[Fixed in v3.5] MyMovies.XML files not being generated

[ScareDcrow]

I am having problems with Mymovies not generating the mymovies.xml files and so (since the disc-less movies process relies on them) I am missing these movies in CMC.

Attached is a log from MyMovies where I am simply clicking "Export MetaData" on a Disc title "Wolf of Wall Street"
I also have a strange situation where I store all my files for mymovies on a NAS, but MyMovies isn't showing that under "External Server Credentials"

Thanks

Tom

[Pauven]

I can see it connecting, and the connection appears successful (simply because I don't see an error and the processing continues), but I see a couple things that concern me regarding the credentials. Highlighted:

2020-06-04 16:52:07 . 52 - Common.SaveMediaInfo - The store path is on a remote server.
2020-06-04 16:52:07 . 52 - Common.SaveMediaInfo - Server is 'Tigger'
2020-06-04 16:52:07 . 52 - Common.SaveMediaInfo - Share path is 'Canada\Wolf of Wall Street'
2020-06-04 16:52:07 . 52 - Common.SaveMediaInfo - Share has subfolder
2020-06-04 16:52:07 . 52 - Common.SaveMediaInfo - Credentials found
2020-06-04 16:52:07 . 52 - Common.AddExternalCredentials - '\\Tigger\Canada'
2020-06-04 16:52:07 . 52 - Common.AddExternalCredentials - Credentials already exists for the share path '\\Tigger\Canada', but with different casing '\\tigger\Canada'. Confirming that the username and password have not been changed.
2020-06-04 16:52:07 . 52 - Common.AddExternalCredentials - The credentials are the same, username 'Thomas'. Returning True.
2020-06-04 16:52:07 . 52 - Common.SaveMediaInfo - Checking if directory exists '\\Tigger\Canada\Wolf of Wall Street'.
2020-06-04 16:52:07 . 53 - Common.SaveMediaInfo - Checking directory '\\Tigger\Canada\Wolf of Wall Street'.

Everything I highlighted yellow has an uppercase first character. I went round and round with Binnerup about this, that there seems to be an issue with capitalizing the first character of both NAS server names and usernames with My Movies. When logging into a NAS, My Movies will use the Server Name as the domain. For Linux logins (and your NAS most likely runs Linux), both usernames and domains need to be lowercase first char. It would be easier if My Movies simply lowercased them, but it will copy the servername as-is and try to log you into the server as \\Tigger\Thomas or Thomas@Tigger.

So even though I don't see an error, and I may be off base, I find that capitalized usernames and servernames/domains as problematic with My Movies.

The next bit that caught my eye is a few lines later, these two gems:

2020-06-04 16:52:07 . 67 - Common.SaveTitleMediaInfo - Checking content for element '\\Tigger\Canada\Wolf of Wall Street\VIDEO_TS\VTS_12_0.IFO'.

2020-06-04 16:52:07 . 67 - Common.SaveTitleMediaInfo - Content of folder have not changed since last storage and read version is the same leaving existing information, and updating update check date.

This seems to suggest to me that My Movies decided what's in the folder is already good, and is skipping the writing of any metadata. This, again, is a common problem for My Movies. We typically solve it by doing the full MM Metadata Clean step I have documented in the Getting Started guides. I know I wrote the other day that I didn't think you needed to do the clean, but that might be the only way to convince MM it needs to write data.

But I might be mis-interpreting what is happening there. This might be reading the IFO file in the directory, and seeing it hasn't changed so it isn't updating the MM DB. Their logs aren't super clear for us end users, so only they know exactly what that means.

I see this line posted a few times, which might have something to do with you not being able to manage external server credentials:

Code: Select all

2020-06-04 16:52:07 . 80 - Common.Database.OpenConn - Current Unclosed Connection: NotConfiguredExternalCredentialsExists

But I also see this, which suggests that write access on your NAS is working:

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2020-06-04 16:52:09 . 90 - Common.PerformTitleInfoStorage - Trying to create mymovies.ign file at '\\Tigger\Canada\Wolf of Wall Street\mymovies.ign'
2020-06-04 16:52:09 . 90 - Common.PerformTitleInfoStorage - mymovies.ign file created

By the way, the mymovies.ign file is an "IGNore" flag file, which MM places in folders temporarily while it is working in them, and then deletes automatically when it is done. It prevents the app from doing some processing at the wrong time.

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2020-06-04 16:52:10 . 17 - Common.PerformTitleInfoStorage - Deleting mymovies.ign file.

In general, I see it checking all the various media handlers (i.e. Dune, XBMC, Zappiti, TViXetc.) and none are enabled so it doesn't export any metadata for them, as expected. I also see where it teases about generating XML data for export, but I never see it being written.

So my main suggestion is to do the MMCM Metadata Clean. That's the one thing that has worked for all my other users, and while I thought we were beyond those days it seems this might still be a requirement for discless movie users like yourself.

[ScareDcrow]

Wow. Yes. this makes a lot more sense. I was trying to figure out why the process seemed to stop in 2014 as it didn't seem to align with anything, but that seems about right for the time I swapped from a Microsoft Home Server as the main storage to the QNAP NAS. At a minimum, I always have capitalised my username. Frustrated that I did do a clean (as I had the SageTV AND Media Centre metadata files...I have had quite the history here) but didn't clean the mymovies.xml on that pass. This might take a while so I'll update you when all that is done.

Of course, many thanks for the tip on using the monitoring feature to force it to let me update my credentials ... because its still not showing in the External Server Credentials. Luckily most of my disc-less movies seem to already have the path in lower case. The log (done before the clean) now shows my username/password in the file path so its definitely different.

[Pauven]

Have you made any progress?

[ScareDcrow]

I am fixing ALL my paths to use lower case for the QNAP......its not quick
Honestly, I think I am out of luck with MyMovies support.
I am still getting that "nothing changed so I'm not writing the file" message so I might have a look in the DB...but I think he locked us out

Honestly, I think that I either make the XML files by hand (hoping that the entire export XML is somewhat similar so its just a matter of copying out the relevant section) or waiting for you to change the process. After 3 years without any ability to play this stuff, we kinda have enough to watch without these disc-less movies and can wait

Meanwhile, cleaning up the paths can't be a bad thing

[Pauven]

Meanwhile, cleaning up the paths can't be a bad thing

That's a great thing! Certainly can't hurt.

So, did you do the metadata Clean yet? (which is not the same thing as cleaning up your paths...)

[ScareDcrow]

Oh yeah....and fixed my credentials.

funny enough, all my disc-less movies seem to have had the correct case already...the older discs had the wrong...here's kind of what I get now

2020-06-06 21:20:42 . 10 - Common.PrepareAccessToPath - The store path is on a remote server.
2020-06-06 21:20:42 . 10 - Common.PrepareAccessToPath - Server is 'tigger'
2020-06-06 21:20:42 . 10 - Common.PrepareAccessToPath - Share path is 'SageTV\Paycheck\Paycheck.divx'
2020-06-06 21:20:42 . 10 - Common.PrepareAccessToPath - Share has subfolder
2020-06-06 21:20:42 . 11 - Common.PrepareAccessToPath - Credentials found
2020-06-06 21:20:42 . 11 - Common.AddExternalCredentials - '\\tigger\SageTV'
2020-06-06 21:20:42 . 11 - Common.AddExternalCredentials - Credentials already exists for the share path '\\tigger\SageTV'. Confirming that the username and password have not been changed.
2020-06-06 21:20:42 . 11 - Common.AddExternalCredentials - The credentials are the same, username 'thomas'. Returning True.

and then it has a path a couple of lines later that including my username and password (obviously a bit worried about including that here) but still no file. But it still has the line "directory unchanged from last check" or similar......I tried a utility to change the date/time on the DIVX with no success, added extra files.....nothing makes it add the XML

Could you send me an example of the xml output for a disc-less movie ? I might try making them

[Pauven]

It still sounds like you need to do the metadata clean. Sorry that I keep harping on this, but nothing you've written so far indicates that you have done this step. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, let me know.

I've attached a <Movie> xml file for the movie titled "Home Movie" (I thought appropriate for test data), and pointing at a fake MP4 file named "Fake Home Movie.mp4".

If you're only intent is to make them for CMC, though, then here are the fields that CMC uses (word of warning, CaSe SeNsItIvE). There's a lot of data in the real xml file that CMC doesn't (currently) use.

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes" ?> 
<Movie>
	<Global>
		<RunningTime>120</RunningTime>
		<Rating>9.9</Rating>		
		<Year>2020</Year>
	</Global>
	<LanguageSpecific>
		<Title>The Sample Discless Movie</Title>
		<SortTitle>Sample Discless Movie, The</SortTitle>
		<Description>Sample Description</Description>
		<YoutubeTrailerId>2J5OE16C_zY</YoutubeTrailerId>
	</LanguageSpecific>
	<CountrySpecific>
		<Country>United States</Country>
		<Rating>6</Rating>
		<RatingCause>Gratuitous Awesome Action</RatingCause>
	</CountrySpecific>	
	<Genres>
		<Genre>Genre 1</Genre>
		<Genre>Genre 2</Genre>
	</Genres>	
	<RemoteIDs>
		<RemoteID siteName="IMDB">tt1234567</RemoteID>
	</RemoteIDs>	
	<Personal>
		<CollectionNumber>-1</CollectionNumber>
		<Watched>False</Watched>
		<Added>06/10/2020 2:11:00 PM</Added>
		<Online>True</Online>
		<Categories>
			<Category>Only Include these tags</Category>
			<Category>if this value not blank</Category>
		</Categories>
	</Personal>	
	<Persons>
		<Person type="1">
			<Name>Actor Name</Name>
			<Role>Only use Role for type 1 Actors</Role>
		</Person>
		<Person type="2">
			<Name>Director Name</Name>
		</Person>
	</Persons>	
</Movie>

[ScareDcrow]

Yes I did a MetaData Clean

[ScareDcrow]

Perfect.... I did a quick look through and the XML I have for my entire collection from doing the File->Export->XML File seems to be in perfectly the same format apart from the very first line (which I can add easily). So it would be tedious to make all the files, but possible.

Just to check, these files then have the same name as the movie file but end in ".mymovies.xml" ? so for example, "Aeon Flux (2005).mymovies.xml"