Better Series Support

I both love and hate the new series support.

I realize the whole process of "recognizing" the if a file is in a series just from the file name is difficult as the file name formats vary considerably, but I think you can do better.

First of all the "series" recognition algorithm is fails to recognize the following:
a. A file that contains two episodes is not recognized. Typical files names are:
i. foo.S01E23-E24.HDTV.XviD-HWE
ii. foo.S01.E23.E24.HDTV.XviD-HWE
b. A file with a Year in the name. e.g. Castle.2009.S01.E23 is not recognized as being in the series Castle. Mezzmo thinks its series name is Castle 2009.

As a suggestion to help with (a) I expect your algorithm uses a regex expression to determine series name, series number and episode number, if so I would like these 3 regex expressions to be visible and alterable by the mezzmo admin (perhaps an advanced tab).

As with (b), the above suggestion may help, but even better would be a configurable "alias" list that kicks in after the above mentioned algorithm to help determine the series name. (or possible kicks in before some how?)
eg. transporter the series -- > Transporter
castle 2009 -- > Castle

At the moment the only two options for title (the name displayed by the client) are:
a. The episode title as retrieved from source (default)
b. The file name

Both are poor. I would like a 3rd option- a formula the mezzmo admin can alter/specify..
I don't advocate any particular syntax but here are two examples:
a. formula using java like syntax "%1$s - %2$2d %3$2d : %4$s" (where parameters uses are fixed/published as: series,season,episode,title, filename, other metadata fields....)
b. formula using dos like syntax "%SeriesName% - %Season% %Episode% : %Title%" (where value names are fixed/published )

All makes sense. We'll look at exposing regular expressions for advanced users. Thanks for the suggestion.

yeah. I also would like to see regular expressions added. Now, that I've updated to 3.x (which took AGES....) I see a whole bunch of messed up files, litterally thousands of them :-(
It seems that my usual naming scheme "%series% S%Season%E%Episode% - %Title%" really makes Mezzmo go mad and "find" stuff that I never knew it existed :-)))
For instance, my former properly named and sorted NCIS folder now looks in Mezzmo like it would be a DVD copy with episodes called "interview with the crew" or "left out scenes".
What puzzles me too is, even I told Mezzmo just to look for GERMAN entries, the messed up files are all with english description.

We'll look at improving the regular expressions.

Tip: If you don't like Mezzmo's titles, then you can keep your filenames as the titles. In the Metadata Retrieval Settings dialog, select the "Use Filename as title" checkbox. You can get to this dialog from the Maintain Library dialog or the Options dialog (Retrieving Metadata page).

If German text cannot be retrieved from IMDB or TheTVDB web sites, then Mezzmo will get the English text.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Paul

Tip: If you don't like Mezzmo's titles, then you can keep your filenames as the titles. In the Metadata Retrieval Settings dialog, select the "Use Filename as title" checkbox. You can get to this dialog from the Maintain Library dialog or the Options dialog (Retrieving Metadata page).

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this does not seem to work all the time for me. It's more or less random what Mezzmo think that needs to be shown.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Paul

If German text cannot be retrieved from IMDB or TheTVDB web sites, then Mezzmo will get the English text.

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Yeah, that's clear, but still strange things are going on.
If left alone, Mezzmo automatically usually finds NOTHING.
If I open the properties of a file and click the "online info" button, it mostly finds nothing too, but if I delete the year from the search (which is mostly just the year of the file creation, so not really a good choice to search for) and search again, he usually finds me the correct (and german) text.
But the found cover is usually in english or some other language.
Now back to the main properties, I click on "change picture" and do another internet search.
In 99% it then retrieves the wanted german cover as the first in the list !!!
So why do I have to search twice? one time for the metadata and one time for the correct cover?

Thanks for the feedback. We'll improve it for the next release.