltv.xml file into MC.

As far as I can tell, I am using the external mc2xml - see the second screen shot:
Guide Mode = XMLTV
Details = Run executable C:\mc2xml.exe, Data file: C:\mc2xml\xmltv.xml.

[imeric]

EDITED: What You could do is:
1. go in your mc2xml 1.6 folder and delete the mc2xml.dat file if one is present
2. Run mc2xml.exe manually from there first.
3. Enter your username/pwd plus region and Select OTA from the choices you have.
(You could actually do #2-3 in the MC setup for TV or under Load Program Guide if you want as you only need to do this once.)

Then set it up as per my snapshot for it to run automatically in MC.

Have a look at the mc2xml webpage to get more info on these below:
-d 720 is to grab the data for 30 days (I think default is seven which IMHO is not enough and Max is 21 or 504 hours but just in case this changes in the future I set it to 720...)
-C is to grab just the wanted channels (Optional but very handy for my STB as I have hundreds of unwanted channels making the xml file way too big for nothing)
-o is where to put the xml file that will be read. (Optional you don't really need this as long as your xmltv.xml file is in the same folder as mc2xml.exe but I had some strange issues in the past and this seemed to help not confusing the OTA and STB profiles)

That's how I have it setup and it works great. I actually have 2 separate profiles (and separate mc2xml folders) one for OTA and another for Satellite.

**Make sure under load program once it's setup to delete any other profiles and to clear program data before you run the new profile

Hope this helps!

[CountryBumkin]

Your setup is all correct. BTW - I don't use any command line arguments like imeric does.

The data just looks like my old "OTA" data. Before I switched to SD JSON.
I'll take a look at my guide data in MC when I get home tonight. Maybe something is going on with SD.

[imeric]

This: <episode-num system="xmltv_ns">3.14.</episode-num>, indicates "Season 4", "Episode 15".

We use year in season field only if there is no explicit season number.  I do not know what happened in your case.  I made a little change in the code so be sure to test again when a new build comes out in a few days.

I'm seeing Year in a few shows lately so Yaobing something might be broken...I'll cehck in more details tonight

Everything looks fine.  Season #s are all there for shows that have it in the xml file with SD.
Countrybumkin let us know if you see any different.

[BartMan01]

So far my luck with SD has been bad, when I finally got everything cleared out for WMC reconfig the servers were down for maintenance so I had to wait till the next day to reconfigure WMC.

SD JSON feed was also down for a while yesterday right when I was re-configuring everything.

I'll do a reset of the guide when I get a chance and see if that fixes things. I wanted to confirm I wasn't missing anything stupid but it sounds like it should be working the way I have it. I will also try some of the parameters to see if that makes a difference at all since I am using SD to pull data for both Comcast (for EPG123/WMC) and OTA for MC.

Thanks for the help.

[CountryBumkin]

I looked at my Guide Data from Schedules Direct in the MC TV Program listing, and it looks pretty much like yours. But everything I record has the correct Season and Episode number.
I think there may just be some weird guide data provided to SD from the broadcasters - either that or MC just does a great job figuring out the correct S and E numbers from the data.

[imeric]

22.0.77 (3/1/2017)
2. Changed: A small rearrangement in coding in an attempt to fix the problem of "Season" being wrong when loading EPG data from xmltv files.

What were the changes done? Just tested it and it didn't make any changes for me.  I'm looking at my XMLTV file (and yes SD seems to be missing data for some shows...)

However I found another issue.
1. I cleared my program data
2. Re-Loaded my guide data and noticed some shows were missing.
3. Re-ran it and it populated properly.  I've seen this in other versions so I don't think it's specific to 0.77

[BartMan01]

I didn't see any immediate changes with 77 either.

I deleted the internal mc2xml .dat files, the standalone mc2xml dat file and the xml file and then did a full reset of all TV settings. After re-setting it all up from scratch it looks correct now. I will monitor over the next few days and confirm it continues to work as expected.

[imeric]

I just tried this again and same issue as posted above (see attached);

See snapshot.  It does seem to grab the data when I run it a second time and doesn't seem to be an issue when it loads it automatically.

To get back on topic I looked at the XMLTV files and all Seasons not showing up are due to Missing Data from SD. Has it got worst lately? I'M not sure.
Yaobing I'd love to know what change was done but for me it didn't change anything. (Actually I still think MC is doing what it's supposed to do if the data is missing...)

[Yaobing]

The change I made was really not much, as I did not see any problems.  You most likely would not see any difference.  I made the change just for that slim chance maybe it would make a difference. 

[CountryBumkin]

I think you should look at the SD data (open the xmltv.xml file) and see if there is Season and Episode data. If there is data and MC is not displaying it, then Yaobing needs to know. But I think you find that the issue is with the data not MC. Below is a screen shot of what the data looks like in the (SD) xml file.
Good luck.

[imeric]

If there is data and MC is not displaying it, then Yaobing needs to know.

Maybe I should have started a new thread as this issue has nothing to do with Season and Episode numbers...I don't see any issue with this.  This other issue just happened while testing all this stuff which is why I'm posting it here...

Just to clarify:

On my HTPC with 2 profiles -> OTA and STB.
If I clear the data and then reload it some data will be missing in MC
If I reload again without clearing it first all the data will appear.

I tried this on another PC with just an OTA profile and could not reproduce.   Its like there's too much data for MC to digest it in one shot....

[BartMan01]

One thing that I can't tell is if the TV guide is actually getting updated and it does not appear that is happening. MC shows that the program guide last refreshed 3/5/2017 5:23 pm, but the xmltv.xml file in c:\mc2xml\xmltv.xml file shows a date modified of 3/3/2017 5:20 pm. Same date time as the .dat file when I redid the setup. I would expect the xml file to get updated with a new modified date each time it was created.

I am running everything from a non-admin account if that makes any difference.

I saved a copy of the xml file to do a full compare after the MC update tonight.

[CountryBumkin]

the xmltv.xml file should have the date of when it updated. It looks like yours did not update (run) for last couple of days.

The obvious question is, do you have the box checked in MC to "automatically load the program data..."?

[imeric]

One thing that I can't tell is if the TV guide is actually getting updated and it does not appear that is happening. MC shows that the program guide last refreshed 3/5/2017 5:23 pm, but the xmltv.xml file in c:\mc2xml\xmltv.xml file shows a date modified of 3/3/2017 5:20 pm. Same date time as the .dat file when I redid the setup. I would expect the xml file to get updated with a new modified date each time it was created.

I am running everything from a non-admin account if that makes any difference.

I saved a copy of the xml file to do a full compare after the MC update tonight.

Do you have one or 2 profiles running?  A few months back this is why I started specifying the -o with the full path on each profiles to make sure it would write at the exact specified location but technically it shouldn't make a difference...(But I think MC was getting confused not a 100% sure) Something to try maybe...Have a look at my snapshots in my previous posts above.

[BartMan01]

One profile running. The box for 'Automatically load the program guide everyday in the background" is checked. Set to every 24 hours starting at 'Default' hours and '00' minutes.

MC Television screen at the bottom shows: Program guide last refreshed: 3/6/2017 5:24pm.
xmltv.xml file dated 3/3/2017 5:20pm.

When I click OK on the Schedule Guide Reloading screen with 'Run selected profiles Now' checked, I see c:\mc2xml\mc2xml.exe v1.6 running. I get the 'loading guide data' screen at the end and click 'Next >'. TV guide screen shows program guide last refreshed with the current date/time. xmltv.xml still has a date modified of 3/3/2017.

Configuration screenshot is attached.

Permissions on the mc2xml folder are the default of:
Authenticated Users: r/w/e
SYSTEM: full control
Administrators: full control
Users: r/e

I changed the 'Users' permissions to also be r/w/e, made no difference.

For some reason with MC runs mc2xml it is not actually saving the file. I saw this same behavior before I did the reset.

[imeric]

I would try this: -d 336 -o c:\mc2xml\xmltv.xml

[BartMan01]

I added the -o option. Prior to the change the dos box that opened when the program was running indicated that it was writing the output to c:\mc2xml\xmltv.xml already. With -o in place it did update the xmltv.xml file, but now the guide is full of garbage season/episode data again.

This is pretty much what happened last time. Here is where things currently stand:

• Every time I have run set up from scratch, the process works and the guide data looks correct.
• After the initial set up and without the -o option, mc2xml appears to run correctly but does not actually update the .xml file.
• After either running mc2xml manually or changing the configuration to add the -o option, mc2xml does update the .xml file but when that data is loaded by MC the series/season data is wrong.

As an example, tomorrow's airing of Designated Survivor was correct before the udpate and now shows season 2017, episode 111. The guide data xml file has:
      <episode-num system="onscreen">111</episode-num>
      <episode-num system="dd_progid">EP02432664.0011</episode-num>

[imeric]

Here is what I get for that same episode:

      <episode-num system="dd_progid">EP02432664.0011</episode-num>
      <episode-num system="xmltv_ns">0.10.</episode-num>

I believe MC uses this:

      <episode-num system="xmltv_ns">0.10.</episode-num>

and adds +1 to both.  Mine is showing correctly in MC.

I think you maybe using SD but not the JSON feed..Could that be it?

[imeric]

Yep.  That's what you're doing. I just did a quick test and here is what I get with SD non-json fro that same show:

      <episode-num system="onscreen">111</episode-num>
      <episode-num system="dd_progid">EP02432664.0011</episode-num>

Just make sure you set it up with JSON for it to work.

[Yaobing]

Yes, the year (2017 in the example above) is used when we do not find explicit season number.  We get season number only from the following entry, as mentioned by Eric:

<episode-num system="xmltv_ns">0.10.</episode-num>.


We have been using the entry with "onscreen" system as Episode without interpretation.  And we can not interpret the one with "dd_progid" system.

That is why these two lines
<episode-num system="onscreen">111</episode-num>
<episode-num system="dd_progid">EP02432664.0011</episode-num>

result in Season 2017 Episode 111.

Only "xmltv_ns" system gives us specific season and episode numbers.

So it looks like what you are getting is what mc2xml produces.

[BartMan01]

Thanks. The issue appears to be that mc2xml is not running correctly when called by MC. It does run correctly when run on it's own. When I manually run mc2xml.exe, this is what is populated in the xml file for that program:

      <episode-num system="dd_progid">EP02432664.0011</episode-num>
      <episode-num system="xmltv_ns">0.10.</episode-num>

When MC runs mc2xml either the xml file is not updating or it is updating from the wrong feed.

I am running everything under a standard (non admin) user account if that makes any difference. For the people who do have it working correctly are you using admin accounts or standard user accounts?

At this point I am totally at a loss as to why things are not working properly from inside MC. Unless anyone else has any thoughts, I am going to start testing some work arounds. Going to start with trying to force mc2xml to run with elevated privileges or possibly schedule it to run on it's own with MC creating a different output file and then reading in the one created by the scheduled job.

Thanks for all of the help, I am confident I have everything set up 'correctly' at this point and assume there is some systemic failure going on that is specific to my machine.

[imeric]

try as per my snapshot and report back.

putting the full arguments will work.

[BartMan01]

Thanks imeric. Adding both the -D and -o options per your setup seems to have done the trick. I'll see what happens tomorrow night when the built in update runs again.

CountryBumkin - do you have MC running under an admin account? Wondering if that is the main difference given that you seem to be working with no parameters.

[imeric]

Thanks imeric. Adding both the -D and -o options per your setup seems to have done the trick. I'll see what happens tomorrow night when the built in update runs again.

CountryBumkin - do you have MC running under an admin account? Wondering if that is the main difference given that you seem to be working with no parameters.

Glad I could help!

Somehow I think mc2xml running externally as XMLTV is using some default parameters from the internal mc2xml....CountryBumkin any insight on this? 

As an FYI mine is an admin account but still need to pass the command lines to get both profiles working properly.

I've posted on this a while back here: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,103622.msg720027.html#msg720027

[RoderickGI]

For future reference, if the -D and -o parameters don't fix an issue like this, just check and make sure that the "Timeout Minutes" for the external program to be run is long enough.

If mc2xml or any external program run from within MC doesn't complete within the Timeout Minutes, MC will kill it and in the case of mc2xml, the XMLTV file will not be written. If running mc2xml externally to MC works, but internally doesn't, I would look at this parameter first. Make it very big and see if mc2xml works, and if it does, reduce it as much as needed to ensure mc2xml completes successfully every time.

I can't remember how much logging mc2xml can do, but you should be able to work out how long it takes to run from the logs, or based on the start time of mc2xml, and the time stamp on the XMLTV file for a successful run.