Mezzmo Overwriting existing artwork

[GCardall]

I noticed this problem ever since upgrading to the newest version of mezzmo. I have even recently created a new media server with a clean re-install of Windows and Mezzmo, without restoring the old servers Mezzmo database.

The problem is that even if I go through the files (movies, primarily) and get all the cover artwork set up, if I run the "Maintain Library" with all values checked, but also checked "Only add new items and update items with empty attributes", some random movie files get overwritten and lose the existing cover art. Folder art seems to stick, but it's the the Movie covert art that gets lost, not any of the other metadata. Again, it's not all cover art - it's random and maybe 10 out of 100 will get overwritten.

To clarify, the cover art doesn't get overwritten with an updated version - they get overwritten with a screenshot within the videos themselves - as if it couldn't even find any cover art. Very annoying.

This never happened on the previous version (5.x), but only appears to started happening with 6.x.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Peter]

If you maintain the file again with the option to update all properties or right-click on the file and go to properties then select to get online metadata is the poster found for the file?

[GCardall]

In the properties it will show a screen grab from the video itself. If I manually go online to get the artwork, searching by the video title, it will find the correct cover art again. After that, if I Maintain my library again, the video artwork will be lost for that same video.

What's also strange is that when I restarted from scratch, Mezzmo originally found all the metadata and cover art correctly (for most files). On some of the files, the "Maintain" functionality loses ONLY the cover art for files that it previously correctly applied. Metadata is unaffected.

[Peter]

Can you please tell us the filename of a video that Mezzmo does not find the correct poster for so that we can try to reproduce it here?

[GCardall]

You bet. After Maintaining my library with the above settings (as mentioned previously), here are a few movies that lost the cover art (Metadata remained untouched):
- Justice League
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
- Independence Day
- Spider-Man - Far From Home
- Mission Impossible

Thanks!

[Peter]

Are these just the titles of the movies or the filenames minus the extension? I tried naming a file Justice League.mp4 and added it to Mezzmo and the poster was found both when added and when right-clicking on the file and selecting to maintain the file. If the filename has extra words in the name then Mezzmo may not parse the name correctly so that when the metadata lookup is done the name does not match. Mezzmo removes most 'noise' words from filenames but there may be some that we are not removing.

[GCardall]

With the exception of Harry Potter, all names above are how the files are named as MKV files. The file names themselves have no funky characters - they are exactly as-is above.

I do have other files from way back when that, for sorting purposes, I started with I., II., III., IV., etc...those somehow are all ok. Some I've started with "1 -", "2 - ", etc - those are also ok. It's almost completely random.

So back to your example, my file name on my hard drive is "Justice League.mkv". First import into Mezzmo from a clean install found the metadata and poster image. But maintaining the library wipes out ONLY the poster....and that's with "Only add new items and update items with empty attributes" checked. So, regardless of file names, should Mezzmo see I have Movie art and leave it alone based on that setting? It's almost as if somehow the code doesn't see that the poster exists, even if it does, since that's the only thing being removed. But, it's possible it's a larger problem where it's actually replacing all the metadata as well, but just doing that correctly.

Hope that helps/clarifies it a bit.

[Peter]

Maintaining the library with the option to Only add new items and update items with empty attributes will not replace the artwork of files with existing posters. Possibly the download of the poster failed when running Maintenance and this is why it only shows a screen capture of the video. For files with a screen capture instead of a poster you will need to select to update all files and only check the option to update artwork then this will overwrite the screen capture with the poster.