currently I am facing some issues with Infuse’s metadata fetching on my Apple devices.
Recently I got some german movies: Stephen King’s ES (1980), Helena von Troja (2003) and James Clavell’s Shogun (1980).
Infuse won’t fetch any metadata for these movie titles.
Even when I’m trying to edit the metadata manually, Infuse won’t find any results matching my request.
My library contains > 2000 Movies and > 3500 TV Shows - all remaining metadata is fine, except the ones above.
The devices on which I have installed Infuse are: one iPhone, one iPad, two AppleTVs.
All are connected to TRAKT.tv and are linked with iCloud.
I already tried several workarounds: changing Metadata Language (default: german), searching the movies with their original title names, restarting Infuse/iPhone.
Nothing helped.
The most confusing part is, that a friend is able to find the requested metadata for the same movie titles!
His Infuse is working as expected.
How is it possible?
For the first “Steven Kings It” the problem is that the 1990 version was a "made for TV movie and released in 2 episodes. TheMovieDB.org used to have it also listed as a DVD movie but they changed the policy for TV to dvd shows and decided to only provide movie only. You get the metadata for the TV version by using the name “Stephen Kings IT S01E01.ext” . That is for the first half. If you have both halves then the second would be the same except S01E02.
We’ve gone around several times with themoviedb.org and their steadfast in their decision. The reason your friend got the metadata is that he probably grabbed the metadata when themoviedb.org still had it as a listing. If he refreshes it will disappear.
You can create your own metadata files for it by generating an xml file and getting the artwork you want. That’s how I did mine.
I’ll look into the other one shortly and let you know what I found out.
Edit to add:
Just checked both of the others and they are in the same boat, all are TV mini series and will have to be named as such to gather the metadata from thetvdb.com
I have 4 ATVs and only one has the metadata for the IT movie because I never refreshed the metadata after themoviedb.org removed it. I found that out by refreshing that movie which was showing the right metadata on a different ATV and it disappeared after the refresh. Learned that lesson the hard way. It was easy to create the local metadata for it so I just did that.
Things will clear up now.
I do understand.
Can you explain please how to create and how to store a local XML file?
And: how can I avoid this behaviour happening to my existing/already fetched movies without creating tons of XML files for local metadata - when themoviedb suddenly decides to convert a movie into a tv show?
How can I track these „decisions“ of themoviedb?
I’ll try on the xml, first check out this thread XML isn't working? which has a link to a sample xml file. Then check out this users guide Metadata 101 – Firecore Support on how they need to be named and also for artwork.
I’ll try and attach my file for the movie and all you have to do is change the extension from txt to xml and then change the xml file name to match exactly your movie file. Just put them all where the users guide says and then you should be good to go.
But how about that:
„And: how can I avoid this behaviour happening to my existing/already fetched movies without creating tons of XML files for local metadata - when themoviedb suddenly decides to convert a movie into a tv show?
How can I track these „decisions“ of themoviedb?“
Will the affected movies autmomatically appear as ‚others‘ then?
It seems that once you have the metadata it stays. Like I said earlier, I have the old metadata on an ATV that is still there. As long as you don’t delete the movie or move it causing a new search it should be fine.
This is really really a rare occurrence so I really wouldn’t worry about it. I have only seen it on the three movies you mentioned. That was a rare occasion that themoviedb.org even changed a policy so you can just be aware that there is an option if you do happen to have it occur on another movie.
I don’t have “tons” of xml files in fact the only one I really have in play is the one for “IT” from 1990. In fact, I took the DVD video file and split it into 2 episodes the same as the TV miniseries and used the TV show format of “Steven Kings IT S01E01.ext” so it’d be picked up by theTVdb.com instead of themoviedb.org.