A true metadata nightmare...

[skidmarks 188]

Been using media browser for 5+ years...  Use metabrowser for my metadata (like to be in control of the metadata [slight ocd]).  Reading around i see that possibly a change was made to look at file name instead of folder name.  Well this was huge, but this post is to see what the heck happened to trailers and how they get processed...  Not all of my movies, but the great majority of them, my trailers are now duplicated and also mixed in with my movies and recently added views???

 

All of those small thumbs are trailers...

 

 

Here is a folder that only contained filename-trailer (no trailers folder)...

Here is an example of one of my folders that had a trailers folder in it...  filename-trailer file was automatically downloaded from somewhere!

So two differnet ways to add trailers to media files and both ways seem to be ignoring the fact that they are trailers?   The other duplicate files are due to the change from search by folder name to file name. 

 

As always, thanks in advance for any help clearing my mystery trailer situation up!  I formatted my computer a few days ago, to try and get connect to work with my roku's, so maybe i missed a setting somewhere???

 

I have put hundreds of hours into my metadata and even more manually doing all my trailers one at a time.  It appears that it all went south (to the septic tank) relatively quick and effortlessly on my part!  Just imagine the amount of EXTRA data i have now that will need to be cleaned up. 

Edited December 26, 2014 by skidmarks

[Luke 37046]

try the dev server and see if it presents them correctly. make sure to see the alpha area for the changelog.

[skidmarks 188]

No Joy from the DEV server...  Same thing, but i think as messed up as my metadata is now (@ this point) i dont think i have any option but to take a lot of time to clean this mess up.  Before i do this though, i need to try and figure out what exactly happened?  Do i need to fix the file structure (if it is going to stay file name not folder name) and what on earth do i need to do to make trailers be recognized as trailers again...  This is going to be a huge clean up project and want to make certain i dont run into future problems.

 

Thanks...  

[skidmarks 188]

Oh i also had to go to the properties tab of the server and set it to run as administrator in order to instal the dev version.  It would not install otherwise...

 

[Luke 37046]

there has been an ongoing project to expand supported naming conventions for movies and tv

 

our supported conventions for trailers didn't actually change, but they were limited to only the things that are stated in our documentation. as it turns out, there are quite a few undocumented mish-mash conventions that other apps like Kodi are able to handle, and so now we are adding them as they are reported to us. It was a bit of a black box before, now we're able to list exactly everything that is handled, and we have automated testing going forward to alert us quickly if any conventions are ever broken in the future.

[skidmarks 188]

ok so I understand this...  I can just keep my file structure the way is was?  If I go into each folder and start deleting all the recently duplicated metadata, then I can feel the love from my server again?  I have close to 2000 movie folders and this is going to be a undertaking to get this back under control...  The documentation, on how to add media in a file structure, is the same method that we have been using since MB started years ago.

 

I don't want to sound like a douche, I don't want anyone to think what a douche.  The change from MB2 to MB3 has been beyond imagination, and you guys know better than any the amount of work you and the rest of the crew has put into this project.  I appreciate that time and effort!  I am just following up to make sure that once I clean this mess up my file structure will be correct going forward. 

[Luke 37046]

well with the new dev build i think some of your movies should appear correctly in the web client, but it's not going to remove the extra images that have been downloaded. that will have to be cleaned up manually. but there will be some that might still need looking at i'm sure to find out why they're still split up in the web interface.

[skidmarks 188]

Thanks Luke!

[skidmarks 188]

Well I did the 9 straight hours to clean my metadata last night...  I removed 6,345 duplicate files.  Was 10.8 GIG of duplicate metadata!!!  Was very happy once I was finished.  BUT...

 

It didn't take long for the rouge metadata to start repopulating its self!  It is obvious to me at this point that media browser is still looking at file name instead of folder name.  Because my folders were being populated with the same stuff I just deleted. 

 

I have turned off all metadata scrapers / fetchers / savers in media browser at this point.  I will stick with metabrowser for another year. 

 

Where can I find the Alpha Channel change log information that I am supposed to review?  Maybe I can get some insight on what has changed and what I need to be doing on my part to get my file structure in the correct format again?  I am surprised that I have only seen a couple of posts on this subject.  What has worked as the required file structure for years is now wrong?

 

THANKS for the help Luke, but I am tapping out on this one for now...

 

>>>>>> As I sat here and reflected on my issue for a moment I realize that a lot of my duplicated data was the backdrop / backdrop1 / backdrop2 etc files within the folder...  Are files labeled backdrop being ignored? <<<<<<

Edited December 27, 2014 by skidmarks

[skidmarks 188]

OK I got my metadata completely cleaned up and the server is happy and much quicker (now that it isn't confused with trying to figure out what the metadata was telling it).  Even after formatting my computer (not my external media disks), the data was too messed up for the server to present it correctly.  Deleted 10 GIG of stuff (as already posted) and my views are still all kinds of messed up. 

 

Problem one:  A lot of movies had a -poster file in my movie folders.  Don't know why, but almost all of these were LANDSCAPE.  Making it worse i think the server was looking at poster instead of folder.  Making the movies not show a full screen cover.  FIX:  I searched for *-poster in all of my media directories AND DELETED THEM.

 

Second Problem:  TRAILERS!  Searched my media folders for *-trailer.xml DELETED THEM ALL! I didn't open these xml files to see what the info was, but know that my trailers don't need an .xml or NFO file! Realized that most of my duplicated trailers came from folders that I did not use the subfolder trailers option when I did them all.  In these folders I had NFO files, SRT files and other trailer files making the server think that it was actually a movie.  That's no good and hence why the trailer and the movie showed up in movie views.  FIX:  Again searching my media locations I searched for *-trailer.nfo.  DELETED ALL.  Searched for *-trailer-poster.nfo.  DELETED ALL. 

 

THEN I created a trailers folder in EVER movie folder I had.  Yes 2000 of them.  But that was painless using the command prompt...  Utilizing this command you can create subfolders within all of your media folders, DO NOT COME AFTER ME OR REALLY DONT EVEN TRY THIS IF YOU DONT KNOW WHAT A COMMAND PROMPT IS... but it does work!

 

For example one of my hard drives is drive H.  In drive H there is only movie folders...  H:\movie name. So I went into the command prompt (RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR) and change to in my first example H:\ 

 

I then typed in >for /d %a in ("H:\*.*") do echo md "%a\trailers"  this will verify that you are seeing the folders that you want to add the trailer subdirectory to.  This is called an echo.  If you see your movie folders scroll in the window during this process then you are ready to actually do it.  By removing the word echo it will make a trailers subfolder.  MAKE SURE YOU ARE POSITIVE before you do this command... >for /d %a in ("H:\*.*") do md "%a\trailers"  You will now have a trailers subfolder in all of your movie folders for that drive location.

 

For a little more difficult hard drive folder structure I also have a drive I:\ where my media folders are located I:\mkv files\movies\movie folder.  The command to do this structure would be like this... >for /d %a in ("I:\mkv files\movies\*.*") do echo md "%a\trailers"  This again will do an echo first.  If you see the folders you want to add a trailers subfolder too then remove the echo from the command and run it.

 

THIS WILL IGNORE ANY FOLDERS THAT ALREADY HAVE A TRAILERS SUBFOLDER IN THEM.

 

Unfortunately I could not figure out a easy way to move your actual trailers into these folders and I did it all manually.  Find your trailer and move it into the new trailers folder.

 

This is how that mess that I showed a screen shot above (Here is a folder that only contained filename-trailer (no trailers folder)...  looks like now that I cleaned all that crap out

 

That's all that is needed for metadata and why my server needed to be cleaned.  I know that you should be able to save local trailers in the main directory example:  moviename-trailer, but somehow that made one heck of a mess out of my server in the last month. 

 

I still haven't had the desire to turn back on fetch metadata in the server, but my meta is all clean and now all my trailers and movies show where they belong!

Edited December 31, 2014 by skidmarks

[Luke 37046]

Well filename-trailer isn't a problem. The problem was something else that got the server confused. But I'm glad you're back up and running