Batch Metadata Tools - Start Here

[stuckless]

Well, I can finally say that I've completed the 4.x release of BMT, and I have the documentation to prove it

Quick Start (alternate version)
Short quick guide on installing/upgrading/updating BMT

About BMT (alternate version)
I recommend that everyone read this document, even if you've been using BMT for a while. I hope it helps explain the product and its close relationship with Phoenix.

BMT User Guide (alternate version)
User Guides are tough to write. I've refrained from writing one because the product was changing pretty fast. But now, I think that it's fairly stable. While you might now read the entire user guide, please check the table of contents, to see if there are things that may catch your attention.

If you have trouble opening the links, then try the alternate versions. The alternates are not well formatted, but they should work, in the event that the 'formatted' version does not.

I hope both of these documents are of help to the community, since they both took way too long write. Now I can get back to doing what I do best, write code.

Videos / Tutorials
Youtube Channel

Enjoy

[stuckless]

Just a bump, to let people know that I've posted "formatted" versions of the documents. The original links were horribly formatted from google docs, but they should now look ok. But if you have issues accessing the mian links, then use the alternate links (which are unformatted)

[stuckless]

There was a permissions issue with the Google Docs Link. That should be resolved now. You should not need a google account to simple view the document.

I started to get so many requests to "share" the document, that I thought people were wanting to edit them It turns out, people just wanted to see them

[jreichen]

Excellent work, Sean. Being a fellow developer I know how hard it is to write doc when you could be doing something else. I haven't used BMT in a while and it looks like the web UI has come a long way.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by jreichen

Excellent work, Sean. Being a fellow developer I know how hard it is to write doc when you could be doing something else. I haven't used BMT in a while and it looks like the web UI has come a long way.

Thanks! It certainly wasn't easy, that's for sure, but hopefully, there's enough in there that people can get a feel for what bmt does (and doesn't) do. It's no secret that I hate writing documentation,mainly because it's seems like it's out of date before it's written BMT is fairly stable right now, in terms of features, so hopefully the documentation will remain relevant for at least a few months

[OneOfMany]

Thanks a lot Sean. Although I am "fairly" comfortable playing with BMT, most of my successes came after numerous failures. Reading the docs have helped me to solidify those things I know and filled in the gaps of those that I don't.

Really appreciate your time.

Grant

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by OneOfMany

Thanks a lot Sean. Although I am "fairly" comfortable playing with BMT, most of my successes came after numerous failures. Reading the docs have helped me to solidify those things I know and filled in the gaps of those that I don't.

Really appreciate your time.

Grant

Thanks, and if you have ideas on how to improve the documentation, then feel free to post suggestions... also if there are sections that people still find confusing, then let me know, I'll to rewrite them, etc.

[OneOfMany]

Ok.. I'll bite lol..

1) Often you will mention to "touch" the file to allow metadata to be refetched on the media item. Somewhere a long time ago, in one of your posts you recommended installing the "touch" command and registering it to show up when a file is "right-clicked" in Windows Explorer. This has really helped when correcting stuff.

Maybe a quick blurb on where to get, how to install, and how to use.

2) I have many media files such as home movies, music videos, web downloads that have no "official" metadata. I like to create my own manually, including creating the appropriate fanart directories. Some I set as TV-series, some as Movies. It sort of "completes" the vids

Maybe a quick note on doing this.

Grant

[mdnttoker]

Originally Posted by OneOfMany

Ok.. I'll bite lol..

1) Often you will mention to "touch" the file to allow metadata to be refetched on the media item. Somewhere a long time ago, in one of your posts you recommended installing the "touch" command and registering it to show up when a file is "right-clicked" in Windows Explorer. This has really helped when correcting stuff.

Maybe a quick blurb on where to get, how to install, and how to use.

2) I have many media files such as home movies, music videos, web downloads that have no "official" metadata. I like to create my own manually, including creating the appropriate fanart directories. Some I set as TV-series, some as Movies. It sort of "completes" the vids

Maybe a quick note on doing this.

Grant

From a bit of a BMT NEWB here, that info. would be extremely appreciated!

[OneOfMany]

The Touch.exe I downloaded was from a post here with instrcutions from babgvant

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...exe#post368782

The direct link to the file is

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/applic...touch_win.aspx

To install. Extract file.

Save the touch.exe to any folder. Note that moving this file after being registed/installed will cause it to no longer work.

Use a text editor such as Notepad to creat a new file. Copy the text provided in the post. Edit the last line to your correct path to the .exe file.

Save file as touch.reg in the same directory as your touch file (can be anywhere, but just makes sense)

Right-click on the touch.reg file in Explorer and choose Merge. This will add the entries to your registry.

Not sure if a reboot was needed, but right-clicking on any file will provide a "touch" option on any single or group of files selected. This will set the date/time to current.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by OneOfMany

Ok.. I'll bite lol..

1) Often you will mention to "touch" the file to allow metadata to be refetched on the media item. Somewhere a long time ago, in one of your posts you recommended installing the "touch" command and registering it to show up when a file is "right-clicked" in Windows Explorer. This has really helped when correcting stuff.

Maybe a quick blurb on where to get, how to install, and how to use.

2) I have many media files such as home movies, music videos, web downloads that have no "official" metadata. I like to create my own manually, including creating the appropriate fanart directories. Some I set as TV-series, some as Movies. It sort of "completes" the vids

Maybe a quick note on doing this.

Grant

I do have a fairly large section on manually updating fanart... but I don't have a section on manually creating .properties... mainly because bmt doesn't deal with .properties any more. You can manually edit the metadata within BMT, so I don't really document the fact that you can do it outside the app. I'll look at adding a section talking manually updating and "touching" files.

[russellnewman]

Typo???
(on the "About BMT" link)

"" BMT is not associated with SageTV in any way, so please to send support related questions, regarding BMT, to core SageTV employees...."

You mean
"... don't send...to Sage Employees..."
Right?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by russellnewman

Typo???
(on the "About BMT" link)

"" BMT is not associated with SageTV in any way, so please to send support related questions, regarding BMT, to core SageTV employees...."

You mean
"... don't send...to Sage Employees..."
Right?

hehe - it is a typo... it's been fixed, and thanks for pointing that out.

[LoopyWolf]

I used to use MetaDataTool.jar in order to populate my video files on my media center with Season and Episode numbers

I recently had to re-install the system on win7, and I got sage7 to go with it, and of course MDT no longer worked - sadly.. cause it was great =)

I instaled the new MetaDataTool, and BMT and any others that asked for "update" on the SageTV plugins screen - but when I try to run the metadatatool on any media I get

NoSuchMethodFound sagex.pheonix.metadata.automaticMetadataVisitor.<init>{Lsave/pheonix/...}

That looks to me like I'm missing a library or have an out-of-date library or something else.

What I want to do is to run MDT.jar from the command line and get information on Season and Episode number, based on the title and show.

Can anyone help me to get this back on its feet?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by LoopyWolf

I used to use MetaDataTool.jar in order to populate my video files on my media center with Season and Episode numbers

I recently had to re-install the system on win7, and I got sage7 to go with it, and of course MDT no longer worked - sadly.. cause it was great =)

I instaled the new MetaDataTool, and BMT and any others that asked for "update" on the SageTV plugins screen - but when I try to run the metadatatool on any media I get

NoSuchMethodFound sagex.pheonix.metadata.automaticMetadataVisitor.<init>{Lsave/pheonix/...}

That looks to me like I'm missing a library or have an out-of-date library or something else.

What I want to do is to run MDT.jar from the command line and get information on Season and Episode number, based on the title and show.

Can anyone help me to get this back on its feet?

I sort of stopped supporting the the command line version some time ago. It is still there, but I haven't run it in quite some time. I'll open a bug for this, and see if I can get it working again. Typically I just use bmt web ui, so I don't put much effort into the command line.

[LoopyWolf]

Is quite OK - actually I went and looked up the tvdb API and made myself my own little episode-season metadata information grabbed for my media center =)

[stuckless]

I find the problem the bmt command line as well.... It'll be fixed in the build, but sounds like you won't need it now

[LoopyWolf]

well I thank you for taking the time and for making the awesome BMT =)

[adone36]

BTW Sean.

The "you'll only see this message once" about the new manual, etc, shows every time I load BMT.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by adone36

BTW Sean.

The "you'll only see this message once" about the new manual, etc, shows every time I load BMT.

The setting for this is stored in a cookie... do you have session based cookies? Maybe I'll look at doing this a different way.