What, exactly, does infuse 6 support for embedded metadata, and how does it differ for file format? I’m specifically interested in mkv but the question is relevant to other containers as well as different containers have different limitations.
I used metaX to add some local metadata to a test mkv or 2 and some, but not all of the metadata was picked up. Rather than go through the laborious trial and error guessing game process, it would be better if firecore will just tell us.
This question shouldn’t actually be answered in the forum, the metadata article should contain the answer. Or another new article. It does amount to a documentation issue.
So disappointed in lack of response. Local metadata is so important because the *db are littered with errors, incomplete, and especially bad for anything out of the ordinary.
I spent today doing a local metadata hackathon. Here are my findings.
MetaX is actually a horrible software. But, it did give me a very fast understanding of how mkv metadata is meant to be written. Using what I learned from MetaX, I hacked together my own tool in a couple of hours instead of the days of learning it would have taken. Also an actually great thing about MetaX is it will write out nfo and xml files. So I also didn’t have to spend forever learning how local-but-not-embedded metadata is supposed to work.
‘Metadata 101’ article is helpful but only in passing. The sample xml file apparently shows the only metadata that will work. It doesn’t explain what to do for a tv show. I changed the media type to “tvshow” and it worked, but I haven’t yet tested episode ordering so I’m not convinced yet. The article doesn’t even mention that .nfo files are supported. Mostly that article is not actually about metadata but about file naming to support online query of such. Maybe I’m asking for too much here.
infuse does not follow the current XMBC/Kodi spec for nfo files.
What does work for infuse, from current Kodi nfo documentation:
actor and actor/name (ie, name as a child element of actor)
director
genre
mpaa
plot
title
year, although marked ‘do not use’ in kodi
What works, but isn’t documented for Kodi (nor infuse) anywhere:
writer
What doesn’t work, but should if infuse were to follow current Kodi (which they should for sake of compatibility – we all have pre-existing libraries you know):
premiered
aired
What doesn’t work as there is no display field for it with infuse:
studio
actor/role
uniqueid isn’t necessary for infuse even though per kodi it is required … it only refers to some other source so i can’t fathom the supposed requirement anyway
I can spend more time hacking nfo/xml for episodic data but it would be better if someone from firecore can comment on the xml/nfo fields necessary to order episodes, or definitely state that no such support exists.
I will have another post in a jiffy about embedded (into the video container itself) metadata.
The above nfo/xml learnings are enough for my general need, aside from being able to specify episode ordering outside of the filename format.
But what would be really more helpful is if embedded metadata worked. It does, but only barely. For mkv files anyway. Didn’t test mp4 as that’s a completely different beast. Better support for embedded metadata would avoid yukking up the filesystem with nfo or xml files. And it’s convenient to have it within the same container.
Rather than follow the matroska spec for embedded tags, kodi claims to require that the nfo be attached to the mkv. But actually Kodi allows override of an attached nfo/xml (or separate file nfo/xml) with just 3 matroska tags. I don’t recall the exact ones and didn’t investigate why just those 3. I didn’t test this with infuse yet. But infuse does support some matroska style xml tags.
infuse supports only level 50 tags AFAICT. These work:
description
genre
title
Nothing else worked. I tried both the matroska specified tag names (deficient, but documented) and the kodi nfo names as tag names.
also embedding cover art as an mkv attachment works.
It took me an extra 2-3 hours to figure embedding out because infuse ignores any elements that contain a ‘targettype’ element. Without any kind of diagnostic this was pretty frustrating.
Please, can someone from firecore comment on this. It would be so better to embed the same metadata as is supported in the xml standalone files. Either as matroska tags or as attached xml, I think either way is fine.
Would love this question answered too. Seen many similar questions referring to local metadata. At best these questions got a vague or incomplete answer.
There should be a decent guide on here that describes metadata support for embedded (in the file) and local (xml or nfo file) metadata. And for both movies and TV.
still disappointed, but I have a workaround. I’m now using MrMC (tvOS port of Kodi). in the meantime i will submit a suggestion to support attached metadata as kodi does. mostly because i like hearing my own voice echo.