[takkun324]

Ok, so I'm easily fustrated but I'm happy now (even though I have a lot of work ahead of me). Recently I started to use tinyMediaManager to (finally) organize all my shows for XBMC/Kodi (~4 years after GBPVR). THe first steps were pretty straight forward: In the settings/preferences, set the appropriate folders; done. Then scrape. Ok, cool but wait: Now I have unidentified files. This is where things went wrong. Rename the videos so the scraper can find them, right? Nope, wrong. Some were renamed/moved, some not. Now it's unordered and I cant mass-rename using external tools because some episodes were already correctly renamed.

So, I would like to outline a proposal for better renaming:
Note: I'm going to reference features in TagScanner: Ultimate Tag Editor. An Audio Collection organizer; it has the best music-file renaming scheme I have ever used). Check it out if you've never seen it.

1. *** Filename Pattern Matching ***: If a file isn't identified then the user should at-least have all the episode info from the initial scrape. Usually, the season & episode numbers should be obvious to the user so why not allow the user to say: "This is where your info is located". That way, it wouldn't matter if the episodes are out of order. Additionally, this might allow the parser to "skip" problematic characters.
Ex: "{SEASON:2}.{EPISODE:2} - {TEXT}" would apply to the naming scheme, "05.07 - The Trouble with Cheesecake".
Ex: "{TEXT} {TEXT} {SEASON:2}{EPISODE:2}{TEXT}" would apply to the naming scheme, "Good Eats 1211 A Cabbage Sprouts In Brussels". (Note the space-delimiters in "{TEXT} {TEXT} {...".)

2. Filename/Season/Episode Edit directly from List: Something I LOVE about TagScanner is the fact that you don't need to open a dialog to edit tags or filenames. From the main list, simply double click the entry. Great for minor corrections! (Admittedly, I did this on Android 2.3 and I found it confusing to get running.)

3. Auto-Number Episodes: Select a few unknown episodes, bring up this dialog, specify the season, set the starting episode number (lets say it's 4 in this example), the click "OK". The episodes should be renamed (according to the naming scheme), in this example: from episode 4 to 24 = easy-peasy.

4. File renaming errors:: Invalid Session? Why not tell the user where the problem exists in the name. When the error hits, just pass the index & string and say, "I've.hit.an.error.H[E]RE.mkv".

*** Honorable Mentions (nothing really to do with renaming) ***

5. Copy/Paste: I'd just like to copy some info from the currently-selected episode. For example: While writting this, I wanted to copy the filename that's shown below the 10 stars so I wouldn't need to type them out ... but I can't. Java/Spring Labels?

6. Persistent Error Log Dialog: When you bring up the error-log, you are blocked from using the program until the error-window is closed. Is there a scenario this would be useful? Why not use concurrent windows and auto-update the error-list to show the user what is going on in real-time? Much more useful. (At least open the file in an external program instead.)

7. Simplified R-Click Menu:: "Search/Scrape/Force/ExcludeThumbs/NewItemsOnly" can be placed neatly in a single dialog. The "Edit" 'menu-section' could be better organized similarly as well.


** If you're open to some help/assistance, PM me. I'd love to help this program become a bit more user friendly. Some years ago I tried reaching out to GBPVR to but they weren’t comfortable with that idea at the time (which is ok).

[myron]

Thanks for your extended report - much appreciated

TvShow matching is a very hard and critical action.
While it should work for most/all your files, a single false positive can give unpredicted results, and must be avoided in either case.
We're supporting quite all Kodi naming scenarions (http://kodi.wiki/view/Naming_video_files/TV_shows ), see our all working examples here

1) we already thought of such "patterns", unfortunately, they can be too global, or need to be set on each show separately, to perfectly identify a special format.
have to think, if we can support this in any way, and how to configure such things easily.
Dunno if it's worth the effort, since it's only a one time issue on first import; There already some good tools our there, to batch insert/replace some characters, to match a better initial pattern...

2) you can edit all the files in a list - just edit the TvShow, on the last tab you'll see all your files and yould change the wrong ones easily.

3) how should auto-numbering work? if we can't match the correct episode, just take the next file as episode 5?!?
If WE can't detect them, YOU need to play/identify the file - simply matching anything is not what you want... (we won't rely on them being sorted alphabetically correct)

4) we decided to NOT rename a file, if we do not have a valid season/episode pair.
As a further improvement, we might not even start renaming, if not ALL files are set properly - TBD

5) yes, it seems you cannot C&P such labels, but if you edit this movie, pretty all should be in text fields...

6) Popup is quite new, we might change that

7) Yes, there's some more work to do
At first place we concentrated on functionality, not on design.
But this is already planned


I guess, the "rename the videos so the scraper can find them" was the wrongly part here.
If we didn't detect a correct Season/Episode, we are not able to rename it, so that we will detect it afterwards
This is the point, where 4) kicks in...

Since we did not rename undetected files, it should not be too hard to find them in the "edit movie, last tab, episodes list" and correct the numbers there.
If all set, rename again...

hth
br
Myron

[takkun324]

Oh no-no-no-no-no-no! Seems we have a huge misunderstanding! What I meant was that I (the user) would "cut the fat" out of the filename according to patterns that I would define and then let tMM try to identify the file a second time after the manual change. Granted, perhaps editing the meta-data (only in bulk) -- updating -- then auto-naming would make more sense.

Why? Because I can do a MASSIVE number all at once. Case in point: I used pyRenamer for Ubuntu to get rid of some hash-code I had used with GBPVR that was messing with tMM's episode scraper. With a pattern of "{#} - {X} - {X}" and using a rename with "{1} - {3}", my file "11 - XCL14D - EpisodeName.mkv" was reanmed "11 - EpisodeName.mkv". However, I lost time looking for it and figuring out how to use it in a way that would best suit my needs.

1) Just renaming patterns, *not* something that is stored but something to help clean up the mess of files for tMM and Kodi (ex: I still had many hash-codes used in GBPVR and AniDB's in my filenames screwing with your scraper). It is not a one-time kind of issue: Drive errors occur and new series are added occasionally... it's a dynamic environment and groups that distribute a series like to self-advertise in the filenames. That said, it may be a lesser priority for you right now compared to other things you're trying to accomplish.

2) I did not know that existed, thanks. Took quite awhile to figure out I can press the [ENTER] twice (a very useful feature ). A couple of things though: I can't see multiple series at the same time. I cant bulk-edit any data what-so-ever (*season*-cough,cough). I also cant see all possible fields ("DVD episode/season"-cough-cough). And, I have to navigate a file list to get to a file list. Speed bumps?

3) You misunderstand the feature! Its only a part of the *manual* assigning process (goal: make it easy for the user make changes). I stress, "manual," process (a one-time process too). **It could be used in bulk-episode modifications instead. Auto-numbering is one of my most-used features in TagScanner and this is how works: 1] Drag files up/down in the list to order them. 2] Highlight/select the files to be numbered. 3] R-click for a menu and select "Autonumber". 4] Your done numbering your 20-sum files, sorry there is no step four. -- I would STRONGLY suggest you check it out in TagScanner on some test albums (FYI: audio only).

4) Again, the misunderstanding takes over: No auto-changes on unknown data - that would make NO sense. Currently you allow the user to rename and choose the renaming scheme. I'm finding all sorts of wacky schemes (a few unordered) so why not allow the user to tell the program, "for these 50 episodes, here is the episode number in the name". ...to correct it's failed logic. There may be random stuff before and after the number, but if you tell it where it can be found with a pattern, it can correct its logic with that new info.

5) So you're forcing me to make more clicks & open dialogs when the information is already visible? Ouch, that hurts. I use to get around that problem by disguising text fields as labels (by subclassing labels and instancing that ... cause I'm lazy).

6) While some dialogs are rarely-avoidable, IMHO: the more consistent the UI, the better the UI is. If the window very-rarely changes (if ever) then the layout is near-perfect. An unchanging UI also helps avoid missing certain things that might be missed as the program expands. Again I point to TagScanner that only has a side panel which changes according to the 5-kinds of tasks you'd want to preform on your selected files in the list (RENAME (and move files around), EDIT [Tags], ONLINE [scrape tag data from websites], GENERATE [extract tag data from the filename], and EXPORT of a collection list. Common functions have buttons that remain at the top. The file-list is an awesome list! Each row shows any desired TAG/META data fields assigned to the file, grouped by parent directory and sorted (within all groups) by whatever the user wants to sort by. It's awesome and I'd use that for if it would work on videos.

7) I probably seem (seemed?) like a jerk and you're probably smarter then I give credit for ... I know . Years of cheesy workarounds and half-baked tools might have left me a bitter-old nerd, LOL.

I'd still love to help (only <now> taking time away from 'updating my library' to view the source on GIT). I've never used GIT before (only tortoisesvn and perhaps maven long ago) but I'll look into it (I have the next 3 days off work to get started).