[slizzap]

EDIT: I originally titled this thread "File is no longer available for movie titles starting with The". After troubleshooting this further, this description is incorrect. The movie library is mistakenly adding these video files with an uppercase extension, when the file has a lowercase extension. The mismatch is causing the message "File is no longer available" to display.

I'm a long time user of XMBC and then Kodi, and over the last few months I have slowly been upgrading to each new version one by one to get current. I have an issue with Kodi since upgrading to v16. I have just tried upgrading to v17.1, but the problem persists.

I have one movie in particular that stopped playing, despite it showing as Watched...since we've watched it before. The movie is "The Money Pit", which is a DVD image (Filename = "Money Pit.iso"). When I select the movie in the Movie library it says "This file is no longer available. Would you like to remove it from the library?" I said yes and rescanned, but the same problem persists. If I go into the Videos section and manually browse to the file, it plays fine...it's only in library mode that this problem exists.

I removed the movie from the library, renamed the file to "The Money Pit.iso", rescanned the library, and now the movie plays fine. So then I went through my list of movies and sure enough every one I've come across that starts with "The" in the title has the exact same issue. Since I have manually ripped all my movies, I took out the word "The" from the beginning of the filename for every movie that starts with it so movies are properly alphabetized in my folder.

Here's my log file, which should contain everything from initially trying to play it, then re-adding to the library, then renaming and re-adding to the library, and then successfully playing.

[Edit log] http://pastebin.com/TizsBCum

[PatK]

Yes, "No information found" when you modify the titles, even to the exclusion of articles like 'The' and 'A' the scraper has issues finding the titles. Using the folder names with date is the work around I use. Looking at the log (please don't post logs in the forums) No information found for item 'smb://x.x.x.10/Videos/Movies/Michael Malone - Casual Sext.mkv', it won't be added to the library. It looks like you might have some cross-over between Music Vidoes and Movies and I found no listing for Money Pit 2 unless it's this /tt2099672 as Melon Street Money Pit 2 (1998) and without the date, clearly the scraper is lost.

Settings>media>general>ignore articles when sorting.

[slizzap]

Thanks for the response, PatK. Just to make sure you understand the issue I'm facing, the issue here is not with the movie information being found via the scraper. The movie is found properly, it's just not playing. This is evidenced by Money Pit, which was already in my library and watched previously, but no longer plays as of v16 and higher. For some reason after the scraper pulls in the info, Kodi seems to be expecting the filename to be exactly the same as the title given by the scraper. I have the 3 Naked Gun movies and I've watched all of them in the past. I'm no longer able to watch them because the file name is "Naked Gun.iso" and not "The Naked Gun.iso". Seems to me there might be a disconnect between the scraper info and the library. The workaround is to bypass the library mode and go to Videos -> Files and then manually browse to the file. This is annoying, though, because there are a *lot* of movies that start with "The".

And to elaborate on some of those other issues you discovered in the log:
1) The Michael Malone video file isn't listed in IMDB or whatever scraper I'm using, and so that one isn't added to the library. I expected that behavior, so I'm not too concerned with that one.
2) The reason you see "Money Pit 2" listed is because I noticed somewhere in the interface that the filename "Money Pit.iso" was showing as "Money Pit.ISO" and I was wondering if there was an issue with case for some reason. I renamed the file to "Money Pit2.iso" strictly for testing purposes. After which I renamed it back to "Money Pit.iso". The case showed the same after verifying it was indeed in lower case. There isn't actually a Money Pit 2...I was just renaming the file for testing.
3) The "ignore articles when sorting" option is not relevant to this issue. I did turn it on and off during testing, but that had no bearing on whether the video played. The same issue exists regardless of whether that is turned on or off.

Cheers.

[PatK]

The failure to play from a library listing is almost always an issue with the source path (although corrupt libraries etc excluded).

Take a file that doesn't play from the library, bring up the information and look carefully at the source/path/name then find that file in file mode and carefully compare source/path/name 'is it and 'EXACT' match? (case sensitivity here). For some reason it sounds like the .nfo locally is being ignored. Ran into something a few weeks back in which a path listing change case for one chr$ which wasn't congruent with the library listing. I threw the "ignore articles when sorting" for 'next time, instead of renaming.

[slizzap]

Library mode shows the path as "smb://x.x.x.10/Videos/Movies/Money Pit.ISO" (note the upper case of ISO extension).

Actual filename is "Money Pit.iso" (lower case...always has been)

Videos -> Files -> Movies shows the file name as "Money Pit.iso"

Opening up the MySQL database (myvideosXX -> Tables -> Movie) column c22 for this entry shows "smb://x.x.x.10/Videos/Movies/Money Pit.iso"

I do not use .NFO files.

Upon further testing it has nothing to do with "The" in front of the title, and everything to do with the case of the extension. I renamed the file to "Money Pit.ISO", then tried to play it and got the same error. So I removed it from the library, then updated the library again, and now the movie is playing. Pretty easy to reproduce. This is not affecting all ISO files. I have 22 in my collection and it's only affecting 3 of them. The case has never changed and has always been lower case. These are some of the oldest movies in my collection, and all were previously watched on a previous version. Only 3 ISO movies in my collection are showing the extension as ISO in upper case when the file is actually lower case. The only way for me to manually fix this is to "rename" the file from <filename>.iso to <filename>.ISO.

I have 7 MySQL databases on my server from doing upgrades over the years. All of them show the case the same way. I'm very curious as to why the movie library would be inconsistent with these 3 movies.

[PatK]

If the source is not local, could there be some sort of file manager handling movement or one of the 'other systems' auto scanning? Curiously file extensions don't rename themselves, you wouldn't be using a media manager?

[slizzap]

Nope, I don't let anything manipulate my media. I handle everything manually by hand. I have a background in IT, so I'm rather anal about naming and consistency. Not to mention, if there was a file/media manager in the mix, the problem would be consistent...it wouldn't only affect 3 ISOs out of 22.

Just a reminder - all of my ISOs (and all video files) are named consistently with lowercase extensions. The library shows that the extension is uppercase when it is not. If it was simply an issue of an actual mismatch between the file system and the library, that would make sense. But the extension is actually lower case. I'm removing it from the library, then re-adding....after which the library is *still* showing the extension as uppercase. Therein lies the problem. I'm having to rename the file to have an uppercase extension just to make the Kodi movie library happy.

If I get the motivation, I'll revert to some previous versions of Kodi on one of my computers and see if I can find out exactly where it broke.