TV series naming

OK, I know there are a lot of other threads regarding this issue, but I’m still struggling with the renaming of two TV series: Star Trek Voyager and Star Trek Deep Space Nine.

Keep in mind I’m using the italian interface (someone hinted that the localization may influence the “get content info” function).

I’ve tried several naming format:

Star Trek Voyager - S01E01 - “episode title in italian”.avi

Star Trek Voyager - 1x01 - “episode title in italian”.avi

Star Trek Voyager - S01E01.avi

Star Trek Voyager - 1x01.avi

Star.Trek.Voyager.1x01.“episode title in italian”.avi (dots everywhere!)

Star.Trek.Voyager.1x01.avi

and different folder structure:

“Serie TV” (folder) → “Star Trek Voyager” (folder) → “Stagione 1” (folder)

“TV Series” (folder) → “Star Trek Voyager” (folder) → “Season 1” (folder)

Same thing Deep Space Nine

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks

EDIT: I forget to say that with Anime TV Series the WD TV works fine (well, works like a charm!!!) with this file naming

Oreimo - 1x01.mkv

Seitokai no Ichizon - 1x01.mkv

and so on

There are several threads that address this problem.

Check the one bellow and see if it works:

http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-Hub-Themes/question-tv-show-sorting-folder-thumbnails/m-p/500844#M9976

Well, first of all the WD TV Live HUB doesn’t have the “get content info” and secondly the thread you are referring to, talks about a sorting problem.

And lastly, if you suggest to put dots in the filename structure, as already said, I’ve tried it with no luck.

Regards

Well, try this thread

http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-Streaming-Discussions/Problems-with-TV-Series-metadata/m-p/424030/highlight/true#M9759

And before you come back to me saying that you have already put dots in the filename structure have a closer look WHERE you have put those dots.  Also this filename structure mentioned in the above link is not on the list in your first post in this thread.

That link took me a whole thirty seconds to search.

MauroMJ Wrote:

Well, first of all the WD TV Live HUB doesn’t have the “get content info”

_____________________________________________________________

The WDTV Live HUB  sure does have “Get Content Info”  but only if you have the Media Library turned ON

 

 (and of course later firmware that support scraping TheTVDB.com)

 

i’m looking foward to Dexter.S08E01.mkv  this year  :wink: 

 

 

PGRated wrote:

Well, try this thread

 

http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-Streaming-Discussions/Problems-with-TV-Series-metadata/m-p/424030/highlight/true#M9759

 

And before you come back to me saying that you have already put dots in the filename structure have a closer look WHERE you have put those dots.  Also this filename structure mentioned in the above link is not on the list in your first post in this thread.

 

That link took me a whole thirty seconds to search.

Dear PGRated, I do not intend to start a sterile controversy, but let me say you one thing. I’m perfectly able to make a search on my own: however it has taken me a little more than thirty seconds…my bad.

Anyway, I may have not included “star trek voyager.s01e01.avi” in the list but I’ve already tried every permutation with or without dots and every single attempt has failed.

As said in the first post the strange thing is that with other tv series, there are no problems with the “get content info” function using the standard naming format like “Oreimo - 1x01.mkv” (no dots).

So, I was hoping that if someone has had a little luck with the naming of the Star Trek TV series, could have point me out the right naming format.

Thanks again.

Regards

MauroMJ wrote:

As said in the first post the strange thing is that with other tv series, there are no problems with the “get content info” function using the standard naming format like “Oreimo - 1x01.mkv” (no dots).

What standard? The only de facto standard I’m aware of is used by the scene: S01E01.

Techflaws wrote:


MauroMJ wrote:

As said in the first post the strange thing is that with other tv series, there are no problems with the “get content info” function using the standard naming format like “Oreimo - 1x01.mkv” (no dots).


What standard? The only de facto standard I’m aware of is used by the scene: S01E01.

Okay then “1x01” is not the standard format, however the WD TV Live SMP is able to find content info (just like XBMC does) for several tv series with this naming format; the problem still remains with the Star Trek’s TV Series (DS9 and Voyager) and I suspect that it’s not only a “1x01” or “S01E01” problem, but maybe the WD TV Live requires a specific file name (and maybe a specific folder name?).

Regards

Since the WDTV uses TVDB.com as its metadata source, it makes sense that the name of the show needs to be the same as on the tvdb.com website, well to me it does anyway.  happy to be corrected on that.

A quick trip to that website shows that all the star trek series have a colon in the name after the “trek”, e.g. Star Trek: Voyager, but windows does not allow you to put a colon in a file name so you can’t make it match exactly.  The only workaround I can suggest in cases like this is to get the content info manually using programs like Thumbgen, The TVDB XML fetcher, WDTV Hub Gen, WDTV Thumbs etc etc.

ronmaz wrote:

A quick trip to that website shows that all the star trek series have a colon in the name after the “trek”, e.g. Star Trek: Voyager, but windows does not allow you to put a colon in a file name so you can’t make it match exactly.  The only workaround I can suggest in cases like this is to get the content info manually using programs like Thumbgen, The TVDB XML fetcher, WDTV Hub Gen, WDTV Thumbs etc etc.

I am aware of the “colon” that tvdb.com puts in the series name and, as you rightly say, Windows do not allows that special character in the file name. Since I suppose others could have the Star Trek series, I was wondering how they have dealt with this problem. Last week, I have already taken a look at programs like the ones you suggest but I was hoping to using the built-in feature of the WD TV Live SMP.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestion.

There is no controversy.  I was only responding in the same manner as you had done to the WD employee that was trying to help you.  Your reply appeared to be a little rude as I have mentioned in other posts in regards to other users there appears to be a lot of rudeness on these forums at times.  I am not crusading against rudeness on the forums - it’s just a little annoying at times.

Anyway…  Back to trying to help you with your problem.  You say that you have tried using other programs - did these programs work?  Just trying to narrow down if it is the WD scraper not working or it is the way the file is named.  While I don’t watch Star Trek I have done a test with a Star Trek filename on the WD scraper since your original post.  I had the same problem.

Have you tried just naming the file Voyager.S01E01?  This should scrape the info for you.

MauroMJ wrote:
but maybe the WD TV Live requires a specific file name (and maybe a specific folder name?).

Doubtful. OTOH, someone mentioned in another thread that his LIVE started finding entries the moment he switched the GUI over to English. What is yours set to?

I have not had any touble with my SMPs scraping for TV shows.  My TV show episodes are all named as:

The_Show_Name.S1E01.mkv

Notice that I have underscores between the words in the show title.  This is a standard Linux/UNIX approach, because it is generally safer (more likely to work right) than the standard Windows approach of using spaces.  The reason for this is that the underscores make the entire filename a single “word,” while a space (whitespace) is by default a delimiter character (so the filename can get interpreted as multiple words/filenames).  It is quite easy if not careful to end up with a script that doesn’t work right on filenames containing spaces.  Single and double quote characters can also be problematic.  Since you didn’t list trying this naming scheme, I thought I would suggest it, since the WD TV units are Linux based.

While I was doing some other things I renamed some files in a number of different ways in regards to Star Trek.

I tried out naming some dummy Star Trek files as mentioned in my previous post as Voyager.S01E01.  The WD scraped them with no problems.  I know that this is only a work around and may not suit the original posters requirements but it may be of some use.  As stated in a previous post, I think it may have something to do with that colon in the title name.  While I was mucking around with some other files with a colon in the title name it did not scrape them either.

Techflaws wrote:> Doubtful. OTOH, someone mentioned in another thread that his LIVE started finding entries the moment he switched the GUI over to English. What is yours set to?

I’ve read about the interface language being a possible issue, but the first time I’ve powered up the WD TV Live there was no internet connection (no SSID broadcasting, no DHCP, MAC filtering, WPA2 password, and so on) and the external USB HDD was not connected. Then the first thing I’ve changed was the interface language (italian).

PGRated wrote:> You say that you have tried using other programs - did these programs work?

I’ve looked around and I’ve found ThumbGen; with this, I’ve created .xml files and downloaded the thumbnails for the first season of Voyager but I haven’t tried it with the WD TV yet. I still hoped to be able to use the internal function of the WD TV and above all understand how to deal similar titles for future reference.

ncarver wrote:

I have not had any touble with my SMPs scraping for TV shows.  My TV show episodes are all named as:

The_Show_Name.S1E01.mkv

    • *> * * *
      PGRated wrote:

I tried out naming some dummy Star Trek files as mentioned in my previous post as Voyager.S01E01.  The WD scraped them with no problems.

I’ll try this two suggestions as soon as I come back home. I suppose the colon in the title must be the problem; anyway, there must be a workaround.

I’ve tried the two different naming with no luck.

I suppose that other than the colon in the title, even the interface language makes the difference if PGRated has been able to get content info with the format “Voyager.S01E01” (just out of curiosity, how have you renamed the folder?).

I’ve started playing around with ThumbGen and probably I’ll have to use something like this to definitively solve this naming problem.

Because I just used a ‘dummy video file’ the file was in the root directory of my HDD.  I may be wrong but the name of the folder shouldn’t affect the scraper in any way.

PGRated wrote:

I may be wrong but the name of the folder shouldn’t affect the scraper in any way.

 

It should be so…I suppose. But the WD TV has found the info automatically or did you have to press “option” and then manually forced the search after selecting the right show (Star Trek Voyager) from the list that appears?

I ask this, because if I manually select the option menu and then “search for information” (I’m not sure if this is the exact phrase that the WD TV shows with the english interface), after choosing “star trek voyager” from the list, the WD TV correctly retrieves the information: anyway this procedure must be done for EVERY single file!!! I’m not sure about the exact number of episodes, but we are talking about of at least 100 different episodes!!!

This should not be the way…no no no. I have used this procedure this for two or three movies not correctly renamed…but for an entire tv series, it’s a whole other thing!

Sorry about that!!!  Yes, I only did it for one file.  When I said that I did it for some files it was files just named differently to try and get it to scrape.  Should have tried it with more than one named the same way.

Yeah I wouldn’t be doing it for every individual file it would send me crazy.

Did you have any success with Thumbgen?

PGRated wrote:

Sorry about that!!!  Yes, I only did it for one file.  When I said that I did it for some files it was files just named differently to try and get it to scrape.  Should have tried it with more than one named the same way.

 

Yeah I wouldn’t be doing it for every individual file it would send me crazy.

I suspected something like this.

PGRated wrote:> Did you have any success with Thumbgen?

Yes, I’ve spent a couple hours yesterday trying different settings with ThumbGen and finally I’ve found a solution even if it needed a little manually editing of the .xml files and a LOT of batch renaming for the thumbnails.

Anyway, at least I learned one or two things about how the WD TV manages folders, files’ thumbnails and other jpeg (movie related) files.

EDIT: Use programs like ThumbGen or similar (before asking in the forum I’ve downloaded different programs hoping to find a “quick” alternative solution) wasn’t the ideal solution that I had in mind and actually I was hoping to understand how to deal with the “colon” in the title, but it’s better than nothing. Hope to not meet again another tv series with this problem!This wasn’t the ideal solution that I had in mind and actually I was hoping to understand how to deal with the “colon” in the title, but it’s better than nothing.

Hope to not meet again another tv series with this problem!