Kodi Community Forum

Hi everyone,

I've been searching for a while and haven't found any answers so I hope that you can help me. I'm hoping that the answer is a minor tweak that I've overlooked that someone can just point out.

I've been trying to add a source to the xbmc library with TV shows in it to no avail. Funnily enough, I've also added a source with my movies in it and that seems to be working fine (except that recently I noticed at least one of the movies is not showing up... on a side note, is there any way to ensure all my movies show up in the library?)

Here is the process I went through to try and add the TV show source:

Navigated to Watch TV Shows > Files (in the pop-up context menu) > Add Source

When I added the source I used the "set content" dialogue to choose IMDB as the default TV show scraper and told it to scan for new content.

The scan lasted maybe a minute (this is probably the equivalent of 5 seconds to most systems, I'm running xbmc on a mini-itx pc that has all the firepower that an Intel Atom can provide). I tried this method with a few different folders with varying amounts of failure:

If I added my drive with all my TV shows in it as a source (folder structure: TV Show Name / Season X / episode files) then I could see a listing of some (not all) of the shows on my drive but it claimed there were no episodes available to watch.

If I added either a tv show folder or a season folder as a source, then xbmc simply said I had no TV shows to watch.

However, If I navigated to TV Shows > Files (in the pop-up context menu) after adding any of these dirves or folders as sources then I would be able to browse through all the files and even play them.

Another quirk I found was that if, while browsing the files on the source, I manually added that file to the library, it showed up in my movies section (but without any descriptions or thumbs or fanart or anything like that).

Any suggestions on how I can get everything running smoothly?

Thanks

Good place to start if you haven't seen this already.

http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=TV_Shows

Thanks Joe,

I had seen this page already, which is why after a while I added a single season folder as a source to see if the folder structure I had on my drive was the problem. Because from what I see on that page (I may be wrong and if so you could explain this thing to me) If I have a source that is filled with video files in the format TV Show Name.Season#Episode#.avi (eg. 30 Rock.101.avi) then the library should get populated.

I actually only noticed the last section just now that explains how to load custom regex searches which would help me later on because I prefer my files to be structured a bit differently. But that's only after I figure out how to get it to load the files in the library.

Example of how I have mine set up on the HD

TV Shows
|----Dexter
| |___ Dexter.S01E01.showname.avi
|
|----Californication
| |___ Californication.S01E02.showname.avi
|
----Bones
|___ Bones.S01E01.showname.avi

Well, I guess I'll try a structure like that on a few files later when I get home and see if it works. I really hope it is something as simple as incompatible folder structure.

http://www.therenamer.com/
Use this program for SUPER easy organization of your TV shows. Puts them into the right structure and renames them with the correct names. Only thing it doesn't do is like fan art and info. But i use Media Info Plus for that also recommended.

I got a chance to go home a little bit earlier and do a test run with a few files and it seems that the problem was a simple mismatch of what xbmc expected and what it got. Applying your structure, Joe, got it working fine. So I think I'm going to try and see if I can either figure out a way to keep my structure and apply a new regex to the config file or just rename all the files and put them in your structure.

Thanks for the link modd3r3v3r. If I have to resort to plan B I'll check it out.

It seems that I was wrong. The problem I had with the TV shows not showing up had nothing to do with the file names or folder structure. The scraper I was trying to use at the time (imdb tv) just doesn't work. When I tested the new file structure, I decided just to use the default (tvdb) and it worked only because that was the scraper I used.

I've tested all the scrapers lately, and it seems the only one that comes with xbmc that works fully is tvdb (at least, those are the results I'm getting with my setup).

This has gotten to be a bit annoying because although all the episodes are listed and organized properly, the thumbs that show up for the shows are not poster size or even square. They are more akin to the aspect ratio of a web site banner. What that means is that it's difficult to look at because in the list it's too small to read and in the more detailed view it's stretched to fit the aspect ratio of a poster. All the thumbs that I seem to be able to get from this scraper are in this same, much-too-wide format.

Does anyone know how to either fix the already existing scrapers TV scrapers that come by default in xbmc (assuming, of course, I'm not the only person that's had this problem) or how to add another non-default scraper that should work fine?

Thanks

tried looking in the scraper settings?

Like SHo said, check the settings. You'll want to click the prefer posters option if you don't like the wide banners.

I have the exact same problem.
Only i can't load movies either.

Tried scanning for files using both a Vista and an XP machine but same results...

Binder Wrote:I have the exact same problem.
Only i can't load movies either.

Tried scanning for files using both a Vista and an XP machine but same results...

Spamming multiple threads wont get you support any faster. Open a new thread and post full details, including a debug log.

prae5 Wrote:Spamming multiple threads wont get you support any faster. Open a new thread and post full details, including a debug log.

Hmm, ok, understood.
I'm a bit of a noob to xbmc but am a capable computer user though.

Anyway, here's the debug log:
http://pastebin.com/m1db079d3
Is this useful? or do you need the latest?

not a debug log - see my signature.

spiff Wrote:not a debug log - see my signature.

Saw the signature, followed the instructions (except activating debug log) and posted prematurely.
When I get home from work I'll get you another, working, log.