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[FIXED in v5.0] CCC not working

Chameleon CentralController (CCC) is used to export My Movies metadata directly to CMC's Movie DB, and manage User Accounts and Parental Restrictions, and tracks Watch History and WatchLists on a per-user basis.
RKEP
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[FIXED in v5.0] CCC not working

Post by RKEP » Wed Feb 10, 2021 9:25 am

Hi Paul

Just got back again and excited about new update but it dosent seem to be working for me and I don't no where I'm going wrong!

Initialy I installed the MM update 5.4 and then updated CMC and installed CCC. The install was a success but I had a mixture of cover profiles even when set to My Movies, CMC Box sets and DVD's when I don't have any??? Also titles were duplicated outside box sets and FanArt was not appearing on some titles. After messing with display functions I managed to change some things but everything was erratic and on reboot of program it never saved all display settings I made.

I notced on the forum you said that we should be using MM5.3 but I missed that download and don't know where to find it! So don't know if this is an issue.

I then reinstalled MM5.25 and tried again with no more success. In both cases even the old way of syncing is not working properly anymore either.

I had so many tites doing wierd things I decided to delete all titles from MM database except one boxset to see what is happening precisley. I thought doing a full sync looks at MM again and updates but it did nothing that I could tell and all titles were still there. CCC's GUI states that it scans for changes every 5 mins so I waited and tried again with no difference. I checked the old way and only scanned the title left on MM but when finished I had titles still there which are not in the scanned folder???

I then did another full export with CCC with just the one title in MM and still alot of titles are still there.

It seems to be all over the place and I am totally confused with what is happening, please advise

Best Regards

Richard

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Re: CCC not working

Post by Pauven » Wed Feb 10, 2021 11:52 am

Hey Richard, happy to help.

RKEP wrote: Wed Feb 10, 2021 9:25 am I notced on the forum you said that we should be using MM5.3 but I missed that download and don't know where to find it! So don't know if this is an issue.
5.30+, as new functionality was added in 5.30. I'm running 5.40. While it will work with 5.25, you lose the new functionality.

RKEP wrote: Wed Feb 10, 2021 9:25 am I then did another full export with CCC with just the one title in MM and still alot of titles are still there.
This is by design. When you do a Full Export with a value in the search box, it changes to Append mode, instead of clearing the entire CCC DB. That way, if there is just one title that has a problem, you can easily force a Full Export of just that one title, and not lose any other data.

The ability to create a small DB with just a single title has essentially been removed in CCC, as it wasn't really an important feature and the new behavior is much more useful.

Also note that while you could delete the CCC_MovieDB.bin file manually and then export just one title, my guidance is that users should NEVER delete the CCC_MovieDB.bin file without direction from me. The CCC_MovieDB.bin file contains more than just the exported movie collection from My Movies, it also contains the user DB plus all the viewing history. While there is a secondary CCC_UserDB.bin file that holds the same User DB and viewing history, that is essentially a backup file that is not normally used, and exists so that if the main MovieDB file somehow got corrupted and needed to be deleted, the user data wouldn't be lost.

RKEP wrote: Wed Feb 10, 2021 9:25 am I checked the old way and only scanned the title left on MM but when finished I had titles still there which are not in the scanned folder???
When you use CMC with CCC, scanned folders are no longer used.

Essentially, CCC is exporting everything (by design), and CMC is syncing everything from CCC (by design).

If you are flip-flopping between using CCC and folder scanning, then you would have to do a Full Sync with folder scanning to remove the CCC data. Not sure I recommend this pathway, as I really haven't designed the software to seamlessly transition between using CCC and folder scanning. The expectation is that you pick one solution and stick with it, and some manual cleanup might be required to go back from CCC to folder scanning.

RKEP wrote: Wed Feb 10, 2021 9:25 am The install was a success but I had a mixture of cover profiles even when set to My Movies, CMC Box sets and DVD's when I don't have any???
Apparently you do have some in My Movies, even if they are not in your scanned folders. CCC will export standalone Movies (non-Disc titles) if you're on MM 5.30+, offline titles, unmapped TV Series, and the brand new Movie Collections (also if you're on MM 5.30+). Whereas CMC's folder scanning only showed the playable titles it could find in your media folders, CCC shows everything in MM, which can be significantly more data. Yes, it can look different in CMC simply because you are getting more data, and the data more accurately reflects MM.

RKEP wrote: Wed Feb 10, 2021 9:25 am Also titles were duplicated outside box sets and FanArt was not appearing on some titles.
I know some users were managing FanArt directly in the media folders, outside My Movies. With CMC+CCC, all artwork comes from MM, so if it isn't in MM, then you won't see it in CMC.

As far as titles being duplicated, I would need to see an example to know exactly what you are describing. Though there are some changes in how box sets are exported from MM with CCC - it's much better than before and actually obeys the "Include the Box Set Container when opened in the presentation interface" setting. I know many users were doing some trickery of adding duplicate fake titles to box sets to get them to display as they wanted in CMC - that is no longer required and can actually cause problems now, so you would want to remove the fake duplicates if you used that trick.

RKEP wrote: Wed Feb 10, 2021 9:25 am After messing with display functions I managed to change some things but everything was erratic and on reboot of program it never saved all display settings I made.
Your description of what steps you took isn't enough for me to be sure on this answer, but I should point out that CMC has configurable default display settings that are applied on startup. If you are changing the filters and sorts using the top Icon Bar, those are temporary changes that are reset to defaults on startup. To set defaults, go to Settings > Startup & Logging Options, and Settings > Display Options.

Additionally, with CCC you can now manage user accounts for CMC, and that includes controlling all the same display setting defaults. Plus these will sync to all CMC clients. You may find this easier.


Hopefully that answered your questions and gives you a better idea of what is going on. If you feel things still are not right, please provide some screenshots illustrating the issue so I can better help.

Paul
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RKEP
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Re: CCC not working

Post by RKEP » Fri Feb 12, 2021 6:00 am

Hi Paul

Thanks for the info. I have had to change the way I set my MM database up as I did things to manipulate what I wanted with WMC and then in the process for CMC. As you know in CMC I like to keep my TV Series in Legacy View and disabled the "Enhanced TV Series View". So I have unmapped all TV Series in MM leaving the info on Page 2 of Title the same as a "Movie". (IMG 001)

I have upgrade to MM 5.4, done a new Full Export and now I can see clearly where I am having Issues! Please see IMG 2 & 3 for my display settings.

1. As you can see in All Media Section (IMG 004) Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and other TV Series appear as a boxset. In TV Series Section (IMG 005), you can see it displays Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and other TV Series as seperate titles and not as Boxsets??? I have tried Boxsets in all sections. Movies and All Media are okay. Documentaries and Other Media sections also display as seperate titles and not as Boxsets???

As you can see in (IMG 003) There is an option for "Use Boxsets Iin the "Movies" View". when enabled this displays Boxsets but disabled only individual titles. So do we need an option to enable each section, so they work aswell?

2. All my Boxsets display the FanArt except TV Series. This is the case in TV section and All Media section but if I change to anything else. i.e. Movies or other, (so its no longer a TV series) the FanArt displays???

3. When I do a Full Export, no problem, but I made changes and tried to do a full sync and nothing changed. It says in CCC that it "Scans for changes every 5min". so I watched a couple of series and came back 2hrs later and the sync still didn't work. It only makes changes with a Full Export???

I hope this is clear and possibly I am making some stupid mistakes! I appreciate you're help, thanks

Best Regards

Richard
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RKEP
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Re: CCC not working

Post by RKEP » Fri Feb 12, 2021 6:42 am

Hi Paul

My Bad! Please ignore issue 3. I had a Dime Bar experience. While setting up I got to user accounts which I currently don't need to know about and then missed the "IMPORTANT" section at the end. I have set up the Auto Export and that is working great. Just hope the the other issues are equally a stupid mistake on my part and easily resolved, thanks

Best Regards

Richard

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Re: CCC not working

Post by Pauven » Fri Feb 12, 2021 8:00 am

RKEP wrote: Fri Feb 12, 2021 6:42 am I had a Dime Bar experience.
That bloke's a nutter... OI, NUTTER!





I'll have to look closer at issue #1.


For issue #2, Discs marked at TV series in My Movies do not have fan art. I struggled with this myself, until I finally realized Binnerup programmed it this way. I can't show what doesn't exist.
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RKEP
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Re: CCC not working

Post by RKEP » Fri Feb 12, 2021 10:31 am

Hi Paul

I'm a little puzzled with issue 2. I'm not saying your wrong but even with TV series, if page 2 is'nt there you can right click the title in the list pane and "Create Movie" this gives you page 2 and you can add a FanArt of your own as you can see in IMG 001. This is the same as a movie so its a bit odd the artwork is missing when It is clearly in MM database GUI.

I'd appreciate youre thoughts on this. I'm wondering what is Binnerup doing or not doing with FanArt that is in the Database GUI???

Best Regards

Richard

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Re: CCC not working

Post by Pauven » Fri Feb 12, 2021 10:40 am

RKEP wrote: Fri Feb 12, 2021 10:31 am I'm a little puzzled with issue 2. I'm not saying your wrong but even with TV series, if page 2 is'nt there you can right click the title in the list pane and "Create Movie" this gives you page 2 and you can add a FanArt of your own as you can see in IMG 001. This is the same as a movie so its a bit odd the artwork is missing when It is clearly in MM database GUI.
I didn't realize this was possible. As it's not there by default, if CCC attempts to retrieve it the API produces an error, so I had disabled that logic.

I'll look into this.
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Re: CCC not working

Post by Pauven » Fri Feb 12, 2021 11:12 am

RKEP wrote: Fri Feb 12, 2021 6:00 am 1. As you can see in All Media Section (IMG 004) Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and other TV Series appear as a boxset. In TV Series Section (IMG 005), you can see it displays Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and other TV Series as seperate titles and not as Boxsets??? I have tried Boxsets in all sections. Movies and All Media are okay. Documentaries and Other Media sections also display as seperate titles and not as Boxsets???

As you can see in (IMG 003) There is an option for "Use Boxsets Iin the "Movies" View". when enabled this displays Boxsets but disabled only individual titles. So do we need an option to enable each section, so they work aswell?
I've looked at this, and so far I haven't been able to replicate it. Regardless of whether I enable or disable Enhanced TV Series View, my TV Series always show as Box Sets in both views (ALL and TV). I think this might be related to how you've modified your TV Series to not appear as TV Series, which was a hack you were using to force earlier versions of CMC to display the way you wanted.

The change I made to CMC to let users disable the Enhanced TV Series View was a change I made for you. But for you to use this correctly, the TV Series needs to be a true TV Series. Something you are doing in MM is breaking this logic.

One clue is your screenshot showing Agent of Carter. I see you have created an Agent of Carter Collection, and have it as a parent of Seasons 1 and 2. This looks very unusual:

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For contrast, here's all 12 seasons of The Big Bang Theory in my collection - note how each one is just a separate disc title. CMC automatically combines them together for display, so you don't have to do anything special in MM to get them to group.

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In fact, as a TV Series, each disc is linked to a common TV Series ID, which is how CMC automatically groups them together. A good example of this is my Game of Thrones collection. I have Seasons 1-7 as a Box Set I purchased, and then separately I bought Season 8 (shame... shame...). Notice that I did nothing special to group Season 8 with the other seasons:

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Yet in CMC there is just the single TV Series Box Set Cover:

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And opening it with Enhanced TV Series View shows both titles, Season 8 and the Seasons 1-7 Box Set:

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I put a lot of work in CMC to make it display the way you wanted (no Enhanced TV Series View), even though this wasn't a feature I really liked. But for this to work correctly, you need to stop trying to trick CMC into working the way you want, and instead just use MM normally as I showed above. You will need to have your TV Series marked as TV Series, and link them to the actual TV Series, so that CMC can group them together for you in the legacy Box Set View.
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Re: CCC not working

Post by Pauven » Fri Feb 12, 2021 11:23 am

Pauven wrote: Fri Feb 12, 2021 10:40 am
RKEP wrote: Fri Feb 12, 2021 10:31 am I'm a little puzzled with issue 2. I'm not saying your wrong but even with TV series, if page 2 is'nt there you can right click the title in the list pane and "Create Movie" this gives you page 2 and you can add a FanArt of your own as you can see in IMG 001. This is the same as a movie so its a bit odd the artwork is missing when It is clearly in MM database GUI.
I didn't realize this was possible. As it's not there by default, if CCC attempts to retrieve it the API produces an error, so I had disabled that logic.

I'll look into this.
So I attempted to replicate your actions using my Season 1 disc title of True Detective. When I right-click on the title in the list pane, the "Create Movie" option is disabled:

image.png
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It seems that this is only working because you are not treating your TV Series disc titles as TV Series.

As I wrote in my previous post, for the correct grouping of TV Series as Box Sets, even with Enhanced TV Series View disable, you must still treat these discs as TV Series. Once you start doing this correctly, you will no longer be able to do the "Create Movie" trick, and you won't be able to assign custom FanArt.

All that said, one thing I failed to mention in my earlier post is that I made a change (in v4.0 if I recall correctly) to show the TV Series Backdrop as the FanArt for each disc title in a TV Series. For example, here's my The Big Bang Theory Season 8 disc, and it does show FanArt:

image.png
image.png (866.67 KiB) Viewed 6316 times

The only downside to this is that since there is only one TV Series Backdrop for the entire series, the same FanArt is shown for all disc titles.
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Re: CCC not working

Post by Pauven » Fri Feb 12, 2021 11:31 am

One more tip. The last time you struggled to get TV Series to display the way you wanted in CMC you were using CME.

With CCC I was able to make a ton of improvements to the export of TV Series - it is remarkably better than CME. The point here is that you should reset your expectations with CCC. Instead of using all the tricks you used to use, simply try using the default functionality of treating TV Series Disc Titles as TV Series. Even if you don't map the episodes, the data will export without error, and with Enhanced TV Series View disabled in CMC, everything should just display as you want.

I don't want your previous experiences with CME to dissuade you from retrying it the way as I describe, which didn't use to work for you.
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