DVDs in TV shows directory possible?

Got a funny situation here and can't get it to work.

I have 2 DVD folders, each with a VIDEO_TS folder etc. These are part of a 2 DVD boxed set, under a single title name.

The title of this DVD set exists in TheTVDB.com, with Season 1, episodes 1 to 8.
So I thought I'd store these 2 DVD folders within my TV shows directory.

DVD1 contains episodes 1 to 5, and DVD2 contains episodes 6 to 8.
However, I'm not sure of how to map the DVD folders to the episode ranges listed in thetvdb.com, and what directory structure to use.
I've tried various combinations and nothing seems to work.
The top level 'TV show' is recognised when I scrape, but then it gets problems mapping the episodes to the two DVD folders.

I've given up with this idea of trying to keep this in the TV shows folder, and have 2 other ideas:
1. move the dvds into the movies folder and manually create the nfos based on existing movie nfo templates.
2. use dvd rip tools to try to extract each episode chunk from the DVD images, and then map these under the tv shows directory using the existing episodes existing in thetvdb.com

Any help gratefully received

I can only think of one way to get around this without separating the episodes out & re compressing them.

Rename one of the files in the VIDEO_TS folder with the series & episode information..

rename the ifo file.......S01E01E02E03E04E05.ifo

The vobs will be ignorned by MC because they don't contain any series & episode information

This way you should get only 1 entry in MC for the 1 DVD

Let us know if this works, I haven't tested it

PS you could use the ISO file format instead of the separate VOBS in a VIDEO_TS folder structure, that way you only have 1 file per DVD. Then you would just name that ISO with the episode information.

Cheers

I wouldn't rename any of the dvd files, doing this would break the DVD structure.

Stormyknight has the correct idea though,

You can rename the VIDEO_TS folder, or Just place the VIDEO_TS folder within the correctly named folder.
eg.
\S01E01E02E03E04E05\VIDEO_TS\dvd files
or
\S01E01E02E03E04E05\dvd files

This example will add episodes 1-5 to MC and XBMC,

The only downside to using entire ranges like this is that neither XBMC or MC can play back an individual episode from these dvd folders, playback of any episode within that range will only launch the DVD in the player.

Thanks to both of you for helping with this.

I tried both solutions...

\S01E01E02E03E04E05\VIDEO_TS\dvd files
or
\S01E01E02E03E04E05\dvd files

...these paths underneath the TV Show name of course, and it 'worked' as in that MC listed the season 01 and the episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 etc, and then in MC I could click on each episode entry and browse the plot and related fields. So all looked good.

But then I went into XBMC and did a 'scan for new content'. It picked up the TV show name and the plot, but it shows 'Episodes: 0', so it seems not to be picking up the episodes somehow. Of course, nothing is available to launch to play the media therefore.

Any ideas?

In the meantime, until I hear back, I will try to manually create an entry for this in the Movies path and see if I get any more luck, even though this feels wrong.

Update: Manual entry worked under movies, so I'll leave it like this, as in Library mode I can find the media with the genre tags etc.
Thanks a lot.

I bought a new DVD today called "Planet Earth" which is a DVD that contains the first 3 episodes of a TV series -- TVDB id=79257

The DVD contains the first 3 episodes: From Pole to Pole, Mountains and Fresh Water.

I tried using the following directory structure under TV Shows:

\Planet Earth\S01E01E02E03\VIDEO_TS\

MC seems to scan it OK, and all episodes list correctly (multiple episode etc).

However when you go in XBMC and scan for new content, all looks good but XBMC shows "0 episodes", so I can't play the DVD.

Any ideas, or is this a known bug? I'm using MC 3.251

Thanks.

As far as I know thats exactly the way it works, I don't think you have done anything wrong.

As long as the tvshow.nfo is in the root,
ie
Planet Earth\tvshow.nfo
and the VIDEO_TS folder has the files 'VIDEO_TS.IFO' and 'VIDEO_TS.nfo'
then XBMC should see the information to scrape it.

This is not a format I use, so it may be worth asking over at the XBMC forums.

Additionally, have you tried a DVD image, you may have more success with '\Planet Earth\S01E01E02E03.iso'

Sorry I can't be anymore help.

Yes, the tvshow.nfo is in the root, and the VIDEO_TS folder has the files 'VIDEO_TS.IFO' and 'VIDEO_TS.nfo' files.
So all looks good.

The only thing I can think of, is it's either a bug in XBMC, or perhaps the NFO generated by MC within the VIDEO_TS folder is unrecognised by XBMC. Reason I say this is that XBMC picks up all stuff and artwork, plot etc, all looks good except when you click on the 'TV show name' then zero episodes appear -- so gut instinct makes me think that perhaps XBMC is unable to recognise/parse the VIDEO_TS/VIDEO_TS.NFO file, possibly meaning that the file contents are in the wrong or unexpected format??

Did you ever test this kind of thing -- i.e. a DVD containing TV episodes, as a TV Show?

I'll see if I can find anything like this on XBMC forums...

Thanks again.

Edit - These look interesting:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=TV_Shows_(Video_Library)#Multi-part_Episodes
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=29445
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=55497

and this:

"TV Shows in DVD Folders" section near bottom of http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=TV_Shows_(Video_Library)
TV Shows in DVD Folders Using the same directory structures as above, you can name DVD folders by adding the following xml to advancedsettings.xml. This information was gleaned from forum thread http://www.xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=55497.

Code:

<xml>
<tvshowmatching append="no">
    <regexp>\[[Ss]([0-9]+)\]_\[[Ee]([0-9]+)\]?([^\\/]*)(?:(?:[\\/]video_ts)[\\/]video_ts.ifo)?</regexp>
    <regexp>[\._ \[\-\\/]([0-9]+)x([0-9]+)([^\\/]*)(?:(?:[\\/]video_ts)[\\/]video_ts.ifo)?</regexp>
    <regexp>[Ss]([0-9]+)[\.\-]?[Ee]([0-9]+)([^\\/]*)(?:(?:[\\/]video_ts)[\\/]video_ts.ifo)?</regexp>
    <regexp>[\._ \-\\/]([0-9]+)([0-9][0-9])([\._ \-][^\\/]*)(?:(?:[\\/]video_ts)[\\/]video_ts.ifo)?</regexp>
  </tvshowmatching>
</xml>

The regex are not needed since the season and episode info are actually located within the nfo.

According to those posts, it seems XBMC may not yet be capable of scraping tvshows that are in the VIDEO_TS format.

This post states that it works perfectly if you use an .iso container, it is a fairly simple process to create this type of file, either when ripping from DVD, or just converting the VIDEO_TS folder.

For ripping the dvd I use 'DVD Shrink' it can save the disk as either iso or dvd folders, it can also convert VIDEO_TS folders to an iso container.

I had the same issue. I ripped all my TV shows as VOB files in the Video_TS folder, and they did the same thing that you describe. The show is found and scraped by XBMC but no episodes are added. I converted all mine to ISO's and they work great now. The problem that was created by that, however, was that Win7 media player would not play the ISO's, so I use VLC now and everything is good again.

Yeah, I tried the ISO idea and all was recognised, scraped, episodes appear in Mac XBMC, but when you try to play the episode, it fails with some cryptic error message in xbmc logs. I need to get to the bottom of why it fails. Close but no cigar

Perhaps I might try to view an ISO-based episode using XBOX XBMC now... oh... that didn't work either. Need to check the error message, search and see what I can find. Could be that the ISO is not liked by XBMC, but VLC can read it fine, so I don't know...

chinadoll911 wrote:

Yeah, I tried the ISO idea and all was recognised, scraped, episodes appear in Mac XBMC, but when you try to play the episode, it fails with some cryptic error message in xbmc logs. I need to get to the bottom of why it fails. Close but no cigar

Perhaps I might try to view an ISO-based episode using XBOX XBMC now...

That may well be a bug, XBMC is supposed to playback ISO files without issue for movies and tv shows.

I have not used them for TV Shows since I like to have them seperated, I usually use seperate the vobs into seperate episodes then just treat them as normal media. I have used them on occasion for movies and they worked perfectly, at least on an XBox, and HTPC using XBMC Linux.

What method are you using to create the ISO files, and are you keeping the DVD structure within the ISO, ie the VIDEO_TS folder.

What are you using to convert to ISO, are you converting your folders, or straight from the DVD,

Can you playback the ISO using VLC.

Don't give up, i'm sure you will work it out eventually.

I used Toast Titanium on the Mac to make the ISO file from just the VIDEO_TS directory and its contents.

I suspect something about the ISO file format is not liked by XBMC, so I probably need to try to make the ISO again, reading the tips from the Toast user guide on creating an ISO file... will give it a shot tomorrow and will reply here about any findings... as, like you say, it looks like it should work, but just need to find out why XBMC cops out when trying to play the file. As mentioned, the error message was far from intuitive, see here:

NOTICE: DVDPlayer: Opening: smb://nas/tv_documentaries/Planet Earth/Series1/Planet Earth_S01E01E02E03.iso
WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(player)::Put MSGQ_NOT_INITIALIZED
NOTICE: Creating InputStream
ERROR: Error on dvdnav_open
ERROR: CDVDPlayer::OpenInputStream - error opening [smb://nas/tv_documentaries/Planet Earth/Series1/Planet Earth_S01E01E02E03.iso]
NOTICE: CDVDPlayer::OnExit()
NOTICE: CDVDPlayer::OnExit() deleting input stream
ERROR: Playlist Player: skipping unplayable item: 0, path [smb://nas/tv_documentaries/Planet Earth/Series1/Planet Earth_S01E01E02E03.iso]
NOTICE: CDVDPlayer::CloseFile()
WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(player)::Put MSGQ_NOT_INITIALIZED
NOTICE: DVDPlayer: waiting for threads to exit
NOTICE: DVDPlayer: finished waiting

I'll try to dig a bit more after a sleep...

After enabling detailed debug logging in the Mac's XBMC System settings, I think I found the problem:

INFO: msg: libdvdnav: vm: DVD Title: PLANET_EARTH_D1
INFO: msg: libdvdnav:DVDOpenFileUDF:UDFFindFile /VIDEO_TS/VIDEO_TS.IFO failed
INFO: msg: libdvdnav:DVDOpenFileUDF:UDFFindFile /VIDEO_TS/VIDEO_TS.BUP failed

This is odd as I checked, and the files VIDEO_TS.IFO etc do exist in the VIDEO_TS folder, so the problem must be the way that the files were ripped from the DVD. I will try to rip again to .ISO file and see if that fixes the problem.

When I made the .ISO I first copied the files from the DVD using dragon drop and then used the ISO tool to make the ISO file from the AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS folders, but it seems not to like that. I even tried to build the ISO up from scratch.

Now it's time to re-rip the DVD using a proper ripping tool... will see if that works and report back.

DVDs are usually encrypted so just dragging the folder from the disk will not work, indeed this may be the cause of your problem.

On a PC the obvious tools are DVD decryper and DVD Shrink, both of which can rip straight to ISO

I'm not sure what the best mac tools are, but there are likely a great many free tools available.

OK, that was the problem -- dragging and dropping the files to get the VIDEO_TS etc directory worked fine for VLC after I made the .iso file, but xbmc and other tools didn't like it.

I used Toast on the Mac to rip directly to ISO file and now it works fine with XBMC etc

Will have to remember this for the next time

Thanks a lot for your help Billy.

Thanks a lot for your help Billy.

___________

Octopus
MusicpublishersLondon50