[Fixed in v1.3] Beginner Question re: TV episodes

[Bairman]

Good day CMC community,

New user, first time poster.

I've been a looooong time user of My Movies + WMC and for the most part it has served my needs extraordinarily well. But the time has come to move onward and upward, so here I am. I've actually been following the progress of CMC in the My Movies forum where I've been mostly a lurker for 12+ years. I don't post there often simply because Binnerup is kind of an ass to his supporters and I have little patience for that. But I digress...

So I''m currently working with the test functions in CME and everything seems to be going well except for one thing. I think I know the answer but I'm looking for confirmation before I proceed with what will be quite a bit of work. I have a fairly large collection... 3600+ disc titles, 1900+ movies, 550+ TV series with 31000+ episodes. Performing a test run on my collection gives me 100% success with disc titles (movies, concerts, etc.), but 0% success with TV episodes.

I can read your mind... yes, all discs and episodes are correctly mapped and assigned. My collection is immaculate in MMCM (I'm one of those types ) and everything worked perfectly under WMC. However, the CME log files say that the episode metadata will be skipped because the discs are marked as offline. Am I correct in deducing that even though all 31000+ episodes have the direct path to the corresponding episode file (converted media) that just because the disc is marked as offline I still won't get any metadata?

I suspect that's the answer and that I'll have to change every last TV series disc to online in order to fix it, but I'm sure you can understand why I want to confirm before I get started.

Cheers,
Barry

[Pauven]

Hi Barry,

Welcome. You timing is uncanny!

I have another user like you who has a lot of TV episodes in converted format (mostly WTV I think, recorded with WMC and still playable because they are not protected). Up until now, he has had to jump through major hoops to get this to work with CMC, and CME wouldn't export his episodes or any TV Series info because the disc didn't have mapped episodes. Even worse, I broke something in CMC v3.1 that prevented the import of converted media episodes, so he's been stuck using v3.0 for a few months.

The past few days I've been working on fixing all of that for him, and lucky you the fixes will work for you too.

CME v1.3 will now export all TV Series metadata even if you don't have online discs or don't even have discs at all - no disc based titles required. This will be a huge benefit for the other user, who has been adding fake titles manually just to make things work. Sounds like you have the disc titles, but they're just offline, so the new version of CME should let you use what you already have without any changes.

TIP: If you have your TV media stored in a folder structure as Binnerup directs (\TV Series\Season\Disc\files) then you can use the Structured output option (which will put the Series info in the Series folder, and the Season info in the Season folder), otherwise use the default Collapse output option in CME, which will write Series & Season metadata to the same folder with the episode files.

I've also modified CMC v3.2, fixing the broken import of converted media episodes, plus adding the ability to import them even if you don't have a parent disc title for the TV Series.

I just wrapped up these changes about an hour ago. I'm going to do some more testing with CMC & CME tomorrow morning, then send it out as a release candidate to the prerelease testers.

If everything stays on track, CMC v3.2 final with CME v1.3 final should be released within a week. So my recommendation for you is to just chill for a few days until the new version is out.

Paul

[Pauven]

Am I correct in deducing that even though all 31000+ episodes have the direct path to the corresponding episode file (converted media) that just because the disc is marked as offline I still won't get any metadata?

By the way, your deduction was only half correct. The current version of CME didn't support converted media episodes at all, only disc based episodes. So not only would you have had to make your discs online, you would have also had to map all the episodes on every disc, which wouldn't make sense for your converted media collection.

I'm afraid if you had tried that you would have ended up very frustrated. I'm glad you reached out to verify, you're definitely going to like the new versions, and you shouldn't have to do any collection cleanup.

[Bairman]

Paul,

Timing is everything.

Actually, my disc titles do have all of the episodes mapped. Every last one. As well as the episode entries linked to the corresponding converted media files. (I did say I'm one of those types. )

Anyway, I set the discs for an 8 episode series (11.22.63) to online (folder), re-ran the test in CME and it reported that it would download metadata for that title, just as expected. So next I was going to begin the long, mind-numbing task of changing them all to online. We're talking thousands of discs.

But now I'll just wait and test the new CME once you're ready to go. In fact, if you want to add me as a pre-release tester, I can run the new version of CME against my collection to see how it works. I use a flat folder structure rather than season folders, so that might provide a good test as well since I seem to be in the minority where folder structure is concerned.

My next question was going to be how I would handle series I've purchased online and downloaded and therefore wouldn't have a corresponding disc title, but that's completely moot now.

I think I'm going to like CMC. A lot.

Barry

[Pauven]

Actually, my disc titles do have all of the episodes mapped. Every last one. As well as the episode entries linked to the corresponding converted media files.

It's on my to-do list to test having both disc episodes and converted media episodes for the same episodes. My expectation is that the disc episodes will prevent CMC importing converted media episodes, as CMC isn't expecting two copies of any episodes. This is new territory for me too. Unless I find otherwise, if you want to primarily use your converted media then definitely do not make your discs online.

I think I'm going to like CMC. A lot.

If you don't, I'm always open to guidance. If it wasn't for all the wonderful CMC users that have helped me along the way, CMC would only be 10% of what it is today.

[Pauven]

But now I'll just wait and test the new CME once you're ready to go. In fact, if you want to add me as a pre-release tester, I can run the new version of CME against my collection to see how it works. I use a flat folder structure rather than season folders, so that might provide a good test as well since I seem to be in the minority where folder structure is concerned.

Barry,

I've added you to the prerelease testers group. I've also just released RC3 for CMC & CME, details here: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=304

Paul

[Bairman]

Excellent, thank you. I'll take it for a spin soon.

Barry

[Pauven]

I have a fairly large collection... 3600+ disc titles, 1900+ movies, 550+ TV series with 31000+ episodes.

Now that you're taking your first big steps to export/sync everything, here's some tips for you.

While your overall # of disc titles isn't that large (we have several users over 10k movies), I think your TV Series collection is the largest that CMC has seen to date. And due to the massive amount of data for TV Series (lots of images, metadata and images for every episode), they are much slower to sync than a typical movie. Based upon your other post in the prerelease thread, you are coming in with a healthy expectation for a lengthy export and sync, which is good. The sync might be faster than you expect. I can export my entire collection in just under an hour, and sync it in less than 30 seconds, so the CMC sync is easily 100x faster than the CME export (the My Movies API is slooow, just like MMCM, so that is out of my control).

Since you are a new user, you probably won't understand why the CMC Sync icon keeps spinning after the Sync is done. It's not broken. This is indicating that the Artwork Caching process is running in the background. This will actually take longer than the main Sync process, especially on your collection with tons of TV Series artwork. You will want to let this run to completion for maximum performance (local artwork provides a very fast browsing experience versus pulling artwork off your NAS in real-time). If you exit CMC early before the artwork caching is done (and CMC let's you do this without any warning), then your local artwork cache will be incomplete. CMC will still work just fine - it automatically pulls artwork from your media folders on the fly if the artwork is missing in the local cache - it will be slower to navigate around, perhaps sporadically faster/slower depending upon which titles completed caching. You can always run a Smart Sync (changes only) to resume Artwork Caching, which will pick up where it left off, so again it won't be broken if you don't let it run to completion.

You've probably already read the tutorials, but after you've done your first full export & sync, you will want to configure CME for Changes Only Since the Last Run, and begin using the Smart Sync in CMC (which is changes only too). That will let you keep your collection up to date in the quickest possible way.

Enjoy.

[Bairman]

Thanks for the tips. The spinning sync icon certainly would have been confusing. Everything else is coming along nicely and I'll have some feedback shortly in the pre-release thread.

[ScareDcrow]

Looks like I got the timing perfect (121 series, 7010 episodes)
Already I am happy that after numerous server changes I finally am sure that all my UNC paths are right