Metadata Extraction Problems

I am new to Serviio. I have an extensive video library of Movies and TV Shows, and wanted to test Meta Data Extraction. Things don't work as described in the WIKI. I can't get any metadata defined for my library and would appreciate help.

File naming is supposed to drive this. I am providing some simple examples of what I have tried below..
..\Movies (This is one shared folder)
\Movies\Casablanca 1942.mp4 (This title is on www.themoviedb.org)
\Movies\Cinderella 1965.mp4 (This title is on www.themoviedb.org)
\Movies\Cinderella 1965.jpg (This is a DVD Cover image used as an experiment for Serviio)
..\TV Shows (This is one second shared folder)
\TV Shows\Hogan's Heros (This Series is in www.thetvdb.com)
\TV Shows\Hogan's Heros\S04E02 Klink_vs_the_Konculator.mp4 (A Test Episode. There are others in the directory)

So, then, in Serviio's metadata menu all defaults are selected. I choose under descriptive metadata "Online Metadata Sources". (I did this after the default returned no metadata.) and then SAVE and RESCAN VIDEO METADATA.

So, I was hoping...
1) It would Identify Casablanca and Cinderella as Movies
2) It would display appropriate thumbnails for the movies and provide a description as you can get online.
3) It Would Identify Hogan's Heros as a "Series", perhaps more description.

It did none of the above and I have experimented extensively. It did provide a generic icon for Casablanca and Cinderella, but these were not correct for those movies/years).

I am thinking of giving up. I do not know where this generated Metadata is stored, I figured, maybe I could edit it, but that would be time consuming given the size of mu library is actually in the thousands of files (Only experimenting at the moment)

Any suggestions?

[atc98092]

Well, I have one of those movies, and it displays correctly. So let's see how mine are labeled.

Casablanca (1942).mkv. Almost the same, except for the parenthesis.

Cinderella (1950).mkv. Mine is the Disney movie version, not the made for TV version from 1965. Again, same as above for the naming. This is the naming convention I use for all my movies. If I encounter a title that doesn't populate the metadata, the first thing I check is themoviedb.com to confirm it's listed and I have the year correct. Some of the stuff I record off of TV isn't dated correctly from the broadcast info.

For TV shows, I again have a slightly different format than yours.

Columbo - S01E01 - Prescription Murder.mkv. I include the TV show name in the episode file name, and the entire series is on a folder with the Series Name as the folder name. On occasion I come across shows that are identified incorrectly, and the solution is to add the IMDB ID number to the folder name (Wings tt0098948). I don't need the IMDB ID on each file if the folder name has it.

Only files with SxxExx in their names are considered TV shows. Everything else is considered a movie. Out of my 1000s of files, I've only had one or two movies that would not identify correctly. For those I again added the IMDB ID to the file name (I don't put my movies in individual folders.

I don't use jpg images for any of my files. With a few exceptions, the cover art for the online sources download accurately and are displayed on my player. And that is one final thing I want to mention. The cover art is only displayed if your player supports it. My Sony BD players have never shown any artwork. My Samsung TVs show a small image, Roku players have larger images (depending on the view set in the (Roku Media Player) and my Shield (using Kodi as the player) is configurable to show small or good sized art.

Where is the data stored? Within a Derby database. This can be edited, but it's not at all user friendly to do, you can really mess things up if you aren't database savvy, and it can only be opened if Serviio is completely shut down. It's a single instance database, so if Serviio is using it nothing else can connect.

[freaknik]

I have a lot of that too like Hercules I don't know the naming convention but the movie I have is the animated one and the movie poster metadata are for the live action Hercules with The Rock it's a completely different movie made in a different decade. It's definitely more art than science (parsing and getting metadata).

Thank you Dan(atc98092), your post was very helpful.
After changing naming conventions and Uninstalling/reinstalling serviio several times, I got to the point where Series vs Movies are correctly identified and most Metadata is correctly imported.

So the trick for Movie naming is "My Movie (YYYY)"
For series, the actual video file must include a SnnEnn, ie "S01E01 My Episode name"
The Series name can be in a upper Directory ie "Hogan's Heros".
I found that this can actually be two directories up- ie \TV Shows\Hogan's Heros\Season 1\S01E01_The_Informer.mp4"
Adding the IMDB id to the movie file name or series directory name can be helpful if Serviio is having issues getting Metadata. That number is available in the URL of the associated movie/series on IMDB.com

It is not that I did not try some of these things prior to my original post. Which brings me to a very significant learning.
The "Rescan Video Metadata" button in Servio does not function, at least on my Windows 10 installation.
So after Renaming files and directories, the only way for me to see the updated metadata results was to Uninstall/Reinstall Serviio.
I tried deleting and reattaching Libraries, but that did not address the issue. I did not try the "Polling" option since the video files are "Local"

I did find some issues as I brought more of my library over..

1) Some Metadata is still incorrect, mostly Series/Movie Posters. There appears no way to correct this by editing the database.
2) Servio has issues with multipart movies. Some movies were too long to release on 1 DVD, so there are 2 Mp4 files. Ie "Dances with Wolves (1990) Part1.mp4" and part 2. When you find the movie in Serviio, it will only list one title, (ie "Dances With Wolves (1990)") If you attempt to play it you get gibberish as though Servio is playing both files simultaneously. I could probably find a mp4 merge utility, but prever to keep these files separate.
3) The "Last viewed" feature in Servio shows you the last "N" Videos you watched. It would be much better for series to show just the last episode. So If you are following 10 Series, there would be only 10 entries and you can easily pick up where you left off.

You might have guessed that I am evaluating Serviio prior to committing moving off my existing media server. So any advice about a more feature rich and less buggy Local DLNA server would be most appreciated.

[atc98092]

You have the basics down good now. You are understanding it correctly. You are correct that the Series name can be only on the lead folder. I've just gotten accustomed to including the entire name on the file itself. No right or wrong there, just different acceptable methods.

The Poller function can sometimes help even with local drives. No rhyme or reason when it might be needed. That's strange you had to reinstall Serviio to get the refreshed metadata. In my experience simply renaming the file causes the old data to be removed from the database and the file added as a new entry. I've seen the same thing simply renaming the root folder. But I have used the refresh metadata button in the past, and it did perform as expected.

You are correct that there's really no way to modify anything within the database itself.

When you have a video contained in two or more files, Serviio does have the ability to "stack" them and play as a single file. It's only available with the Pro (paid) version, and is enabled in the Serviio console under Delivery/Stacking. I do have a few files like that and it has worked for me.

I see your point about the Last Viewed. However, it would be next to impossible to separate the different players/users and present them as you say. Serviio does indicate which Series episode was last watched with an * next to the season, and then again next to the title after you enter the season. Not quite as fast as your suggestion, but provides the same information. You won't see that if you're playing from a Playlist, or one of the other presentations. It's only available under the Series presentation.

[freaknik]

Thank you Dan(atc98092), your post was very helpful

Sorry mine wasn’t. All the naming convention stuff is in the documentation, maybe it could be made more pronounced since it’s so important to get the metadata to work.


https://wiki.serviio.org/doku.php?id=im ... ata_naming

Thank you again Dan(atc98092). Your post was helpful.

As far as combining multiple video files into a single video using the "Stack" feature. I could not get this to work for me. I placed files in my movies directory named as follows

Dances With Wolves (1990 Directors Cut) Part1.mp4
Dances With Wolves (1990 Directors Cut) Part2.mp4

They show up in the roku client as "Dances With Wolves", but when played, are gibberish as if the two files are overlayed rather than appended.
Since I can append these files, this is not a big deal.

The last viewed in a series feature you identified- by the asterisks, does appear to work. It is subtle, and involved, but worthwhile. I never would have found this had you not pointed it out!

So I am considering Serviio for my home media server. My biggest concern is the need to uninstall/reinstall the software in order to recognize metadata associated with added files. I will continue to test and post.

[atc98092]

I only have one example of stacked files, but they do play as expected. It appears that Serviio must transcode the files for playback, since my example uses supported codecs and containers for my Roku TV. But it's playing at this moment without a problem. The three files are in a MKV container, and use MPEG2 video and AC3 audio. Since my Roku TV supports that, I'm assuming the way that Serviio handles multi-part files is to transcode them into a single stream.

The three I have are a total of 4 hours and 24 minutes, which my Roku player displays accurately. My file naming convention is The Infinite Worlds of H. G. Wells tt0280770 (2001) part2.mkv. I had to include the IMDB ID number because it wasn't getting accurate metadata. Naturally, the other two files are part1 and part3.

It's puzzling that yours are playing incorrectly. I realized I was using the beta version of Roku Media Player, so I switched back to the public version to be sure. It let me resume where I had left it with the beta player, and then I decided to fast forward to where it should switch to the second file. Looks like it switched to the second file without a hitch. No screen flash or anything like that. When I pause the playback, RMP still shows that it's playing part 1, but it's definitely playing the second file. I fast forwarded again to see if it would show the second file name, but it didn't change. That's probably a Roku RMP issue, not Serviio.

I was testing this with my 4K Sharp Roku TV, but I would expect it to be the same with any Roku player. What Roku are you using? Nevermind. I see you have the newer stick from your sig line. Are you using the correct Roku profile? The 3810 Stick should use the Roku 4K w/MPEG2 profile.

There's no way you should have to reinstall Serviio to get metadata on newly added files. It might be interesting to see your Serviio log after you've added a new file and see what it shows.

It's great to hear that your stacked files are playing smoothly, even with a mix of containers and codecs. Your file naming convention is pretty neat, including the IMDB ID for accuracy.

It's interesting to read about your testing on the Roku Media Player, and it does seem like the behavior might be more related to the player itself rather than Serviio. Technology can be a bit quirky sometimes, right?

[atc98092]

It's great to hear that your stacked files are playing smoothly, even with a mix of containers and codecs.

This thread is over 3 years old, so a bit out of date. And if you read my post you would see there is no mix of containers and codecs. I suspect mixing containers would be a no-no for file stacking.