Empty monitor folder causes weird situation

[Kick4U]

Hello, I sent a support ticket about this. When first time setting up CMC, you set the monitor folder to an empty folder; CMC acts strangely.

I tested on another machine that had one movie folder and it the scan worked, but when I deleted the folder; CMC locks up. Once it locks up, it can't scan the folders properly again (even with movie files correctly there).

[Pauven]

Hi Kick4U,

I had tried to reply to your support ticket, but you had a typo in your email address, so I had no way to respond. I felt real bad not being able to email you to help, and just had to hope you would try again.

I've never tried to scan an empty folder, so I'm not sure what's happening there. I'll take a look at it and see if I can't solve that bug. Thanks for reporting.

Because all of the CMC data is stored in the program directory, you should be able to delete the directory and reinstall CMC to fix this.

Thanks for reaching out, and let me know how it goes.

Paul

[Kick4U]

So it seems that CMC is seeing the movies, but it's not inserting them into the database correctly. I have tried opening CMC as administrator and gave rights to the files within C:\CMC\ to everyone, but no luck!

I attached some log files that seem pertinent and the cfg with database.

Do you see something I'm missing?

[Pauven]

Hi Kick4U,

Please provide a sample mymovies.xml file, like this one:

C:\Users\MCE\Videos\VOD\A.Million.Ways.To.Die.In.The.West.2014.1080p.BluRay.DTS.x264-CyTSuNee\mymovies.xml

Thanks,
Paul

[Kick4U]

The movie files are on the same machine CMC is running and I have tried using shared network folders with correct permisions (MyMovies is able to write the files into the folders) and using local paths. I have attached using a shared network xml file.

mymovies.xml

(30.82 KiB) Downloaded 374 times

[Pauven]

Wow, color me surprised!

Binnerup likes to name all their meta-data files the same, mymovies.xml. But each one is like a little mystery box, you never know what you're going to find inside.

Up to this point, I've seen <Title>, <Series>, and <Episode> mymovies.xml meta-data files, and one other I can't remember right now.

But what you just shared is a <Movie> meta-data file. I've never seen one of these before. I had a theory that these existed, but never knew for sure. I can't believe in the past 1.5 years, no one has ever sent me one of these. I think this is because your entire collection is encode media/file based, and not disc based.

So the immediate answer is that CMC v2.1 doesn't support <Movie> metadata files. Sorry about that.

But since you shared this with me, I'll work on adding this to CMC v2.2. Hopefully you can be patient, as I'm not planning on having v2.2 out until late May or maybe June. Though if you're interested in playing with a beta, let me know and I can include you in the v2.2 Beta cycle, probably starting up in May.

Thank you very much for sharing that <Movie> mymovies.xml file!
Paul

[Pauven]

Kick4U,

Can you provide some screenshots of how you have this title configured in My Movies Collection Management? I'd like to set up some similar titles in my collection to test with, and I want to make sure I replicate what you have.

Thanks,
Paul

[Kick4U]

You figured it out. For testing purposes, I changed the xml files to Title tag and CMC sees them and plays (albeit the metadata shows errors since its not what it expects).

I would gladly help you with the beta cycle. I actually have many different types of media (including discs sets), but am working on building a new build and am testing multiple different scenarios before pulling the trigger. Hence, I found your software and would like to use this based on the feature set. I used MMBrowser many years ago and know you got skills;)

Since I'm testing different configurations; I'm also reorganizing my media collection (dreaming about getting a dedicated low-power NAS instead of my 2009 hand-me-down desktop). That's why my collection only has a handful and why at first I thought the issue was due to an empty monitored folder.

Here are the screenshots for the same film.

image.png (219.56 KiB) Viewed 8063 times

image.png (65.88 KiB) Viewed 8063 times

[Pauven]

Thanks for the screenshots. That's about what I expected. I don't have any in my collection like this, so I'll set some up to do some testing.

One more heads up, as I see another problem you're going to encounter.

If you look inside your mymovies.xml file, you see that the network file path inside is not the same local C:\ filepath that CMC is seeing. CMC v2.1 has a requirement that the filepath inside the xml file matches the filepath that CMC is using to find it. If it doesn't match, then CMC doesn't link up the XML to the file, and instead discards the XML metadata. You'll still see the file in CMC, you just won't have the metadata. So for v2.1, you'll want to make sure that the filepath that CMC is using is the exact same filepath you are using in My Movies. So both need to be C:\Users... or both //Server/xyz…, but not one C:\Users... and the other //Server/xyz...

For v2.2, I just made a change a few days ago to relax this requirement, so that only the file or folder name has to match, and not the entire path. But since you're still on v2.1, I wanted to mention this.

Which also brings up a 3rd point: I think your filenames are exposing a bug in CMC. I've never seen a filename with so many periods in it, and I think some of the internal file handling logic in CMC is failing to accurately process these filenames. After all, one of the benefits of CMC is that it should allow you to browse and play your videos even if the meta-data is missing. We know your meta-data is missing because a) it is the currently unsupported <Movie> format, and b) you're using a different filepath in CMC than in My Movies. But I got so distracted by the new <Movie> metadata file that I totally forgot that the video file wasn't showing for you to play either.

So I'll have to do some testing on my side with some files named the same as yours, with all those extra periods, and if there is a problem expect a fix in v2.2 for this as well.

In the meantime, you can rename a video file from this:

A.Million.Ways.To.Die.In.The.West.2014.1080p.BluRay.DTS.x264-CyTSuNee.mkv

to this:

A Million Ways to Die in the West_2014_1080p_BluRay_DTS_x264-CyTSuNee.mkv

To verify that it shows and works in CMC.

Correction: I just tested, and if I removed the mymovies.xml file from the directly, the A.Million.Ways.To.Die.In.The.West.2014.1080p.BluRay.DTS.x264-CyTSuNee.mkv filename showed up in the GUI no problem. As soon as I added the mymovies.xml file back in and Full Synced again, it disappeared. So it is just the unsupported <Movie> metadata file that is causing your files not to show, not the filenames.

Paul

[Kick4U]

Yep, I tested simple Movie (Year) which didn't help yesterday. I think the metadata is totally different because it doesn't show up even with setting up CMC with the network path.