Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[blgentry]

I've been using MC to lookup TV series information for my files for many years.  I was just working on importing Firefly into MC and the episode numbers are wrong for some and missing for others.  Pressing "prefer DVD Order" does not change the data retrieved:  It's all exactly the same.

I did some research and found this thread, which talks about theTVDB support being removed from MC and TMDB being added as an alternate.

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=125535.0

I consulted TMDB for Firefly and found that it does not have information on Firefly from DVD/BD at all.  It only knows about the aired order, which is essentially useless for this particular purpose.

Is there some other source that I can tell MC to use for TV series lookups?  TMDB seems to have far less data than thetvdb does.  I'm open to using another tool, but I can't use anything that runs (only) on Windows, as I do not have any windows computers.

Thanks,
Brian.

[blgentry]

Does anyone have thoughts about this?

Brian.

[Buldarged]

Well, TMDB actually has the information you desire. You can find it by clicking on "Overview --> Episode Groups", when browsing a TV show on TMDB. Seems like in the transition, this feature was not correctly ported over.

I also don't agree that theTVDB has more information as TMDB. If I take the series you mentioned (Firefly) as an example, theTVDB lists 14 episodes and 6 specials, while TMDB lists 11 episodes and 12 specials. Additionally TMDB provides multiple episode covers that are of a higher resolution.

However, I do understand that since theTVDB is an older project, there might be more data for older TV shows and movies.

I generally think that MC should provide the possibility to write metadata source addons, which allow users to add custom support for their own needs. I recently stumbled over Playnite, a library manager for games. Through aforementioned community addons, it can fetch data from 21 different sources. Some access official information like Steam or the Playstation Network, while other use public databases like IGDB and in some cases the user needs to provide an API key.
This is what I would like to have in MC as well. If a free open source project can provide this functionality, JRiver can surely do too.

[blgentry]

Well, TMDB actually has the information you desire. You can find it by clicking on "Overview --> Episode Groups", when browsing a TV show on TMDB. Seems like in the transition, this feature was not correctly ported over.

For this particular series, there are no "episode groups" that I could find.  If they are there, please provide a link.

I also don't agree that theTVDB has more information as TMDB. If I take the series you mentioned (Firefly) as an example, theTVDB lists 14 episodes and 6 specials, while TMDB lists 11 episodes and 12 specials.

I can see why you would think that is "more information".  But it is actually less information.  Because there is NO INFORMATION about the DVD and BD version of Firefly.  Which is the only version that any person would want to import into MC.  The DVD and BD have 14 standard episodes.  The 11 episode number comes from the original broadcast more than 20 years ago.  That version of Firefly essentially no longer exists.  You can't stream it, you can't buy it on media.  It was aired and is gone.  The normal version of Firefly available now is 14 episodes.  TMDB does not have that information.

I do understand that Firefly is an exception.  For many other series, TMDB probably has the correct information.  In this case, it does not.

I'm asking for an alternative data source, or an alternative method.

Brian.

[Hendrik]

For this particular series, there are no "episode groups" that I could find.  If they are there, please provide a link.

https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/1437-firefly/episode_groups

All the information you talk about is in there. Accessible from the main series page in the menu under Episode Groups.

I'll see about making sure DVD episode groups are hooked up in MC when I'm back from vacation.

[blgentry]

https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/1437-firefly/episode_groups

All the information you talk about is in there. Accessible from the main series page in the menu under Episode Groups.

I'll see about making sure DVD episode groups are hooked up in MC when I'm back from vacation.

Thanks for the link.  I can't find any thing that says "episode groups" on the listing for Firefly.  BUT.... if you hover over where it says "Original Air Date", it pops up a menu with the DVD and "Intended Order" selections.  I'll have to list them both and compare to find out what the difference is between the two.

I'd also like to thank you for volunteering to hook up the other orders into MC.  That will make it very useful again.

I hope you enjoy your vacation.

Brian.

[Hendrik]

Its here in the menu:

[Buldarged]

I do understand that Firefly is an exception.  For many other series, TMDB probably has the correct information.  In this case, it does not.

Its actually not. I recently had to deal with the series Money Heist, for which three different orders and numbers of episodes exist.

But the place where this is really common are animes. There are typically multiple orders, including:
- An ever increasing absolute order (from episode 0001 to 9999)
- Grouped by story arcs
- Grouped by cours (release cycle, typical close to 13 or 26 episodes)
- Grouped by seasons (for DVD/Bluray)

This is why I'm glad to see that at least DVD order might see a comeback.

[Hendrik]

I was thinking about letting you specifically pick an episode group to pick from, but for automated or bulk lookups thats a bit complicated, as we dont know what might exist beforehand, etc. Maybe it can store the ID of the group used somewhere if you did it manually once, for future automated and bulk lookups.

[Buldarged]

That's definitely a good idea. I think a relational per series tag, which is by default empty would do the trick. Bulk lookups use the default order if the tag is empty. Lookup for a single episode lets you select the episode group and sets the aforementioned tag for the whole series, after which a bulk lookup would use that information automatically.

A bit off topic, but related: Currently, if I select an episode cover that is not the first in the TMDB lookup, this information does not get saved in the tags, which causes problems.
My use-case is the following:
- I do a bulk lookup for a series
- I notice that a single episode has 4:3 cover art instead of 16:9.
- I do a single lookup for that episode and choose a 16:9 image, if one is available.
- Once a year or so, I make a bulk lookup for the whole library, to get newer and better descriptions and images.
- Manually selected 16:9 cover art gets overridden with 4:3.

I know that saving the corresponding image index is not a valid strategy, since their order on TMDB changes based on votes. Maybe a better idea would be to have a boolean "Protect Image" tag, that can be used universally. Per default the tag is empty, which implies false. If the user selects non-default cover art during TMDB lookup, manually selects the image via the right click menu --> Cover Art --> Paste from Clipboard, or by using a screen capture, then this tag gets set to true. If that is the case, bulk and automatic actions that would delete or change the image (file) like the TMDB lookup should respect this setting and not update the corresponding images.

[Hendrik]

DVD order should be fixed for the next builds. I'll think again on offering a full episode group selector and storing the selected one. Needs a bit of a bigger rework there.

[TheShoe]

An interesting issue - not Media Center related - is that depending on how you source your content, some shows as combining seasons into 1, particularly early seasons, e.g. 1 and 2 into a single season.  This throws off scrapers depending on how you name your file.  American Dad is one such example.  TheMovieDB is correct in how they were aired/presented originally, however if you were to look at Hulu for example, Season 1 is now season 1 and 2 combined.

Sites like "Rotten Tomatoes"  (for example) have adjusted to that change whereas TheMovieDB and TheTelevisionDB have not, and are at times inconsistent with each other.  I noticed other shows like "Dexters Laboratory" are also quite a mess because of how individual episodes were combined into a single episode.

Requires a bit analysis and renaming of the file to match the movie DB and all is well.

Sharing just in case anyone encounters this as I have.