What is the bare minimum requirements for a TV Show these days in terms of nfo files?
This used to work in Jarvis but something extra is needed in Leia.
Folder: TV\b07986tm
tvshow.nfo
xml:
<tvshow><title>blue peter bite</title></tvshow>
b08p1nnk.strm
Code:
plugin://plugin.video.bbc.strms/play/b08p1nnk
b08p1nnk.nfo
xml:
<episodedetails>
<showtitle>blue peter bite</showtitle>
<title>blue peter review</title>
<season>2</season>
<episode>25</episode>
<thumb>https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/raw/p05gtj10.jpg</thumb>
</episodedetails>
It works if I change the names to
blue peter bite S2E25.nfo
blue peter bite S2E25.strm
but it used to pick up that data from the nfo file alone.
I've had a quick look through the scraper code but there is a lot to go through.
https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/38f3bb...canner.cpp
After a lengthy process of elimination I've found that the minimum necessary is as above but the strm and nfo episode files need to have a season/episode or aired date in their filename.
So the folder can be
"anything"
The episodes can be:
"S1E1.strm"
"S1E1.nfo"
"2001-12-31.strm"
"2001-12-31.nfo"
But you need a
"tvshow.nfo"
And all the contents can be as in my first post.
The date format needs an <aired> attribute instead of <season> and <episode>.
I'm not sure if there is a workaround but shows without either of those need a dummy value for either date or season/episode.
Hi. Thanks. I've been through them and the source code.
I was assuming that because all the details were in the nfo files it wouldn't matter what the actual media files were called.
In my mind the nfo should trump the strm file names.
The problem I still have is how to deal with tv programs that don't have episode/season data and are all broadcast on the same day.
Specifically I'm thinking of BBC iPlayer programs for something like a general election.
The code I've got so far just puts an incremental episode number on unknown program episodes.
The trouble is that needs some extra housekeeping to keep those numbers associated with the streams.
What I really need is a looser concept of a TV Show that doesn't need season/episode or aired data as the key.
I must have overlooked this bit:Parsing nfo files cannot be used for episode nfo's
(2018-05-07, 22:43)primaeval Wrote: [ -> ]In my mind the nfo should trump the strm file names.
That seems to be true for Movies but not for TV Shows. TV Shows and episodes still require accurate naming. I haven't looked at this in great detail, but it seems to create the DB entry on the file name and then import the nfo data. If you remove the <season> and <episode> tags from the episode nfo file, it is still correctly imported, showing that they are irrelevant.
Another issue I discovered recently has to do with internal ID's that Kodi generates for each TV Show. You may want to make allowances for this. If you have ever come across threads in the forum where the member has issues with episodes from different tv shows being mixed into one show, I recently figured out what causes this.
1. It only happens with NFO Files.
2. I narrowed down the problem to entries in *C12* of the *tvshow* table of *MyVideos107.db*
3. C12 looks to be a Unique ID generated by Kodi based on one, or all, of the following tags. The tags must have data and any random number or text can be used as data in the tags.. If they are missing from the tvshow.nfo file, the default entry is
-1. This means the number is no longer unique and is shared by multiple shows.
xml:
<id></id>
<uniqueid type="imdb"></uniqueid>
<uniqueid type="tvdb" default="true"></uniqueid>
4. But... If you use these older tags, the problem does not occur and Kodi generates a valid unique ID. The tags can be empty.
xml:
<imdbid></imdbid>
I need to spend more time on this issue to see if there are any other variables, but haven't done so as yet.
Thanks for the info. It's a tricky business being a librarian.
There are many ways to organise media files and naming conventions.
It gets really silly when producers decide to reboot a show and start the numbering again. Something like Doctor Who springs to mind.