Kodi Community Forum

I have a tricky problem on my hands. Any help would be very appreciated.

I have a current (9.04) Mythbuntu installation with the most version XBMC installed via PPA. It's been running admirably for quite some time. All of my media resides on a separate Windows box. The video sources are accessed via Samba as setup within the XBMC interface.

I do not use "Library Mode" because of the esoteric files and organizational structure I use. Also, library mode makes it more difficult for some of the members of my family to navigate. I have spent a great deal of time using scrappers with each individual file to add cover art, synopsis, etc to the media.

Recently, I've been getting extremely frequent "connection timeout" and "connection error" messages when viewing videos. After reading several threads both here and on other sites, a common proposed solution was to mount the Samba shares directly through fstab instead of via the XBMC interface. I have done so, and then edited my sources within XBMC to point to the new locations. This seems to have eliminated the problem.

But now all my metadata is gone. Not only that, but it refuses to let me call up the info page for any files when using this method. So I cannot rescrape my files.

So my questions are:

1) Is there any way to restore my metadata? All the file names are sources are identical, the only change was editing the original sources to point to a mount point instead of an "smb://" path.

2) Failing that, how do I enable the info page/scrappers for the files in their new location?

I'd certainly appreciate any incite, as my searches have yielded no results.

1. Go back to the original path.
2. Export all info to separate files.
3. Switch to the new path.
4. Rescan.

jmarshall Wrote:1. Go back to the original path.
2. Export all info to separate files.
3. Switch to the new path.
4. Rescan.

This or via editing the MyVideos34.db in case you're familiar with sql.

I've completed steps 1, 2, and 3.

However, I'm unsure what you mean by "Rescan". Can you elaborate? Thanks for the assistance.

Make a backup of you current video database file, then remove the old source and add the new one. After setting content on the new source run the scan and all you items will get added back to the library (with old information, thumbs and fanart).

So after swapping to original paths, exporting as separate files, and then swapping back to the new path I should:

-Enable Library in Video Settings

And then choose what? Clean-Up library? Or enable scan on start and restart XBMC? Then disable Library again? Is that correct?

Sorry for the confusion. I'm trying to play it as safe as possible.

Ok..

First of, backup the old MyVideodb34.db file so you can easily switch back in case something went wrong. Then remove the old source and say YES in both dialogs. This will remove all old items from library (of the given source). Then add the new source and trigger the scan for new content in context menu.

My apologies, the scanning/update options were not in the context menu because I did not have Library Mode enabled after the export (as I don't use it).

After doing as you instructed, it appears to simply be redownloading all the metadata and completely ignoring my original data/covers.

Any other suggestions?

Sounds like you didn't export information to separate files then? This will have placed .nfo files and folder.jpg's inside your media folders.

No I definately exported as seperate files. However the Samba share is read only. So that's likely the issue. Strangely, XBMC didn't give me any errors during the export...

I'll try again soon.