Get Online Video Metadata not working

[taread68]

Since updating to Mezzmo 5 "Get Online Video Metadata" is no longer working. After I add a new video, I attempted to update the metadata through properties/Get Online Video and Metadata and select "Search", I get the message "Mezzmo cannot find any video metadata that matches the title". I have verified the title of the video I am trying to update and it is correct. This was working fine before upgrading to mezzmo 5.

[Paul]

Just tried it here and it is working fine. One possibliity is the online movie site (themoviedb.org) may have been down at the time that you tried to use it. Try again now and, if still a problem, then email us at support [at] conceiva [dot] com and we'll find out what's going wrong for you.

[Eagle009]

Hi,

Is there an issue with the TV Shows Metadata site? I cannot get any info for any shows i have download for two days now

John

[martyd]

Paul, it's Thetvdb thats the problem. Movies get metadata ok, TV Shows get an error. Still happening.

[jbinkley60]

It's a problem with Thetvdb.com's website. I am getting 404 Not Found errors from their Nginx load balancer when doing direct API calls to the PHP database. Here's an example:

https://www.thetvdb.com/api/GetSeries.php?language=en-US&seriesname=Jeopardy

What I don't know is whether this is a real outage or whether they made an API change. Peter can probably help answer this question.

[martyd]

JB you're probably right about the API. It's possible to search and browse the website, so not an outage.

[morden]

I believe it's an updated API as they (Thetvdb.com) recently announced an upgrade to version 3 from the looks of it.

[cchasecfi]

Hello. I have been getting the same problem since yesterday, (7/31/2019). Is there a fix available yet?

[mail@edgars.org]

https://www.thetvdb.com/blog/something_new

[Peter]

We are investigating the problem and will let you know when a fix is ready.

[jbinkley60]

The metadata is working again today. You can test it with : https://www.thetvdb.com/api/GetSeries.php?language=en-US&seriesname=Jeopardy

[cchasecfi]

Confirmed...Good Job!

[jbinkley60]

I can't take the credit here. it looks like TheTVDB.com rolled back their API update back to version 2 to fix. I've seen other threads in the Kodi forums where folks are having issues because they didn't update their apps to v3. Here's the official thread (https://forums.thetvdb.com/viewtopic.php?f=118&t=57711) .

[martyd]

Looks like thetvdb.com have rolled out v3 API again. Get Video Metadata in Mezzmo is broken for TV shows.

[Peter]

It stopped working last weekend also then was working the next day. Please check tomorrow to see if it is working.

[jbinkley60]

It stopped working last weekend also then was working the next day. Please check tomorrow to see if it is working.

Here's the thread (https://forums.thetvdb.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&p=162869#p162869) on v3 and v1/v2 support.

[martyd]

Still broken today.

[HomerRamone]

Broken here too :(

[jbinkley60]

Yep. The Kodi forums also have a banner up about the issue because this broke most of the Kodi TV database scrapers. The TVDB folks have been posting updates in the link I posted above. One thing The TVDB folks mentioned is old TLS libraries which leverage SSLv3, which they have disabled. That is an old insecure encryption method. If Mezzmo relies on it then they will need to address.

[Peter]

Mezzmo sends API requests directly to thetvdb.org using curl so there are no libraries used which rely upon SSLv3.

[icorrie]

Broken here too, as been all weekend + monday.

[jbinkley60]

It looks like they are making some progress at TVDB. The API call now returns text but the XML formatting is missing. Here's an example link (https://www.thetvdb.com/api/GetSeries.php?language=en-US&seriesname=Jeopardy) . Based upon what I am seeing in the TVDB forums they are more focused on the v2 and v3 API issues but there is a thread (https://forums.thetvdb.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=60126) on the v1 APi issues .

[jbinkley60]

Peter,

I don't know when the TVDB folks are going to fix this. I do see where the Kodi team and others have started migrating to API v3, which the TVDB folks are focused on maintaining going forward. Is there an option for Mezzmo to be updated to support the v3 API ?

[HomerRamone]

Its not finding any metadata for movies either now - not for me at least.

[jbinkley60]

Movies working fine for me. The go against IMDB and not TVDB for the metadata. I am temporarily using Tiny Media Manager (https://www.tinymediamanager.org/) to create MFO files for new TV episodes. it is more time consuming than the built-in Mezzmo scraper but it works.

[Peter]

Unfortunately we do not have time currently to migrate to API v3 so we have to rely upon TVDB fixing the API we are currently using.

[icorrie]

Unfortunately we do not have time currently to migrate to API v3 so we have to rely upon TVDB fixing the API we are currently using.

Our license fees don't justify any ongoing maintenance of the application, then?

[Peter]

Our license fees don't justify any ongoing maintenance of the application, then?

When you purchase Mezzmo/DownloadStudio:

* you own your license of Mezzmo/DownloadStudio for life
* you receive minor updates and bug fixes for free
* major new releases may be charged and this is determined on a case-by-case basis. To date, we have not charged for any new major version that we have released and the upcoming major new version we are developing now will be free to all registered users.

I have had a look at the response returned from thetvdb.org and it appears that they are returning 'all' in the language tag instead of 'en' and Mezzmo is rejecting the results because of this. You can set the language to 'all' instead of 'en' and the search will return results. Posters are not working due to a permissions issue when accessing the URL.

[jbinkley60]

Peter,

I changed the language from EN to ALL and did a Get Metadata for an individual episode and I do get something back from TVDB but there is no episode list to choose the correct episode.

[Peter]

Yes it is not returning episode data in the response.

[Peter]

We have fixed the metadata retrieval in Mezzmo. Please send an email to support [at] conceiva [dot] com and we will send you the updated beta for testing.

[jbinkley60]

The updated beta resolves the TVDB metadata issue for on demand retrieval, newly discovered TV episodes and when running maintenance. Nice job Peter and company. Thanks.

[icorrie]

Working here also, thanks Peter.

Notice the splash screen shows "Mezzmo 6" interesting :D

[shap4ever]

Hi Peter,

I installed your software yesterday and after 2 hours struggling for metadata problem just find here! Would you please give this beta to free users like me too?

ty

[HomerRamone]

Dont suppose there is an ETA for the full release. Im tempted to mail and ask for the beta - but then it would be own fault if it all goes pete tong.. Im sure it wont but...

[Peter]

There is no ETA for the full release as yet but you can email support to get access to the beta.

[steve+t429]

All looking good now for me too, so thanks for the fix Peter:) Looking forward to the new Mezzmo 6!

[RonB]

Working great here, thanks for fixing!

[morden]

Update working fantastic...even better than the previous version as there were a few titles that it wouldn't get the correct information from TVDB such as the new Magnum P.I. and several other shows. Thanks for the beta fix Peter and keep up the excellent work!! P.S. Looking forward to the new Mezzmo 6 just like everyone else is :cool:

[martyd]

Yes, working fine for me too on everything except Eastenders. It returns the description, but not the Episode info or the Artwork. Logging in to Thetvdb everything appears to be there. Would that be a Mezzmo issue or a Thetvdb issue?

[Peter]

There was an issue in the beta where the metadata was larger than 1Mb. The beta is now allocating a larger buffer for the extracted data, please try downloading the beta again to see if this fixes it.

[martyd]

Sorry Peter. It hasn't worked. (I just installed over the top and when the installer asked "Do you want to Repair the existing Version" I said yes). Tried this twice but hasn't fixed it. The will be a lot of Episode data - 4 nights a week for 35 years!

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[Peter]

We have made a change so that the required size is read from the zip file central directory, Eastenders is working now. Please download the updated beta again.

[martyd]

Hi Peter, that's done the trick. Thanks once again for your excellent and prompt support.

[jbinkley60]

There was an issue in the beta where the metadata was larger than 1Mb. The beta is now allocating a larger buffer for the extracted data, please try downloading the beta again to see if this fixes it.

I download this latest update and it fixed a problem I was having with one particular TV series not populating with the earlier update. Thanks Peter and team. Great job.

[Marty Mcfly]

Hello everyone, I am a user of Mezzmo free version 5.2.0.0, and I would need the beta version to repair the problem with the tv show metadata, you cannot download any data, I have already contacted the support of concevia by mail and FB msg but I have no answer. Thank you.

[Paul]

Hello everyone, I am a user of Mezzmo free version 5.2.0.0, and I would need the beta version to repair the problem with the tv show metadata, you cannot download any data, I have already contacted the support of concevia by mail and FB msg but I have no answer. Thank you.

Please be patient until Jan 2nd. Our office is currently closed. We will respond promptly when we return to the office. Many thanks!

[jbinkley60]

FYI, the TVDB database / website is having intermittent issues again today. Some TV series are working and others are not. It's also being reported on the Kodi forums by a number of other metadata scrapers.

[martyd]

Is it intermittent issues, or is it due to the following announcement in Thetvdb forums? (my Bolding).

"Dear Users,

As you probably know, we cutover to a new infrastructure, API, and website in early November 2019 and with that update came the introduction of some modern security features. However, as with any update, the transition revealed some upgrades we needed to make and we have made the tough decision to stop supporting a feature which may require some legacy users of the site to update their media centers. One issue that we encountered was that some older versions of Python (mostly 2.7) experienced issues due to a bug in their bundled url libraries. This caused some old scrapers and players to experience a SSL handshake failure due to outdated/unsupported TLS support. We put a temporary fix in place to remedy the issue and worked with some partners to put in a fix for their users, but our temporary solution is hugely expensive and presents a security issue for the site, the integrity of the data, and our users. Ultimately, we can no longer sustain this support and will be sunsetting our temporary fix soon. It may be in your best interest to reach out to the developers of your specific media center software to see if your system will be affected and if there are any upgrades that will solve this issue. We are sorry to discontinue the support of any technology that our users have become reliant upon, but this transition has made apparent that deprecating some of our older systems and early APIs is the only way we can continue to grow and build the best that TheTVDB has to offer.

Sincerely,
TheTVDB Team"

[jbinkley60]

It is specific to certain TV series and not the connection method. Some of the TV series which weren't working are now working again. I am still see 1 or 2 which aren't. I've tried other scrapers with teh same results. As well this is being reported on the Kodi forum.

[martyd]

Yes, you're right, JB. Some are working, some are not. Some will not respond unless the year of first release is appended. For example, Father Brown returns nothing (it used to return the 1975 series). Father Brown 2013 returns the correct data. I suppose we'll just have wait to see what happens.

[jbinkley60]

Looks like everything is working again. I am no longer getting any failures.

[Virtul]

Still not working for me. Only tv shows, movies are collecting fine.
I've installed tool called Fiddler which displays all web requests in the system.
It showed that mezzmo sends a request to "http://www.thetvdb.com/api/GetSeries.php?seriesname=The+New+Adventures+of+Win nie+the+Pooh&language=all"
When I open it in the browser, everything works fine and I get a valid response. But not in mezzmo, which says it can't find anything.
I guess this happens because thetvdb responds with 301 status code to each request. Could somebody verify this please?

Upd: yep, looks like thetvdb forwards all http requests to https with 301 code, I tried rewriting these request using Charles tool, it can automatically convert http to https, but that didn't help, mezzmo still shows the error :(

[jbinkley60]

Still not working for me. Only tv shows, movies are collecting fine.
I've installed tool called Fiddler which displays all web requests in the system.
It showed that mezzmo sends a request to "http://www.thetvdb.com/api/GetSeries.php?seriesname=The+New+Adventures+of+Win nie+the+Pooh&language=all"
When I open it in the browser, everything works fine and I get a valid response. But not in mezzmo, which says it can't find anything.
I guess this happens because thetvdb responds with 301 status code to each request. Could somebody verify this please?

Upd: yep, looks like thetvdb forwards all http requests to https with 301 code, I tried rewriting these request using Charles tool, it can automatically convert http to https, but that didn't help, mezzmo still shows the error :(

Have you installed the beta patch which fixes the TVDB retrieval issues due to their APi change ? If not, write support and ask for the patch.

[martyd]

Looks like this is broken again, but only for some shows. For instance, 911 S06E18 gets correct metadata for the episode, but Chicago Med S08E20 retrieves the show but not the episode info. The episode list returned is not in any order and seems to go no further than S05. Also Eastenders currently on S39 only shows up to S09.

I logged into thetvdb.org and all the episodes are there, so it's something to do with the retrieval of data, perhaps.

[martyd]

It looks like it's affecting long running shows, so lots of episode data to return. Shows with fewer episodes seem to work fine. Is there a size limit that could be causing this?

[jbinkley60]

It looks like it's affecting long running shows, so lots of episode data to return. Shows with fewer episodes seem to work fine. Is there a size limit that could be causing this?

This looks like something on the source side. I have checked a few shows with many episodes (i.e. Blue Bloods, Cheers, Heartland etc..) and they work fine. I agree Chicago Med is a mess, with the episodes not being in order, missing etc.. Mezzmo is using the older TVDB API interface, which TVDB is eventually shutting down in lieu of moving to v4 of the API. Unfortunately, from what I understand, TVDB is maintaining the rights and authoring for v4 clients. They provided one for Kodi. Peter had mentioned that once TVDB begins to really shut down the old API that Mezzmo would look to move to TMDB for episode metadata.


Thanks,

Jeff

[martyd]

Thanks, Jeff. Looks like we'll just have to wait and see.

[jbinkley60]

Thanks, Jeff. Looks like we'll just have to wait and see.

It looks like the issue is starting to spread on TVDB. I checked Young Sheldon for an episode which worked a week ago and is now missing when doing a Get Online Video Metadata. My conspiracy theory tingle thinks TVDB may be doing this to move people off their old API onto their new pay API. Of course the more likely scenario is that it is starting to break due to a lack of attention and support. We'll see what Peter thinks.


Thanks,

Jeff

[martyd]

My conspiracy theory tingle thinks TVDB may be doing this to move people off their old API onto their new pay API.

Ahh! Programmed obsolescence. Surely not!

[Peter]

We will need to switch to themoviedb.org eventually as TVDB is no longer free and will eventually stop working altogether.

[jbinkley60]

Ahh! Programmed obsolescence. Surely not!

It looks like I can land my black helicopter for a bit longer. I saw note in the Kodi forums where folks reached out to TVDB.com and they fixed the issue. You might want to try the ones again which were broken. They look good here. I checked your Chicago Med and see all 8 seasons now, in the proper order.


Thanks,

Jeff

[martyd]

You might want to try the ones again which were broken. They look good here.

Yes, Chicago Med is good, but Eastenders is still a mess. I might hop over to TVDB and see what they can do. Thanks, Jeff.

[martyd]

but Eastenders is still a mess. I might hop over to TVDB and see what they can do.

And before I could do anything, Eastenders has been fixed. All's well that ends well.

[jbinkley60]

And before I could do anything, Eastenders has been fixed. All's well that ends well.

Great news. By the way, I see you are from Tasmania. I have visited there once, along with Australia and New Zealand. All beautiful places and wonderful people.


Jeff