Media Companion not recognising your folder structure/file names? Look here!

Hey

I've had much success with a 'non-standard' file naming convention for my TV shows (my movies are OK), so I thought I would post here for anyone having trouble.


Here's an example. My TV shows are organised like this:

Seinfeld (1990)\Season 3\04 - Episodename.avi


Now straight off the bat, Media Companion won't recognise this. So I found billyad2000's advice to someone in an obscure thread somewhere.


This is the solution:


Find out how to scrape your shows/movies with XBMC. With XBMC, if it doesn't initially recognise your structure/filenames, you can make it do so by using regex's (regular expressions, a special type of masking) - and then you would insert the specific regex for your files into advancedsettings.xml

To find the correct regex for you (depends on your folder structure and file naming), search the FAQ on xbmc.org - this is what I did, and I got the right regex from there (they have examples) - if your's doesn't match any of the examples, I would strongly suggest adopting one of their conventions, as those are the most logical.

If you have some fancy way of doing things, you'll need to find out how to make a regex for yourself (which seems complicated for a newbie... I didn't know how to lol)


Once you have the correct regex, navigate to the same folder the Media Companion EXE is in on your computer. Create a new notepad file there and call it regex.xml

This is what it should contain:

<regex>Season[\._ ]([0-9]+)[\\/]([0-9]+)[^\\/]*</regex> <--- where the bold part is YOUR regex (I've used mine here as an example, it's one of the ones you can find in the XBMC FAQs, and will work for the folder structure/file naming I posted at the top of this post)



That's it! Now scan your shows - Media Companion will show a TOTAL number of episodes (e.g. for me it was like 300), and once it FINISHES scraping, you will see your TV Shows organised by show and seasons. But this organising occurs AFTER scraping COMPLETES - not before.


Hope you all have the success I had

Thanks again to billyad2000 for this great program

I tried this and still no dice. I can get my shows to show but no episodes. My files are stored on a server. I am using the same regex as above. he exact path to files is a mapped drive (Y:\videoshare\tvshows\Family Guy\Season 1\file.xyz)

Any suggestions?

You must have the regex in both Media Companion AND in XBMC (advancedsettings.xml)

Apart from that, are your episodes named 01 - episodename.avi, 02 - episodename.avi, etc.?

Yes that is how my files are named. But this has nothing to do with advancedsettings.xml That file is on my xbox, unless you are saying I need the same file in my media companion folder. I must be missing something, I don't get it.

No, sorry I meant you need the regex included in Media Companion (through regex.xml) and on your Xbox (advancedsettings.xml) - so two instances of the regex...


Also, have you attempted to scan and scrape? The episodes will only show up AFTER you scrape using Media Companion - seasons show up before scraping, but not episodes.


I can't think of any reason it won't work other than doing this:

1. make sure your advancedsettings.xml is on your xbox (you will know this is functioning correctly if you can use XBMC's inbuilt scraping... try to see if this works first)

2. Ensure you are running the LATEST version of Media Companion (1.998? or something like that)

3. Make sure regex.xml is in the same folder as the Media Companion exe file, with the regex correctly typed, between the <regex> and </regex> tags

4. Select your TV show folders in the preferences window pointing to the folder containing the TV show directory (e.g. if you have a folder called Family Guy in C:\TV Shows\, have Media Companion point to C:\TV Shows

5. Attempt to scan with Media Companion, regardless of anything coming up or not.


I'm sure you've done all these things, but try again, starting from scratch - if this doesn't work, I don't know what's causing your trouble :/

I need help with a Regex, I'm almost there but it's still not picking up any episodes

My structure is as follow (2 examples):

G:\tvshows\American Dad\Season_01\american.dad.101.hdtv.avi
G:\tvshows\Chuck\Season_01\chuck.101.dvdrip.avi

I added G:\tvshows\ to Media companion

now I have this regex in my regex.xml

<regexp>Season_([0-9]+)[\\/][a-zA-Z0-9]+.([0-9])([0-9][0-9])[\._ \-][^\\/]*</regexp>

if I test this regex in a regex tester it should match my 2nd example but it still does not find any eps.

and i dont know how to match it for the 1st example.

I dont know much about regex, Im trying but seem to be stuck.

any help would be appreciated

Download version 2.107 https://billyad2000.darkbb.com/announcements-f1/small-update-2107-t329.htm

It seems I had broke the custom regex system.

Create a text file containing the following:-

<override>false</override>
<regex>([0-9]+)([0-9][0-9])[^\\/]*</regex>

save the file as "regex.xml"

If you have a filename containing 3 digits 101, 102 etc digit 1 is the series no and digits 2 & 3 are the episode no.
If you have a filename containing 4 digits 0101, 0102 etc digits 1 & 2 are the series no and digits 3 & 4 are the episode no.

billyad2000 wrote:

Download version 2.107 https://billyad2000.darkbb.com/announcements-f1/small-update-2107-t329.htm

It seems I had broke the custom regex system.

Create a text file containing the following:-

<override>false</override>
<regex>([0-9]+)([0-9][0-9])[^\\/]*</regex>

save the file as "regex.xml"

If you have a filename containing 3 digits 101, 102 etc digit 1 is the series no and digits 2 & 3 are the episode no.
If you have a filename containing 4 digits 0101, 0102 etc digits 1 & 2 are the series no and digits 3 & 4 are the episode no.

Thanks a lot, with the new version and the regex you gave me, it could find episodes in the 2 examples I gave, now I just have to do all of the remaining shows, thanks a lot

joncgde2 wrote:

Hey
To find the correct regex for you (depends on your folder structure and file naming), search the FAQ on xbmc.org - this is what I did, and I got the right regex from there (they have examples) - if your's doesn't match any of the examples, I would strongly suggest adopting one of their conventions, as those are the most logical.

Finding it took me a while, so here is the direct link to the xbmc wiki page for people who are interested:
http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=TV_Shows_(Video_Library)#TV_show_filenaming_conventions

My episodes are organized like this:
<Show Name>\Season <x>\<release file>
<release file> is for example lost.s04e01.hdtv.xvid-xor.avi

Is it possible to create a regexp for this?

eriksmith200 wrote:

Finding it took me a while, so here is the direct link to the xbmc wiki page for people who are interested:
http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=TV_Shows_(Video_Library)#TV_show_filenaming_conventions

My episodes are organized like this:
<Show Name>\Season <x>\<release file>
<release file> is for example lost.s04e01.hdtv.xvid-xor.avi

Is it possible to create a regexp for this?

There are two regex hard coded into media companion :-
S01E02
or
1x2
The regex is not case sensitive.

lost.s04e01.hdtv.xvid-xor.avi will work without additional regex (s04e01)

billyad2000 wrote:

Download version 2.107 https://billyad2000.darkbb.com/announcements-f1/small-update-2107-t329.htm
Create a text file containing the following:-

<override>false</override>
<regex>([0-9]+)([0-9][0-9])[^\\/]*</regex>

save the file as "regex.xml"

If you have a filename containing 3 digits 101, 102 etc digit 1 is the series no and digits 2 & 3 are the episode no.
If you have a filename containing 4 digits 0101, 0102 etc digits 1 & 2 are the series no and digits 3 & 4 are the episode no.

Ah that worked for me, sorry I missed it initially.
After correctly naming the season specials (using season 0, episode # from thetvdb.com specials sections), almost everything works fine.
Only problem is if a release group has a number in the name: Lost.S04E13-E14.HDTV.XviD-2HD.avi will become episode 2, as will all 2HD releases. Is this fixable with a change to the regexp or is renaming the files the only option?

eriksmith200 wrote:

Ah that worked for me, sorry I missed it initially.
After correctly naming the season specials (using season 0, episode # from thetvdb.com specials sections), almost everything works fine.
Only problem is if a release group has a number in the name: Lost.S04E13-E14.HDTV.XviD-2HD.avi will become episode 2, as will all 2HD releases. Is this fixable with a change to the regexp or is renaming the files the only option?

Just wondering what version you are using, the problem you are having with 2HD shouldn't be an issue any more.

Latest verision is 2.132 - see the announcements forum

billyad2000 wrote:

eriksmith200 wrote:

Ah that worked for me, sorry I missed it initially.
After correctly naming the season specials (using season 0, episode # from thetvdb.com specials sections), almost everything works fine.
Only problem is if a release group has a number in the name: Lost.S04E13-E14.HDTV.XviD-2HD.avi will become episode 2, as will all 2HD releases. Is this fixable with a change to the regexp or is renaming the files the only option?

Just wondering what version you are using, the problem you are having with 2HD shouldn't be an issue any more.

Latest verision is 2.132 - see the announcements forum

oops I am using 2.085, from the download section of your website

eriksmith200 wrote:

oops I am using 2.085, from the download section of your website

No problem, since I am constantly adding new features to Media Companion there often is a gap of about a month between releases getting announced on this forum and getting onto the main website, only after all main issues are resolved do I upload it to the Webpage

I've not long discovered Media Companion and it appears to be EXACTLY what I need! I have multiple XBox's in different rooms which each access a central location for media. Media Companion will save me having to scrape on every box; it will also help out when transferring to my girlfriends house (who runs the same setup as I do).

I really hope I'm missing something simple here lol. My media is laid out using the same naming convention as joncgde2 and mhermann (posts 1 and 2) eg:

Battlestar Galactica\Season 1\01 - Episode.avi
Battlestar Galactica\Season 1\02 - Episode.avi
Stargate Atlantis\Season 1\01 - Episode.avi
Stargate Atlantis\Season 2\02 - Episode.avi

So forth and so on. I've been through the examples above and connot for the life of me get Media Companion to find my episodes. It will find the TV Show name, but no seasons under them.

The regular expressions I use on my XBox's are:

<regexp>Season[\._ ]([0-9]+)[\\/]([0-9]+)[^\\/]*</regexp> (for almost all of my tv shows)
<regexp>Day[\._ ]([0-9]+)[\\/]([0-9]+)[^\\/]*</regexp> (this is for the tv show '24')

I have tried cutting it down to just my 'Season' regex in case the 'Day' one was causing problems. I have downloaded a few different versions of MC with no success although I've been using version 2.107 more due to billyad2000's post.

Can anyone help me out?

Cheers

I use a program called 'TV Rename' and to be honest, I couldn't manage my media without it! You can use it to rename all your files into the correct structure and naming convention automatically. That's just the start though...

Have a look here:

http://tvrename.com/about.html

It does everything a media centre user needs!