Library Content Organization under "Movies"

I have movies and TV series files well organized in folders and sub-folders on my hard disk, like this:

Drive M:\
|
|--Movies (folder)
| |
| |-- Movie 1 (folder, movie file is inside)
| |
| |-- Movie 2 (folder, movie file is inside)
| |
| |-- Movie 3 (folder, movie file is inside)
|
|--TV Shows & Series (folder)
| |
| |-- Series 1 (folder)
| | |
| | |-- Series 1 Season 1 (folder, video files inside)
| | |
| | |-- Series 1 Season 2 (folder, video files inside)
| | |
| | |-- Series 1 Season 3 (folder, video files inside)
| |
| |-- Series 2 (folder)
| | |
| | |-- Series 2 Season 1 (folder, video files inside)
| | |
| | |-- Series 2 Season 2 (folder, video files inside)
| |
| |-- Series 3 (folder)
| | |
| | |-- Series 3 Season 1 (folder, video files inside)
| | |
| | |-- Series 3 Season 2 (folder, video files inside)
| | |
| | |-- Series 3 Season 3 (folder, video files inside)

All of these are within the Mezzmo library (along with other well organized folder areas with photos, music...).

Mezzmo detects and organizes these movies and TV shows files/folders automatically into various categories under its "Video" item in the playlists/library area. When I click on Video I can see the various categories:

Actor
All Video Files
Director
File Type
Genre
Home Movies
Last 50 Played
Movies
Movies (Unwatched)
Recently Added
Top 50 Rated
TV Series
TV Series (Unwatched)
Year

Mezzmo generally does a good job automatically organizing, but there are a few exceptions. For example, almost all the TV series & shows are present under the "TV Series" categoriy, and I can access them by season.

However a few of the TV series seem to be missing from the "TV Series" category. In my example above, for example, Series 1 and Series 3 show up in the "TV Series" category, but Series 2 does not (no access to any of the Series 2 folders or files under the "TV Series" category.

The only place I can see/access any of the Series 2 shows is under the "All Video Files" category. So clearly Series 2 is in the library and detected by Mezzmo, but for some reason not categorized under "TV Series" correctly.

My question: How can I manually force Mezzmo to include the Series 2 folders/files under the "TV Series" category?

Secondary question: Why did Mezzmo not automatically detect Series 2 correctly (why was it not automatically included under the "TV Series" category)? The Series 2 files were created in the same way as Series 1 and Series 3, so I'm curious to know that the detailed requirements are in order for Mezzmo to automatically categorize correctly.

Thanks very much!

LRC

Hi LRC,

Some answers:

1. Right-click on one the misplaced videos and click Properties. On the Properties dialog, check the Series edit box, Season edit box and Episode edit box. Correct any of these that are missing or wrong. Also, check that the Category has a value of "TV show". Click OK and Mezzmo will save these changes and start processing active playlists to update them all with your changes. After a few minutes, you should see that video start to appear in the TV series active playlist.
2. Mezzmo automatically detects the TV series name, season number and episode number from your video file's filename and/or any associated external metadata files (.NFO, .XML. .TGMD, etc.). Let us know the full path of on the the misplaced video files and that may provide a clue.

Hi Paul,

For your item #1: I checked some of the video files properties - the "Category" item is blank instead of the "TV Show" value it should have, so this seems to be the problem. Not sure why Mezzmo did not automatically pick this up as a TV Show when it automatically picked up so many other series in my library. Your suggestion in #1 requires that I go through and adjust properties on each individual video file - very tedious, is there any way to set the Category value on a folder and have the fix apply to all sub-folders and their contents? Or any other way to set the category value on many files all at once?

For your item #2: Here's the full pathname of one of the affected video files:

M:\ServerMedia\TV Shows & Series\NCIS LA\S06\NCIS LA S06E16 - Expiration Date.flv

Thanks,

LRC

Hi LRC,

To change a bunch of files in one operation, select the files in Mezzmo (using Ctrl or Shit keys with your mouse) and right-click on one of them and click Properties. On the Properties dialog, change the Category and click OK. The change will be applied to all selected files.

Regarding why Mezzmo did not pick up your videos as a TV show, the reason is that Mezzmo does an online search for the TV show name and if it does not find a match, then it does not regard the video as TV show epsiode. For TV shows, Mezzmo uses www.thetvdb.com and "NCIS LA" does not match the correct name of "NCIS: Los Angeles" - so that explains why you did not get correct results for these videos.

Here's a way to fix this quickly without edit each file using the Properties dialog. Create a "series.xml" text file in the folder containing the videos, and add the following text into the XML file:

Code:

---

<series>
    <seriesname>NCIS: Los Angeles</seriesname>
</series>

---

Note: This XML file will apply to all videos in the folder.

Now right-click on the playlist or folder containing these files and click 'Maintain Files'. On the Maintain Files dialog, select the 'Update all information' radio button and click 'Maintain Now'. Mezzmo will pick up the external metadata file (series.xml) and use it when looking the TV show name online.

Hi Paul,

Thanks very much for the answer and instructions, exactly what I was hoping for.

Regards,

LRC

Paul,

Is there documentation for the series.xml file ? I have a structure and naming standard I have used for a number for years, prior to Mezzmo and I'd like to see if I can have Mezzmo use it vs. me changing it at this point. My structure is exactly like LRC's:

|--TV Shows & Series (folder)
| |
| |-- Series 1 (folder)
| | |
| | |-- Series 1 Season 1 (folder, video files inside)
| | |
| | |-- Series 1 Season 2 (folder, video files inside)
| | |
| | |-- Series 1 Season 3 (folder, video files inside)
| |
| |-- Series 2 (folder)
| | |
| | |-- Series 2 Season 1 (folder, video files inside)
| | |
| | |-- Series 2 Season 2 (folder, video files inside)
| |
| |-- Series 3 (folder)
| | |
| | |-- Series 3 Season 1 (folder, video files inside)
| | |
| | |-- Series 3 Season 2 (folder, video files inside)
| | |
| | |-- Series 3 Season 3 (folder, video files inside)

But the naming standard I use is:

Big Bang Theory 1.01 - Pilot

Where the 1.01 is the season and episode followed by the dash and then the episode title. I looked at the Wiki and see you support the S01E01 format and others but not a 1.01 formet (you support a 1x01 format). Is there a way I can use this format by editing the series.xml file ? Or more details on the series.xml file ?

The series.xml file is a "standard" XML file that is created by various media organizer/center/player tools. Mezzmo supports reading them (as well as <episode>.xml files, metadata\<episode>.xml files, etc.).

Regarding your filenaming scheme, we can adjust Mezzmo's filename metadata parser to accommodate your scheme. Email us at support [at] conceiva [dot] com and we'll provide a patch for you to test and confirm all is working correctly with your folder/file structure.

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the offer of patch but I've already adjusted properties of the files per previous instructions. I'm all good now and no need to send any patch. The offer is greatly appreciated though!

Regards,

LRC

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LRC

Thanks for the offer of patch but I've already adjusted properties of the files per previous instructions. I'm all good now and no need to send any patch. The offer is greatly appreciated though!

---

The patch was for jbinkley60 since he has a slightly different TV show file naming style. Sorry for any confusion.

Glad you are up and running now :).

Paul,

As always you guys are great and the patch worked perfectly. It will save me a lot of time in the future.

Excellent :). We'll add this capability into the next Mezzmo release.