Multiple level folders flattened, blank DVD names in Imported Videos

[feilerd]

Does anyone know how to get the imported videos to group into multiple levels based on the folder structure?

eg right now my folder structure is like this:



kids\

Barney\

Barney ABC.mpg
Barney XYZ.mpg

Disney Movies\

Cinderella\

video_ts\

Snow White\

video_ts\

grownups\

Movie 1\

video_ts\

Movie 2\

video_ts\

I'm trying to get the top level to display:

Kids
Grownups

When I drill down to "Kids," I want it to show:

Barney
Disney Movies


The next level should show:
Cinderella
Snow White


I'm sure I'm just missing something obvious, since that seems the logical way to do it--and that's how Sage used to work in v 2.2.8 (my last version). The folder view in Imported Videos (in 6.0) is just displaying all the recordings together, in one big single-level list, with names like Kids\Barney\Barney ABC.mpg. On top of that, a number (but not all) of ripped DVDs are showing "DVD:" as the entire DVD name, instead of the name of the directory above VIDEO_TS. (And is there any way to get it to stop showing the file extensions?)

Also, is there any way to turn off the thumbnails for imported videos? They're just screenshots of opening screens and don't really add anything but noise to the interface.

Thanks

[nielm]

Originally Posted by feilerd

Does anyone know how to get the imported videos to group into multiple levels based on the folder structure?

Switch the imported video view (click on top row or yellow <| |> icons) to 'Folder' (you probably have Title or DVD view...)

[feilerd]

Originally Posted by nielm

Switch the imported video view (click on top row or yellow <| |> icons) to 'Folder' (you probably have Title or DVD view...)

Thanks, but no--that's the "Folder" view. The others are even worse. Oddly, at least one of the other views at least strips off the file extension--the folder one doesn't.

I upgraded on top of a 2.2.8 install. Should I not have? (ie would I have been better off doing a clean install and letting it build the data from scratch)? If I did that, all my recorded shows would end up in "Imported Videos," though, right?

[Opus4]

You are only importing the top level video folder? Can you attach a screen shot of what you are seeing?

The first time you ran v6, it should have updated all the info for imported media, but you could try removing the video import dir (or just set it to import only music so you don't actually remove the dir frmo the import list), restart SageTV & confirm that there are no imported videos, then add the video import dir & restart SageTV again. This should completely refresh the imported videos.

- Andy

[feilerd]

That's weird. I removed the directories and rescanned--but everything is still there. I only have 2 import directories--and one is just set to photos and the other is just set to music.

[Opus4]

Did you give it time to finish rescanning to remove the videos that were previously imported? If you have a lot of imported media, a scan might take a while.

Also, if the video import directory is the same as a video recording dir, it will find 'unknown' videos in the recording dirs as imported videos.

- Andy

[feilerd]

I gave it plenty of time--in fact I've also tried doing it from a SageMC client, which explicitly tells you when Sage is finished scanning--so I know it completed.

I'm still getting weird results in basic Sage, but I seem to be closer to where I want w/ SageMC--so I'll post the following there as well.

I'm including it here because I think the root cause is that the old entries aren't getting properly cleared out of the database--and I believe that to be an issue w/ Sage itself--not the SageMC interface.

w/ SageMC, I was finally seeing things almost right--but some of the DVDs showed up as having "2 items," yet drilling down showed only the VIDEO_TS folder. When I drilled into that (which also showed "2 items,") I saw nothing-which meant I couldn't play those DVDs.

Now that I've removed all the import directories, I'm seeing just one copy of each (so things work exactly as they should--except there's no way to add new files, because I don't have any import directories). It's almost as though entries from before are "stuck" in there, so the real ones create duplicates.

This is a new box. I was running 2.2.8 on another box, and I did this:

1. Copied the 2.2.8 directory to a new box
2. Installed v6 server
3. Edited the sage.properties file to repoint any local drives (for the library import only) to the UNC of those same drives on the old server.
4. Removed the original local drive names
5. Started the server

Could it be that Sage didn't delete the old entries under the original local drive names--so that when it finds them under the new UNC path, it treats them as duplicates--and I get the "2 files" problem?

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by feilerd

I'm still getting weird results in basic Sage, but I seem to be closer to where I want w/ SageMC--so I'll post the following there as well.

Please keep the topic in a single place. Before dealing with a customization, let's get the media imported correctly in the first place, then you can look into how you prefer to have it displayed in the UI.

...I think the root cause is that the old entries aren't getting properly cleared out of the database...

Looks like it...

Now that I've removed all the import directories, I'm seeing just one copy of each (so things work exactly as they should--except there's no way to add new files, because I don't have any import directories). It's almost as though entries from before are "stuck" in there, so the real ones create duplicates.

This is a new box. I was running 2.2.8 on another box, and I did this:

1. Copied the 2.2.8 directory to a new box
2. Installed v6 server
3. Edited the sage.properties file to repoint any local drives (for the library import only) to the UNC of those same drives on the old server.
4. Removed the original local drive names
5. Started the server

Could it be that Sage didn't delete the old entries under the original local drive names--so that when it finds them under the new UNC path, it treats them as duplicates--and I get the "2 files" problem?

Do any of these remaining videos actually play? I'm guessing not.

SageTV expects to see its files in their old locations and does not remove them from its database until it can see that they are not where they used to be. If the old import dirs are not visible to SageTV, it can't determine that it should remove those files from its database... because it thinks that while the drive might not be available now, maybe it will be later.

Look at the Video Detail screen for one of these left-over videos. It should display the full path to the video -- does that path actually point to a file on your system? If the path or drive does not exist, you could try temporarily creating it (mapped drive letter?) so that SageTV can see taht the files are no longer there. If it an old UNC path, this could be a problem because the old network name might not exist any more. Or, maybe SageTV on the new system simply doesn't have permission to access that location.

If you can't recreate the path for the nonexistent videos, try simply deleting them via the SageTV interface. You may have to use the Options command to enable deleting imported videos. If their paths don't point to any actual file, the delete command should not delte any real files. Delete only 1 to prove this before deleting everything, of course!!

- Andy

[feilerd]

Thanks--it's finally fixed. It appears that Sage will never clear out entries that were made under a different server (ie PC) name. I'm not sure why (it's almost like the beginning of an attempt to support multiple servers), but I did find it in an unrelated (and very old) thread by Sage themselves. I had to rename the new box to the old name and refresh the database by adding and removing a channel. Once I did that, I was able to name the server back to it's new name, and add the import directories back in.

I'm still getting empty DVD names, but I just went back to SageMC and everything displays as expected there.

Thanks.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by feilerd

Thanks--it's finally fixed. It appears that Sage will never clear out entries that were made under a different server (ie PC) name.

I believe the logic is that Sage won't remove an entry until it can access the path and see it's not there. The reasoning behind that is so if a network drive temporarilly goes down, Sage doesn't accidently clear data for a file that's really still there.

I'm still getting empty DVD names, but I just went back to SageMC and everything displays as expected there.

Sage 6 now stores the name/title in the "Episode" field (it stores the "path" in the Title field). I'm assuming you're importing metadata in SageMC, last I knew, it wasn't following that convention and was writing to the Title field.

Might want to put in a request for SageMC to follow the new V6 convention.

[feilerd]

Actually, I'm not importing anything in SageMC--it just works out of the box. The standard Sage STV, however, gives me those blank names.

Odd--and I'm not really looking for a fix, since my DVD folder names become the DVD names in SageMC (the old 2.2.8 functionality), but the standard STV gives me a bunch that are just "DVD:" The easiest "fix" at this point is to use SageMC, so I'm happy.

re the update to the video import directories, what threw me is that I'd removed the paths entirely (ie I had no import directories assigned whatsoever)--and the entries still remained. I had to change the name of the server before it cleared out the entries. In both cases, the paths (UNCs) to the files existed. I see the logic you're describing--and it certainly makes sense--but there seems to be an added dimension with respect to PC names. If I can find the thread, I'll post the link.

Anyway, thanks for all your help. I'm good now.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by feilerd

Actually, I'm not importing anything in SageMC--it just works out of the box. The standard Sage STV, however, gives me those blank names.

Yeah, but are you getting metadata in SageMC? Depending on how it's setup, it will import external metadata into SageTV's database.

Sage changed the way they used some of the fields when moving to V6 such that the stock STV looks at a field SageMC normally fills with blanks when it pulls metadata. So if you've imported metadata in SageMC (and I think it does that by default) you can run into the situation where the stock STV shows blanks for all the titles.

re the update to the video import directories, what threw me is that I'd removed the paths entirely (ie I had no import directories assigned whatsoever)--and the entries still remained.

That might be worth a bug report, especially if you removed the paths before you changed the server/server name.

I had to change the name of the server before it cleared out the entries. In both cases, the paths (UNCs) to the files existed.

But if the "old" path didn't exist on the new server, Sage will hold onto those entries in case that "old" server returns.

[feilerd]

I was actually using the default STV for a while in v6 before giving up and trying SageMC, so I don't think SageMC messed anything up (ie it was already messed up at that point).

I have a Cinderella II DVD for my kids--and that had shown up w/ a blank name. After running SageMC, I now see "The magic didn't end at midnight" (which is the tagline) as the name in the default STV). I might be mistaken that it was blank before, but it looks like there are two possibilities:

1. It was blank before in the default STV, which leads to the question of "why?"
2. The default STV had actually pulled that tagline in as the title (again "why?")

I'm not really looking for an answer, and once the dust settles on the upgrade, I may report it to Sage.

I'm ok w/ SageMC for now (for whatever reasons), so it's not a critical issue for me anymore.

Thanks

[stanger89]

Did you ever run SageMC before using the default STV? Even in a previous version of Sage? What you have described (blank title in SageTV) is exactly what I've seen after importing metadata using the method of naming in V5 or earlier.

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Did you ever run SageMC before using the default STV? Even in a previous version of Sage? What you have described (blank title in SageTV) is exactly what I've seen after importing metadata using the method of naming in V5 or earlier.

Yeah, this has been mentioned before. The problem is caused by a change in SageTV 6.0 when it started to use the 'Episode' field for the video title. The next SageMC version will conform to the way the default STV uses the metadata fields again.

Dirk

[feilerd]

Originally Posted by flachbar

Yeah, this has been mentioned before. The problem is caused by a change in SageTV 6.0 when it started to use the 'Episode' field for the video title. The next SageMC version will conform to the way the default STV uses the metadata fields again.

Dirk

Thanks. As a practical matter, it's only going to matter when trying to access things via the Placeshifter (or can we somehow set Placeshifter up to use SageMC too?). Otherwise, as long as one stays entirely in SageMC, it's really not an issue.

Anyway, I understand the desire not to step on the "standard" interface, so...

Thanks for all the work!

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by feilerd

(or can we somehow set Placeshifter up to use SageMC too?).

Sure, you can use SageMC on any client, just load the SageMC xml as usual

Dirk

[feilerd]

Thanks!