v14 - Scraping just doesn't work, losing the will to live

v14 Scraping just doesn't work, losing the will to live - Printable Version

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Scraping just doesn't work, losing the will to live - dr oldskool - 2015-03-12

I'm sorry for such a dramatic title but I really am on the verge of smashing up my computer I'm just so fed up with it all Sad

Having just moved over to a htpc and kodi (14.2 Helix beta) on my Zotac Zbox ID86 (D2550 processor) on Windows 7 ultimate, pulling files off my HTPC (Win 7 ultimate) using SMB, I have been having nothing short of hell these last 3 days of my annual leave trying to get things to scrape properly.

Lots of searching and reading and I've managed to get films to scrape sort of ok, but my main problem is with tv shows.

I am using the TVBD as the scraper and am getting very hit and miss results.

Brass Eye:
All of last night I had huge trouble getting Brass Eye to work. Eventually what seemed to fix it (although I have absolutely zero idea why) was to deliberately incorrectly spell it as Brasseye (no space) and then it seemed to work, even though TVDB and all my files have "Brass Eye" as separate words and indeed that's what shows up on too. !!!

The Armando Iannucci Shows
I've had zero luck with this despite trying for 2 hours solid. I've tried all my tricks, incorrect spellings on purpose, changing file names, everything, I just can't at all get it to scrape. I noticed in the title of the NFO files they'd written Iannucchi instead of iannucci but I tried changing a load of stuff and it still didn't work. In the end I deleted the NFOs complately just leaving the bare files formatted properly as per the wiki advice but again no joy.

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace
Yet again, as above, no joy at all despite trying non stop for as long as I have any will left to live!

I mean, all of these are on TVdb and everything is spellt exactly the way tvdb does it (and the way it should be) but it just doesnt' work at all.

Lastly, for some reason the first episode of every series that DOES work seems to get dropped and I have to change it from s01e01 to just 1x01 and then it works. Even though the rest of them are all in the exatcly the same sXXeXX format....

If anyone can give any pointers I'd really appreciate it. It really is driving me crazy Sad

I don't know if a debug file would be helpful at all, as it doesn't even seem to put the folder in...?

Thanks in advance guys Smile

RE: Scraping just doesn't work, losing the will to live - Pr.Sinister - 2015-03-12

I would strongly suggest you invest your time productively with Ember Media Manager, MediaElch or TinyMediaManager.

Once you get those programs to recognize your shows (much easier cause you can pick and choose and easily fix mistakes), Kodi will swallow them like a baby with his mamma's breast milk

RE: Scraping just doesn't work, losing the will to live - PatK - 2015-03-12

theRenamer is drag & drop friendly with TV shows... whole folders in one go, uses the same TVdb how can you lose?

RE: Scraping just doesn't work, losing the will to live - dr oldskool - 2015-03-12

Guys those are giving me a glimmer of hope! I shall try al 4 of those and report back.

I did some forum and google searches (many!) and ended up trying a renamer called Filebot, which was useless. Hopefully these will help....

RE: Scraping just doesn't work, losing the will to live - steelman1991 - 2015-03-12

Dear Dr

Provide the debug log after attempting to scrape these - to at least give the devs a chance to look at the issue and if there is a problem with the scrapers, to resolve them.

Just for kicks I'm going to set-up some dummy files - see if I can reproduce the issue (give me an example of your folder/file naming structure and I'll see what happens on a dummy run).

You mention NFO's in your second example - what programme generated these?

Hit and miss results, would certainly indicate an issue with naming conventions, but without a debug log or an example of your folder/file structure its impossible to tell.

RE: Scraping just doesn't work, losing the will to live - dr oldskool - 2015-03-12

YOU GUYS ARE AMAZING!!!

Pr Sinister - ember wouldn't install properly (xml file problem or something), MediaElch I had no idea what I was doing, but by the time I got onto TinyMediaManager and gave it a little more time I figured it out and OH MY GOD I managed to sort out Garth Marenghi and Iannucci I just can't believe it! I spent basically all of yesterday evening into the night (and arguing with my wife and sleeping in a separate bed as a result - does she not realising I'm doing this for the family not just me??) and your stroke of genius basically sorted the issue for me!

PatK - thanks to you too for a similar suggestion but as on of the above sorted it for me didn't get onto trying yours but i'm sure it'd work also, so thanks again for the input!

steelman - yes I totally accept that of course debug logs would help but I was wondering if there was something more basic i was missing and it turns out it that simply using one of those amazing tools really helps with the tricky ones.

How do I add rep? I can't seem to find an "add rep" button, because you all deserve rep for being so helpful!

I'm not completely out the woods yet though but I figure I'll not bother you guys until I need it and sort stuff out on my own. For example, even though TMM sorted the namings etc and Kodi actually picked it all up for me, it inexplicably wouldn't then work when I moved it into a different folder. No matter how many times i'd clean up and then "update libraries" it just wouldn't pick up what it had picked up moments before, just because it was in a new location!! I realised my TV Shows files were in a bit of a mess i.e. I had the indicidual sub folders and also the parent folder listed. So I cleaned that up and that helped. I also found that exiting and returnign into kodi helped too.
Re: NFOs, to be honest I have ZERO idea what these things are! I just thought they are "info" files for when you download something and it just tells you how to install. I had no idea they serve some sort of a function for scraping?? I mean, many of my progs scrape perfectly well without any nfo files. I am CERTAIN I'm missing somethign pretty key here, like the clueless n00b I am. Damn, I used to program in assembly language when I was 8 years old and here I am getting confused by these new things... (!!) Steelman, I had gotten rid of the NFOs because I thought they were the problem (wrongly spellt name in it), but the TMM programme did me a load of new ones... I'm guessing they're kinda important? *blush*

Thanks again you lovely helpful people Smile

RE: Scraping just doesn't work, losing the will to live - steelman1991 - 2015-03-12

My only issue with external third party scrapers/media managers (and bear in mind they are 3rd party and not officially supported), is that sometimes they are left behind when changes are made and developers don't react quickly enough to respond.

By all means use them, but I have never (seriously) needed them to scrape any of my metadata (Kodi does it perfectly, providing the naming convention is correct and the source is set correctly).

What produced the NFO's that you deleted - were you using another media manager? NFO's are not that important the system can run quite happily without ever seeing one, I don't have any in my set-up. But they are useful if there is a need to re-build a library, as that information will be used without the need to re-scrape from the t'internet.

Anyway glad you got it working to your satisfaction. There is a 'rep' button at the foot of each post, next to the PM and FIND buttons, though I'm not sure if you have to post a minimum number of times before you get access.

RE: Scraping just doesn't work, losing the will to live - zerocool_ie - 2015-03-12

(2015-03-12, 03:09)Pr.Sinister Wrote: I would strongly suggest you invest your time productively with Ember Media Manager, MediaElch or TinyMediaManager.

Once you get those programs to recognize your shows (much easier cause you can pick and choose and easily fix mistakes), Kodi will swallow them like a baby with his mamma's breast milk

+1 on this

Ember really is brilliant.

RE: Scraping just doesn't work, losing the will to live - BatterPudding - 2015-03-12

NFO Files - go read the Kodi wiki page http://kodi.wiki/view/Nfo

These are really handy, simple text files. Associate the .nfo extension to Notepad++ so it is easier to edit them. They are XML files, but an assembler programmer should be able to hack them in his sleep.

The Media Managers you have been running are basically just creating an NFO per show and putting that into the show folder. Open up some of the NFO files that have been created and look inside.

Personally I just use the built in scrapers in KODI. Mainly because my videos are on a Read Only server share and I don't want to clutter the folders up with lots of extra files. This will sometimes mean I need to open up TVDB.com and then tweak file and folder names a bit to fit their naming schemes. When TVDB lets me down I then manually create an NFO file for that show. You don't even have to fill out the whole NFO file - just put in the main bits like show name. You don't need to go into all of the actors if you don't want to. The media managers can get very verbose if you let them.

RE: Scraping just doesn't work, losing the will to live - Pr.Sinister - 2015-03-13

(2015-03-12, 11:46)dr oldskool Wrote: How do I add rep? I can't seem to find an "add rep" button, because you all deserve rep for being so helpful!

I think it may be because you are too new or too low or a postcount to add to reputation. You can try clicking on someone's rep points or clicking thank user at the bottom of a post if you see it.

Quote:I'm not completely out the woods yet though but I figure I'll not bother you guys until I need it and sort stuff out on my own. For example, even though TMM sorted the namings etc and Kodi actually picked it all up for me, it inexplicably wouldn't then work when I moved it into a different folder. No matter how many times i'd clean up and then "update libraries" it just wouldn't pick up what it had picked up moments before, just because it was in a new location!!

This may be because of how you used the Set Content feature.

It you have a folder structure like this:

Code:
D:\Media\TV Shows\TV Show 1

D:\Media\TV Shows\TV Show 2

D:\Media\TV Shows\TV Show 3

D:\Media\TV Shows\TV Show 4

D:\Media\TV Shows\TV Show 5

You should Set Content at the TV Shows level. Kodi will find TV Show 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.

Then if you change your structure to be

Code:
D:\Media\TV Shows\TV Show 1

D:\Media\TV Shows\TV Show 4

D:\Media\TV Shows\TV Show 5

D:\Media\New TV Shows\TV Show 2

D:\Media\New TV Shows\TV Show 3

And you do not also Set Content on New TV Shows, Kodi will only find TV Show 1, 4 and 5

RE: Scraping just doesn't work, losing the will to live - dr oldskool - 2015-03-13

steelman - the original NFOs were in the folders that I had, done by someone else, somehow else (not sure how). Thanks again for the reply very helpful.

zerocool - thanks good to see extra support for ember. It won't let me install it (xml problem) so i'm with TMM which is doing good for me so far

batterpudding - thanks buddy that's helpful indeed. From what I can see NFO files are like a local way of telling kodi what art etc to use? and the 3rd party scrapers get that stuff and put it in the folder for you? I thought i'd have to set it as "scrape locally" or something similar, but obviously not. I'll get the hang of it and yeah altering a NFO seems very simple.

pr sinister - thanks again mate, well explained.

(Yes it seems I can't thank or add rep yet as I'm too new. I hope I remember to do it when I've made enough posts! It makes sense to limit it on the number of posts to stop people repping themselves with false usernames I suppose! BRILLIANTT forum btw guys, you're all VERY helpful and friendly thanks again! Big Grin

)

RE: Scraping just doesn't work, losing the will to live - BatterPudding - 2015-03-13

(2015-03-13, 10:48)dr oldskool Wrote: batterpudding - thanks buddy that's helpful indeed. From what I can see NFO files are like a local way of telling kodi what art etc to use? and the 3rd party scrapers get that stuff and put it in the folder for you? I thought i'd have to set it as "scrape locally" or something similar, but obviously not. I'll get the hang of it and yeah altering a NFO seems very simple.

Not just art, but the show name, artists, running time - everything. The idea is that a local NFO file can over ride any scraper. Meaning you, the human, can simply over ride anything you need to.

RE: Scraping just doesn't work, losing the will to live - host505 - 2015-03-13

You guys are giving the wrong impression, Kodi doesn't need 3rd party scrappers, you just have to follow some rules wrt file structure/naming (like every media center I suppose):
1. Every show in its own folder - no need for separate season folders as long as episodes are correctly distinguished.
2. Naming of that folder should be as clear as possible, containing the exact name as it appears on tvdb.
3. If more than one show with a specific name exists, put the country name or year in the folder name also [eg The Killing (US)].

I for one never had to use external scrappers/renamers/whatever, also never had to rename episodes.
All this with the default tvdb scrapper.

RE: Scraping just doesn't work, losing the will to live - mkortstiege - 2015-03-13

(2015-03-13, 14:12)host505 Wrote: You guys are giving the wrong impression, Kofi doesn't need 3rd party scrappers, you just have to follow some rules wrt file structure/naming (like every media center I suppose):
1. Every show in its own folder - no need for separate season folders as long as episodes are correctly distinguished.
2. Naming of that folder should be as clear as possible, containing the exact name as it appears on tvdb.
3. If more than one show with a specific name exists, put the country name or year in the folder name also [eg The Killing (US)].

I for one never had to use external scrappers/renamers/whatever, also never had to rename episodes.
All this with the default tvdb scrapper.

+100. Thanks Smile

RE: Scraping just doesn't work, losing the will to live - BatterPudding - 2015-03-13

(2015-03-13, 14:12)host505 Wrote: You guys are giving the wrong impression, Kodi doesn't need 3rd party scrappers, you just have to follow some rules wrt file structure/naming (like every media center I suppose):
1. Every show in its own folder - no need for separate season folders as long as episodes are correctly distinguished.
2. Naming of that folder should be as clear as possible, containing the exact name as it appears on tvdb.
3. If more than one show with a specific name exists, put the country name or year in the folder name also [eg The Killing (US)].

I for one never had to use external scrappers/renamers/whatever, also never had to rename episodes.
All this with the default tvdb scrapper.

^^^ Totally agree here. ^^^

Kodi's own scrapers are great. 95% bang on I would say. And with a little tweak here and there to get your naming closer to TVDB.com and you are laughing. The only times I've had to use a NFO file is for those shows not listed in TVDB.com / TMDB.com

When I first used XBMC I experimented with one of these separate media scrapers and didn't like the dozens of extra files and images it threw into my video folders. I think the built in scrapers of KODI are so much neater as the mess is then kept in one place.