Confused: genres and groups

[elaw]

All,

Background: I'm a long-time Sage user but a total n00b with SageMC. I'm using the latest versions of Sage and SageMC.

I'm going nuts trying to get my head around genres and groups in "My Videos" under SageMC.

First issue: genres. I've been running the IMDB and R/W metadata plugins for the default STV forever, so that's where my current metadata came from. When I select the "Genre" view, the genres show up exactly as the data comes from IMDB: one movie is "Action / Comedy" while another is "Drama / Comedy". What I would expect is to see 3 genres "Action", "Comedy", and "Drama", the 1st movie would be listed under "Action" and "Comedy", the 2nd would be listed under "Comedy" and "Drama". Is something broken or set wrong, or am I just misunderstanding how this works?

"Groups" I'm even more confused by. When I go to "options" for the My Videos screen, I can use "manage groups" to add/delete groups. But when I select "groups" view in My Videos, what's shown is completely different from the list in "manage groups". And I can find no way to assign videos to groups.

Can anyone help unconfuse me?

[Brent]

Originally Posted by elaw

First issue: genres. I've been running the IMDB and R/W metadata plugins for the default STV forever, so that's where my current metadata came from. When I select the "Genre" view, the genres show up exactly as the data comes from IMDB: one movie is "Action / Comedy" while another is "Drama / Comedy". What I would expect is to see 3 genres "Action", "Comedy", and "Drama", the 1st movie would be listed under "Action" and "Comedy", the 2nd would be listed under "Comedy" and "Drama". Is something broken or set wrong, or am I just misunderstanding how this works?

I'm not positive I'm understanding your question so bear with me. I think you're saying you are seeing two genre's but not three as you expected? If so, the answer is this: SageMC can currently only handle two genre's so it only shows that title in the first two genres listed. Works the same way if you're doing a DVDProfiler import.

Not sure on the second question as I don't use the "groups" much. Hopefully someone else can help with that one.

[Kirby]

Seems like elaw has this type of situation going on. Movie one is Wall-E, with genres of Animation and Comedy. Movie 2 is Sweet Home Alabama, with genres of Comedy and Romance. In each Genre subcategory he is expecting:

• Animated: Wall-E
• Comedy: Wall-E, Sweet Home Alabama
• Romance: Sweet Home Alabama

To my knowledge, this is how mine has always worked, and the way it should work. But I cant currently check as I have totally wiped my video library and am in the process of re-setting it up.

As for groups, its been a while since I used them. But I recall having to set them up on the server (for best luck) and not through a client/placeshifter. Once you create the groups, then when you go into a specific video file, you can "send to" a group (I think that was the menu command and terminology).

[elaw]

Kirby,

Yeah, you've got it. Here's a screenshot:


It seems that whenever a movie has multiple genres listed, Sage interprets the list as a genre unto itself. As you can see, it doesn't work very well this way!

[MeInMaui]

SageMC can only handle 1 genre + 1 subgenre. I don't know what will happen if there are more than 2 total.

Aloha,
Mike

[elaw]

Aaah! That would make sense. It's a bummer but makes sense. Sounds like when SageMC sees a metadata file that gives > 2 genres, it gives up and just considers the whole "a/b/c/d" list as its own genre.

I've found I can fix it by selecting each video and manually doing an IMDB lookup, then saving the info. Tedious but it works!

Thanks!

[Brent]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

SageMC can only handle 1 genre + 1 subgenre. I don't know what will happen if there are more than 2 total.

Aloha,
Mike

If there are more then 2 total genre's SageMC just ignores the 3rd, 4th etc. SageMC only "sees" the first two genre's. For example, DVD Profiler exports three (possibly more) genre's into the collection.xml file, but SageMC only picks up the first two genre's listed.

[elaw]

Hmmm... it seems that SageMC either has a bug interpreting existing .my / .properties files (or is the genre info already in wiz.bin?), or a large number of my metadata files are corrupt, because I get different results when I do an IMDB search from within SageMC.

Using what's shown in my screenshot above as an example, I can select the "action / adventure / comedy" genre. When I do that, "tropic thunder" is the only movie shown under that genre. I then go to the details screen for that movie, do an IMDB lookup, and save the information. Once I've done that, on the genres screen "action / adventure / comedy" no longer appears, and "tropic thunder" now appears under the "action" and "adventure" genres.

So seemingly it works right when fed the info directly from IMDB but not when using metadata created under the standard STV via the IMDB and R/W metadata plugins.