Episode Information exported into Video Library

[haubrija]

Originally Posted by dvd_maniac

I'm surprised the .my file stvi created by JREkiwi Located Here hasn't been brought up here.
I have almost 6000 episodes now and I use this STVI to generate my files which capture the info of all recordings and can follow it to the import folder.
I cut out commercails and encode to H.264 and lose the episode number and place in the Import directory.One of the features that this has that is great is the ability to create .my files for an enitre TV series.
For instance I had recorded all of the Simpsons (18 seasons is a lot of episodes) and when this STVI came out I just created all available .my files for the Series. It looks at everything in the wiz.bin and future airings and creates the file. Then it took about 15 minutes to put the files in the proper folder. I have each tv show in their own folder and then each season and finally each episodes
ex:
\\TV\Animated\Simpsons\18\18x04 Treehouse of Horror XVI\18x04 Treehouse of Horror XVII.mp4
and the info file:
\\TV\Animated\Simpsons\18\18x04 Treehouse of Horror XVI\18x04 Treehouse of Horror XVII.my

Another example is I ripped the entire Star Trek Original and TNG series from DVD, encoded them and placed them in an Import directory. When I saw a marathon on for them I used this STVI to create my files for shows that were never recorded by Sage!!!

I've taken a look at that import and its definately a step in the right direction but its dependent on the guide data instead of an external source. For example, I have alot of DS9 episodes ripped to my hard drive but only use OTA for TV. Since no DS9 episodes are on, I'd never get any metadate for them.

[dvd_maniac]

I can definitely see that as a problem. But I was thinking of creating a simple site for uploading .my files for just that purpose. If some others that have alot of shows have interest in this that is.
Also I have about 20 .my files of DS9 if you want them. I routinely check my DVD rips every couple of weeks and DS9 is on the Spike channel daily where I am. So I will eventually get them all.

[briands]

What's all this fuss with seperate external files... why doesn't someone support the tagging functionality native to the video file formats.

BTW... don't look at me

[haubrija]

Originally Posted by briands

What's all this fuss with seperate external files... why doesn't someone support the tagging functionality native to the video file formats.

BTW... don't look at me

Doesn't 6.0 add this support? I haven't tried it out yet but I thought I saw that among the added features. Does anyone have any experience with it? If it works well, I need to get to tagging.

[Belgrath]

Originally Posted by dvd_maniac

I'm surprised the .my file stvi created by JREkiwi Located Here hasn't been brought up here.
I have almost 6000 episodes now and I use this STVI to generate my files which capture the info of all recordings and can follow it to the import folder.
I cut out commercials and encode to H.264 and lose the episode number and place in the Import directory.One of the features that this has that is great is the ability to create .my files for an entire TV series.
For instance I had recorded all of the Simpsons (18 seasons is a lot of episodes) and when this STVI came out I just created all available .my files for the Series. It looks at everything in the wiz.bin and future airings and creates the file. Then it took about 15 minutes to put the files in the proper folder. I have each tv show in their own folder and then each season and finally each episodes

This is pretty much exactly what I'm looking at doing myself. Awesome.

Originally Posted by dvd_maniac

ex:
\\TV\Animated\Simpsons\18\18x04 Treehouse of Horror XVI\18x04 Treehouse of Horror XVII.mp4
and the info file:
\\TV\Animated\Simpsons\18\18x04 Treehouse of Horror XVI\18x04 Treehouse of Horror XVII.my

Another example is I ripped the entire Star Trek Original and TNG series from DVD, encoded them and placed them in an Import directory. When I saw a marathon on for them I used this STVI to create my files for shows that were never recorded by Sage!!!

So a few questions:
- Is the *.my file text editable? Meaning that if I had enough spare time I could create one based off an existing .my file. Mine you I'd have to look up the EPG ID so that that would match.
- Is there any way to get the IMDB data into a .my file
- Since I'd like for my directory structure to follow something like show/season instead of show/season/episode is there any way to combine all .my files into a larger one for that whole directory.... not a big deal if there isn't

Thanks for the info man, I've been looking a few days for this...

Belg

[dvd_maniac]

- Is the *.my file text editable? Meaning that if I had enough spare time I could create one based off an existing .my file. Mine you I'd have to look up the EPG ID so that that would match.

The .my file has to be the same name as the video file so I do not think you need the EPG ID, in fact I take that out of the filename after I cut commercails and encode them. Yes you can edit a .my file. You can even create them from scratch. Create a file that has the same name as the video only give it the extension .my
Open in notepad and put in the following three lines and fill them out:
title=
overview=
released=

Is there any way to get the IMDB data into a .my file

Yes, his latest beta version allows you to search IMDB and save into a .my file
but I find this useful for movies only. Most of the time episodes have blank info on IMDB...

Since I'd like for my directory structure to follow something like show/season instead of show/season/episode is there any way to combine all .my files into a larger one for that whole directory.... not a big deal if there isn't

If you have all of a season in one folder then you just put all corresponding .my files in that directory as well.
EX:
1x01 pilot.mpg
1x01 pilot.my
1x02 Something.mpg
1x02 Something.my
1x03 Something Else.mp4
1x03 Something Else.my

[Belgrath]

Originally Posted by dvd_maniac

The .my file has to be the same name as the video file so I do not think you need the EPG ID, in fact I take that out of the filename after I cut commercails and encode them. Yes you can edit a .my file. You can even create them from scratch. Create a file that has the same name as the video only give it the extension .my
Open in notepad and put in the following three lines and fill them out:
*snip*

Cool, I got this to work nicely this evening. Now the trick is to create an excel spreadsheet export that will allow me to easily create these files on the fly.

[dvd_maniac]

What is it you are going to do with the excel spreadsheet that will make it easier to create these files? Maybe it will help me too?

[Belgrath]

Originally Posted by dvd_maniac

What is it you are going to do with the excel spreadsheet that will make it easier to create these files? Maybe it will help me too?

From what I've seen the my files have XXXX= tags for various attributes, I'm not sure if there's a master list of those tags, if there is, I'd like to see them.

Irregardless what I'd like to do is have a separate row for each *.my file where the columns are these attribute tags. The contents of the cell would be the data after the "=". It would be much easier to edit a master excel spreadsheet compared to editing each file individually. The data that is retrieved from IMDB is good for most details, but it lacks in the synopsis so that means I'll be going to other various websites to get the more verbose description and copying this and pasting it into the excel spreadsheet. Also episode numbers, seasons, original airing dates... all of these details are easier to edit if you can get them into an excel spreadsheet.

The trick now is to get excel to format all of this correct into separate files. I'm not sure if I can do this is one step, or if I have to create a csv file from the excel and then user another parser to create all of the individual files with supplied data.

In a way, XML files may be easier to do this export since XML is handled quite nicely in excel sheets.

[millers_35]

Originally Posted by dvd_maniac

Open in notepad and put in the following three lines and fill them out:
title=
overview=
released=

Are these the only 3 lines you can use? I was wanting to add genre and/or category. Stuff like that...


Miller

[dvd_maniac]

Originally Posted by Belgrath

From what I've seen the my files have XXXX= tags for various attributes, I'm not sure if there's a master list of those tags, if there is, I'd like to see them.

The tags read in RW My Files are

title=
Title=
overview=
released=
actors=
TVEpisode=
TVOverview=
TVActualStartTime=
TVStartDate=
TVStartTime=
TVEndTime=
TVGenre=
TVActors=
TVGuestStar=
TVDirector=
TVExecutiveProducer=
TVProducer=
TVHost=
TVWriter=
TVChannelNumber=
TVChannelName=
TVOriginalAiringDate=

Let me know what you come up with using Excel to parse to .my...

[Belgrath]

Originally Posted by dvd_maniac

Let me know what you come up with using Excel to parse to .my...

cool; thanks for the list; Time to start reading some manuals

Belg

[dvd_maniac]

Irregardless what I'd like to do is have a separate row for each *.my file where the columns are these attribute tags. The contents of the cell would be the data after the "=". It would be much easier to edit a master excel spreadsheet compared to editing each file individually. The data that is retrieved from IMDB is good for most details, but it lacks in the synopsis so that means I'll be going to other various websites to get the more verbose description and copying this and pasting it into the excel spreadsheet. Also episode numbers, seasons, original airing dates... all of these details are easier to edit if you can get them into an excel spreadsheet.

I find www.tv.com much better for synopsis.

Also if you go to the episode guide page for a show it has a printable version that can be saved to a text file and then using find/replace can be easily editted to a workable format. I then have the editted text file take up the left side of the screen and open a blank text file on the right and cut/paste each episode to the blank text file and save it as 1x01 Pilot.txt, 1x02 something.txt, 1x03 Something Else.txt etc... then use a rename tool to change them from .txt to .my

Probably a good 10-15 minutes per season for me.
Let me know if you find a better/faster solution.

[Belgrath]

Originally Posted by dvd_maniac

I find www.tv.com much better for synopsis.

Also if you go to the episode guide page for a show it has a printable version that can be saved to a text file and then using find/replace can be easily editted to a workable format. I then have the editted text file take up the left side of the screen and open a blank text file on the right and cut/paste each episode to the blank text file and save it as 1x01 Pilot.txt, 1x02 something.txt, 1x03 Something Else.txt etc... then use a rename tool to change them from .txt to .my

Probably a good 10-15 minutes per season for me.
Let me know if you find a better/faster solution.

http://search.cpan.org/~tigris/WWW-TV-0.04/
This might be a good starting point to be able to parse thru the TV.com data

[Belgrath]

Originally Posted by Belgrath

http://search.cpan.org/~tigris/WWW-TV-0.04/
This might be a good starting point to be able to parse thru the TV.com data

Anyone know of any existing tools that can pull the data from these sites?

Belg

[justme]

I'm just posting to add my desire to see if someone could whip up a IMDB style import for TV.com. Don't get me wrong I love the IMDB import's ability, and the .my files import is indespencable(I'd actually want it to work with a TV.com import/reader the same way IMDB does). It's just that, having access to all that rich detailed data at TV.com for individual TV episodes would be a really great feature.

[roxy99]

Originally Posted by Belgrath

Yup this worked, but because my files are DivX I think its busted other things. For instance I'm unable to FF or RW thru the episode, and the timer length is appearing as a 450hr show But I still have my program information... heh

I think I'm going to move the various episodes into the Video Library instead.

Curious to see how others manage all of their episodes and TV shows after the recordings have been done. I read on one of the threads that someone had 1000+ shows taped. How do they manage all of those, especially if they've already removed the various commercials and done compression on the show.

Thanks ahead of time, keep the comments coming,
Belgrath

This did'nt work for me.

I tried the following:

Encoded to XviD while keeping original mpg in recordings folder.
Changed the satus of the mpg to Archived
Shut down Sage Server
moved the mpg to a non-recoding directory invisible to Sage
replaced the mpg with identically named XViD compressed AVI version
Restarted Sage so that new AVI would be dedected in its place

Result was when I went to the recordings folder, Sage no longer shows the episode. It appears that the AVI is being ignored. As well, its not in the Archive folder of Sage.

Am I missing something? Does the time stamp also need to be changed?

I know that I can always move the AVI to my import video folder but then I loose the episode information. Is that what these XML hacks are about?

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by dvd_maniac

I find www.tv.com much better for synopsis.

Looks like IMDB is getting a lot more information for TV shows, which looks like it may be promising. Unfortunately, the curse of screen-scraping strikes and nielm needs to do an IMDB search update so that we can get the new data.

[dvd_maniac]

IMDB for movies is awesome but I actually think I would find manual creation better than going through IMDB for episodes.
First go to the episode in Sage.
then do an IMDB search which always defaults to movie results, so...
then do a manual search
then click the TV show (If it finds it)
then goto episodes and find the right one.
Then finally find out that you did all this for nothing as the overview is either blank or populated with the generic description of the series and not the episode overview.
Then do the same for them all.

I am wondering if it would actaully be better to approach it another way?
If someone has a folder say \\ImportedVideos\TV and has subfolders for each series like say 24. IE:\\ImportedVideos\TV\24 then would it be possible to create something like a .my file for the parent series folder?
Ex:
\\ImportedVideos\TV\24\24.my
Like I stated above, all shows on tv.com have a printable episode guide that could easily be saved as a text file. This would be much easier to create than any other Sage way could be. And would be easier for someone to find a particular episode through the one guide rather than searching through the folder and opening the details of each until they found it.

The create and read .my files works excellent for shows recorded in Sage but I think this would solve the needs of downloaders and dvd rippers of TV shows.

Possible anyone?

[roxy99]

Originally Posted by dvd_maniac

IMDB for movies is awesome but I actually think I would find manual creation better than going through IMDB for episodes.
First go to the episode in Sage.
then do an IMDB search which always defaults to movie results, so...
then do a manual search
then click the TV show (If it finds it)
then goto episodes and find the right one.
Then finally find out that you did all this for nothing as the overview is either blank or populated with the generic description of the series and not the episode overview.
Then do the same for them all.

I am wondering if it would actaully be better to approach it another way?
If someone has a folder say \\ImportedVideos\TV and has subfolders for each series like say 24. IE:\\ImportedVideos\TV\24 then would it be possible to create something like a .my file for the parent series folder?
Ex:
\\ImportedVideos\TV\24\24.my
Like I stated above, all shows on tv.com have a printable episode guide that could easily be saved as a text file. This would be much easier to create than any other Sage way could be. And would be easier for someone to find a particular episode through the one guide rather than searching through the folder and opening the details of each until they found it.

The create and read .my files works excellent for shows recorded in Sage but I think this would solve the needs of downloaders and dvd rippers of TV shows.

Possible anyone?

I agree. I'd love for my Video import directories to be set up in subfolders by series. Each folder has an .my file of all eposodes so that it can be used by Sage to make a submenu for navigating.

Question for DVD maniac:
I haven't yet installed the .my read/write my plugin by JREkiwi (http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21629)

Since the IMDB database keeps changing, the IMDB plugin is broken now. Should I even bother with the IMDB plugin? JREkiwi recomments to install the IMDB plugin then his my plugin. Is the IMDB plugin required for the my to work? Does the plugin retreive info from the my for avi, wmv, etc- or are only bloated mpg files indexed?