[Moisie]

Hello all:

Firstly, a great big thank you to all who work on Kodi - it’s been invaluable to me.

I’ve been succesfully running XMBC / Kodi for a few years now, relying on TheTVDB and IMDB for file information - which has worked great.

However, I’m now trying to organise some recordings I’ve transferred from my Humax PVR. I’ve created a tvshow.nfo file with just the name of the show in it, and individual episode nfo files with data about the individual episodes.

The show folder is picked up, and an episode is shown inside - but none of the data for the individual episode appears to be being read: the episode appears with just the name of the show on it (no date identifier, even though it’s in the file name), and looking at the Info pane shows the following:

TV show: £100k House: Tricks of the Trade
Aired: 31/12/1969
Year: 1969
Runtime: 60 Minutes
Path: /Volumes/Media HD/Hummy2/£100k House_Tric…


My folder structure is this (I’ve set the Hummy2 folder as a Content Source, set to TV Shows with Local Information Only):

Hummy2/
- £100k House_ Tricks of the Trade/
- - tvshow.nfo
- - £100k House_ Tricks of the Trade_2014-09-09.mpeg
- - £100k House_ Tricks of the Trade_2014-09-09.nfo


My tvshow.nfo is:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<tvshow>
    <title>£100k House: Tricks of the Trade</title>
</tvshow>

And the £100k House_ Tricks of the Trade_2014-09-09.nfo is:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<episodedetails>
    <title>£100k House: Tricks of the Trade</title>
    <studio>BBC TWO</studio>
    <plot>2/6. Kieran Long and Piers Taylor come to the aid of homeowners as they take on ambitious building projects. This time, they help Sue with her previously unloved 1920s semi-detached. Also in HD. [S]</plot>
    <aired>2014-09-09</aired>
</episodedetails>

Removing the show and rescanning the Hummy2 folder produces this in the debug log file:

21:02:06 T:2954514432 NOTICE: VideoInfoScanner: Starting scan ..
21:02:06 T:2954514432 DEBUG: CAnnouncementManager - Announcement: OnScanStarted from xbmc
21:02:06 T:2954514432 DEBUG: GOT ANNOUNCEMENT, type: 16, from xbmc, message OnScanStarted
21:02:06 T:2954514432 DEBUG: VideoInfoScanner: Found matching Full NFO file: /Volumes/Media HD/Hummy2/£100k House_ Tricks of the Trade/tvshow.nfo
21:02:06 T:2954514432 DEBUG: VideoInfoScanner: Adding new item to tvshows:/Volumes/Media HD/Hummy2/£100k House_ Tricks of the Trade/
21:02:06 T:2954514432 DEBUG: CAnnouncementManager - Announcement: OnUpdate from xbmc
21:02:06 T:2954514432 DEBUG: GOT ANNOUNCEMENT, type: 16, from xbmc, message OnUpdate
21:02:06 T:2954514432 DEBUG: VideoInfoScanner: Scanning dir '/Volumes/Media HD/Hummy2/£100k House_ Tricks of the Trade/' as not in the database
21:02:06 T:2954514432 DEBUG: VideoInfoScanner: Found date based match /Volumes/Media HD/Hummy2/£100k House_ Tricks of the Trade/£100k House_ Tricks of the Trade_2014-09-09.mpeg (09/09/2014) [([0-9]{4})[\.-]([0-9]{2})[\.-]([0-9]{2})]
21:02:06 T:2954514432 DEBUG: GetEpisodeId (/Volumes/Media HD/Hummy2/£100k House_ Tricks of the Trade/£100k House_ Tricks of the Trade_2014-09-09.mpeg), query = select idEpisode from episode where idFile=6941
21:02:06 T:2954514432 DEBUG: VideoInfoScanner: Found matching Full NFO file: /Volumes/Media HD/Hummy2/£100k House_ Tricks of the Trade/£100k House_ Tricks of the Trade_2014-09-09.nfo
21:02:06 T:2954514432 DEBUG: VideoInfoScanner: Adding new item to tvshows:/Volumes/Media HD/Hummy2/£100k House_ Tricks of the Trade/£100k House_ Tricks of the Trade_2014-09-09.mpeg


So it looks like the nfo files are being found - but the episode one isn’t being used.

To this end, I have two questions:

1 - What am I doing wrong to prevent the episode information being used?
2 - Am I right in thinking that shows should be listed with their date identifier if it’s provided in the file name?

I realise I can probably find this particular show in TheTVDB - but I have plenty which I know I won't be able to find, so I'll need to solve this problem for them.

I’m running Kodi 14.1 on Mac OS X 10.6.8; unfortunately I have a 32-bit CPU, so I can’t run Kodi 15. :-(


Any input much appreciated - thanks!

Moisie.

[DaVu]

It seems your doing everything correctly. I just see two things that differ from my working setup for TV-Shows.

1. you don't use a season folder

As there is only 1 season for this show, I would still use a season folder...

- tv-show name folder
-- tvshow.nfo
----season 1 (subfolder)
----episode files.mpg

2. Your naming of your shows differ. But that shouldn't be the culprit as you use local nfo only and have a matching nfo file. But I would name it like "S01E01.nfo" and I would also rename the episode file to match the same.

This always works for me

[ReplayHarry]

It seems your doing everything correctly. I just see two things that differ from my working setup for TV-Shows.

1. you don't use a season folder

As there is only 1 season for this show, I would still use a season folder...

- tv-show name folder
-- tvshow.nfo
----season 1 (subfolder)
----episode files.mpg

2. Your naming of your shows differ. But that shouldn't be the culprit as you use local nfo only and have a matching nfo file. But I would name it like "S01E01.nfo" and I would also rename the episode file to match the same.

This always works for me

I agree with what David said. In Gotham what you did would work. But I found that in Helix and after, the scrapper will not even look at the .nfo file unless the recorded show has a filename which includes season and episode (as in David's example, S01E01). There is a thread that goes into this in a lot of detail.

[Moisie]

Hello David, hello Harry:

Many thanks for your quick replies - I really appreciated this.

I shall try adding pseudo-season tags to the files over the weekend, and will report back.

Thanks,

Moisie.

[Moisie]

Hello again:

Ok - I've given it a try as suggested, but I'm still not seeing the custom info being displayed in Kodi... :-(

My folder structure is now:

Hummy2/
- £100k House_ Tricks of the Trade/
- - tvshow.nfo
- - Season 01/
- - - £100k House_ Tricks of the Trade.s01e01.mpeg
- - - £100k House_ Tricks of the Trade.s01e01.nfo

I've tried various variations on this theme. In each case, a new episode was added to the show listing in Kodi, but the custom info was never included.

Kodi is seeing the season and episode numbering that is embedded in the file name (not that I've ever needed to give other shows (using TheTVDB scraper) separate season folders), but the .nfo is still not being used. Note that I haven't updated any information inside the .nfo to reflect the new season/episode numbering...

There is a thread that goes into this in a lot of detail.

I've tried searching for this thread, but it's difficult to know what search terms to use - it's all quite generic stuff!

EDIT: I think I've just found the thread - http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=215316 for future reference.


I have just found this thread - http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=...recognised - which looks interesting. I shall try implementing some of this and see if it yields fruit...

Any other ideas welcome!

Many thanks,

Moisie.

[Moisie]

Hello again:

Ok - I've given up trying to get my custom .nfo episode files to be read with my current build (Kodi 14.1). I'll keep an eye on it for future reference, but I'll just have to be content with how things are for now.

Not that this has been a waste of time at all - I have at least found that adding the tvshow.nfo files brings my various files into the TV Show browser, rather than having to browse through the file listing - and that will help my other half use Kodi effectively.

Thanks for your input anyway - appreciated!

[Moisie]

Hello again:

An update for anyone who might find this useful:

Not that this has been a waste of time at all - I have at least found that adding the tvshow.nfo files brings my various files into the TV Show browser, rather than having to browse through the file listing - and that will help my other half use Kodi effectively.

As you might have already realised, just adding the tvshow.nfo file does not bring the episodes into the TV Show listings - just an empty entry for the show itself. So I kept plugging at it, and I think I'm now on top of it.

The main problem I had with my <episode> nfo files were some illegal characters in them: I had generated the nfo files using some metadata I'd got from my PVR, and I hadn't sanitised the inputs properly. I think this was also causing some issues with the UTF-8 encoding of the files (I'm no expert on this, so please excuse me if I'm getting this all wrong). Now that I've cleaned the files up, they're all working as expected.


So, in summary, this is working for me in Kodi 14.1 (and I think 15.1 too, but not exhaustively tested):

My folder structure is this (I’ve set the Hummy2 folder as a Content Source, set to TV Shows with Local Information Only):

Hummy2/
- £100k House - Tricks of the Trade/
- - tvshow.nfo
- - £100k House - Tricks of the Trade.2014-09-09_2001.mpeg
- - £100k House - Tricks of the Trade.2014-09-09_2001.nfo

(Note - no season folder required, no s00e00 tag required, and I can use date and time in the file name.)

And the £100k House - Tricks of the Trade.2014-09-09_2001.nfo is:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<episodedetails>
    <title>£100k House: Tricks of the Trade - 2014-09-09_2001</title>
    <season>0</season>
    <episode>0</episode>
    <mpaa></mpaa>
    <studio>BBC TWO</studio>
    <plot>2/6. Kieran Long and Piers Taylor come to the aid of homeowners as they take on ambitious building projects. This time, they help Sue with her previously unloved 1920s semi-detached. Also in HD. [S]</plot>
    <aired>2014-09-09</aired>
    <showtitle>100k House - Tricks of the Trade</showtitle>
    <rating>0.0</rating>
    <votes>0</votes>
    <uniqueid></uniqueid>
    <thumb></thumb>
    <playcount>0</playcount>
    <watched>false</watched>
</episodedetails>

(Note the <season>0</season> and <episode>0</episode> tags, required not to make it show up under Season -1.)


With this in place, the show is listed correctly in the TV Shows listing, the episodes are listed correctly inside the tv show (displayed exactly as per the <title> tag), and the info is displayed as set.

Hurrah!


I hope this might be helpful for anyone else who's having problems.

[PH-SYM]

Thanks for sharing your findings. I hardly use nfo files but some may be having similar issues.
In my experience, season folders are not needed at all, not even when you are scraping via the internet. A proper file naming format is a must though but with nfo files that shouldnt matter as well.

[Redwingsfansfc]

Though NFO creation is a cool art, which I personally haven't attempted, get a file namer like Filebot that pulls from a wide array of Internet databases. It will name your episodes as per universal format.

Then for an NFO file automatic creation, you could use something like mediacompanion.
http://mediacompanion.codeplex.com

I haven't used it, but it's kodi friendly, and creates NFO files from your properly named shows.