issues with BMT and Playon Netflix Queue importer

[jayman]

I began this topic in the Playon Netflix Queue Importer Thread beginning with this post. Please follow the trail of Plucky's replies and mine to the end (5 replies) for details and screencaps.

He suggested that I seek further advice in this sub forum.

To summarize: My Netflix TV shows are picked as TV shows by the Queue Importer but BMT seems to be automatically selecting them as movies. Essentially I would like my Netflix TV shows to show as recordings in the recording list as SHOW/Episodes rather than as a very long list of individual episodes.

Thanks in advance!

Jay

[evilpenguin]

Go ahead and post the file names of the videos your having trouble with.

[jayman]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Go ahead and post the file names of the videos your having trouble with.

Thanks EP..great work on this stuff, BTW!

I have several shows with several seasons and each season with several episodes, so to post all the file names would take forever. Hopefully a couple of examples will help.

The netflix queue importer is generating the following file name for
SHOW=30 Rock; Season=2; Episode=1; Episode Title= Seinfeld Vision

T:\PLAYON\TV\30 Rock\Season 2\30 Rock S2E01 - SeinfeldVision.mkv

Shows like Nip/Tuck, 24, Damages etc all follow a similar pattern.

I'm getting the suspicion that BMT doesn't know what to properly do with the above (see attachment from BMT for above example) for what gets imported in. Also note that I previously used the default path in the queue importer settings and got the same results.

Thanks!

Jay

edit

I forgot to mention that the actual sage import path is T:\PLAYON

[stuckless]

I just test the one file, 30 Rock S2E01 - SeinfeldVision.mkv, and it imported fine.

Given the screen shot, it certainly shows that BMT has no metadata for this show, but keep in mind that BMT will NOT attempt to automatically find metadata for a show if you are providing a .properties for the show as well. ie, if you have some other metadata program running that is create a .properties file for that file then bmt will skip it.

Perhaps you can look in the logs/phoenix-metadata.log and search for the filename 30 Rock S2E01 - SeinfeldVision.mkv, and see if it shows FAILED, SKIPPED, etc for the line. I try to log one or 2 lines per mediafile in that log to make it easy for people to see if BMT is actually handling their files or not.

Given that the file imports fine on my system. I suspect that bmt is not even attempting to locate metadata for the file because a .properties exists for that file at the time that you added it to sagetv. Another possible issue may be that bmt timed out trying to get a respsonse from tvdb (although bmt will attempt multiple times). Or,perhaps the automatic updater is not enabled... did you turn it off? Do you have the folder excluded?

I think the easiest play to look is the phoenix-metadata.log and if we can't figure it out from there, then maybe you can send me the phoenix.log for a failed lookup.

[jayman]

Thanks Stuckless!

OK, I found "30 Rock S2E01 - SeinfeldVision.mkv.properties" in the "T:\PLAYON\TV\30 Rock\Season 2" folder. In fact every imported netfilx episode for every show has a properties file.

The content of every properties file is as follows: "Title="

That's it. So how do I remove the generation of properties files? Is this where the log comes in?

Thanks

Jay

edit

I had SMM and Diamond installed at different times but they are not installed now....

Also checked the log for the specific example and got...

"2011-03-20 20:53:24,807 - SKIP; T:\PLAYON\TV\30 Rock\Season 2\30 Rock S2E01 - SeinfeldVision.mkv; 30 Rock S2E01 - SeinfeldVision; 2214982"

It looks like this for all my netflix imports.

In fact, all my DVD/BD imports have properties files, but there appears to be no ill effects for these files. So, what's the best way to go about killing off the generation of these files??? Is there a way to generate a text list of all currently installed plugins?

Thanks again!

[jayman]

could either phoenixfanartv7 or gkusnicktoolslib be the culprit?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by jayman

could either phoenixfanartv7 or gkusnicktoolslib be the culprit?

I doubt either of those plugins are the culprit.

The existence of the properties files now may be a bit of red herring in some cases. BMT, depending on whether or not the sagetv setting, update_external_properties_files_on_metadata_changes, is set to true, will create .properties as a side effect of updating the metadata. Now, given that bmt didn't update the metadata for those items, I'm pretty sure, that bmt didn't create the .properties.

The issue from a BMT perspective, is that IF another plugin/program creates .properties and then you import those files into sagetv, then BMT will SKIP them (as shown by your log file entry). Can you post a complete .properties file... sometimes there may be other information in there as to what is creating them.

Also, you can force BMT, from the web ui to rescan a particular folder and to overwrite existing metadata. That might help fetch metadata for most of your items, but it won't solve your original issue as to why they are being created with .properties and then skipped by bmt.

[jayman]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I doubt either of those plugins are the culprit.

The existence of the properties files now may be a bit of red herring in some cases. BMT, depending on whether or not the sagetv setting, update_external_properties_files_on_metadata_changes, is set to true, will create .properties as a side effect of updating the metadata. Now, given that bmt didn't update the metadata for those items, I'm pretty sure, that bmt didn't create the .properties.

The issue from a BMT perspective, is that IF another plugin/program creates .properties and then you import those files into sagetv, then BMT will SKIP them (as shown by your log file entry). Can you post a complete .properties file... sometimes there may be other information in there as to what is creating them.

Also, you can force BMT, from the web ui to rescan a particular folder and to overwrite existing metadata. That might help fetch metadata for most of your items, but it won't solve your original issue as to why they are being created with .properties and then skipped by bmt.

Thanks for the help. So, that properties setting was set to true. I shutdown sage service, set it to false, and saved. I deleted all the playon dummy files and restarted sage. I uninstalled the playon stvi and queue importer then reinstalled. I set the queue importer back to the default folder buried within the sage folder. I manually updated the netflix queue importer. All the dummy files and proper folder structures were populated. Then I updated the media import directories. To my joy, there were no new properties files, BUT the metadata properties were as shown in the previous screencap. I can see all the netflix queue items in the videos folder view, but nothing in recorded tv.

FYI I'm running sage 7.1.5. For BMT, under config/Phoenix/Fanart I have both the Auto Fanart and Import TV Media Types boxes checked. Attached you will find my properties file as requested.

BTW, my metadata and fanart for BD/DVD and sage recordings all look fantastic! Thanks a ton for this tool

edit

Got it working!! I nuked and paved my sage install with a fresh v7.1.5 in an empty directory. I only moved over my wiz.bin and channel logos. I reconfigured tuners and import directories then only installed jetty/BMT followed by the PlayOn Plugin and Importer. I'm currently using the stock UI. BMT is slowly doing its magic on over 500 dummy PlayOn Files! This is excellent.......

Mental note...back up the Sage install folder as it is after the metadata updating is complete.

Thanks again!

Jay