My favorite personal hack was a simple 20,000 mixed drink recipe database and desktop program I found twenty-something years ago. You could look up a drink by name, and it would detail the ingredients to make it. But I was unfamiliar with drink names, and wanted to know what I could make with the alcohol and mixers I had in the house, plus I was frustrated looking at recipes for which I didn't have the ingredients to make. So I hacked it. The biggest part of the hack was that the database was password protected and encrypted, which was a fun puzzle to crack. Then I programmed a web front end, and allowed extra query parameters to search by either ingredients you had available, or your favorite ingredients, and it would return just the drink recipes that matched. It was very popular with my friends for many years, until I retired my web server.
Since I'm the author, you've got me to hack MM Browser. I think you're hacking efforts are better applied in trying to get data out of My Movies, rather than data into MM Browser. If you can get the data out, I can get the data in.
Here's where I would appreciate the most focus:
Some of the data gaps I have identified seem to be fixing themselves when I'm not looking. For example, the poster.jpg and banner.jpg artwork files were originally very reluctant to generate, and I had only succeeded once. Now, I'm noticing them for many of my TV shows, but the dates on the files don't match the xml file dates. It's almost as if when I Save Meta-Data, the xml file is immediately written, and then the artwork is queued up for separate background processing. So I keep thinking I failed to generate it, then I come back days later and look, and sure enough it is there. Because I tried multiple methods to generate the artwork, the time gap prevents me from understanding exactly which step(s) worked to generate the artwork.
It would be helpful to have a second set of eyes to determine what steps in My Movies causes those files to generate. This will probably be a slow and time consuming research task, as you really need to pick a single title, take a single step, then walk away and check later (hours... days?) to see if the artwork was generated. Maybe your system will be faster than mine.
The possible triggers here include adding Episodes, adding Episode File Paths, saving 'TV Series' meta-data, selecting/changing the TV Series artwork, or some other step like saving the Title meta-data or individual Season meta-data.
It would also be helpful to know if you have to manually Save Meta-data to trigger the TV Series artwork generation, or if the Update All Meta-data function will do it too. Since most of my TV Series are missing the artwork, I don't think simply adding a TV Series is enough to trigger artwork generation by itself (probably a logic bug in My Movies).
Also, research is needed into what meta-data files will contain the TV Series info, and whether or not they get overwritten by other meta-data files. For example, I've never seen a mymovies.xml file with <Series> meta-data (but maybe it is getting overwritten by <Title> meta-data and I haven't noticed). I have seen a Zappiti.xml file with <Series> data, but it gets overwritten by a Zappiti.xml file with <Title> data (same filename, same file location), so you can't trust it to be there. I have seen the tvshow.nfo meta-data file written (I believe triggered by the Popcorn Meta-data option), and while the data looks nice and the filename suggests it will not be overwritten, the file is missing one crucial value: The TV Series ID. It also doesn't have any other values, like IMDB ID, that I could use to join it with the various seasons. It might be possible to use this file (at least it is placed inside the media folder instead of the parent folder), but it sure has some shortcomings.
Even though they require points, I don't want to exclude a few premium meta-data exports: MediaBrowser movie.xml files, and JRiver MediaCenter Sidecar.xml files.
I've also yet to try the Netgear EVA TAG files, mainly due to the warning message regarding the file location for the meta-data files.
One tip when testing meta-data export options: I have been disabling the 'My Movies General Service' in the Windows Services, then turning on meta-data export options, and then manually writing the meta-data by hitting the Save Meta-Data button. This way the test meta-data is only written to a few titles, and doesn't muddy my entire collection. Once I have a good lead on a meta-data option and turn off the options I don't want, I plan to re-enable the General Service.
Oh, and before I forget...
Yes, absolutely. I think this might be the step you missed to get the Box Set to show up (remember, I have yet to program support for empty Box Sets). Not only that, but I believe that this is a truly valid configuration. Since you can buy a Box Set that contains all seasons of a TV Series, it is expected that you would assign the individual season titles underneath the Box Set Parent. Most likely MM Browser will need some tweaks to handle this scenario correctly, as I've programmed Box Set and TV Series support separately, and have never tested with titles that are both. I'm not sure how MM Browser will behave.
Keep in mind that, in general, the presentation of Box Sets in MM Browser is very close to final, so if you follow this path then your TV Series would always display as a Box Set. However, if we can get the <Series> meta-data/artwork export working, then once I program the new functionality into MM Browser, you will have a much richer TV Series browsing experience in MM Browser, far beyond the basic Box Set display functionality.
Paul
