About to buy Mezzmo - Metadata questions

Hi all,

I've been tinkering with Mezzmo past few days and it's great. Few frustrating things though and I would like some explanation/answers.

My setup: WDTV streaming media player as my device connected to Mezzmo media server running on a machine on my lan.

1. Not using any default playlists as I want to setup "smart playlists". Where does Mezzmo pick up the metadata from (let's say Title) to determine what should go into that smart list? I see there's support for tgmd files, so is metadata read directly from tgmd or does tgmd file first update Mezzmo's own db when you maintain library and data is then read from Mezzmo db? Or neither?

2. Related to item 1: I generated a tgmd file for all my videos since it's well supported by other media servers also instead of relying solely on Mezzmo, but having heck of a time trying to get the files to read when maintaining library. Doesn't seem to update so I'm obviously doing something wrong? To illustrate, I created a smart playlist of all video files in the library. Since each file has an associated tgmd I was expecting to see the "Title" in Mezzmo front-end to be what's in that file, but I don't. I see the raw file name as title - which is what Mezzmo defaults to I pressume. However, I can edit the properties > Title directly in Mezzmo for that file and then it works. So where exactly is tgmd (or some other external metadata file) actually coming into play in this process? Is my understanding of how it should work incorrect or just how I may be going about doing things?

3. Setting up TV series. Any suggestions on what's the best setup to have series show up as follows: Master folder for all TV shows, let's call it "Series", under which you would have, "Series Name", under which you have individual episodes with proper titles, etc.? Just setup generic "playlist" and add files to that, or is there a "smart" way to do it? As comparison, I've tried Serviio media server and that somehow magically created the exact navigation I described above - no need to create playlist or structure the folders on your a certain way. It fetches data from TVDB I believe and uses the file naming convention of <name (year) S00E00>. Will say that Mezzmo is superior overall :D

I attempted to do this by creating an "Active Playlist" and tie all the episodes of a series by "Album" property (and deleting the album property for movies). Trouble is, even the files that don't have album show up in the list in their own category. Anyway to change this so I'm left with just the ones that do? Figured this method could be a workaround for what I'm trying to accomplish, but falls short.

4. Also about TV shows, does Mezzmo not support the SeasonEpisode (S01E01) convention for file name to get online metadata? E.g., I have Game Of Thrones S01E01, but when you get online metadata it can't find any. If you remove S01E01 it fetches the data along with a dropdown list of all episodes you can choose from (although they don't have the episode number which would've made it more convenient).

Again, this is a great piece of software and I appreciate any thoughts you may have on these questions. If anything I described is confusing please say so and I'll try to clarify.

Hi Vinash,

Some answers:

1. When you add files/folders into your Mezzmo library, Mezzmo extracts text and artwork metadata embedded in the video, music or photo file and also from associated metadata files - including ThumbGen .tgmd files, XMBC .nfo/.tbn file, series.xml files, <episode>.xml files, MyMovies.xml, movie.xml, folder.jpg/.png, artwork*small/large.jpg files, and Sony .modd files. In addition, when using the Maintain Library dialog, if you want, Mezzmo will also read metadata that is embedded in the file and from the external metadata files. You can control this using the "Update media properties" and "Update artwork" checkboxes.

2. Mezzmo should be picking up your .tgmd files. Make sure they are in the same folder and have <filename>.<ext>.tgmd naming convention (e.g. c:\inception.mkv and c:\inception.mkv.tgmd). When using the Maintain Library dialog, be careful with regards using the update settings. If you wish to overwrite the existing your metadata (e.g. title) for your files, then choose the "Update all files" radio button (note: all your existing metadata that you have entered will be replaced). If you wish to retail all your current metadata for your files and just find metadata for new files or find metadata for attributes that are empty, then choose "Only update files with missing information" radio button. If that doe snot help, then send us one of your .tgmd files to support [at] conceiva [dot] com and we'll check it out. Another tip: you can right-click on a folder or playlist in the tree in Mezzmo and click 'Maintain Playlist' to just maintain the files contained within it, rather than maintaining your complete library of files.

3. As mentioned, Mezzmo does read series.xml and <episode>.xml files so it can extract all the nice metadata about your TV series. In terms of setting up playlists, as you have found, you can use the 'Album' attribute to create a playlist structure (where the series name is entered into 'Album' attribute). We're about to add better series file naming extraction & series playlists (like you mention), so you should a nice improvement in this area in an upcoming version.

4. Mezzmo lets you find movie and TV series information online from IMDB and TheTVDB. In the current version (v2.6.7), you have to manually search for these using the Get Online Video Metadata button on the Properties dialog. We will automate this in an upcoming version based on the video filename.

Thanks for the quick reply, Paul.

Regarding ThumbGen, I've double checked the settings you mentioned (Update media properties, Update Artwork..). I've recreated the entire library all together, deleted and regenerated the tgmd file several times to be sure, but no joy. For example, file name is 21 Jump Street (2011).mkv, there's an associated "21 Jump Street (2011).mkv.tgmd", and a cover art jpg in the same folder. Mezzmo picks up the cover art Thumbgen created (I switched it around couple of times to verify), but the title in Mezzmo still shows as "21 Jump Street (2011)" and not "21 Jump Street" as the title in tgmd shows. I suppose I could be wrong in thinking that the "<title>" is what gets picked up by Mezzmo and am just way off in troubleshooting this. Snippet of the NFO file from tgmd (I will email the entire tgmd to email you provided also) where you can see the title:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<movie xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" ThumbGen="1">
<hasrighttoleftdirection>false</hasrighttoleftdirection>
<title>21 Jump Street</title>
<originaltitle>21 Jump Street</originaltitle>
<year>2012</year>
<plot>An undercover police unit ...

If it's any help, I'm using ThumbGen 1.2.13.0.

Thanks.

Hi Vinash,

Thanks for the sample .tgmd file. We found and fixed the problem. It will be included in the next update for all registered users (should be released next week).

Good deal. Thanks.