[MrHaydo]

Hi all

After endless months trying to resolve some challenges with certain types of TV shows I am at my wits end and posting here to see if anyone else has/is experiencing similar probs. Here is a quick sit rep.

Running Frodo 12.3 with the NEON skin on Windows 8. Everything works a treat however certain types of TV shows seem to be doing weird things. I have 61 items in my TV Show folder on my NAS box, such as 24, Lie to Me, Roots, Game of Thrones etc, etc. Recently I have included some Doco style TV Shows such as , Africa, Life (2009) and all of David Attenborough's other "Life" titles and this is where I start having problems. My view style within XBMC for TV Shows is the "Cover Flow" option and in this mode I can scroll through all 61 titles and see the correct covers. When I press enter on say cover 24, I also get the season folders within and then finally the episodes. So this works just as it should. However when I get to Life (2009), I see the lovely cover but when i press enter nothing is shown. It appears to be empty, trust me, it is not!

I started thinking that perhaps XBMC is set up to manage TV Shows that are stored in the following manner - Show name\season folder\episode name and this works fine for TV shows that run across seasons so I tried messing around with putting the 8 or so Life episodes into a folder named season1 however this had no effect within XBMC. I am at a bit of a loss because the TV Show "Africa" which has only 4 episodes and no season folder works and displays just fine with everything in the root folder "Africa". How does XBMC manage TV Shows without yearly series? How does it manage TV Shows that are multi part documentaries? I think this is the actual problem, XBMC does not recognize multi part documentaries as TV shows (because they are not) but then they are not movies either...?

I have searched the forums and can only find general TV show info, my challenge seems to be unique? Any suggestions welcome as I have now torn out most of my hair out.

Haydo

[negge]

1. Tell us how exactly you have named your Life folder and episodes.

2. Post a debug log (wiki) where you update your library.

I usually put everything in a "Season 1" folder and name them S01E01 etc., that way XBMC always finds them. Look at thetvdb.com for the correct show name.

---

Multipart documentaries can indeed be tricky, though it's worth to check thetvdb.com if it is listed there, if so you just put them in a season directory and name them S01E02 etc. and it will work.

[leepenny]

well the show exists as tv
http://thetvdb.com/?tab=season&seriesid=...9821&lid=7
so you have Life (2009)/Season 1/episode names - as your file structure. How are you naming episodes? Rename first episode to s01e01 and refresh folder - see if it the naming of files ?
any specials you have are all season 0 episodes (so you have to name them accordingly)

[MrHaydo]

Thanks leepenny / negge. to clarify. I generally run all my titles through Media Center Master prior to moving to the correct folder on the NAS.

Leepenny, no, I have Life (2009) and then the file names as per the TV database so no series folder. My logic for this layout is that there are not multiple series for this show, simply 8 episodes. Further, the TV Show Africa is stored in the folder Africa and then the four episodes names, once again as per the TV Database and this displays as it should within XBMC.

negge. My folder structure looks like this

Life (2009)/BBC Life E01 2009.avi - so perhaps this is the problem? I will try renaming to the following structure
Life (2009)/season1/BBC Life s01e01.Challenges of Life.avi.

So it sounds as though both you guys are suggesting a season folder even when there is only one season? Now, I thought I had tried that with no result but perhaps I need to mess with the actual file names as well and make sure i inclde s01e01 etc?

Thanks guys, appreciate your thoughts. I will post back here with results.

[MrHaydo]

Sorted peeps.

Firstly - big ups. I think I have nailed it or more precisely you have nailed it for me.. Changing the file name to include s01e01 - e02 - e03 and so on seems to have done the trick. No need to move the files into a folder named "season1"

I cannot believe I did not think of this. Perhaps I did not think that a handful of episodes constituted a season bu t I guess that is what XBMC is looking for when it sees multiple files in a folder.

Cheers.

[steelman1991]

Yes - as long as there is Season and Episode information in the file name there is no need for a Season folder. It is what XBMC is looking for because the source (tvdb) stores it that way.