v3.221 - Episode Information NFO missing some needed data

Junior Member Posts : 16 Join date : 2010-02-28

Ok this is a bit convoluted so bear with me..

I had thought that once I updated my NFO files via Media Companion, there would be an easy way for XBMC to look at those NFO files and import them into the library. Ideally via a "Scan for New Content" action.

However I've since learned the hard way that I must go into each show and REFRESH the show, telling it to refresh every episode. This is fairly counter-productive, if my episode is available via a scraper then it would scrape the data and effectively I've just used Media Companion for nothing. (Obviously if a scraper doesn't exist for the show then at least XBMC will pick up the NFO file as media companion created, so it's not a total waste).

However it appears that we COULD have the easy import functionality... and I could have sworn that one of the older versions did in fact behave this way.
See this thread on XBMC forums for a complete description of the problem and the XMBC developer's response, near the bottom of the thread:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?p=520326#post520326

The bottom line is that it appears that the NFO files created by Media Companion, specifically tvshow.nfo is missing some needed Episode information. XBMC uses that file, and that file alone to determine if/how it should update episodes.

I am not sure exactly if this is considered a BUG or a Feature request as perhaps Media Companion was never meant to be used in this fashion, but considering the extensive support for episode information, i find it hard to believe we should be updating each episode seperately in XBMC.

Admin Posts : 1326 Join date : 2008-09-20

Just looked at this, it seems that the tvshow.nfo file is missing the <episodeguide> tag needed by XBMC.

I know that this used to be included in the nfo, but it looks like I have removed it for some reason.

I think I must have intended to replace the tvdbid tag with the <episodeguide> tag since this also contains the TVDB ID it should not need its own tag.

I'll fix it for the next build, which i'll do when I get time, later today, or tomorrow at the latest.

Billy & DaGnome, I just tried Scan for new Content on XBMC & it worked fine - upon inspection the relevant tvshow.nfo doesn't have any episode information. It found a new episode & loaded the relevant details into the XBMC library....

Admin Posts : 1326 Join date : 2008-09-20

StormyKnight wrote:: Billy & DaGnome, I just tried Scan for new Content on XBMC & it worked fine - upon inspection the relevant tvshow.nfo doesn't have any episode information. It found a new episode & loaded the relevant details into the XBMC library....

Is it possible that when you first added the tvshow.nfo to XBMC that the <episodeguide> tag did exist, and was actually imported by XBMC, then it was removed by MC at a later time.

Junior Member Posts : 16 Join date : 2010-02-28

THanks for the new version but umm... according to the patch notes:

"Bugfix - <episodeguide> tag was missing from tvshow.nfo files, no need to rescrape the shows, just click the save button for each one"

It's not a big deal however this does not work Smile

I tried on several shows to simply hit the SAVE icon, and while it does resave the tvshow.nfo file it does not get any new info nor episode guide info.

What did work was to reselect the show via TV Show Selector, that automatically saved the file and it did contain the Episode guide, along with a bunch of new artwork Smile

Admin Posts : 1326 Join date : 2008-09-20

Just checked this, and as long as the <tvdbid> tag contains the show ID, MC will create the <episodeguide> tag

Junior Member Posts : 16 Join date : 2010-02-28

Yep I realized that as well... I guess my old TVSHow.nfo files weren't scrapped with that ID originally. Not sure if it was added later or not.

I'm seeing another odd result related to this but still trying to debug the issue.

Basically, I DO see the new episodeguide tag now, but once I pass it through XBMC and scan for new content, it still has a problem finding new episodes, telling me that there is no NFO file. Furthermore, if I tell XBMC Camelot to export my NFO files at any time it seems to remove the episode info. It could be my installation of XMBC as I was fiddling with SVN versions but I thought I reverted back to camelot completely. I'll investigate this further to be sure where the cause is, but in case others mention it add my voice to the mix.