[Fixed in v3.2] Sort By Release Date Problem

[soundmanmike]

Just to give an overview first. I have been going through my large collection of movies (2500+) and updating information within MM Manager to make all of my movies sort properly when it comes to release date. As many of you may know the release date generally refers to the day the movie was released on DVD (Blu-ray, etc) therefore if you use the information that is found by default in MM Manager it may list a movie from 1990 as having a disc release date of 8/7/2008 because that is when it was actually put out on disc. Therefore sorting by release date is kind of useless for movies that have not been release in the last 10-15 years (at least that is my opinion)...anyway I went through and changed all the older movie release dates to reflect when the movie was released into theaters instead, that made the sorting work really well. The only problem I am having now is that my boxed sets are the only things that are not sorting properly. When I sort by release date in CMC my boxed sets are listed in the start or the end of the entire list. In MM Manager the release dates are correct. Has anyone else had this issue and do they know what I may be doing wrong or is it a program issue?

Thanks for any help.....Mike

[Pauven]

There's also a sort by Production Year, which it sounds like you are manually recreating by putting the production year into the disc release date field, though perhaps you are being more specific and using the exact theatrical release date instead of just a year.

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I'm not aware of any issue in the code, as I haven't seen this behavior before, though there could be an issue. I will look into it.

Can you send me the XML file(s) for some box sets? That will help me troubleshoot.

[soundmanmike]

Sort by production year is not what I was looking for because it only uses the year. I have attached the XML files from three different box sets that are listed in the first four titles when sorted by release date.

Thank you for your help!

Mike

[Pauven]

I looked at all three files, and none of those are box set parents (nor box set children). These are all TV Series.

Is the problem only with TV Series?

[soundmanmike]

You are correct, I should have phrased that differently. They are all TV series.

[Pauven]

Please post the mmSeries.xml files for these TV series.

[soundmanmike]

Only one of the three has that XML file...I have attached it.

[Pauven]

Thanks Mike. I'll dig into this tomorrow.

[Pauven]

I found the problem. For TV Series, CMC was using the date in the OriginalAirTime tag, which seems to have a bogus date, as the Release Date.

Code: Select all

<FirstAired>9/3/2008 12:00:00 AM</FirstAired>

<OriginalAirTime>10/29/2019 10:00:00 PM</OriginalAirTime>

I've corrected this to use the FirstAired date as the Release Date instead. This fix is in CMC v3.2, due out around the end of the month.

Thanks for letting me know about this issue.

One tip, I noticed that a few of my TV Series were still not sorting correctly. When I checked, I found that the Global First Aired date was blank, and that there was only a Country Specific First Aired date:

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You will need to make sure the Global First Aired date is populated, as that is what CMC is using. Update below.

[Pauven]

Correction on that last tip: I have fixed CMC to pull the date from the Country Specific section if it is missing in the Global.

But if you don't have any episodes mapped, then MMCM won't display the [+] to expand the Title and show the Series info, and it won't be exported by CME either, so the Release Date will be blank in CMC and sorting won't work.

So mapping episodes (at least 1 episode) is a hard requirement for TV Series to sort by Release Date.