Not recognizing certain TV series

[AWSHO]

I have 40 different series in my TV SERIES folder on my computer. There are four that I cannot get Mezzmo to recognize. I have tried numerous times by updating the folder, with no luck. I know they are labeled correctly because they are labeled like all of my other TV series.

The titles are ABSENTIA - JACK IRISH - THE BIG INTERVIEW and TOM CLANCY'S JACK RYAN

A sample of the path is as follows - G/TV SERIES/ABSENTIA (2017)/SEASON 1/ABSENTIA_S01E01 COMEBACK.MKV

Another sample is - G/TOM CLANCY'S JACK RYAN/SEASON 1/TOM CLANCYS JACK RYAN - S01E01 - PILOT.MKV

Anybody have any suggestions as to what might be wrong?

Thank you all ahead of time for your assistance. These four series are driving me crazy to try and fix.:)

[jbinkley60]

Mezzmo uses www.thetvdb.org to pull metadata for TV shows. You can always go there and see how they exist and are named. The first one is just named Absentia in www.thetvdb.org. I verified Mezzmo pulls it with just that name. One of the ways to manage this better is to leverage a series.xml file in the folder with your TV files. I use a series.xml file quite a bit when shows are harder to identify or scenarios where there is a remake with the same name.

Here's the format of a series.XML files:

<series>
<seriesname>Absentia</seriesname>
</series>

Indent the seriesname line, even though it doesn't show up here due to HTML formatting.

[morden]

I'm having issues with getting a correct series to come up as well, in this case it's Magnum P.I. (2018 remake). I typed in Magnum to bring up all the series containing Magnum but it only brings up the 1980 version no matter what. TheTVDB has both series listed on the website, the 1980 version id is 74380 and the 2018 version id is 350068. To differentiate the difference in series name in their website there is one minor difference in the title.. the 1980 series is actually titled Magnum, P.I. whereas the 2018 is Magnum P.I., which I actually type in but it keeps coming up with the 1980 version no matter how many different ways I type in the title.

I tried the series.xml file method that was mentioned in the previous post as well. No luck with that and yes I did indent the seriesname line.

Any help with solving this would be helpful!

[jbinkley60]

I am having the same issue. It appears to be an issue with the comma in the original series name at TVDB. Maybe the Mezzmo folks can work around it and differentiate the comma vs. not in the two series names..

[Peter]

The tvdb is only returning the original series http://www.thetvdb.com/api/GetSeries.php?seriesname=Magnum+P.I&language=all

[jbinkley60]

Peter,

The issue appears to be with the language setting. I went via the TVDB GUI and both show up: https://www.themoviedb.org/search?query=Magnum%20P.I.&language=en-US
If I then modify your API query to only English: http://www.thetvdb.com/api/GetSeries.php?seriesname=Magnum%20P.I.&language=en-US I see both series. Is the language setting possibly not being passed ? I will say though the TVDB behavior seems odd since English is a subset of All.

[Peter]

Mezzmo passes 'all' as the language then compares the result language to the selected language. It looks like the parameter all needs to be capital A, if I use http://www.thetvdb.com/api/GetSeries.php?seriesname=Magnum+P.I&language=All then it is found. I will replace this in the code and you can get a beta from support [at] conceiva [dot] com

[jbinkley60]

Peter,

I am not sure this is the fix and might in fact break others. I did some testing with this API query: http://www.thetvdb.com/api/GetSeries.php?seriesname=Godzilla&language=All . it only returns English language responses. If I change it to: http://www.thetvdb.com/api/GetSeries.php?seriesname=Godzilla&language=all I get more responses with other languages. Any query I have tried with All just returns English. Granted I've only tried about 10 different queries. What's even more interesting is that if I specify the de language on the above query http://www.thetvdb.com/api/GetSeries.php?seriesname=Godzilla&language=de it responds with de and en language series.

[Peter]

Yes it appears that using All is the same as using it without the language parameter. We will investigate further to see if we can find a better solution.

[jbinkley60]

Peter,

Agreed. I think All is being ignored and then TVDB defaults to the en-US, which causes Magnum PI to work. Their API documentation says en-US is the default if no language is provided. This really looks like a TVDB issue.

[AWSHO]

Just had a chance to check back on this thread. It seems like we got a little off topic. I don't think my original question got answered. Peter, any suggestions for TV series not being found?

[Peter]

I tested adding a file with the same path as Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan and it was found successfully.

[AWSHO]

OK, I think this goes to my other question that was posted. And possibly my TV SERIES is not added as a folder.

[Peter]

For looking up metadata it does not matter whether the TV series is added as a folder, Mezzmo still uses the full path to the file to lookup metadata.

[AWSHO]

OK, now I am a little confused. You said that if TV series is not a folder, it will not update new files. Which is the issue that I had. And now you say that it does not matter if it is a folder. Perhaps I am confusing the technology of words. I have added TV series as a folder now and it added all of the folders on my computer.

[Peter]

It is only for looking up metadata that it does not matter if it is a folder or a playlist, files are treated the same. When maintaining the library only folders check for new files, playlists only show the files that have already been added to the library. Adding the TV Series folder to Mezzmo will add all the folders under TV series, if you added the parent drive of TV series or the parent folder then any other folders will be added to Mezzmo, you should only add the TV series folder and not the parent drive or folder.

[AWSHO]

Pete, Thanks so much for the information. YOU DA' MAN!!!

[hsbrown2]

Just to add a little bit to this...

I avoid using the online metadata scrapers like the plague for this very reason. They aren't foolproof, and if you lose your Mezzmo server for some reason, it all has to scrape again, and any fixes/edits you did before the loss will have to be redone. Or if you build a new computer with better functionality. There are any number of reasons you may have to force Mezzmo to re-index all your content.

My current tool of choice is Tiny Media Manager (https://www.tinymediamanager.org/)

I gather all the metadata using this tool, and if I can't find it I write my own (or home movies!). I then store it in a .nfo file, and scrape the fanart.jpg and folder.jpg files, and store them in the same folder as the movie (you're using subfolders for each movie/tv series, right?), then tell Mezzmo to ONLY get art from the media folders, and to ONLY use data from .nfo files (some will have text metadata embedded in them, even).

This way, no matter what, if I have to restore from a backup, or rebuild my Mezzmo database, the metadata is exactly as I have curated it, and never changes.

Once the file has been indexed properly, it's always a good idea to lock it, too. You can still hand edit what's in the database through the GUI, but it won't edit through metadata scans later (and it speeds up scanning a LOT).

Finally, this is one of the reasons I changed over to using metadata editors. When you have multiple series from different years of the same name, scrapers can't always smartly select the right one. With TMM, you can pick from several and apply the correct one, and it works like a charm.

[AWSHO]

Thanks hsbrown 2, I will look into this.

[smitbret]

+1 for this, almost verbatim. I too use TinyMediaManager to create the .nfo file that is stored in the video folder along with the applicable fanart. Then Mezzmo is set to only get metadata from the .nfo file and get art only from the external files. It might take a little more work when adding titles but potentially saves time over the long run and it's the most accurate and thorough.



Just to add a little bit to this...

I avoid using the online metadata scrapers like the plague for this very reason. They aren't foolproof, and if you lose your Mezzmo server for some reason, it all has to scrape again, and any fixes/edits you did before the loss will have to be redone. Or if you build a new computer with better functionality. There are any number of reasons you may have to force Mezzmo to re-index all your content.

My current tool of choice is Tiny Media Manager (https://www.tinymediamanager.org/)

I gather all the metadata using this tool, and if I can't find it I write my own (or home movies!). I then store it in a .nfo file, and scrape the fanart.jpg and folder.jpg files, and store them in the same folder as the movie (you're using subfolders for each movie/tv series, right?), then tell Mezzmo to ONLY get art from the media folders, and to ONLY use data from .nfo files (some will have text metadata embedded in them, even).

This way, no matter what, if I have to restore from a backup, or rebuild my Mezzmo database, the metadata is exactly as I have curated it, and never changes.

Once the file has been indexed properly, it's always a good idea to lock it, too. You can still hand edit what's in the database through the GUI, but it won't edit through metadata scans later (and it speeds up scanning a LOT).

Finally, this is one of the reasons I changed over to using metadata editors. When you have multiple series from different years of the same name, scrapers can't always smartly select the right one. With TMM, you can pick from several and apply the correct one, and it works like a charm.