CMC Forums

Hi,

I have been noting an issue where i add a collection in my movies collection manager, but cmc control center is not properly pulling the collection detail. Last night i saw it when i added Beetlejuice Beetlejuice to a new collection i stacked on Beetlejuice. It showed fine in my movies collection manager, but after doing a full refresh on the CMC UI, it only showed beetlejuice.

It was only after i went in to the base movie in the collection "beetlejuice" and made a blank edit to the description to force a title refresh in CMC collection manager did the new title show up.

I have been noticing this frequently, this is only one example. I have one live example right now that i wont fix if you need me to pull some debug info for, but i added "Sing Thriller" to my "Sing" collection, it shows up in my movies collection manager perfectly, but in CMC UI the "Sing Thriller" title is missing from the collection.

Let me know if there is something you would like for me to try to debug this issue for you. I'm happy to pull logs or whatever you need to isolate why this is happening.

Thanks!

A common misconception is that CCC detects changes in My Movies. The reality is that My Movies reports changes, via the API, to CCC.

So CCC will query the API for a list of all titles and their most recent "Changed On" dates. There's actually several of these dates, some for global data and some for personal, things like that.

When one of these dates is newer than the last time CCC exported, CCC knows that is a changed title, and proceeds to export it for a Changes Only run.

CCC's code is very solid (and pretty simple, too, not very hard to compare dates). The problem is that My Movies has several bugs, or perhaps a nicer way of describing this specific issue, My Movies has gaps in its internal change detection logic.

There are certain edits you can make in My Movies that do result in a change, but My Movies fails to flag the change and update those dates exported via the API. Collections are notriously bugg.... errr... I mean gappy, in this regard. You'd be right to expect the change you made to trigger an update, but it doesn't, due to it not being reported via the API.

Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do about this. The My Movies API is fairly restrictive, I can only do what it permits, and it permits very little, and often the data is simply wrong, like what you're experiencing. My Movies deceives CCC into thinking there's no changes, so none get exported by CCC.

These issues were long ago reported to Binnerup, but they've never been fixed. It also seems like Binnerup no longer develops the desktop My Movies client, solely focusing on their mobile app instead (that's their revenue stream these days). So we're stuck with what we have, but let's be thankful we still have My Movies.

There is a feature in CCC to help you recover quickly and easily when My Movies fails to export a change. At the top-right of the CCC screen is a text box, similar to a search box. You can type a partial or full title name there (i.e. Beetlejuice), and then run a FULL EXPORT. Now, normally a Full Export would clear the local CCC database and rebuild it from scratch via the API (taking hours), but as long as you have something (anything) typed into that text box, CCC switches to a special APPEND mode. Instead of wiping the local DB, it is left unchanged, and any data that matches your typed text string is fully exported and updates the local DB. So you get the benefits of a full export, but in just a few seconds/minutes, versus hours of a real full export.

NOTE: Be sure to clear the text box after you're done, then resume your normal changes only export jobs.

I also have a feature in CCC to do a Full Export on a set schedule, and it is weekly by default. Depending upon how often you update your collection, you can adjust this schedule to better fit your personal usage needs. The idea is that the Full Export resolves the data gaps that My Movies creates. If you still had this feature enabled (in CCC's settings), then this issue would have solved itself on the next scheduled Full Export.