Actor images and Mezzmo future

[MidnightInAurora]

Good evening everyone -

I have a question (actually 2). I'm trying to get actor or cast images to load and I'm not having much success.

I'm using Media Center Master and it puts a URL to the image in both the movie.xml and <movie title>.nfo file

For example, in movie.xml it has -

<Person>
	<Name>Haruka Ayase</Name>
	<Type>Actor</Type>
	<Role>Cyborg</Role>
	<Image>https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w300_and_h450_bestv2/oUfDmm4jJ03Vs58Ys64f1E219Ix.jpg</Image>
</Person>

And in <movie title>.nfo file it has -

<actor>
	<name>Haruka Ayase</name>
	<role>Cyborg</role>
	<thumb>https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w300_and_h450_bestv2/oUfDmm4jJ03Vs58Ys64f1E219Ix.jpg</thumb>
</actor>

Mezzmo is just displaying the normal generic heads with actor name below it.

Any idea how to get these actor images to display?

Second, will there ever be a Mezzmo 7?

Thanks.

Jim

[jbinkley60]

Good evening everyone -

I have a question (actually 2). I'm trying to get actor or cast images to load and I'm not having much success.

I'm using Media Center Master and it puts a URL to the image in both the movie.xml and <movie title>.nfo file

For example, in movie.xml it has -

<Person>
	<Name>Haruka Ayase</Name>
	<Type>Actor</Type>
	<Role>Cyborg</Role>
	<Image>https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w300_and_h450_bestv2/oUfDmm4jJ03Vs58Ys64f1E219Ix.jpg</Image>
</Person>

And in <movie title>.nfo file it has -

<actor>
	<name>Haruka Ayase</name>
	<role>Cyborg</role>
	<thumb>https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w300_and_h450_bestv2/oUfDmm4jJ03Vs58Ys64f1E219Ix.jpg</thumb>
</actor>

Mezzmo is just displaying the normal generic heads with actor name below it.

Any idea how to get these actor images to display?

Second, will there ever be a Mezzmo 7?

Thanks.

Jim

Jim,

Peter can best answer the question on what format and tags Mezzmo uses in the NFO file for actor / actress images. I know Mezzmo scrapes TMDB for images normally so it might be an issue where Mezzmo needs to scrape them directly or an NFO format issue.

One thing you might want to look at is a tool I created called Mezzmo Artwork Checker to help manage Mezzmo actor / actress images. The link has instructions on usage and the tool pulls info directly from the Mezzmo database so you can run CSV exports and such to see exactly what is going on. I use it to periodically check for new images on TMDB vs. having to rescrape media. It has an option for IMDB but that does require an IMDB, which has a small cost.

Here's a link to the support forum for the tool. It does require Python on your local machine. Sorry, I am a Python developer I've used it to pull down 14k+ actor images from TMDB and IMDB. It is very fast with TMDB. It can run through 1,000 queries in a few minutes.


Thanks,

Jeff

[MidnightInAurora]

Thank you Jeff. That's very helpful.

I've downloaded Python and your Github zip. I'll try it and what results I get.

Any plans to add TVDB for series?

Jim

[Peter]

Mezzmo does not currently get the actor image from the NFO, only the actor name. There are no plans for a Mezzmo 7 at this time.

[jbinkley60]

Thank you Jeff. That's very helpful.

I've downloaded Python and your Github zip. I'll try it and what results I get.

Any plans to add TVDB for series?

Jim

No plans for TVDB right now. With their moving to API v4, I believe they have made it much more restrictive for the future for 3rd party development.


Jeff

[DaveyDee]

I have managed to pull down 41,365 images out of 81,407 using MCM using only the TMDB API, as I get the feeling my AWS bill would be way high if I used the IMDB API too. Is there any other way of finding the missing Actor Images short of looking through the actor_no_match csv and googling each one in turn?

Also I used to have my music as a Scondary Library, which I have since tried to remove (606,980 tracks in 50,000 Folders, arranged in Music > Artists > Artist x-x (A-D, E-K, L-R and S-Z) > Artist > Album), but even after doing a Delete and choosing to delete data from Mezzmo Library - which took hours! - a Lot of data still seems to be stuck in the database, and MCM is still searching spurious Artist Names (and occasionaly album names) when I run mezzmo_actor.py.

As I have never managed to get past basic SQL, is there any way in Mezzmo to strip out these entries in the database short of ading in the Library again and trying another delete cycle.

I don't really want to completely wipe the database amd start from scratch again, as I have over 5.5k Movies and 25,000+ TV episodes in my Video Library, many of which I had to manually populate records for as they were not found using Online Metatdata searches!

[jbinkley60]

I have managed to pull down 41,365 images out of 81,407 using MCM using only the TMDB API, as I get the feeling my AWS bill would be way high if I used the IMDB API too. Is there any other way of finding the missing Actor Images short of looking through the actor_no_match csv and googling each one in turn?

Also I used to have my music as a Scondary Library, which I have since tried to remove (606,980 tracks in 50,000 Folders, arranged in Music > Artists > Artist x-x (A-D, E-K, L-R and S-Z) > Artist > Album), but even after doing a Delete and choosing to delete data from Mezzmo Library - which took hours! - a Lot of data still seems to be stuck in the database, and MCM is still searching spurious Artist Names (and occasionaly album names) when I run mezzmo_actor.py.

As I have never managed to get past basic SQL, is there any way in Mezzmo to strip out these entries in the database short of ading in the Library again and trying another delete cycle.

I don't really want to completely wipe the database amd start from scratch again, as I have over 5.5k Movies and 25,000+ TV episodes in my Video Library, many of which I had to manually populate records for as they were not found using Online Metatdata searches!

I am not 100% following you here with regards to MCM and Mezzmo_actor.py, which is part of the Mezzmo artwork Checker. Are you running both ? If I understand you right the Mezzmo artwork Checker is still showing a bunch odd looking actors and actresses names which it is checking, correct ? That could happen sometimes either by Mezzmo scraping the data or MCM (and then importing via NFO files).

If you want the Mezzmo artwork Check to ignore them just mark them as bad and then they will be ignored when you run the bad command (this adds it to the artwork checker bad database). If you are trying to clean these out of Mezzmo then you will need run run maintenance on the Mezzmo database. Make a backup first but realize you are never going to get to 100% of images being available and there is always going to be bad data for some some performers due to bad data on their websites.

I've been using the Mezzmo Artwork Checker for a year, including with IMDB and here's my stats:

IMDB image fetching completed.
Mezzmo actor comparison completed successfully.

TMDB query count:                       500
TMDB image queries:                     500
TMDB images found on this query:        4
IMDB query count:                       500
IMDB image queries:                     500
IMDB images found on this query:        3
IMDB image query success rate:          100.0%

         ************  Mezzmo Artwork Checker Stats  *************

Last time checker ran:                  2023-03-20 15:52:46
Mezzmo actors found:                    75458
Mezzmo actors deleted:                  926
Mezzmo Poster files found:              52274
Mezzmo Poster files without actor:      11098
Mezzmo UserPoster files found:          14418
Mezzmo UserPoster files without actor:  0
Mezzmo actor not found on IMDB/TMDB:    4016
Mezzmo actors with Good Image:          55056
Mezzmo actors with Bad Image:           400
Mezzmo actors with no Image:            21222
Mezzmo actors with no Image found:      15499

You can see I have 400 which either have really bad images on TMDB / IMDB or have bad names I don't want to attempt fetching. For example:

Harlem Community Choir; John Lennon; Plastic Ono Band; Yoko Ono
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Helen Rodgers; Paul Hardcastle
Joshua Redman; Peabo Bryson
Boney James; Rick Braun
Blue Öyster Cult
The Pretenders
Manhattan Transfer
Doc Severinsen; Doc Severinsen & The Tonight Show Band; Los Angeles Children's Chorus

This is just a sampling of ones I marked bad but they likely are valid for Mezzmo.

With regards to NFO imports, I have been working with Peter for the Mezzmo NFO file imports to support importing the playcounts and the last played time from Kodi NFO files. The playcount is working with the latest Mezzmo patch (version 6.0.7.15). He's still working on the last played date / time import.



Thanks,

Jeff

[DaveyDee]

IMDB image fetching completed.
Mezzmo actor comparison completed successfully.

TMDB query count:                       900
TMDB image queries:                     900
TMDB images found on this query:        0
IMDB query count:                       0
IMDB image queries:                     0
IMDB images found on this query:        
IMDB image query success rate:          100.0%

         ************  Mezzmo Artwork Checker Stats  *************

Last time checker ran:                  2023-03-21 16:53:17.569135
Mezzmo actors found:                    81196
Mezzmo actors deleted:                  6
Mezzmo Poster files found:              7493
Mezzmo Poster files without actor:      7250
Mezzmo UserPoster files found:          41344
Mezzmo UserPoster files without actor:  17
Mezzmo actor not found on IMDB/TMDB:    9875
Mezzmo actors with Good Image:          41598
Mezzmo actors with Bad Image:           311
Mezzmo actors with no Image:            39604
Mezzmo actors with no Image found:      29726

I have run maintenance several times to try to clear out the rogue data in the Mezzmo.db files, but I still see weird things like 'Earth, Wind and Fire, ripped with Express Rip CD Ripper Software, Live from the Hollywood Bowl, Yngwie Malmstein' etc (again just a sample), even though I have run a delete Library on the Music Library on my Mezzmo server and ticked "Also delete the file(s) from your Mezzmo Library", so those tags should not even be showing up in the Mezzmo Artwork Check.

I understand that not every Actor has a profile pic in TMDB, and the technicalities of being able to search TVDB make that avenue impractical. I was just wondering if anyone else had any 'quick-fix' suggestions to locate the 40k+ files I am still short of, and if they had any other options that I could pursue to try and clean my mezzmo server database!

[jbinkley60]

IMDB image fetching completed.
Mezzmo actor comparison completed successfully.

TMDB query count:                       900
TMDB image queries:                     900
TMDB images found on this query:        0
IMDB query count:                       0
IMDB image queries:                     0
IMDB images found on this query:        
IMDB image query success rate:          100.0%

         ************  Mezzmo Artwork Checker Stats  *************

Last time checker ran:                  2023-03-21 16:53:17.569135
Mezzmo actors found:                    81196
Mezzmo actors deleted:                  6
Mezzmo Poster files found:              7493
Mezzmo Poster files without actor:      7250
Mezzmo UserPoster files found:          41344
Mezzmo UserPoster files without actor:  17
Mezzmo actor not found on IMDB/TMDB:    9875
Mezzmo actors with Good Image:          41598
Mezzmo actors with Bad Image:           311
Mezzmo actors with no Image:            39604
Mezzmo actors with no Image found:      29726

I have run maintenance several times to try to clear out the rogue data in the Mezzmo.db files, but I still see weird things like 'Earth, Wind and Fire, ripped with Express Rip CD Ripper Software, Live from the Hollywood Bowl, Yngwie Malmstein' etc (again just a sample), even though I have run a delete Library on the Music Library on my Mezzmo server and ticked "Also delete the file(s) from your Mezzmo Library", so those tags should not even be showing up in the Mezzmo Artwork Check.

I understand that not every Actor has a profile pic in TMDB, and the technicalities of being able to search TVDB make that avenue impractical. I was just wondering if anyone else had any 'quick-fix' suggestions to locate the 40k+ files I am still short of, and if they had any other options that I could pursue to try and clean my mezzmo server database!

Ok, sorry to be a pain here but trying to fully understand things. When you say you are seeing things like "'Earth, Wind and Fire, ripped with Express Rip CD Ripper Software....." where are you seeing it, in the Mezzmo artwork Checker ? I ask because I note that your Mezzmo actors deleted count is just 6. If you are still seeing them in the Mezzmo artwork Checker and that is the concern, there is a bit of a quirk in how the checker finds deleted actors which have been removed from Mezzmo.

Try running this command:

mezzmo_actor.py noactor all

This will force the Mezzmo Artwork Checker to find any actors deleted in Mezzmo and mark them deleted in its database, thus never scanning them again unless you do a clean command. It will also give you two CSV files where you can what movies various unwanted actors are associated with. It should also increment your Mezzmo Actors Deleted count, if it found actors which have been deleted.

Then run this command:

mezzmo_actor.py csv

This CSV file called actor_no_match...csv will show you the status of every actor in the Mezzmo artwork Checker database. Look at the checkStatus column. Deleted means the checker has detected that the associated actor has been removed from Mezzmo. bad means it has been marked bad, as above. In either case the checker will skip them.


Thanks,

Jeff

[DaveyDee]

Ok, sorry to be a pain here but trying to fully understand things. When you say you are seeing things like "'Earth, Wind and Fire, ripped with Express Rip CD Ripper Software....." where are you seeing it, in the Mezzmo artwork Checker ? I ask because I note that your Mezzmo actors deleted count is just 6. If you are still seeing them in the Mezzmo artwork Checker and that is the concern, there is a bit of a quirk in how the checker finds deleted actors which have been removed from Mezzmo.

Try running this command:

mezzmo_actor.py noactor all

This will force the Mezzmo Artwork Checker to find any actors deleted in Mezzmo and mark them deleted in its database, thus never scanning them again unless you do a clean command. It will also give you two CSV files where you can what movies various unwanted actors are associated with. It should also increment your Mezzmo Actors Deleted count, if it found actors which have been deleted.

Then run this command:

mezzmo_actor.py csv

This CSV file called actor_no_match...csv will show you the status of every actor in the Mezzmo artwork Checker database. Look at the checkStatus column. Deleted means the checker has detected that the associated actor has been removed from Mezzmo. bad means it has been marked bad, as above. In either case the checker will skip them.


Thanks,

Jeff

After running the processes you suggested, I got the following upon running the process again:

************ Mezzmo Artwork Checker Stats *************

Last time checker ran: 2023-03-21 23:06:08.046795
Mezzmo actors found: 81196
Mezzmo actors deleted: 6
Mezzmo Poster files found: 7493
Mezzmo Poster files without actor: 7250
Mezzmo UserPoster files found: 41350
Mezzmo UserPoster files without actor: 17
Mezzmo actor not found on IMDB/TMDB: 9874


Also, after running the aforementioned processes, I did not see any spurious references while the process 'mezzmo_actor.py images' was running.

Thank you so much for your assistance, it has been most helpful!

David.