Scrapable names for multi-part rar files?
#1
I greatly appreciate the ability to play video straight from multi-part .rar files, as it lets me use the same disk space for playing and sharing files.

However, I'm having a hard time naming things so that the thetvdb.com scraper find them.

I have tried to name things in accordance with best practice, but the FAQs don't give any advice for the last leve, the .rar files themselves.

So currently I have a directory structure like

Game of Thrones/Season 2/Game of Thrones - S02E02/refill.throness02e02.720p.{rar,r00,r01,r02,...,r29}

The final file names are whatever they were when I got it.

The scraper fails to find any TV shows. Which makes me unhappy. Any advice on how to fix this?
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#2
If it fails to find TV shows then it's a different issue than if it fails to find episodes.

Typically you'll find that XBMC looks inside the RARs, so what it's named inside is important - what are they?

Assuming that you have a Game of Thrones entry in your video library (i.e. only episodes aren't showing up) then refresh the show and all episodes from TV Show information and grab the Debug Log - it'll show you what it's matching.

Cheers,
Jonathan
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.


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#3
Thanks for the amazingly quick response!

The file inside the .rar is "refill.throness02e02.720p.avi". Not a great file name, but unfortunately, that's hard to change without breaking the whole purpose of things. (I can certainly play it if I go through the files menu.)

I'll look at the debug logs (when I get to the machine in an hour or so), but I'm afraid that I don't understand your comment "Assuming that you have a Game of Thrones entry in your video library (i.e. only episodes aren't showing up)". I do NOT have a Game of Thrones entry in my video library. I assumed that it would be created when the first episode was found, and the reason it doesn't exist is the lack of episodes.

Perhaps this indicates a deep misunderstanding of XBMC's internal model of TV shows and episiodes thereof. Is there a way to create the show entry without any episodes in it?

The big issue from my perspective is that the standard naming advice covers 3-part "show/season/episode.avi" names, but I have "show/season/episode/multiple.rar//filename.avi" (where the "//" indicates a virtual file system hack), and I don't understand what information XBMC extracts from which portions of the 5-part path name.
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#4
That would scan fine anyway.

The problem you have is it's not finding the show at all. Fix that first and the episodes will show up.

Have you "Set Content" on the folder containing all your shows? i.e. if you have:

blah/tvshows/game of thrones/blah/blah/blah/multiple.rar

you need to "Set Content" on the "tvshows" folder. I assume you've already done this, if so choosing "Scan for New Content" on that folder will clear out the hash and check for new folders. A Debug Log for this should be all good.

As for what XBMC picks up, all the default regexps for episodes hit only the filename portion of the URL, which in the case of a RAR is the file inside the RAR. But again, this is not your problem.

Cheers,
Jonathan
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.


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#5
I have it in the same directory as multiple other TV shows (with 3-part path names), which are being scraped correctly. I'm not at the machine to get debug logs right ATM (I'll get them ASAP!), but how much is required to get the TV show itself picked up? Will an empty top-level directory do?

That's what I mean about my failure to understand XBMC's model of shows & episodes. I had assumed that it scanned the disk for episodes and created the shows and seasons as needed to group them. If there's such a thing as a show (or a season) with no episode files, then my thinking about debugging is all wrong.
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#6
Yes, completely empty top level directory will still be scanned as a tvshow.

As to what went wrong, it's hard to speculate without a Debug Log - the only thing I can think of is that whatever filesystem you're on doesn't update the hash correctly when you added the new show folder.
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.


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Scrapable names for multi-part rar files?0