Prohibit title modification for "home videos"?

Hi,

i'm quite new to serviio, just imported a large collection of home videos (e.g. video files without corresponding metadata from public sources). My problem is: I'd like to modify the titles of the video items manually. I've learned there's no web gui, but i'm happy editing the sql data directly (maybe creating some nice forms in LibreOffice Base...). I've managed editing the titles, but after adding new video files to the collection, all previously manually-modified items have lost their custom title - it seems Serviio replaces them based on the file name even if the items aren't new . That's quite ugly, since my manual renaming work is lost (Background: I've moved the media collections from Synology to Serviio, putting much effort into importing the metadata - titles, genres - as well).

So, my question is: Is there a way to restrict collecting metadata to new folder content? Alternatively - is there a way to make sure that manually modified metadata (esp. titels) won't be changed by serviio?

PS: On the serviio console, metadata category, there's an option "no descriptive metadata". I've selected it since i thought if serviio doesn't look for additional metadata, it won't touch manual modifications...

Even worse: issue doesn't affect only the titles but also the genre entries. Not only there's n way to modify the metadata manually using the Web UI, modifications on DB level will be lost if new media items are added. - so question should be more generally: is there any way to modify metadata of video files in a persistent way?

Or is there only one option: provide the metadata in separate files (*.nfo, Media Center Master XML)?

[atc98092]

The .nfo files are certainly one option, and if you want more complete metadata, that is really the best way to do it. However, if you simply want the file name to appear as the video title, you can place them in a separate folder from your commercial media and not use the Internet to add metadata for that folder. That will just display the file name as the title. But as I said, there would be no other metadata shown for the title.

It is possible to edit the data within the Derby database, but it's not a simple process to do so. You can't access the DB with Serviio running (it's set to single user only, so Serviio is the only connection while running). Also, if you ever click Refresh Video Metadata in the Serviio console it will go out and replace your efforts with online data.

I did a quick search and I found this site (https://www.newsgroupreviews.com/cool-b ... eator.html) that discusses an NFO file creator. I have not downloaded or installed it, so make no claims about it. But there's probably other software available as well.

Thanks a lot @atc98092 for your comments - obviously my first approach (migrate metadata directly into the SQL db) was wrong . So i tried the nfo way, but i'm stuck again . I've managed to create nfo files based on the existing metadata set (about 750 datasets from a PostgreSQL db, created by Synology's "Video Station").The nfo files are placed in the media directories, but serviio seems to ignore them. I didn't analyze this yet because lack of time (didn't look into the server logs), but a short test using a different DLNA server (emby) didn't reveal any problems - emby uses and displays the nfo metadata as expected. Since this is a new issue, differently from my initial problem, i think it would be better to start a new thread after i've collected more information about it (logfiles, online documentation on nfo files).

[freaknik]

did you change in the console, under metadata, from online source to the nfo files?

I bet there's ya problem.

did you change in the console, under metadata, from online source to the nfo files?

I bet there's ya problem.

Negative - i've checked both "Retrieve descriptive metadata" under "Library" -> "Shared Folders" -> my video folder, as well as the Metadata settings unter Metadata -> Video -> Descriptive metadata...

Seems i found the reason - i had to change the nfo file's root element from tvshow to movie. With tvshow, XBMCExtractor doesn't recognize the nfo file as XBMC file:

2019-02-05 20:32:32,167 DEBUG [XBMCExtractor] File '3sat-Das_Shakespeare-Rätsel-0175075072.nfo' is not a XBMC file

After changing the root element to movie, everything works fine . Since i don't need to separate between movies and TV-Shows, it's completely ok for me to use the XBMC "movie" scheme for the nfo files. Maybe the documentation should add a note if tvshow-type nfo files are generally ignored (ok, there's only movies and periodic content mentioned - does "periodic content" mean the nfo episode type?)