Feature Request Better control of data for TV shows/series

[Jattok]

Whenever I rip TV series from Blu-rays using DVDFab 10 and save them to my DVDFab Media Server, the data it downloads mismarks the TV series every single time. However, when I match the TV show properly, every episode is always episode 1 of season 1, regardless of the episode, how many there are, etc.

I'm requesting that DVDFab Media Server include better controls and data for TV shows, so that we can not only provide details for the TV show collection itself, but also individual episodes.

[signals]

Hi Jattok, please be more specific about what you mean by "mismark" It may be that the MetaInfo for some of the series is incorrect, you can review it (and report it if it is wrong) by pressing the "M" button in DVDFab Copy or Ripper modules.

[Jattok]

What happens is that I put in, say, the first Blu-ray disc of the NA copy of Game of Thrones, Season 1. I change the information of the titles to the names of the episodes, and rip the disc. The Media Server sees the titles instead as some documentary of the fourth season of GoT, and marks them as movies in the same collection. When I click on one of them to search for the proper information on the series, it sets them all to Episode 1 of Game of Thrones, Season 1. Any disc of Game of Thrones, North American Blu-ray, I rip with DVD Fab 10, when I set it with the search to find Game of Thrones, sets them all to "Episode 1" of Season 1.

What should be happening is that we should be able to edit not only the details of the TV series itself, but also the individual episodes. I can't edit any of these in the Media Server's port 32080 web page on updating the information.

[Jattok]

As an update, I just inserted disc 1 of the Witchblade North American Blu-ray into DVD Fab, and clicked the Meta Info.

Track 1 of this disc is the complete run of all 10 episodes available on the disc itself. When I switch the Disc Type to "Season disc", the dropdown for "Type" only allows me "Episode" as the logical choice for what this track is; there should be a drop down for "Complete Episode Run" or something similar, since so many discs have all episodes as one complete title. There is also nowhere to update in the Meta Info screen which disc this is, the title of the series itself, which season it is, nothing like that. Could it be possible to get these added to the Meta Info screen?

[Jattok]

Another issue I discovered, and I can't find out how to fix it, is that, for Witchblade NA Blu-ray Disc 1, all the episodes are held in Title 1, which has 82 chapters. Only chapters 1-80 are episodes (8 chapters each, 10 total episodes), and 81 is an English Blu-ray Credits card, and 82 is junk. There's no way that I can see to get Title 1 to be only 1-80 for its episodes, or to designate 81 and 82 as non-episodes. This needs some work, or a better explanation of how to handle this.

[FrankD]

The meta editor in dvdfab needs some work. What i do is to select disc type as movie and then (re)set it to season disc. This to get the full content to show as the meta edit screen doesn't always show all contents when first opened.
I mark the 'full length' version as junk/filler content type.
Sorting out the individual episodes can be a hassle as there sometimes are duplicate versions with slightly different running times. I just mark them as junk filler as well.
(Using menu mode gives normal access to all content anyway)

As a side note: disks have indexed content but sometimes such an index number can be just a pointer to another index number. If you play such a 'pointer index' it plays a short scene. I mark these as junk filler as well. It is just the how disks are authored.

When a mistake is made with the season number the entire disk needs to be reloaded and worst yet the mistake ends up in some mysterious database that causes the wrongly loaded disc to be displayed as well in the poster wall menu system on the movie server. These end up as mysterious duplicates under other season numbers....

Manually editing of the metadata file on the harddrive doesn't seem to fix anything.

[FrankD]

Seems like the problem with 'duplicate' poster wall entries for tv shows has been sorted.
Noticed that the movie server disk now has a tv shows directory in which each disc has it's own directory containing the iso and the meta file.
I manually created this structure for earlier loaded season discs and all looks as it should now.

[Arminder]

Looks Movie Server uses The Movie DB for its show, season and episode data. Looking at the \share\sdcard\Android\data\org.dvdfab.box.launcher \files\.vidon\userdata\database\VMS2.db file and data.... the data looks correct. However, it does not get used correctly to identify and label TV shows and episodes from a DVD.iso file. Just need DVDFAb to verify that this opinion is correct.

[signals]

Jattok and others,

TV discs can be a problem since they are authored differently in some cases. For discs authored with only a Play All playlist or PGC, I use Main Movie in DVDFab Copy and split the episodes by using the chapter select feature. This takes a little longer to process but works well with MS, since you can manually group all of a season's episodes to their own poster or have a poster for all episodes of a series if you prefer. I use the 'Series Name SxxExx' when creating the files in DVDFab. Copying episode discs with Full Disc does not work well for me since youmust play them back using Menu play mode and it does not allow MS to handle the episodes properly (i.e. episodes that are on Disc 2 are still in the menu copied for Disc 1).

Arminder, please give some details or examples of how the data is used incorrectly, this is not clear.

Some of this may be addressed in the MS Cloud version of the firmware at some point, but there is a Known Issue with the early Beta listed that relates to TV episodes.

[Arminder]

I do something similar to yours technique... I rip each episode separately and name it with the same convention that you use.

In regards to an example, then I inspect the VMS2 file, the title for each episode is included in the file, however, the title of each episode is not displayed in MS. Instead, MS displays it as Episode 1, Episode 2, etc.

[Juice]

I do something similar to yours technique... I rip each episode separately and name it with the same convention that you use.

In regards to an example, then I inspect the VMS2 file, the title for each episode is included in the file, however, the title of each episode is not displayed in MS. Instead, MS displays it as Episode 1, Episode 2, etc.

We will add this feature asap.thanks for the feedback,

[petas_70]

I am just so frustrated with this DVDFab server database sorting its just impossible.
I am adding Vikings show (it is not Blu ray or DVD, it is .mkv file) all properly named by season and episodes. But for some reason, the seasons and episodes are not adding to actual Vikings show container in TV show. This is very very limited, unless I am doing something wrong. I have this server for 2 weeks now and I am already fed up how the software works and is sorting out the titles!!!!
Actual movies are ok, but TV shows is completely different ball game. Any suggestions or ideas how to update/sort the TV show episodes/titles etc????

I really miss My Movies software :-/ www.mymovies.dk

Thank you!

[petas_70]

Well...I cannot even edit the metadata, all episodes in Season 1 are labeled "Episode 1". Every time I am trying to edit the title/name of individual episode, the information are not getting saved!!! Very VERY poor design.

[Shaggy6977]

I'm with you on this petas_70, I am about to throw this POS out myself, too bad I wasted $300 for a piece of equipment that you would think would have at least the capabilities of a simple Kodi setup that you could download your meta info and posters and whatnot just once and it would stay populated. My box has to refresh itself everytime its rebooted. This server is not what I was led to believe.

[mgn]

Personally I find the DVDFab Metadata and on screen description editing very clunky and primitive. I add movies to its hard drive after ripping and then struggle to get the meta data right or to get it to sort movie collections under one grouping.

I still use PLEX for my TV collections and BluRay Movies as the metadata information and handling works so well and virtually without too much user intervention. I use the DVDFab Movie Server for my UHD / 4K collections but it's library poster wall is deficient (albeit primitive) in many ways.