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[MrHaugen]

I've been testing the latest build in hopes of seeing some online meta data fetching. At least that I thought Carnac was for. The movies I've tested have the correct movie name as file name, the directory has the "movie name (year)" in it. Still not a single field is updated, besides Media Sub Type.

Am I missing something, or am I just to eager here?

[darichman]

I'm really excited about this feature. I suspect it will be tweaked to better accommodate different naming and file structure standards over time.

I've had mixed success so far...

Film
A lot of downloaded backups (torrents etc) have this naming structure:
The.Three.Musketeers.1973.720p.BluRay.X264-7SinS.mkv
My file path is: O:\Sorting\#Film\#Torrentday

All it's pulling is [Media Subtype]=Movie

I think this scheme is common enough for MC to be able to pull
[Name]=The Three Musketeers
[Year]=1973
[Media Subtype]=Movie

I also like to store what the original "media source" was (in this case 'BluRay')
It would be nice if MC could recognise the common ones like DVDRip, BluRay, HDTV, PDTV, VHS, HDDVD etc and store these in a field by default.

Television
A pretty representative filename for an episode:
File Path: O:\Sorting\#Television\#Torrentday\Battlestar.Galactica.S03.720p.BluRay.DTS.x264-REPTiLE
Filename: Battlestar.Galactica.S03E01.720p.BluRay.DTS.x264-REPTiLE

Again, not much luck:

• [Name]=Bluray.Dts-Reptile
• [Season]=01
• [Episode]=03
• [Series]=Battlestar.Galactica  (can we drop the full stop "." ?)
• [Media Subtype]=TV Show

----------------
Once I'm happy with the fields,  I rename from properties. My naming scheme goes as follows (I've also showed what MC picks up if I then attempt to run Carnac)

Film
O:\Film\Aladdin (1992)\Aladdin (1992).mkv
Picks up:

• [Name]=Aladdin
• [Year]=1992
• [Media Subtype]=Movie

Awesome Television, however doesn't work with my scheme.

Television
O:\Television\Doctor Who (2005)\Season 6\Doctor Who - 6-08. Let's Kill Hitler.mkv
Picks up

• [Series]=Doctor Who (2005)    Should really just be 'Doctor Who'
• [Season]=6
• [Media Subtype]=TV Show
• Misses [Episode] (08) and [Name] (Let's Kill Hitler)

[MrHaugen]

As I understand it, Carnac is just the function of extracting and recording data embedded in the file pathname. While getting external meta data necessarily relies on that process to correctly identify the media, it has it's own configuration requirements and should therefore be (or be thought of as) a separate system. Some media will be fully tagged by the auto-tagging system (e.g., music or image files with existing complete file tags). Other media will only be identified by the auto-tagging system (e.g., movies and episodes) and most of the data will come from a meta data retrieval system.

Correct. I think I got some better results now. tested with my TV Shows, and as all of them is tagged with "Name - SXXEXX" it was easy for MC to fill in those 3 fields. I'm a bit disappointed that Movies did not handle better though. I've got Year in () in ALL my folder names, and this should be picked up easily if the system looks for it. Hope this is added too. If so, the system works perfectly on my side

I just really hope that this system is not the end of metadata. We really need some automatic external sources for this.

[Matt]

darichman, thanks for the detailed examples.

Anyone else that finds files not being handled nicely, posting in a format just like darichman would be helpful.

Thanks.

[MrHaugen]

Film
Z:\Movies\District 9 (2009)\District 9.mkv
Picks up:
[Name]=Aladdin
[Media Subtype]=Movie

Missing [Year].

[JimH]

Discussion split here:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=66902.0

[Matt]

17.0.14 handles most files mentioned above nicely.

But please keep the examples where it stumbles coming.  We need a lot of real world examples to train the system.

[rick.ca]

But please keep the examples where it stumbles coming.

This is what I found when I imported my existing videos into a new build 14 library...

• Name and Year are generally captured correctly from files named Title (Year).ext, but not Title (Year) something else.ext—then the whole thing is captured as Name.
  
  
• Whatever is captured as Name (for any media type) is converted to upper case all words, even if the title in the filename is proper title case.
  
  
• Series, Season, Episode and Title are captured correctly from files named Series S00E00 EpTitle.ext, and if EpTitle is omitted. Some common variations are not handled, however:
  
  • A double episode indicated with S00E01-02 will result in "02" being captured as Name.
  • For the episodes of a miniseries named Series E00.ext, all is captured as Name and Episode is not.

[MrHaugen]

A double episode indicated with S00E01-02 will result in "02" being captured as Name.[/li][/list]

Correct. I've had trouble with this as well. There are quite a few of this. I've often got one or two of them in every second TV Show.
It would be good if Carnac adds the sequential numbers in the episodes. In Ricks case: "01-02" as episode (or 1 & 2 if you leave out the zeros).
The double episodes are also added to lots of online databases, so this in an important one for future scraping.

[Matt]

Next build:

Changed: Carnac won't change capitalization when a value already uses title case.
Changed: Carnac better understands series ranges like "Curb Your Enthusiasm S4E1-6".
Changed: Carnac does a better job with miniseries that have episode values but no season.

[struct]

Nice to see each of the sources listed in the dialog box after lookup info.  There needs to be an ability to do a multiple select here as each source contains some of the information, eg. rottentomatoes has a genre and critic rating, but wikipedia has editor.  given that you know what each source has available, why not a setting option for order of preference of source for the superset of fields available from all sources (think this is a riff on a rick.ca suggestion).

I silent update on a multiple select is really important for some (me ) I want to get the rotten tomatoes ratings, but that is it, for my couple of hundred movies.  I have most of everything else from pvd and don't want to over-write other fields.  I currently have no way of doing this, do I?

Would be good if you could describe a few of the near term goals for Carnac as there is clearly a lot that can/should be done on autoimport/rename/scrape and it may save a lot of posted suggestions till you get it up and going a bit stronger.  [This is on the assumption that it is going to do more than do a regex parse of the name, which is all it currently seems to do??]

Thanks

Craig

[justsomeguy]

Just purchased the upgrade. Looking good so far.

I was wondering though, why the name Carnac? I was trying to come up with some kind of symbolic meaning related to this, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnac but I can't think of any. So how did you come up with the name?

[rick.ca]

It's Magnificent.

[wig]

Just purchased the upgrade. Looking good so far.

I was wondering though, why the name Carnac? I was trying to come up with some kind of symbolic meaning related to this, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnac but I can't think of any. So how did you come up with the name?

Try this page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnac_the_Magnificent

[justsomeguy]

Well that makes a lot more sense now. Can't believe I forgot about the Carson skit... oh and that it was the very next link in google under the one I looked at.

[jack wallstreet]

Notwithstanding the Carnac may be very good and desirable for many people, I provide my own tags and would (generally) not want what I put in overwritten.  This includes when I load a file and have blank tags temporarily for when I later fill in the tags.  I understand Carnac cannot be turned off and that is a concern. 

Does it overwrite ONLY blank tags or does it overwrite what it thinks is incorrect.  If I put in a space or a default temporary tag, will that stop it from overwriting?

[JimH]

It shouldn't overwrite any tag that has a value.  If it is, that's a mistake.

[jack wallstreet]

I have not tested and am not saying it is doing anything improper.  I just wanted to know under what circumstances it filled in tags and I think others will want to know also. 

Thanks, Jim for reply, as always.

[Gl3nn]

Is Carnac meant for music too? Or just video?

What happens if there's no Internet connection?  Or outbound connections are blocked by a firewall?

[Hendrik]

I finally got around to letting Carnac run wild on my library, here some cases that failed:

Z:\Series\Pinky and the Brain\1\1e01-Das Mouse.mkv - shows up as Unassigned
... and all files in that series. I assume because there is no series name in the file name, only season and ep title?

Z:\Series\Doctor Who (2005)\Season 1\Doctor.Who.S01E010.The.Doctor.Dances.mkv
.. identified with episode tag 1, i assume because of the three digit ep number. How did i manage to name them like that, i wonder.

And of course there is the whole trouble with Doctor Who (2005) and Doctor Who (Classic), which all get mixed and matched and do all the weird things, because it cannot separate the two.
Doctor Who (Classic) also uses a layout like this: doctor.who.s01e01p01.avi - meaning the first episode is split into multiple parts, back then they had "stories" and not episodes, so a season would have stories, and a story would have parts.

Anyway, overall its working really great. Now i just have to figure out how to fix the theater view to show the episode number for a name, instead of the name which most of the time contains nothing useful.

[Matt]

Is Carnac meant for music too? Or just video?

It's used for all media types, although it's most useful for video.  Music normally has tags.

What happens if there's no Internet connection?  Or outbound connections are blocked by a firewall?

It's not an online system.  It's a system that takes what we know about a file (filename, codec, etc.) and tries to fill in other information.

Automatic online lookup of other metadata would be a different (but possible future) feature.

[Matt]

I finally got around to letting Carnac run wild on my library, here some cases that failed:

Z:\Series\Pinky and the Brain\1\1e01-Das Mouse.mkv - shows up as Unassigned
... and all files in that series. I assume because there is no series name in the file name, only season and ep title?

Z:\Series\Doctor Who (2005)\Season 1\Doctor.Who.S01E010.The.Doctor.Dances.mkv
.. identified with episode tag 1, i assume because of the three digit ep number. How did i manage to name them like that, i wonder.

Thanks for the details.

That year one is a little tricky, because often folders that end with a year is because that's the date the show aired.  So it's going to be hard to know if the year is part of the series or should be split to the date field.

Anyway, overall its working really great. Now i just have to figure out how to fix the theater view to show the episode number for a name, instead of the name which most of the time contains nothing useful.

That's good to hear.  We need TheTVDB lookup of additional information based on the series, season, and episode.  This is on our list.

[rjm]

I just updated library from tags for 20,000 videos because I wanted the bitrate, dimensions, and compression fields updated by RO.

All other tags for these videos were perfect and I did not want anything changed.

An unfortunate side effect of Carnac was that many other tags were changed. I spent many hours editing the tags to put them back the way they were before I started.

A new option that simply updates bitrate, dimensions, compression, and the thumbnail would be very much appreciated.

[fitbrit]

So I need some advice. I've been using MC for close to 4 years now, and in the absence of something like Carnac, the majority of my video files are tagged a certain way. Now Carnac comes along and does things a little differently.

For a start, under Season and Episode, I use the format: Sxx and Exx respectively, including the letters 'S' and 'E' and padding the numbers to two digits. Questions:

1) I'm now unsure whether I should remove the letters from all my existing tags or to add them to the Carnac ones.

2) I would really like the number padding to be in effect, because it's kind of the convention everywhere on the net, and it does make a difference in sorting if the fields are used as part of a filename or other field name for example. SP, although I know MC doesn't require the padding internally, it would be nice to have the option. I'm clueless about this, but I imagine it should be possible to make a custom field, based on an expression, that will automatically take Carnac's Season and Episode format and put it in the format I want, including the letters etc.

*sigh* If only I were new to MC16/17!

[Matt]

So I need some advice. I've been using MC for close to 4 years now, and in the absence of something like Carnac, the majority of my video files are tagged a certain way. Now Carnac comes along and does things a little differently.

For a start, under Season and Episode, I use the format: Sxx and Exx respectively, including the letters 'S' and 'E' and padding the numbers to two digits. Questions:

1) I'm now unsure whether I should remove the letters from all my existing tags or to add them to the Carnac ones.

2) I would really like the number padding to be in effect, because it's kind of the convention everywhere on the net, and it does make a difference in sorting if the fields are used as part of a filename or other field name for example. SP, although I know MC doesn't require the padding internally, it would be nice to have the option. I'm clueless about this, but I imagine it should be possible to make a custom field, based on an expression, that will automatically take Carnac's Season and Episode format and put it in the format I want, including the letters etc.

*sigh* If only I were new to MC16/17!

First, you can change #1 to either format with just a few keystrokes using an expression.  For example, pick all videos and type this for the series to switch S02 to 2:
=FormatNumber(RemoveLeft([Series], 1))

I don't see any reason for Media Center to use leading zeroes when displaying seasons and episodes.  Our sorting doesn't need it.  Using leading zeroes when building filenames (like we do for Track # for music) is a good idea.

[fitbrit]

Thanks for your answers, Matt.

[rick.ca]

I'm clueless about this, but I imagine it should be possible to make a custom field, based on an expression, that will automatically take Carnac's Season and Episode format and put it in the format I want, including the letters etc.

Further to what Matt says, if you prefer to see "Sxx Exx" in a caption or in a file info panel, use SPadNumber([Season],2) EPadNumber([Episode],2). That's just an example. The point is, you're not likely to want to display things like [Season] or [Episode] in isolation, and will be using an expression anyway. You don't need to make a custom expression field, but may if that makes things easier. I use one like this for use in a Standard View column—simply because it's easier to read and saves space.

[fitbrit]

Further to what Matt says, if you prefer to see "Sxx Exx" in a caption or in a file info panel, use SPadNumber([Season],2) EPadNumber([Episode],2). That's just an example. The point is, you're not likely to want to display things like [Season] or [Episode] in isolation, and will be using an expression anyway. You don't need to make a custom expression field, but may if that makes things easier. I use one like this for use in a Standard View column—simply because it's easier to read and saves space.

Thanks, Rick. They're exactly the expressions (separately) I've been using to rename my seasons/episodes within the respective fields. I just kind of recalled that one could make a custom expression field, and that might be just the compromise solution I've been looking for.

[fitbrit]

If I may trouble someone again... how can I create an expression that will conditionally remain blank if the Season and Episode fields are both blank, or better still if only one is filled, it only shows the padded, lettered version of it?

[rick.ca]

If(IsEmpty([Season]), , SPadNumber([Season], 2)/ )If(IsEmpty([Episode]), , EPadNumber([Episode], 2))

Note the handling of spaces. The expression language ignores spaces within functions, so they can be used to separate parameters for readability. So the space in ', ,' could be omitted—this means 'nothing' either way. Where a space is needed, it must be escaped with a '/'. Here, I've added a space after Season, and included it in the 'If' function so it's only added if there is a Season. On the other hand, there is no space separating the two 'If' functions—because we don't want '_E00' as a result when there is no Season.

[fitbrit]

If(IsEmpty([Season]), , SPadNumber([Season], 2)/ )If(IsEmpty([Episode]), , EPadNumber([Episode], 2))

Note the handling of spaces. The expression language ignores spaces within functions, so they can be used to separate parameters for readability. So the space in ', ,' could be omitted—this means 'nothing' either way. Where a space is needed, it must be escaped with a '/'. Here, I've added a space after Season, and included it in the 'If' function so it's only added if there is a Season. On the other hand, there is no space separating the two 'If' functions—because we don't want '_E00' as a result when there is no Season.

Thanks VERY much. Off to bed now, but I'll take a closer look at this tomorrow.

[fitbrit]

Thanks again, Rick. I finally tried a slightly modified version and it worked exactly as expected.