klpaint wrote: ↑Thu Jan 23, 2020 11:27 am
Before I ask my next question, please remember you know 100 times more about this than I do (smile). Is the issue that it doesn't realize I have the files below or the files below are corrupt? If they are not corrupt is there anyway for me to leverage these as I have them in all of my movie directories.
I'm not exactly sure what you are asking, but I'll try to answer best I can. I'll make the assumption that you are trying to get TV Series to work. This will be very high level to give you an overview.
For TV Series in MMCM (not CMC yet, still just talking about MMCM), you have a disc "Title" (i.e. "The Big Bang Theory Complete Season 5") that you add to MM. If it isn't already associated with a TV Series, then you would set it as a TV Series and link it to "The Big Bang Theory".
Once you have a Title linked to a Series, you go in and edit the Discs. For each Disc, you link it to the online location, which can be either an ISO rip, or a DVD Folder rip.
Then you map the episodes on the disc (if they weren't already mapped by another user). MMCM requires the Disc ID first, and then it reads the disc structure directly from the disc (assuming you have the original inserted - alternatively we have found you can mount the ISO and get to the same point, but the Disc ID will be a bad value, so you never Contribute this online).
In mapping the episodes, if mapping a DVD then Title/Chapter assignments are good. If mapping a Blu-ray, then you must have MPLS #'s showing in the list, and you map those to episodes.
Once you save this, MMCM will download the Series, Season, & Episode info, and you will now see [+] boxes next to the disc Title, which expanding the tree will get you to the [+] Series, [+] Season, and Episodes. This is now ready for export.
Exporting with CME will get you the mmTitle.xml (which is for the entire DVD/Blu-ray case that you bought), the mmSeries.xml (which gives the overview of the show), and one mmEpisode.xml per episode, plus various artwork images for the Series/Season/Episodes. If you did not successfully map episodes in MMCM, then all CME will export is the mmTitle.xml, same as it does for every other movie.
On import (i.e. Sync), CMC will read the mmTitle.xml, mmSeries.xml, and mmEpisode.xml files to reconstruct the TV Series info. For a DVD, it grabs the Title/Chapter values for each episode, and on playback it will (if using MPC as your Episode player, highly recommended) mount the ISO (if an ISO) begin playback at the Title # / Chapter # specified. This works for DVD ISO's and DVD Folders.
For Blu-rays, the process is different. It grabs the MPLS #, and loads that MPLS file specified (i.e. BDMV\PLAYLIST\00006.mpls), parses the data, and finds the Stream file to play (i.e. BDMV\STREAM\00048.m2ts). Note that there is not a 1:1 correlation between MPLS # and STREAM #, they can be anything, and CMC has to parse the data in the MPLS (which is a playlist file) to figure out which Stream file (which is the video file) to play. CMC will then call your player and tell it to play that stream file, like "\\NAS\TV\The Big Bang Theory\Season 5\Disc 1\BDMV\STREAM\00048.m2ts".
Here's where I think you are getting stuck. You have a DVD/Blu-ray Folder rip, which obviously contains the Playlists and the Streams, which seems like everything you need, right? But CMC needs MMCM to have episodes mapped to Title/Chapter #'s or MPLS #'s, so that the mmTitle.xml and mmEpisode.xml files will have the pointers to them. If this hasn't happened, then CMC won't have the episodes to even show them, or in the case of a corrupted Blu-ray missing MPLS #'s, it won't be able to start playback correctly by finding the stream pointed at by the MPLS #.
CMC does not directly scan inside your DVD/Blu-ray Folder rips to find media to play, it simply notes that you have a DVD/Blu-ray Folder rip, and will use that path as part of the playback start command sent directly to the player, or to load the MPLS file identified by the MPLS # for a Blu-ray episode.
Now, all that said, you do have one other option. Since each M2TS file is a video file, you can figure out which one represents each episode, and in MMCM, you can navigate down to the Episode and edit the Location to point to that file. In theory, CMC can play back that file directly in your player, as if you had converted it to a MK4 or something like that. But I do have a sinking suspicion that CMC might not behave correctly to play back media files linked this way. I've had it on my to-do list to look at this and do some testing, and see if further development work is required. If doing it this way in MMCM, then you might want to go with a TV Series centric approach (adding a TV Series at the highest level), rather than a Title/Disc centric approach (adding a DVD/Blu-ray Title at the highest level and linking it to a TV Series). But I'm not sure that CME will export any data for non-Disc based TV Series at this time, so that might be a dead end too.
Very long story summed up:
You really, really, really want to read the Disc ID and Disc Structure from your original discs, and map the episodes there, making sure that any Blu-rays are showing the MPLS #'s. This is the 10x easier way, because you are using both MMCM and CMC the way they were designed to be used.
If you don't take that path, then you only other option is to directly point Blu-ray episodes at the M2TS files (or other encoded media like MKV / M4V, etc.), but this is a LOT more work, and ultimately may not work in CMC without me doing more development work to support this approach.
And if you don't like either of those options, then you need to complain to Binnerup, explain to him that you have DVD/Blu-rays ripped to Folder for which you still want to map Episodes, and that MMCM isn't allowing this approach. Though based upon what I've seen over the past decade, I doubt you will get the help you are looking for.
I know none of that is the easy answer you were looking for. Sorry.
Paul