Do Active Playlists Really Work?

[SolihullRog]

EDIT 8 Feb 2017

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See post #24 for the Full Monty of this thread.
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I believe that there are big errors in the processing of Playlists.

I've had Mezzmo for a few years and always relied on the good organisation of my PC folders to find films by their Title (because Mezzmo never seems to do what I expect).

I've always wanted to be able to search on different criteria, so I decided to do a proper test.

I created a new database which only contains the works of one person - Spike Milligan.

I've got a number of his TV programs in the folder hierarchy ...>Comedy Progs >Spike Milligan >{Series name} >{Episode}

Attachment 1 (with Titles set to include the Path) shows some of the movies.

Attachment 2 shows the definition of a playlist called Spike Logic Test

Attachment 3 shows that the playlist is empty.

Why is it empty? What have I done wrong, or is this the first bug?

I've tried simplifying the filter (to 'Comedy' or 'Spike') and tried different keywords.

This is just the first strange thing that I find in this area.

[Peter]

Hi,
possibly the properties of the files are missing the 'Year' value and this is why the files are not listed. For an active playlist the files must contain all of the keywords listed in the structure, so for this example Genre and Year must not be empty. I think also the 'Group by first word' is in the wrong place in the hierarchy since the Year will always be one word, you should try moving this up or down in the hierarchy. The group by first word may be failing due to the Year being a numerical value.

[SolihullRog]

Thank you Peter - that's a good start for me. Could I jump to my ultimate goal, which I would expect to be simple. It has eluded me for years.

I have TV series which are simply organised in my Windows folders, like this:

WHY DOES THIS EDITOR IGNORE LEADING SPACES AND TABS ON A LINE?

- Comedy
- Alexei Sayle
- Series 1
- Episode 1
- Episode 2
- Episode 3
- Series 2
- Episode 1
- Episode 2
- Episode 3
- Blackadder
- Series 2
- Episode 1
- Episode 2
- Episode 3
- Series 4
- Episode 1
- Episode 2
- Episode 3

I want to create a playlist which would show something like this:

- Unwatched Comedy
- Alexei Sayle
- Series 1
- Episode 2
- Series 2
- Episode 3
- Blackadder
- Series 2
- Episode 1
- Episode 3
- Series 4
- Episode 1
- Episode 2
- Episode 3

In view of your answer, my questions are:

1. Which field do I put in my Keyword Hierarchy?
2. How do I them populated, semi automatically. e.g. I don't want to edit every film in the Mezzmo database by hand. I would like to create nfo files and populate them semi-automatically, and have Mezzmo import the data.
3. I have created an nfo file containing the following. <keyword>Comedy</keyword>. I expected that to appear against the film in Mezzmo, but it doesn't what am I doing wrong?
4. It would be a great help to understand the mapping between nfo files and Mezzmo movie metadata. Is this available anywhere?

[Peter]

For this playlist you can use the TV Series playlist in Mezzmo as an example, use the Keyword hierarchy:

Album / Series
...Disc / Season

And set the Smart Filter to 'Genre contains Comedy'.
For the Unwatched playlist you can also set the Smart Filter rule 'Playcount is 0'.

[SolihullRog]

Thanks Peter. A light at the end oif the tunnel.

And after several years, it's finally dawned that Album / Series, and Disc / Season DO have relevance to shows recorded off the TV. The terminology has always made me think that they related to music rather than TV show movies ...

[SolihullRog]

Hi Peter, I wonder if you could explain what I've done wrong here.

The documentation seems quite simple, and I think I've followed it, but I don't get the promised results?

I expected the Category to be set to TV Show.

Please see attachments.

TV Shows 0.png

TV Shows 1.png

TV Shows 2.png

[Coises]

I expected the Category to be set to TV Show.

In my experience, the Category field only gets set when I retrieve information from the Internet. Using S__E__ format appears to populate the season and episode fields and make the Internet search do a TV Show search instead of a Movie search... but if I never do an Internet retrieval, the Category field stays empty. I don’t use NFO files, so I can’t say whether they work to fill that field. I do use "mp4box ... -itags ..." to set the "album, disk, tracknum" (series, season, episode) information, and Mezzmo reads that (and it reads the S__E__ filename format when the video isn’t tagged, for example for my non-mp4 videos). Mezzmo does not, however, appear to assume that if a video has a series, season and episode, it’s probably a TV Show and not a movie... until it does an Internet search, when it does assume that for searching purposes.

[SolihullRog]

Thanks for your interest and help, Coises.

I've just re-imported the files, having set the metadata choices to "Update All Attributes", I have every metadata source ticked, but the Categories remain empty.

1. Is my understanding incorrect?
2. Is the documentation incorrect/insufficient, or
3. Is there a bug?

I would expect a simple response in one of the following forms.

1. An explanation of my error.
2. A re-phrasing of the documentation to make it accurate, or
3. An explanation of the bug and a promise to fix it.

Thanks again for your input.

[SolihullRog]

5.1.1.0

I've just done a comprehensive test for my own benefit and that of other users.

Conceiva might find it useful as well. Reference http://www.mezzmo.com/wiki/doku.php?...names#tv_shows

The population of TV Show in the Category, during import or Maintain Playlist, is carried out under the following conditions:

CORRECTION 7/2/17
1. Irrespective of the file name, if the file has an associated nfo file containg an internal overriding parameter of <episodedetails> - YES.

e.g.
<episodedetails>
<title>Episode 2</title>
<showtitle>The All New Alexei Sayle Show</showtitle>
<actor>
<name>Angus Deighton</name>
<role></role>
</actor>
<season>2</season>
<episode>3</episode>
</episodedetails>


2. If the movie has no associated nfo file but the folder contains a tvshow.nfo file - YES.

3. If the file has no associated nfo file containg the overriding parameter, and there is no tvshow.nfo file in the folder - NO.
END OF CORRECTION

INCORRECT
1. If the file name contains SxxExx (Number of x's and spaces seems irrelevant) and the file has an associated nfo file (irrespective of its contents) - YES.

2. Irrespective of the filename, if the folder contains a tvshow.nfo file - YES.

3. If the file name contains SxxExx but the file has no associated nfo file, and there is no tvshow.nfo file in the folder - NO.
END OF INCORRECT

All of the above is purely dependent on having the 'Get text metadata from nfo files' option being ticked in Maintain Metadata. It is not affected by the setting of the 'Get data from internet' option.

[paulsalter]

Category works with nfo files, I use nfo files for everything
Unfortunately I have just cleaned up my library this morning by adding new nfo files, so not sure what it does with Category if no nfo present, but can let you know in the next few days after i record some more shows

For the allo allo examples, are you using nfo files for this?
from looking at it, if you are not using nfo files, it might be the naming of the files
if you view properties of the files in mezzmo and then click get online info, does it fail and say not found?
the show name according to tvdb is 'allo 'allo!, you could try renaming to this, though not sure if those characters would work as file names

I have had it in the past where if the show name doesnt match with tvdb, then no data is retrieved for the show, giving issues like yours, this was one of the reasons i moved fully to nfos, as it doesnt matter what the filename is as long as it has an nfo files with it, mainly for recorded tv where Season/Episode is not known at the time of the recording

EDIT:Another quick thought, not sure how Mezzmo handles them, but as the examples you gave are mp4 files, check in windows explorer to see if they have embedded metadata in them, this can throw off scans