Hey Robert,
Okay, you threw a few curveballs at me with this post. I'll try to take it one piece at a time - fingers crossed I don't miss anything.
robert5733 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 22, 2023 6:38 pm
I started using MM something like 15-20 years ago, so there were problems with meta-data back then. I have cleaned meta-data and restored the meta-data, but it doesn’t change where the data is stored in old or new movie folders, and not sure that it even loads different data. As is the case with the one movie I found that had “series” marked “true” in the script.
Those old metadata issues shouldn't matter with either CME or CCC, as they both export fresh metadata. But your comment regarding "where" the data is stored is concerning. We get into that issue more below.
robert5733 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 22, 2023 6:38 pm
I have been working through the export logs for CME and found the following problems.
Found the one movie that had a “series” in the .xml script and didn’t export correctly. Tried to save meta-data for it but continually saved it with “series”. Deleted it and readded it and it corrected the .xml script without series in it.
Found 7 movies with incorrect/missing paths and fixed them in MM.
Sounds like good progress. I built a lot of data checks into CME (and CCC) to try and identify bad or missing My Movies data, so it looks like this is working okay for you. Data cleanup is never fun, but it certainly helps to have a tool point out the issues for you.
robert5733 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 22, 2023 6:38 pm
I still have 20 or 30 movies from back in the day that have second disks that aren’t mapped for things like special features, which I didn’t copy, before I knew exactly what I was doing. So I will need to go into MM and delete all the skipped offline disks. Not sure if that would make any difference in CMC syncing.
I wouldn't worry about that. CME will report on these, but you can ignore these informational messages. They're more for troubleshooting, i.e. if you are trying to figure out why disc 2 doesn't show up. I have hundreds of these myself, no issue at all.
robert5733 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 22, 2023 6:38 pm
When trying to load just one drive, with 800 or so movies, 412 in with meta-data from MM written to \movies folder and the other 400 written to \movies\video_ts folder, I find the debug log pretty much matches the amount of movies that have the meta-data mapped to the root folder \movie and probably missing the ones mapped to the \movies\video_ts folders.
Yep, looks like you've identified the problem. CMC is behaving as programmed - it will
NOT look inside VIDEO_TS or other similar subfolders. So any movies you've pointed at the VIDEO_TS subfolder will never be found by CMC, by design.
The problem/solution is in My Movies Collection Management. You would need to update the disc path to be the disc root folder, not the VIDEO_TS subfolder.
robert5733 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 22, 2023 6:38 pm
So, the questions are. I have about 800 movies with data in the video_ts folders. Do I have to go in and move all those .xml, folder.jpg, fanart, and covers to the root drive before exporting?
No, please don't do that. Moving the files manually will only halfway solve the problem. The XML files have filepaths embedded inside them, and they will be incorrect if you move them. You also end up orphaning that data, as CME will be maintaining the data inside the VIDEO_TS, not the root where you manually moved older copies of that data, so in the future you would end up frustrated that data changes in My Movies is not showing up.
The correct solution is in My Movies Collection Management. For each affected title, open the Discs and change the folder to the movie root, instead of the VIDEO_TS folder. Then rerun CME doing a Full Export. All the data will then be written in the correct location.
You will have extra copies left behind in the VIDEO_TS folder, but those won't hurt anything and it's easiest just to forget about them. If it really bothers you, I have built some cleanup tools into CME to delete the metadata it creates, but it can be dangerous to use some of the more aggressive cleanup options. If you decide you want to do this, please reach out to me first and I can help you through this.
robert5733 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 22, 2023 6:38 pm
The other problem I was having is the access violation errors. Some were fixed by using the beta you posted in another discussion, the others may have been from the problems discussed above.
Hard to say at this point. But I would recommend solving the path issues first, as that might resolve the Access Violations just as you suggested.
robert5733 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 22, 2023 6:38 pm
Is CCC going to have the same problems with the location, causing CMC not to see them also.
Possibly, but to a much lesser degree. Because CCC directly exports the My Movies API data into the CMC database, it is immune to these path issues that are affecting CMC's folder scanning. So if you used CCC right now, 100% of your collection would show up in CMC.
The problems would then likely show up on playback. CMC calls external players, like PowerDVD and MPC-BE among others, to play your content, and does so by passing the path of your movies. Some players may accept the VIDEO_TS folder, but some players will error because this is not the root of the disc. So while CCC will get your collection visible in CMC, most likely half of it will have playback issues.
The solution described above, correcting the disc path in MMCM, fixes this playback issue too. Which is why I recommend fixing the disc paths in MM. Copying files created by CME would never fix the CCC solution, since CCC (and CMC when in CCC mode) never looks at these files, so the only way to fix CMC+CCC is to fix the disc paths in MMCM.
Hopefully that gets you on the right track. I find it unfortunate that My Movies Collection Management allows you to set the disc path to VIDEO_TS, since that can break downstream playback. That's actually the main reason I don't allow CMC to look inside VIDEO_TS or BDMV type subfolders, since it is incorrect and breaks playback with many players. So since MMCM doesn't force correct data practices, I make sure that CMC does.
There is one other workaround (a poor hack, really) that will let you see the other half of your collection immediately, but you will be missing all the rich metadata. In CMC > Settings > Movie Library Scanning, Enable the option to "Import Titles Missing Metadata", which is disabled by default. CMC will find and import all those titles that are currently missing altogether, but they will probably not have covers or any metadata. You will be able to play them, though.
That's not really a feature I designed for this scenario. Rather, I created it to address another issue - sometimes movies disappear from My Movies. By importing movies missing metadata, you can then find them in CMC's GUI, so you know to go fix them in My Movies. Obviously for 400+ missing movies this isn't really helpful, but I did want to mention this to you in case you find a use for this feature.