Win TheTVDB can´t find Series
#1
Hello everybody,
I tried XBMC a few years ago, but was rather disappointed. I gave the new EDEN a chance and I'm positively surprised. It does a lot better than then (who would've expected that Wink).

NOW: I tried to import my TV-Shows. Some work fine, right from the spot, but most (20 out of 25) need manual interaction. Although there is only one option shown (the name fits 100%) I have to manually add it, after that, everything works fine. It's a bit anoing, but when it's done once it should do for the future and XBMC should recognize newly added Seasons itself correctly.

Some Series the TheTVDB plug-in doesn't find at all, although I can find them on the homepage (http://thetvdb.com/). Is there a difference between the homepage and the plug-in?
Some series have different languages (other than English), but are available at thetvdb Homepage but don't show up in the options dialogue where you can choose a series when the name doesn't fit 100%. I wouldn't bother if the film info isn't in the language of the series (which would be perfect) but the info should be available and show up at all.

Can I set different search plug-ins for different series or just for the whole tv-series folder? And why can't I choose IMDB for TV-Series? They have them too ...

Thanks for your help. I hope I get it all working.

The System is Win7 x64, Intel Pentium Dual Core and ATI Radeon 4650.
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#2
The problem is with thetvDB!

The XBMC TvShow scraper uses their api (Ex: http://www.thetvdb.com/api/GetSeries.php...anguage=en) to get the information.

The seach on their website can access more shows; it can access show aliases. Sadly they won't fix this issue. I believe they are rewriting the whole thing; although it's not out yet and probably won't be until the summer.

On a side note: I found a solution this morning using Google and the IMDB website to access those "hard to reach" shows! :o) I just need to see if it can be implanted within the scraper itself. It uses a similar "trick" I used when I suggested a solution in imdb movie scraper to access YouTube Trailers (instead of full HD).

Hope it helps
-----
XBMC Media Move easily completes your Media Center automated system.
Website: http://sourceforge.net/projects/xbmcmediamove/
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#3
Cool, thanks for the info. I can wait till summer or even winter, no problem. I just thought I do something wrong or could do something different.
Is that thetvdb plugin from you? Because you mentioned rewriting it. If you do (and I hope your idea works), will you upload to the plugin repository on XMBC? Would be bloody freaking awesome Big Grin.
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#4
What shows don't come up? Post a Debug Log of a scan of your tvshow folder ("Scan for New Content")

Cheers,
Jonathan
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#5
It's mostly the shows with different language (so the show title is in German or French for example). If I take the English name, the series is found. And I found the option not to use the Library name for the show but to edit it so it fits the language, which is fine. Now that I added all the show, I don't want to mess it up again. I don't have the time at the moment, sorry. Maybe I'll add the log next time I'll update the library.
Another example was Star Trek. The show of "Deep Space 9" wasn't found. When I named it "Deep Space Nine" it worked fine. It's not a big deal, but it should work regardless of a "9" or "nine".
Thanks anyway. I'll try to remember the log thing.
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#6
Hi,

Sadly no, I'm not the developper behind the TvDB plugin. I'm just like you, discovering that a few shows files have not been scraped in my XBMC. I got a developpement background so I'm trying to find a quick solution.

The TvDB Team are rewriting the website and APIs (making it a v2.0); this will be the ultimate and simplest solution. But I don't know how close they are of putting it online; there are no screenshots or feature list we can access! The only thing we got is the word "Soon". They've been working on it for over 6 months now (last I checked).

The shows I have trouble with are the following:
- "Last Man Standing us": Known as "Last Man Standing (2011)" using TvDB API
- "Dont Trust the Bitch in Apartment 23": This one can't never be found with the API (This is my main problem)
- "Mike And Molly": Known as "Mike & Molly" using TvDB API

Their API uses "Exact" keywords matching so it can't see, for example, that "and" and "&" are the same thing.



I see that a Team-XBMC Developer has joined the conversation; maybe he could help by integrating my solution directly in the scraper (until TvDB v2.0 is out).



Here the problem:

The scraper calls this url to get the show info: http://www.thetvdb.com/api/GetSeries.php...anguage=en

Since the API can't handle the "And" vs "&" situation; it returns no show when we search "Mike+And+Molly". Altough, if you search manually on the website (Using the top search bar), you will find it.

I noticed that each show has it's IMDB ID (Ex: tt1819509); This next url can retreive the show info using this ID: http://www.thetvdb.com/api/GetSeriesByRe...=tt1608180


Here's the solution I found:

Steps:
1) Try finding the show info using API's GetSeries.php page.
2) If no show is found, search the following keywords on google: {ShowName} "tv series" site:www.imdb.com
* Where {ShowName} is the name of the show
* Ex: http://www.google.ca/m?q=mike+and+molly+...w.imdb.com
3) Extract the link of the first found result (most likely the good one); then from it, extract the IMDB ID (IE: tt1608180)
4) Use API's GetSeriesByRemoteID.php page with IMDB ID to get the show's info and return it to xbmc (the returned page is formatted like the one from GetSeries.php) (Ex: http://www.thetvdb.com/api/GetSeriesByRe...=tt1608180)

Tell me Jonathan, can it be done within the scraper? Like stormsh says it would be "bloody freaking awesome"! :o)

Thanx
-----
XBMC Media Move easily completes your Media Center automated system.
Website: http://sourceforge.net/projects/xbmcmediamove/
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#7
You're still there guys?
-----
XBMC Media Move easily completes your Media Center automated system.
Website: http://sourceforge.net/projects/xbmcmediamove/
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#8
Hi,

I face the exact same problem as described above, shows that are in english works perfectly, but I have french and spanish ones which just can't be found.

I was wondering, based on what I read on scrapper configuration:

Would it be possible to edit the thetvdb.com scrapper so that the language parameter is the default $INFO[language] unless there is some specific text found in the query ?
I was thinking for example something like "/xx" added at the end to search in xx language (actually I think the $INFO[language] can be removed if english, so there is no real need maybe of a "default" if empty)

so, a french show like "Bouba" which is not found, could be manually found using "Bouba/fr"

is something like this possible ?
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#9
Regarding the "Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23" problem:

I would love there to be a solution that required you to just chuck in an overriding id. i.e. if I can't get the scraper to do it's thing, then allow me an option to chuck in the id: 248812 - which should then apply that id to anything in that directory. Thus, the only information it should worry about in file names is the episode number - so look for S[0-9][0-9]E[0-9][0-9] or [0-9]x[0-9][0-9]....

It'd then have enough information to resolve something like:
http://www.thetvdb.com/api/1D62F2F90030C...all/en.zip

(though I'm not sure how well this would play out with individual episodes though I assume there'd be enough information from the id and episode number to make rational decisions).

Not ideal but it would at the very least get around these sorts of issues fairly quickly. Any developers around?
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#10
Welcome to the XBMC forums, nevyn.

See here: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Imp...ing_an_URL
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#11
Yeah I've tried that but it just doesn't do what I want it to in all cases. For example, while this approach works for "A Young Doctor's Notebook", "Don't trust the b---- in apartment 23" doesn't import ANY files at all although doesn't produce any errors - which I take to mean that while it's finding the show, it's having some sort of issue with the filenames - something I don't think should be an issue. Instead, it should say "yep, I know which show I'm looking at. The only thing important to me now is the episode information..." assuming that you've checked the "folder contains one show" checkbox.
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#12
As far as I see, this is still an issue with v12.2. Search works only on English names?

For example http://www.thetvdb.com/api/GetSeries.php...anguage=en returns a hit, but http://www.thetvdb.com/api/GetSeries.php...anguage=en doesn't, although the series exist on their website: http://thetvdb.com/?tab=series&id=82802&lid=15

Changing the language to "it" doesn't make any difference.

I suppose the only way to make this work is to rename the series top folder to English names?
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#13
As the tvdb scrper seems to be ignoring the language setup, I've developped a fix that seems to work here :
Edit file "/usr/share/xbmc/addons/metadata.tvdb.com/tvdb.xml"
and change every occurence of "$INFO[language]" by "all".
This forces tvdb to fetch result for every language instead of defaulting to english only.
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#14
(2013-09-13, 11:45)toxn Wrote: As the tvdb scrper seems to be ignoring the language setup, I've developped a fix that seems to work here :
Edit file "/usr/share/xbmc/addons/metadata.tvdb.com/tvdb.xml"
and change every occurence of "$INFO[language]" by "all".
This forces tvdb to fetch result for every language instead of defaulting to english only.

woohooo. This worked. Thanks a lot. Big GrinBig GrinBig Grin
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#15
This is a pretty old post but.... I'm having the exact issue with version 12.3

For some reason, season 2 of the "the Americans (2013)" is not adding. The first season is fine as is any other show, just this one. There is TVDB entry but is not picking it up: http://thetvdb.com/?tab=season&seriesid=...7361&lid=7

Is there a manual way to create an entry or a work around when a file cannot be matched?
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