[Resolved] VOB Movies Not Showing Up In Catalog

[soundmanmike]

I have a collection of over 2200 movies and I have been using MyMovies for years. I have been testing out CMC for a week now and it is coming along but many of my older movies in my collection are copied DVDs in VOB format. There was a file structure that was created years ago that is basically this "ConAir\MainMovie\Video_TS\VOB FIles". All the XML and cover data for MyMovies and CMC is in with the VOBs but the cover in the catalog view shows up black and displays an error after the sync of "Found Playable media without a "mymovies.xml" in Folder "M;\ConAir\MainMovie\Video_TS". If I move all the files including the VOBs to the first folder "ConAir" and delete all the subfolders, the error goes away but the DVD cover completely disappears in the catalog view. When I changed the files structure, I also updated it in mymovies database. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks, Mike

[Pauven]

Hi Mike,

Welcome to the neighborhood.

The structure you are describing, \Title\Disc\VIDEO_TS\*.VOB, is a standard DVD rip to DVD Folders. For example, here is one of mine:

image.png (76.13 KiB) Viewed 9053 times

When you add a DVD Folder to My Movies, it is best practice to do by configuring each Disc as an Online Folder, and point it to the Disc's root folder, like this:

image.png (136.9 KiB) Viewed 9053 times

All of the metadata will be written to the same root folder for that Disc (which is the same location you are manually copying the metadata files to).

It seems like perhaps you have pointed your path to the VIDEO_TS folder in My Movies, or possibly you directly pointed to an individual VOB files in My Movies, and that is why you are getting the metadata files written to your VIDEO_TS folder. I don't believe that this is the correct methodology to use with My Movies, and CMC certainly isn't expecting this (which is why you are getting errors).

Does that sound like how you have maintained your collection?

Paul

[soundmanmike]

Thank you for the help. That was pretty closed to what I was assuming. I didn't realize that MM should only point to the root folder of the disc in the past, it always worked being pointed to the inner VOB folder. Anyways, I made a lot of changes to correct the problem and then I re-synced CMC. The only way I could get thr VOB discs to show up was to enable viewing of the offline discs in the CMC setup menu. After that when I selected one of the discs it says it is and offline disc. MM says that it is online. What am I doing wrong?

[Pauven]

For changes this big, you'll need to do a Full Sync, not a SmartSync.

You also shouldn't have to enable Offline support in CMC, that's for something very different.

How are you exporting metadata, are you trusting MMCM to export it, or are you using CME? The problem your are describing sounds a bit like metadata isn't getting exported.

Beyond that, to provide more help I need screenshots of Disc configuration in MMCM and the corresponding folder showing all the files in it using Windows File Explorer.

[Pauven]

Hey Mike, did you ever make any progress on this? Any outstanding issues?

I'm wrapping up changes to v3.0, so the window for fixes is rapidly closing for the next version. So if you are still having issues, please detail them here, and I can try and squeeze in fixes if needed.

[soundmanmike]

Perfect timing, I was just getting ready to reply. The problem still exists that shows the disc is 'Located offline on Disc' after I select a movie to play. I have been using the Full Sync method in CMC. I do use MyMovies to keep the catalog up to date and for exporting at this point. The file structure for the VOB movies is pretty simple now, everything is in the root folder of the movie (i.e. ConAir/All movies and XMLs).

[Pauven]

Could I ask you to share some screenshots? I would like a screenshot of each of the following (for one title only):

• Disc Configuration (same as my screenshot above):

• Windows directory of the same disc root (i.e. ConAir/ , but use same movie as Disc Configuration screenshot):

• The same Title's detail page in CMC

Also, please attach the mymovies.xml file that's in the directory screenshot.

[soundmanmike]

CMC Disc View.jpg (1.4 MiB) Viewed 9029 times

File Explorer.jpg (327.98 KiB) Viewed 9029 times

MM Disc.jpg (925.37 KiB) Viewed 9029 times

[Pauven]

Thanks Mike, that was fast!

In your folder screenshot, I see both a mymovies.xml file, and a mmTitle.xml file. I didn't think you were using CME based upon one of your earlier responses, but since mmTitle.xml files are only created by CME, then I know that you are using CME.

Since you're new to CMC, a quick note on these files:

mymovies.xml files are created by My Movies Collection Management. Originally, CMC only used these files to sync all metadata, and will still use them if they are the only file present.

mmTitle.xml files are created by CMC Metadata Export (CME). The metadata files created by CME are better than the mymovies files (for various reasons I mentioned elsewhere on this forum), so when both mmTitle.xml and mymovies.xml files exist in the same folder, CMC will always use the mmTitle.xml file. By the way, I highly recommend using CME for the vastly better metadata.

Which brings us back to your screenshot. The mymovies.xml file has a timestamp of 11:18pm, almost 4 hours newer than the mmTitle.xml file which was created at 7:37pm. This probably means that the change you made in My Movies Collection Management got exported to the mymovies.xml file, but not the mmTitle.xml file. But since CMC is still using the older mmTitle.xml file, it isn't seeing the change.

Perhaps you didn't run CME again to pick up the new changes? After doing the first full export, CME is designed to be run in a changes only mode, so it is very fast to export (sometimes faster than My Movies Collection Management!!!). But you do have to run it so it can do its thing.

From this point, you have a couple options: 1) Run CME and let it update the mmTitle.xml file(s), or 2) Delete the mmTitle.xml file and let CMC resort to using the mymovies.xml file.

Let me know how it goes.

[soundmanmike]

Ok, I get what you are saying with the differences between the XMLs. I did a bulk delete of all the mmTitle.xml in all folders in my entire collection and re-synced the database in CMC. The movies are still saying 'located offline' when I select a movie to play.