Kodi Community Forum

Greetings!

I enjoy archiving certain motorsports events..

Let's take the recent Dakar Rally, for instance.

I end up with 13 episodes and various "special" interest files of various sorts.. There's no valid data on thetvdb, so I create a "tvshowslocaldataonly" directory. Set Kodi appropriately, the directory contents are TV Shows, no scraper, local .nfo only.

Okay so far. Now I want to create .nfo files, thumbnails and fan art, etc.. That's all pretty straight forward.

My questions:

1) If I MIX SEASONS in one directory as I often see it, what goes in tvshow.info in terms of tags that relate to season - just leave them out? How would I invoke a "season summary", should I keep every year as it's own season vs. trying to list it as it is, the 38th running of the Dakar Rally (aka season 38)..

2) My info files for this show aren't taking, and I'm sort of stumped as to why not..

My .nfo file looks like this:

Code:
<episodedetails>

    <showtitle>Stage 1: Eurosport</showtitle>

    <rating>10.000000</rating>

    <epbookmark>0.000000</epbookmark>

    <year>38</year>

    <top250>0</top250>

    <season>38</season>

    <episode>3</episode>

    <uniqueid></uniqueid>

    <displayseason>38</displayseason>

    <displayepisode>3</displayepisode>

    <plot>

The 2017 Dakar Rally was the 38th edition of the event and the ninth successive year that the event was held in South America.  The event started in AsunciÃ³n, Paraguay on January 2, then ran through Bolivia and Argentina, before returning to Buenos Aires on January 14 after 12 stages of competition.  This year saw the introduction of the new UTV category.

Stage 1: Eurosport

</plot>

</episodedetails>

When I scan this directory, it "APPEARS" to be working, but then I get nothing in the media database at all, not even an empty TV show.

My CURRENT directory structure is:

$NFS_SERVER:/TV Shows_localdataonly/Dakar Rally/Dakar Rally 2017 (season 38)

All files in bottom dir, "Dakar Rally/Dakar Rally 2017 (season 38)" has all my .nfo, thumbs and fan art..

The LOG FILES (raspberry pi, shared mysql backend) show certain oddities:

Code:
21:20:02 5458.646973 T:1675768896 WARNING: Process directory 'nfs://192.168.100.100/nas/media/Movies/TV Shows_localdataonly/Dakar Rally/Dakar Rally 2017 (season 38)/Dakar.2017.Stage01.Highlights.Red.Bull.Sat.Feed.1080i.H264.English.m4v/' does not exist - skipping scan.

21:20:02 5458.647461 T:1675768896 WARNING: Process directory 'nfs://192.168.100.100/nas/media/Movies/TV Shows_localdataonly/Dakar Rally/Dakar Rally 2017 (season 38)/Dakar.2017.Stage01.Highlights.Sat.Feed.1080i.H264.English.Russian.m4v/' does not exist - skipping scan.

and:

Code:
21:20:01 5457.881348 T:1675768896   ERROR: VideoInfoScanner: Asked to lookup episode nfs://192.168.100.100/nas/media/Movies/TV Shows_localdataonly/Dakar Rally/Dakar Rally 2017 (season 38)/Dakar.2017.Stage01.Highlights.Sat.Feed.1080i.H264.English.Russian.m4v online, but we have no episode guide. Check your tvshow.nfo and make sure the <episodeguide> tag is in place.

Why are we looking for DIRECTORY in the name of the show?

Why, despite setting "content" to local info only, is something saying "Asked to lookup episode".. No, LOCAL FILES ONLY, PLEASE..

I begin to think I need to put everything in it's own directory (show/thumb/nfo), and that CANNOT have an "empty" (nothing but other directories is "empty" to kodi?)..

Anyway, I'm wondering how other folks have dealt with this..

At this point I can get some random stuff to show up in my data base once and a while. Episode 17, with no title, but nothing else.

Episode 17's .nfo file is just like all the rest...

Code:
[etimberl@koti:/Volumes/movies/TV Shows_localdataonly/Dakar Rally/Dakar Rally 2017 (season 38)]% cat Dakar.2017.Stage07.Highlights.Red.Bull.Sat.Feed.1080i.H264.English.nfo

<episodedetails>

    <showtitle>Stage 7: Red Bull</showtitle>

    <rating>10.000000</rating>

    <epbookmark>0.000000</epbookmark>

    <year>38</year>

    <top250>0</top250>

    <season>38</season>

    <episode>17</episode>

    <uniqueid></uniqueid>

    <displayseason>38</displayseason>

    <displayepisode>17</displayepisode>

    <plot>The 2017 Dakar Rally was the 38th edition of the event and the ninth successive year that the event was held in South America.  The event started in AsunciÃ³n, Paraguay on January 2, then ran through Bolivia and Argentina, before returning to Buenos Aires on January 14 after 12 stages of competition.  This year saw the introduction of the new UTV category.

Stage 7 "Red Bull Daily" version of events....

    </plot>

</episodedetails>

Apologies if this seems a little scattered.. I just think I SHOULD be able to do this in a straight forward fashion, but something is sort of hampering me and I'm having a difficult time figuring what I am doing incorrectly..

Thanks so much for your time!

Sincerely,

-ET-

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you.

NFO files/TV shows (wiki) Template for TV show

NFO files/TV episodes (wiki) Template for the episodes.

Custom video entries (wiki) Custom, links to JustUseTheFileName (unsure if it still works with Krypton) and I'm told Stupid Movie Scraper is around too. http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=251769 They would at least put a blank .nfo named as the source in each folder, then it might be easier to modify.

You will have to manually add each listing to your library, ensure the refresh locally picked up the data. Looking at the code 'nfs://192.168.100.100/nas/media/Movies/TV Shows_localdataonly/Dakar Rally/Dakar Rally 2017 (season 38)/Dakar.2017.Stage01.Highlights.Red.Bull.Sat.Feed.1080i.H264.English.m4v/ Looks like TV Shows is a sub folder of movies... (always keep TV and Movies in separate folders, not nested)

$NFS_SERVER:/TV Shows_localdataonly/Dakar Rally/Dakar Rally 2017 (season 38)
$NFS_SERVER:/TV Shows_localdataonly/Dakar Rally (2017)/Dakar Rally season 38/Stage One Highlights s01e01Red.Bull.Sat.Feed.1080i.H264.English .mkv

TV Show Name:->tvshow.nfo------->Season 1:->TV Show Name.S01E01.nfo----------Epsiode S01e01.mkv----------thumbs and fan art Artwork (wiki)

Quote:despite setting "content" to local info only, is something saying "Asked to lookup episode"

I suspect it's just a debug log convention to say looking into the movie folder and found zip.

Quote:I begin to think I need to put everything in it's own directory (show/thumb/nfo), and that CANNOT have an "empty" (nothing but other directories is "empty" to kodi?)..

There should not be any empty folders with data in sub folders.

Sometimes it's good to put a few folders together manually, just to get a feel for the way Kodi works with scrapers. I personally have too many individual TV shows and one offs, that I no longer include them in the library and use 'file mode', 'super favourites', 'favourites' and 'various skins' and more than one Kodi and more than one machine eeps... In file mode you can still see the covers and fanart, and that usually is enough. Here's a link to guys that have custom set-ups for F1 racing, there's plenty of info in this thread on how to deal with the sport http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=96518

BTW: quick questions get answers faster Smile

(2017-02-02, 07:24)PatK Wrote: [ -> ]There should not be any empty folders with data in sub folders.

Sometimes it's good to put a few folders together manually, just to get a feel for the way Kodi works with scrapers. I personally have too many individual TV shows and one offs, that I no longer include them in the library and use 'file mode', 'super favourites', 'favourites' and 'various skins' and more than one Kodi and more than one machine eeps... In file mode you can still see the covers and fanart, and that usually is enough. Here's a link to guys that have custom set-ups for F1 racing, there's plenty of info in this thread on how to deal with the sport http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=96518

BTW: quick questions get answers faster

Thanks, Pat!!

That totally explains much of my trouble - tvshow.nfo too far down!! I get it now!

Thank you so much for the wiki references, they are stellar and somehow I had missed them...

Appreciate your time.. It'll take me a bit to test - I have this issue where I can't seem to effectively DELETE shows - I have to light up mysql (I'm using mysql backend) and delete the show entries and related tables by hand before I can rescan....

But you really set me on the right path, AND I actually DID notice the fan art/poster art was visible in file view, and perhaps that might just be acceptable.. I'll have to think about it some..

Again, THANKS SO MUCH for your kind reply!!

Sincerely,

-ET-

mtrcycllvr

PatK

mtrcycllvr