Media Tags

Hi, Thanks for a great prog.

I have just used the batch update wizard to update my nfo's to include the stream details so xbmc can import the tags.
I have loaded on a fresh install of xbmc from nightly build onto my xbox, using Transparency skin, and created a fresh movie library from scratch, but the tags didn't show, only the studio tags which showed before I did the update.
So I opened up one of the nfo's which had been updated and noticed from the xbmc wiki that it would appear that the format is slightly different so I hand changed the format to read as follows

<movie>
<fileinfo>
<streamdetails>

instead of the mc generated format

<movie>
<streamdetails>
<fileinfo>

and they appeard on the next fresh library created.

hope this helps

John.

Yep, looks like i've added them back to front. will upload a fix tomorrow (Today actually, lets say Saturday )

Sometime during the last few versions I noticed that media tags were not showing up in XBMC for my newly scraped movies, yet I'd never had a problem before and I hadn't changed any settings. This lead me to investigate why and play around a bit...

After looking at my Media Companion settings I noticed I had "Create HD Media Tags" unchecked, so I'm assuming in the past those tags were never added to the .nfo at all ( a quick look at older scraped movies shows this to be true ), but because I had XBMC set to grab that information itself I still saw the media flags on my skin. Was this recently changed in Media Companion to add blank tags to the .nfo even when "Create HD Media Tags" is unchecked? I ask because this causes XBMC to think the .nfo has the media tag information, so it doesn't grab it itself, but the .nfo is blank so nothing appears on screen in the skin. I'm not sure if that's a bug or not, but can you change it so if "Create HD Media Tags" is unchecked nothing under <fileinfo> is added at all to the .nfo?

So, of course, my initial reaction was to simply turn that feature on in Media Companion and let it scrape that information. After doing so I noticed that XBMC once again showed the video resolution, codec, and audio format, but it still wasn't showing the aspect ratio. If I delete the .nfo and let XBMC grab the information itself then the aspect ratio shows up fine. Is that information not being scraped by Media Companion? ( Admittedly, I don't know how XBMC figures out the aspect ratio. I see video height and width in the .nfo now, but maybe there's another field missing? )

Thanks, as always, for taking the time to read this and for all the hard work!

I will add a fix so that empty media tags are not added if the option is not enabled.

medianfo does return the aspect ratio as: "Display aspect ratio : 1.941", and can be added to MC easily, but I need to know the tagname to use. I will ask at XBMC.

billyad2000 wrote:

I will add a fix so that empty media tags are not added if the option is not enabled.

medianfo does return the aspect ratio as: "Display aspect ratio : 1.941", and can be added to MC easily, but I need to know the tagname to use. I will ask at XBMC.

The tagname is Aspect. This is also an issue for me.

Not sure how it works but if you uncheck the Create Media Tags option does MC remove that info from existing nfo`s if you re-scrape. If not could this option be added as, and I am still looking at any differences, if XBMC can now pull this info itself I may go down that route and remove this info from the nfo`s.

Also as far as I can remember I am also getting an issue with the Audio Codec tags. I am pretty sure that until recently it used to code it with DTS but now I seem to get a string of different codecs listed. I cannot be sure on specifics as am at the office now but just wanted to ask if anyhting had changed recently.
On the same subject where MC used to scrape the info from the movie as "DTS" Ember Media Manager seems to scrape the Audio as "dca" and this produces different flags in XBMC even though they depict the same audio type (ok so that may be a skin setting with the .xml which maps it to the tag icon), but can anyone shed any light on the differences here and why.

Thanks again for a great program.

EDIT: I have recently had to use Ember MM to get this information in to the nfo`s but would obviously just like to stick to MC. There are other options that Ember offers that MC does not have and one that springs to mind is the ability to use the <Duration> as the <runtime> which is what I belive XBMC picks up. Would it be possible to add this to MC also. Thanks.

I will add the "aspect" tag to the next build,

As for the rest, it is just a case of tweaking the tags so that the format returned is what the skins support.

This is not easy since their is little documentation.

But it would help if someone would give me a list of the Media Codecs and what the tags need to contain. At the moment they contain what is returned by medianfo.dll, but this is not always what is needed by XBMC

I will change the string "DTS" to "dca"
and
"runtime" to "Duration" (Are you sure about the high case "D" in "Duration"

Any other things that need to be changed then just let me know.

No need to change DTS to dca, it was just a question about the difference, I prefer the tags I get with DTS anyway.

runtime and duration (all lower case, sorry) - MC already populates both of these in the .nfo.

duration - comes from the actual movie file
runtime - comes from the scraper, IMDB......

Would it be possible to add an option to populate the runtime with the value from duration, that way when in XBMC and whatever view you are in you will always have an accurate "Movie length" after all I am really not interested in how long the movie was when it was added to IMDB or how long the version that was released in Outer Mongolia (no offence to OM friends) is but just want to see how long my actual film is.

With regards to populating the .nfo with Media Tag information, perhaps the easiest option here would be to have an option in batch rescraper to "Remove all Media Tags" I am planning on doing some testing with .nfo`s with and without media tags and seeing if there are any differences in what XBMC can get from the file or if there is benefit in having this information in the .nfo itself.

Thanks again.

Just adding the <aspect> tab now,

I noticed that the <duration> tag is already created,
eg
<duration>1h 47mn 41s 44ms</duration>

I wonder if the data format is wrong, these tags are working, but they do need to be tweaked, any help would be appreciated.

Hi, I will have a good look tomorrow as i have been experimenting with ember media manager and all the tags have been showing up fine.

Hi Billy

check out this nfo created by Ember Media manager there is also a link to a screenshot of my library showing the media tags this nfo has created, using the latest build of Xbmc for Xbox and Transparency skin v2.01.

The blank space in the row of media tags displayed is for the subtitles icon, I think which I don't have.

Hope this helps, let me know.

Thanks.


http://homepage.ntlworld.com/john.hanselman/



<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<movie xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<id>tt0480249</id>
<title>I Am Legend</title>
<originaltitle>I Am Legend</originaltitle>
<year>2007</year>
<rating>7.1</rating>
<votes>137,768</votes>
<mpaa>Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence.</mpaa>
<outline>Years after a plague kills most of humanity and transforms the rest into monsters, the sole survivor in New York City struggles valiantly to find a cure.</outline>
<plot>Robert Neville is a scientist who was unable to stop the spread of the terrible virus that was incurable and man-made. Immune, Neville is now the last human survivor in what is left of New York City and perhaps the world. For three years, Neville has faithfully sent out daily radio messages, desperate to find any other survivors who might be out there. But he is not alone. Mutant victims of the plague -- The Infected -- lurk in the shadows... watching Neville's every move... waiting for him to make a fatal mistake. Perhaps mankind's last, best hope, Neville is driven by only one remaining mission: to find a way to reverse the effects of the virus using his own immune blood. But he knows he is outnumbered... and quickly running out of time.</plot>
<tagline>The last man on earth is not alone</tagline>
<trailer>http://www.totaleclips.com/Player/Bounce.aspx?eclipid=e36933&amp;bitrateid=314&amp;vendorid=102&amp;type=.flv</trailer>
<certification>Venezuela:PG-13 / USA:PG-13 / UK:15 / Taiwan:PG-12 / Switzerland:14 / Switzerland:14 / Sweden:15 / South Korea:12 / South Africa:13V / Slovakia:12 / Singapore:PG / Portugal:M/12 / Philippines:PG-13 / Peru:14 / Norway:15 / New Zealand:M / Netherlands:12 / Malaysia:U / Japan:U / Ireland:15A / India:A / Iceland:14 / Hong Kong:IIB / Germany:16 / France:Unrated / Finland:K-15 / Denmark:11 / Czech Republic:12 / Canada:14A / Canada:13+ / Brazil:14 / Austria:14 / Australia:MA / Australia:M / Argentina:16</certification>
<genre>Drama / Horror / Sci-Fi / Thriller</genre>
<studio>Warner Bros. Pictures</studio>
<runtime>1 hrs 40 mins</runtime>
<releasedate>26/12/2007</releasedate>
<director>Francis Lawrence</director>
<credits>Mark Protosevich / Akiva Goldsman</credits>
<actor>
<name>Will Smith</name>
<role>Robert Neville</role>
<thumb>http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTc1NTA2MjkxMF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwOTQwMDA0MQ@@._V1._SY275_SX400_.jpg</thumb>
</actor>
<actor>
<name>Alice Braga</name>
<role>Anna</role>
<thumb>http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTgwNjE4NzU4M15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMDQ5NDI2MQ@@._V1._SY275_SX400_.jpg</thumb>
</actor>
<actor>
<name>Charlie Tahan</name>
<role>Ethan</role>
<thumb>http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTg2NDc3NTcxMV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMzgwOTI2Mg@@._V1._SY275_SX400_.jpg</thumb>
</actor>
<actor>
<name>Salli Richardson-Whitfield</name>
<role>Zoe (as Salli Richardson)</role>
<thumb />
</actor>
<actor>
<name>Willow Smith</name>
<role>Marley</role>
<thumb>http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTY1MTI2MDk0Ml5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMTMzNzg5MQ@@._V1._SY275_SX400_.jpg</thumb>
</actor>
<actor>
<name>Darrell Foster</name>
<role>Mike - Military Escort</role>
<thumb>http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTY3MzQ5MjMxOF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNjgwODQ5MQ@@._V1._SY275_SX400_.jpg</thumb>
</actor>
<actor>
<name>April Grace</name>
<role>TV Personality</role>
<thumb>http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTk3NzMwMjY0NV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwOTg3MTMzMQ@@._V1._SY275_SX400_.jpg</thumb>
</actor>
<actor>
<name>Dash Mihok</name>
<role>Alpha Male</role>
<thumb>http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTYwNDY4ODAyMV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNTY1NjYzMQ@@._V1._SY275_SX400_.jpg</thumb>
</actor>
<actor>
<name>Joanna Numata</name>
<role>Alpha Female</role>
<thumb />
</actor>
<actor>
<name>Abbey</name>
<role>Sam</role>
<thumb />
</actor>
<actor>
<name>Kona</name>
<role>Sam</role>
<thumb />
</actor>
<actor>
<name>Samuel Glen</name>
<role>Military Driver - Jay</role>
<thumb />
</actor>
<actor>
<name>James Michael McCauley</name>
<role>Male Evacuee (as James McCauley)</role>
<thumb>http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTI0MTU4MzM3Nl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwMjQ5MTE4._V1._SY275_SX400_.jpg</thumb>
</actor>
<actor>
<name>Marin Ireland</name>
<role>Woman Evacuee</role>
<thumb>http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BNjMwMzg4ODkxNV5BMl5BanBnXkFyZXN1bWU@._V1._SY275_SX400_.jpg</thumb>
</actor>
<actor>
<name>Pedro Mojica</name>
<role>Sergeant</role>
<thumb />
</actor>
<fileinfo>
<streamdetails>
<video>
<width>632</width>
<height>258</height>
<codec>dx50</codec>
<duration>1h 40mn</duration>
<aspect>2.450</aspect>
<scantype>Progressive</scantype>
</video>
<audio>
<codec>mp3</codec>
<channels>2</channels>
</audio>
</streamdetails>
</fileinfo>
</movie>

hasselhof wrote:

Hi Billy

check out this nfo created by Ember Media manager there is also a link to a screenshot of my library showing the media tags this nfo has created, using the latest build of Xbmc for Xbox and Transparency skin v2.01.

The blank space in the row of media tags displayed is for the subtitles icon, I think which I don't have.

Hope this helps, let me know.

Thanks.

<streamdetails>
<video>
<width>632</width>
<height>258</height>
<codec>dx50</codec>
<duration>1h 40mn</duration>
<aspect>2.450</aspect>
<scantype>Progressive</scantype>
</video>
<audio>
<codec>mp3</codec>
<channels>2</channels>
</audio>
</streamdetails>
</fileinfo>
</movie>

The above is the only important part, could you post the stream details from the nfo for the same movie when created by Media Companion.

The aspect should now be correct, and I also use the same format for runtime.

I just need to know what the tags are for the codecs.

Hi Billy here is an nfo created with v3.142 of the same film as before


<fileinfo>
<streamdetails>
<video>
<width>632</width>
<height>258</height>
<aspect>
</aspect>
<codec>DX50</codec>
<format>DX50</format>
<duration>1h 40mn</duration>
<bitrate>856 Kbps</bitrate>
<bitratemode>
</bitratemode>
<bitratemax>
</bitratemax>
<container>.avi</container>
<codecid>DX50</codecid>
<codecidinfo>
</codecidinfo>
<scantype>0.219</scantype>
</video>
<audio>
<language>
</language>
<codec>MP3</codec>
<channels>2</channels>
<bitrate>112 Kbps</bitrate>
</audio>
<subtitle />
</streamdetails>
</fileinfo>

hasselhof wrote:

Hi Billy here is an nfo created with v3.142 of the same film as before


<fileinfo>
<streamdetails>
<video>
<width>632</width>
<height>258</height>
<aspect>
</aspect>
<codec>DX50</codec>
<format>DX50</format>
<duration>1h 40mn</duration>
<bitrate>856 Kbps</bitrate>
<bitratemode>
</bitratemode>
<bitratemax>
</bitratemax>
<container>.avi</container>
<codecid>DX50</codecid>
<codecidinfo>
</codecidinfo>
<scantype>0.219</scantype>
</video>
<audio>
<language>
</language>
<codec>MP3</codec>
<channels>2</channels>
<bitrate>112 Kbps</bitrate>
</audio>
<subtitle />
</streamdetails>
</fileinfo>

Looking at that it is just the <scantype> tag that needs fixing.

Hi,

Yes the scantype needs fixing but also as of the latest version aspect still remains blank, I do not beleive I have had one version where it was populated at all.
Further to this, it think it was discussed eariler in this thread, please could you have media tags removed from the .nfo if they are not populated by MC. eg. <codecidinfo> </codecidinfo> from the above example. If the tags are not present them XBMC can (if possible) retrieve this info itself however if the tags exist, although blank, XBMC will not retrieve this info from the file.

Lastly, please could you add an option to remove all <fileinfo> details from the .nfo`s

As always thanks again for all your hard work on this.

MarkC wrote:

Hi,

Yes the scantype needs fixing but also as of the latest version aspect still remains blank, I do not beleive I have had one version where it was populated at all.
Further to this, it think it was discussed eariler in this thread, please could you have media tags removed from the .nfo if they are not populated by MC. eg. <codecidinfo> </codecidinfo> from the above example. If the tags are not present them XBMC can (if possible) retrieve this info itself however if the tags exist, although blank, XBMC will not retrieve this info from the file.

Lastly, please could you add an option to remove all <fileinfo> details from the .nfo`s

As always thanks again for all your hard work on this.

Hi,

Sorry to be a pain but is there any timeframe for a fix for the above, currently I have to use MC and Ember to create .nfo's that work correctly. The most important parts are the scantype, aspect and removing non populated tags from the nfo.

Thanks.

MarkC wrote:

MarkC wrote:

Hi,

Yes the scantype needs fixing but also as of the latest version aspect still remains blank, I do not beleive I have had one version where it was populated at all.
Further to this, it think it was discussed eariler in this thread, please could you have media tags removed from the .nfo if they are not populated by MC. eg. <codecidinfo> </codecidinfo> from the above example. If the tags are not present them XBMC can (if possible) retrieve this info itself however if the tags exist, although blank, XBMC will not retrieve this info from the file.

Lastly, please could you add an option to remove all <fileinfo> details from the .nfo`s

As always thanks again for all your hard work on this.

Hi,

Sorry to be a pain but is there any timeframe for a fix for the above, currently I have to use MC and Ember to create .nfo's that work correctly. The most important parts are the scantype, aspect and removing non populated tags from the nfo.

Thanks.

There will be a new build at some point over the weekend.

I can't find out why your having an issue with the aspect and scantype since they are working fine for me, out of curiosity are you just rescraping to add the tags, or does new media still contain blank aspect and scantype tags. I ask because MC can only identify the media after scraping under limited circumstances.
The problem is that MC actually only keeps track of the nfo, and in some situations this causes difficulties.
Movietitle.nfo
movietitle.avi is easy

Movietitle cd1.nfo
Movietitle cd1.avi is also straight forward, cd1 is supported by mc and it can look for Movietitle cd2.avi, Movietitle cd3.avi etc

movietitle.nfo
movietitle cd1.avi - not so easy, at the moment MC cannot find this media file, rescraping will not change the Media tags.

movie.nfo
Movietitle cd1.avi - not so easy, at the moment MC cannot find this media file, rescraping will not change the Media tags.

I have a few ideas that will fix this, I can't promise that it will be ready for the next build though, it depends on how much time I get over the weekend.

As for the next build.
As you have requested blank tags are not added to the nfo, the tags on a movie I have just rescraped look like this:

Code:

  <fileinfo>
    <streamdetails>
      <video>
        <width>608</width>
        <height>256</height>
        <aspect>2.375</aspect>
        <codec>XVID</codec>
        <format>XVID</format>
        <duration>1h 31mn</duration>
        <bitrate>923 Kbps</bitrate>
        <container>.avi</container>
        <codecid>XVID</codecid>
        <scantype>Progressive</scantype>
      </video>
      <audio>
        <codec>MP3</codec>
        <channels>2</channels>
        <bitrate>130 Kbps</bitrate>
      </audio>
    </streamdetails>
  </fileinfo>

There is also a couple of ways that all media tags can be removed;

• You can use the batch rescrape wizard, using the "Rescrape Media Tags" option, if the preference is set not to scrape HD tags then they will all be removed
  
• From the next build there is also an option to rebuild all movie nfo's, I added this option because I cocked up the <sortorder> tag, it should have been <sorttitle>, this option means that updates can be applied to all updates without the need to rescrape all movies. If HD tags is enabled then empty tags will be removed, if it is disabled then all the tags will be removed.

These changes have all been added and tested. It was my hope to upload a build yesterday, but have found another unrelated yet critical issue with using google to search for the movie ID, when testing the new build I deleted about 500 of my movie nfo files and noticed that after scraping 300 or so, google started blocking the search, MC was then unable to identify the movie, not only that, it also has the side effect of having me enter a image word before I can use google in my browser. Hopefully this will expire soon but either way, it would be prudent to remove this rather than have users of MC encounter the same issue, I will have to go back to the imdb search used in gen1, a shame really since google is far more accurate than the imdb.
This is my no1 priority to fix but should not take long, I have to go to work today , but the changes will be ready for the weekend.

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

<aspect> is consistently blank for me (for all movie types; .mkv, avi...) if scraping a new movie or re-scraping. I think I saw it populate a few times but only after I had created the fileinfo with Ember and then used MC to overwrite it. Please see example below which I have just scrapped.
As you can see scantype is also incorrect (never been blank) but cannot work out for the life of me where it is getting this number from (it is different for different movies). Perhaps it is something specific to my build, am running Win7 x64 (RTM). I am logged in as Supervisor, I have tried scraping from 3 different PC`s but unfortunatley all run Win7 x64 and do give the same results.

I do not have any movies with multiple parts, they are all single files.

Thanks again for all your effort...

Mark.

<streamdetails>
<video>
<width>640</width>
<height>352</height>
<aspect>
</aspect>
<codec>XVID</codec>
<format>XVID</format>
<duration>1h 34mn</duration>
<bitrate>860 Kbps</bitrate>
<bitratemode>
</bitratemode>
<bitratemax>
</bitratemax>
<container>.avi</container>
<codecid>XVID</codecid>
<codecidinfo>
</codecidinfo>
<scantype>0.153</scantype>
</video>
<audio>
<language>
</language>
<codec>MP3</codec>
<channels>2</channels>
<bitrate>158 Kbps</bitrate>
</audio>
<subtitle />
</streamdetails>
</fileinfo>

MarkC wrote:

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

<aspect> is consistently blank for me (for all movie types; .mkv, avi...) if scraping a new movie or re-scraping. I think I saw it populate a few times but only after I had created the fileinfo with Ember and then used MC to overwrite it. Please see example below which I have just scrapped.
As you can see scantype is also incorrect (never been blank) but cannot work out for the life of me where it is getting this number from (it is different for different movies). Perhaps it is something specific to my build, am running Win7 x64 (RTM). I am logged in as Supervisor, I have tried scraping from 3 different PC`s but unfortunatley all run Win7 x64 and do give the same results.

I do not have any movies with multiple parts, they are all single files.

Thanks again for all your effort...

Could I ask what build are you using?

medianfo.dll may be the problem, what version are you using, would you have a look at the file properties/details for me

I doubt it is a windows 7 issue, I am using Windows 7 Pro Retail (x64) to develop the program on.

Using 3.148 clean unRar from your file.

MediaInfo.dll version 1.7.7.6

After I posted also realised it is probably not my build as Ember pulls the info without issue.

Thanks.

I've just noticed that the I am using medianfo.dll 0.7.20.0 to develop MC, but the build I am distributing is build 0.7.7.6

Maybe that is the problem

Try this build 0.7.20.0

OK - I can verify that this is the problem, replacing the mediainfo.dll with the one linked above fixed the problem with aspect and scantype.

The blank tags are removed from the next build.

Yup, that worked!

Many Thanks!

<video>
<width>592</width>
<height>320</height>
<aspect>1.850</aspect>
<codec>XVID</codec>
<format>XVID</format>
<duration>1h 31mn</duration>
<bitrate>970 Kbps</bitrate>
<bitratemode>
</bitratemode>
<bitratemax>
</bitratemax>
<container>.avi</container>
<codecid>XVID</codecid>
<codecidinfo>
</codecidinfo>
<scantype>Progressive</scantype>
</video>

All that effort for a simple mistake on my part of not updating the mediainfo library.

I need to spend a bit more time when creating the builds for people to download.

Lesson well learnt

At least we got to the bottom of it.

I must admit I am pretty surprised there were no more posts on this from other users as at least for me the flags are a pretty important part of the skins now.

Thanks again for your time!

A huge thanks for all the hard work on fixing media tags and removing the empty media tags from movie .nfo's if they aren't scraped. It's much appreciated.

I just noticed though that empty media tags are still included in TV episode .nfo's. Is there any way these can get the same treatment as the movies and be removed completely if media tag info isn't set to be scraped? ( I looked through the preferences and didn't even see an option for TV media tags, so obviously this would needed to be added first... )

Thanks!