Hi All, I apologize if this has been answered, but I can’t seem to find the answer.
Everything I’ve been reading about the meta data for TV shows seems to point to having individual episodes in individual folders to get the meta data for it. I have full seasons dvds of many shows which I would like to be able to view the episode information for while browsing the library. I have so far downloaded a few meta data editors and stared creating the XMLs manually, but there has to be a better way.
It seems the hub will not recognize the dvd to locate the content. I have tried manually searching with no luck and changing the meta data source doesn’t help. And even searches on the internet at IMDB and TVDB will not give me the information.
So my question is… is there a way, besides manually creating the XML, to get the meta data for say… The Sopranos, Season one Disk one or The Simpson’s Season four Disk three?
This is a WD Live Hub with the latest (3.01.19) firmware
However, what I am looking to do is have a single entry for the dvd like I hve for my movies and be able to access the DVD menu as opposed to going to the individual episodes. I could modify your solution to obtain the metadata then compile it into a single xml for the individual dvds That being the case, can you explain how to create a Symlink?
No further solutions, my reply was based on the symlink.
Which, BTW, I could not get to work.
It seems that this is a scenario which is common, but no one has solved it completely yet. The one workaround is nice, but right now I have all my movie ISOs in 1 directory along with my full season dvd isos. The movies work flawlessly and I love the auto scan of the content data. However, someone out there has to have realized that TV episodes can come as full seasons with multiple episodes on a DVD along with extra features and other DVD things. I’ve created XMLs for my Little Rascal collection DVDs manually and that was fine, but the thumbnails, and background images are not available. This also holds true for movies with a second extra feature DVD like the Harry Potters or Pirates of the Caribbean. There should be a way to identify these extras without having to resort to manual entries or “spoofing” workarounds.
Hopefully someone knows a clean way to handle this, or at least a utility (like WDTVHubGen) that can recognize a full season DVD set and obtain the meta data for it as a single meta file entry.
Until then, I’ll be brushing up on my meta-tags writing.
Some TV series/episodes I have ripped to individual ISO files for each episode and then used the Hub’s “get info” features to populate the XML and images.
Other TV series DVDs that have some added special features I have left intact by disc (I Love Lucy.S01D01, etc) and created my own XML files by manually copying the episode info from THETVDB, and adding image links to the banners and such. I add info for all of the episodes that are on that disc in the “overview” section in 2 parts. The beginning of the section just lists each episode with first aired date “06 The Audition Show (11/19/1951)” one per line. Skip a line, then repeat but add all the episode info (correcting grammar and typos in the info as I go) so that the “next page” button will scroll through it all.
For movie DVD sets that include a 2nd disc, I first decide if the 2nd disc has anything on it I’d look at more than once. If so, I rip it as “The Guns of Navarone - Extras (1961).iso” and place in the same folder as the main movie. Then manually get info for it by letting the get info process fail, then using the Hub’s edit feature to remove the “- Extras” portion from the title so the process succeeds. Then I edit the XML file to add back the “- Extras” to the title and edit the “plot” and “overview” sections to reflect what the bonus disc contains. I use an image editor to add “Extras” to the cover image file so the cover icons will show the difference.
Not an ideal situation I guess but it works for me for my particular environment. “If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the…” oh wait - I guess that’s what I am using! lol
Yep, that is the exact process I am using at the moment, right down to adding each of the episode titles and a brief 1 line synopsis at the top of the overview then a full desciption of each episode below that. The same holds true for the second disks in a set, except I just copy the original .XML rename it to the “D2” version and change the appropriate meta tags to point to the second ISO and show the correct title (Blah bla blah Disk 2) and modify the overview to “special features and cool extra stuff” or somethiung like that.
It sounds like this will be how I handle the rest of my collection as well.
Thanks again, I guess I didn’t specify my entire environment.
my LIve hub has a wd 2 TB usb connected and I have a Live + on another TV. all on my network
all self contained, no NAS which is probably why the symlink won’t work, I tried it by access the 2 TB drive as a mapped drive on my laptop. I guess without a NAS the Symlink won’t work as there is no OS to parse it.
If you’re trying a “Shortcut,” no, that won’t work. That’s different.
I’ve never tried an “NTFS Symlink,” maybe someone can comment on that… but the command to create a link is MKLINK, done from the command line on a Windows box.
So I am burning the season disc as one .avi file. The WD TV meta database won’t recognize any of these. I tried a few solutions but couldn’t figure them out. Is there a detailed way to describe how I can add the right info for my TV shows? All the movies have worked out just fine.
take a look at dfrench’s reply as that is the current process I am using as well. Until someone can come up with something better, this seems to be the solution. It’s not ideal, and is a bit time consuming, but at least you will have the info for your episodes.
I’ve never created XML files and don’t know if you need a certain editor to do one. If so, could someone send me a) the editor I’d need to create and b) a sample of a file you created so I can “copy” it as a template? In my VIDEOS directory, I’ve got my .avi files and then an associated .methathumb and the .xml file. Am I creating the .xml and just putting it in the same directory as the TV season? What about the image? Is that embedded into the XML or is that what the METATHUMB is for?
Sorry, haven’t gone down this path before so just looking for some more instruction.
All you need to do is take one of your existing .XML files and make a copy of it, then rename to exactly the name of your AVI file (case sensative) and then edit the XML with notepad. you will see a bunch of meta tags with a stop and start for instance in between these tags is the actual data, just replace the existing data withthe new data for the AVI and save it… Make sure if there are any references to the orginal file the XML is for, you update those areas as well.
This should do it. You can play around with the different tags and to test if it is correct, just double click on it, if the file has any error in it, the browser will tel you, if you see the data and meta tags in the browser window, the data is formatted correctly.
You can use MS Word or an XML editor. I was using Word until someone posted about a very nice editor (XML Marker) they found/use last week. (Look under Themes here for a post titled “Sweet Theme Editor!!!” for the info and a link.)
For a “template” you can create a small dummy file with the exact name of the first episode on your disc (“The Rockford Files.S01E01.iso” for example), place that dummy file in your target folder, then allow the Hub to find it and use “get info” to obtain the information pertaining to that single episode. Then copy the XML file to the folder where you do your editing and modify the various fields as needed and as noted previously. You’ll have to play around with the cover thumbnail and background image fields and eventually delete the dummy file and the “hidden” files that were created based on it. Alternately, you can use any XML file previously created by the Hub as a template and go from there. You’ll end up in the same place either way as long as you *studiously* pay attention to updating all the fields to reflect the information about the disc you’re processing.
You can log into the TV episode database site and manually copy and paste the information about each episode as you update the working file, including cover image and background banners and such.
It can be tedious but you can make things end up looking reasonably like you wanted/expected.
