Question Regarding the Media Library, Content Info

[pajjo]

Can someone explain to me what exactly the Media Library does if turned on?

I turned my Media Library On last night and made the Content Info go from Manual -> Auto

After a while of scanning, i noticed my movies all had images beside them and when i changed my view, i could now see info about the movies which is pretty cool.

I noticed though that my movies had been renamed.

For example, if my movie was named The Fast & The Furious - 2 Fast 2 Furious - this seemed to rename itself to just 2 Fast 2 Furious but when i switched the Media Library off, the naming convention seemed to fix itself and it would revert to my naming convention (which is what i want) … So what does the Media Library do? Other than rename your files?

Is it the Media Library or the content info that puts the image beside your movie?

I also noticed that about 10% of my movies do not have any info or images beside their name but when i press options, and do a look up by Flixter - it finds it no probs! Is there a way of adding more sources so all my movies can be found and have images and info?

Finally, all of the above was regarding a local USB Hard Drive.

I also have a NAS that my WD TV Live connects to… When i browse that drive, there is no images etc… Can this all be done with the NAS or is it only with local drives?

[steviegee1964]

Hi, The media content uses a TV or movie database to collect and download the appropriate info on your film/TV show etc. It adds the info to your library and the file name hasn’t been changed only the title you see. It will be listed as exactly what the film/TV show is listed at. http://thetvdb.com/ is the link for TV shows and http://www.themoviedb.org/ is for movies. If you go to these sites and type in the movie/TV show you will see exactly how it will be shown on the WD box. If you check on a PC you will see that your files have not been changed. Having said this, its not perfect. If their are multiple choices for a film with the same title, I/e remakes like Carrie, the WD needs you to manually choose which title so the auto content doesn’t work. It will also sometimes find the incorrect info and list a film/TV show wrongly. I personally set it to manual and do it myself, its more accurate but time consuming.

Bear in mind that a file has to be written the same as is on those websites or the database wont find it. For example Fast and furious 5 is actually Fast five, TV shows are different in that they have to have a full stop between each word and season listing and episode. ie -  top.gear.s06e09. Films don’t need the full stop, you can add the year in brackets on films – Carrie (2013)

I hope this helps a little. There are more knowledgeable on here who will explain in exact detail for you and their are many links on the forums that detail this exact topic, just search Content info Scrapping

Hope this helps

[pajjo]

Thanks for the reply Stevie

Ye sorry, i was aware that the file name was fine on the Hard Drive itself but was only changed in the media library itself… Pretty annoying in my case though as i have all my films named as i want them to appear, like i have all hte bonds named  james bond 1, james bond 2 etc… but with the media library, it seems to scatter them all over the place and sort them A-Z by the name (Diamonds are Forever etc…)  I ended up having to turn media library off and this restored the names to appear as i originally had them. 

Fortunately enough also, all my titles that did have images, seemed to be correct, but maybe because my file naming convention includes the year of each of my movies… e.g. The Fast & The Furious 5 - Fast Five (2011) - 720

 

When you do it manually, i am assuming everything is blank and you check the database on a selected movie and from that point on, the selected movie with have the image and movie description etc…?

[ncarver]

pajjo wrote:

Can someone explain to me what exactly the Media Library does if turned on?

 …

I noticed though that my movies had been renamed.

…

So what does the Media Library do? Other than rename your files?

 

Is it the Media Library or the content info that puts the image beside your movie?

 

I also noticed that about 10% of my movies do not have any info or images beside their name but when i press options, and do a look up by Flixter - it finds it no probs! Is there a way of adding more sources so all my movies can be found and have images and info?

 …

I also have a NAS that my WD TV Live connects to… When i browse that drive, there is no images etc… Can this all be done with the NAS or is it only with local drives?

It is the Media Library doing what you see.  Get Content Info is only available with the ML–that is how you can manually have the SMP scrape online databases for the info.

[pajjo]

Why is it then, when i turn the media library off and delete the current media library that all the movie covers and details remain?

[TonyPh12345]

pajjo wrote:

Why is it then, when i turn the media library off and delete the current media library that all the movie covers and details remain?

The media library (inside the .wd_tv folder) is only a database.

The XML and metathumb files must be removed manually.

[pajjo]

Hi Tony

Ok so once you turn the media library on once even, it means you must manually delete the files if you need to remove them?

Someone mentioned it earlier about manually adding them?  How do you manually add the media info to a file?

Finally, can all of this be done to a NAS or is it only allowed on local drives?

[TonyPh12345]

pajjo wrote:

Hi Tony

 

Ok so once you turn the media library on once even, it means you must manually delete the files if you need to remove them?

 

Someone mentioned it earlier about manually adding them?  How do you manually add the media info to a file?

 

Finally, can all of this be done to a NAS or is it only allowed on local drives?

No, turning the media library ON does not create ANY of the JPG / Metathumb files unless you have Content Info set to AUTO.

If you have Content Info set to MANUAL, only the database file will be created.

And it works on Network Shares / local drives.

[pajjo]

how do you do it on the network share? Like last night, i went into settings and turned on ML and set Content to Auto…

I then browsed my Local USB drive and all the media content / images etc were there…

then i browsed my WD NAS and all files were emtpy (regarding images etc…)

[ncarver]

Sorry, but most of my reply got cut off for some reason and editing the response didn’t work.

So here is the rest of what I tried to say:

The scraping of online DBs that the SMP does results in the thumbnail files and .xml files that contain the movie title and other info that is displayed.  You can edit the xml files to use any title you want.  I do this all the time.  E.g., I wanted all my Bond films to sort together so I changed titles to:  Bond #n:…  Simply go into setup and clear the ML after you make any edits and they will be resorted.  Obviously if you are using an external drive you will have to move it to a computer to make the xml file edits.

You can also use the ML with shares from an NAS.  The shares have to be writable.  Then go into setup and add the shares for the Media Library.

Movies lacking info is typically because scraping failed either because there were multiple alternatives or no matches (due to your filename choice).  Simply use Get Content Info to manually try scraping.  You will either be allowed to select from multiple choices or if no matches were found you can edit the name submitted.

Once the thumbs and xml files are there, the SMP will display them even if ML isn’t selected.

[TonyPh12345]

pajjo wrote:

how do you do it on the network share? Like last night, i went into settings and turned on ML and set Content to Auto…

Add a share to the Media Library via the Media Library Manager.

[WMConey]

---

It is the Media Library doing what you see.  Get Content Info is only available with the ML–that is how you can manually have the SMP scrape online databases for the info.

 

Get Content Info is available manually - at least for DVD ISOs - with the media library off.

Start the ISO playback, press options and GCI is a choice.

[pajjo]

Ok i managed to have my local drive receive all the content - movie covers, details etc…

What i noticed now is that most of the movies have covers but the ones that do not have covers were actually found in the Database.  There is details on the movie, there is backdrop photos but just no cover… When i do a rescan, it finds the correct image cover but it just does not appear… This is happening on maybe 5% of all my movie collection.

Also, i managed to get the NAS working with the media library, but just like above, there is a few movies that have no images but when i click options, i don’t seem to get the option “get content info” like i did on the local hard drive… The first option i see is “lookup on flixster”…  None of my TV shows have images but again, i have no “get content info” option.

Any ideas?

[steviegee1964]

when you have info already added the option to add info does not appear. Try the remove info and then the add info will appear. Sometimes it takes acouple of goes to get the cover. I have actually had instances where there is no info available and then 2 days later it finds it. Go figure!

Also try the clear media library in options this sometimes helps with uncooperative content. Once done eject the drive do a restart, (not just turned off and not a reset). Regarding the drive i only have USB connections Not NAS or networks so i cant really offer any details with those setups, I just attach a usb drive and have it shared with my pc, Depending on how big a file is i will either just connect the drive directly to my pc and transfer and at same time clean up any left over files on the hard drive, (there are always a few). If there smallish files I will use the network to transfer them, (slow work)

Hope I have been of some use though.

[ncarver]

pajjo wrote:

Ok i managed to have my local drive receive all the content - movie covers, details etc…

 

What i noticed now is that most of the movies have covers but the ones that do not have covers were actually found in the Database.  There is details on the movie, there is backdrop photos but just no cover… When i do a rescan, it finds the correct image cover but it just does not appear… This is happening on maybe 5% of all my movie collection.

 

Also, i managed to get the NAS working with the media library, but just like above, there is a few movies that have no images but when i click options, i don’t seem to get the option “get content info” like i did on the local hard drive… The first option i see is “lookup on flixster”…  None of my TV shows have images but again, i have no “get content info” option.

 

Any ideas?

Try looking at the drives from your PC to see if the thumbs are there but just not being displayed for some reason.  For each movie file named something like Movie.mkv, you should have Movie.metathumb and Movie.xml, plus a directory named .Movie.backdrop.  If the .metathumb files are there for the movies that you are not seeing them with then something else is wrong (make sure the .metathumb files actually contain an image too).

I have discovered that a small number of thumbs are not being displayed properly on my SMPs.  This happened starting with the recent firmware update.  I am currently investigating the few files that do not show (9 of >300) to try to see what might be common to them.

As for TV shows, they should work similarly.  Please post info about how you have your TV show files named and how they are organized in directories.  For a show episode named like Show.S1E01.mkv you should also end up with a .metathumb, .xml, .backdrop directory.

[pajjo]

I have my TV shows named like

Folder name - Dexter (2006 - 2013)

File Names inside the folder - Dexter - S1 EP01, Dexter - S1 EP02 etc…

[steviegee1964]

tv files have to be named as following. Dexter.s01e01. inc the full stops where there would normally be a space

Dexter.s01e02. If you dont the content scrapper will not find it and just come up with a red cross