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SolihullRog
01-31-2016, 08:52 AM
I've had Mezzmo for several months, and got it set up 90% very quickly, but I find it impossible to set up my TV shows as I want them. Can you help?

My sample scenario:

Say I have four Blackadder episodes from two series and four Monty Python episodes from two series
I also have four Canal Shows from two series and four Railway Shows from two series.

I want to control my metadata totally from nfo files. I know how to set these up, but Mezzmo seems to have hard-coded logic which overrides some entries, and the mapping from the nfo file into the Mezzmo library isn't clear to me.

I would like to see a tree like this:

>TV Shows
>Comedy
>Blackadder
>Series 1
E1 Title of S1E1
E2 Title of S1E2
>Series 2
E1 Title of S2E1
E2 Title of S2E2
>Monty Python
>Series 1
E1 Title of S1E1
E2 Title of S1E2
>Series 2
E1 Title of S2E1
E2 Title of S2E2
>Transport
>Canals
>Series 1
E1 Title of S1E1
E2 Title of S1E2
>Series 2
E1 Title of S2E1
E2 Title of S2E2
>Railways
>Series 1
E1 Title of S1E1
E2 Title of S1E2
>Series 2
E1 Title of S2E1
E2 Title of S2E2

My problems are:
1. I need a fixed value in every one of the 16 episodes - say 'TV Shows'. Must it be TV Shows? or TV Series (there seems to be hard-coding here)? And which nfo field should be used? Where should this map to in the library?
I have failed to get all of my TV shows under the TV Shows branch. I was working on the basis that TV Show should be a Category, but some series which have this don't turn up in the branch.
2. Comedy and Transport need to be in a field which is in the Keyword Hierarchy of the Active Playlist. Which field should I use in the nfo file, and where would it map to in the library?
3. The program names (eg. Blackadder) need to be in a different field which is in the Keyword Hierarchy of the Active Playlist. Again, which field in the nfo file, and where would it map to in the library?
4. So which three fields would I need in the Keyword Hierarchy?
5. I'm OK with the display of the titles.

I'd be most grateful for the answers.

And ... why can't I search for 'TV' in this forum???:rolleyes:

Paul
01-31-2016, 10:13 AM
Here's how I would suggest you do this. Have a "tvshow.nfo" in your "BlackAdder" folder. It should have data like this:


<tvshow>
<title>Blackadder</title>
<rating>7.3</rating>
<year>1983</year>
<plot>Through four series and a few specials, Edmund Blackadder and his greasy sidekick Baldrick conjure up cunning plans as Edmund tries to take advantage of desperate times. These situation tragedies had obvious parallels from the Dark Ages to Elizabethan times, the rule of mad George III, and The Great War.</plot>
<mpaa>TV-14</mpaa>
<genre>Comedy</genre>
<studio>BBC</studio>
<actor>
<name>Rowan Atkinson</name>
<role>Edmund Blackadder</role>
</actor>
<actor>
<name>Tony Robinson</name>
<role>Baldrick</role>
</actor>
</tvshow>


The <tvshow> tag tells Mezzmo is it a TV show. The <genre> tag tells Mezzmo the genre(s) of the TV show.


For each episode video file, have a matching .nfo file like this:


<episodedetails>
<title>Potato</title>
<season>2</season>
<episode>3</episode>
<aired>1986-01-23</aired>
<plot>After Sir Walter Raleigh takes the Queen's fancy by bringing her a potato, Blackadder decides to become an explorer with the aid of a legless sea captain.</plot>
<director>Mandie Fletcher</director>
<rating>7.6</rating>
<actor>
<name>Tom Baker</name>
<role>
</role>
</actor>
<actor>
<name>Simon Jones</name>
<role>
</role>
</actor>
<writer>Richard Curtis</writer>
<writer>Ben Elton</writer>
</episodedetails>


Now add your files into your Mezzmo library. Or, if they are already there, then maintain the library (or playlist/folder where they are) so Mezzmo picks up all your changes. On the Maintain Library dialog, set the 'Update all attributes' radio button to make sure all tags, etc. are picked up whilst you are experimenting with your .nfo files.

Next, create an Active Playlist:


Call it whatever you like e.g. "My TV Shows".

The keyword hierarchy should be:


+ Genre

+ Album/Series

+ Disc/Season


Add a Smart Filter to your active playlist with the rule:


[Category] [contains] [TV show]

Set the Display Titles as want your titles displayed for the active playlist.

Restrict the active playlist to videos files by clicking the "Video files" radio button.

Set the "Sort By" setting to "Track/Episode (Ascending)" so your episodes are listed in the correct order.


Save your active playlist and Mezzmo will start populating your active playlist. It may take a few minutes. Then, hopefully you should see what you want :).

If you wish to make changes to your active playlist, then right-click on it and click Properties. Make your changes and click OK. Mezzmo will (silently) re-process the active playlist and show the results after a few minutes.

Any questions/problems, just ask.

SolihullRog
01-31-2016, 04:38 PM
Wow, Paul. Your support is really quite good!

It's 6 o'clock in the morning here and I just got up to improve my example, but you've beat me to it. Just a couple of things before I go back to bed ...

1. I'd have one folder containing every Blackadder episode? Or would it create difficulties (apart from repeated tvshow.nfo files) to have a folder per series?
2. Each folder would contain a single file, with the exact name of 'tvshow.nfo' in it.
3. You say that the smart filter would have a rule "[Category] [contains] [TV show]", but your sample scripts don't contain any Category data. Presumably this is hard-coded, taken from the first line of tvshow.nfo?

All of this is news to me. My lack of knowledge of these items has bothered me for months. Is there more comprehensive documentation somewhere - especially of hard-coding and mapping from nfo to library?

Roger

Paul
02-01-2016, 08:58 AM
You can have any folder setup that you like. Just make sure there is a "tvshow.nfo" either in the same folder as your episode video files or in the parent folder.

When Mezzmo see the <tvshow> tag in the "tvshow.nfo" file, it sets the Category for episode video files to "TV Show".

Sorry, there's no comprehensive documentation as yet (we're planning to create a wiki soon). Basically, Mezzmo reads various external metadata file from popular media manager software tools (.NFO, .TGMD, .XML) and Mezzmo maps the tags within these files to the matching attributes in Mezzmo.

smitbret
02-01-2016, 01:00 PM
Just to throw in what has worked for me.

I keep a TV Show parent folder and each season has its own sub-folder. I keep all episodes for each season in the same folder.

Episodes are named "tvshow SxxExx - episode name". For Instance, "Dexter S01E01 - Pilot"

Then, I create the .nfo files with TinyMediaManager:
http://www.tinymediamanager.org/

The most difficult part of the whole process is making sure that TinyMediaManager matches up the correct episodes with the correct filename. Mezzmo has no trouble reading the metadata generated my TinyMediaManager. TMM creates a tvshow.nfo file in the parent folder. After that, it's just a matter of setting up your playlist correctly.