Is that what I have to do? Assign a “random show”? If so, how? Is that just a matter of naming the folder/files? E.g. Existing Show/Season 1/S01E01.mkv ? And then I would include custom metadata in S01E01.xml ?
So, based on the documentation (as noted above), I don’t see any reason for S01E01.mp4 to fail.
According to that, I would expect this to work: /videos/custom name/show name/season 1/S01E01.mp4
Also, I would like to get clarification on the question I asked. Is it really necessary to trick the system with an existing series and do I do that via the folder and file names?
That thread is about .nfo files, which are different. I am using .xml, which should work, according to what I can find (including the post referenced, earlier).
I’m pretty sure that xml and nfo are interchangeable. I’ve used the xml file template and just changed the file type to nfo and it worked identically.
The users guide “Metadata 101” is still the current go to source for info on metadata and it still only shows xml files for movies, not tv as stated in the thread I referenced above.
XML is a widely recognized standard. I haven’t seen anything to suggest that “.nfo” files are a standard that is recognized as interchangeable with XML. For example, Windows (7, 8, 10…) recognizes .nfo as a “system information file” by default. Wikipedia suggests something totally different for “.nfo” files.
Currently, in order for TV shows to appear in the Library, you will need to have Metadata Fetching enabled and the shows will need to match against something on TheTVDb. It won’t really matter what they’re matching since you’re overriding the fetched info with your own XML/artwork anyways.
As I understand this post:
You need metadata fetching
The show needs to “match against” something in TVDb
If those requirements are met, you can override with your own XML and art
So, my questions still remains: What does it mean to “match against” and how can I get this to work?
This is also a poor way to handle this, compared with the way movies work. I think Firecore needs to consider an update and I am happy to vote on that, if there is a thread with it.
When it says it needs to ‘match against’, it means the TV show needs to exist in the database of TVDB… if it doesn’t, you can join the database and add the show there… BUT Infuse still doesn’t handle TV Series very well at all locally. I pull the data from TVDB/TMDB and they use .nfo files (which generally have .xml headers… so I guess they are probably interchangeable as mentioned). This means Infuse must be reading them anyway when it fetches metadata from the online database right? Local metadata for me on TV Series, splits them up into individual episodes and they reside in ‘Other’… it’s just messy but I’d prefer to have local control over the appearance of my files. If Infuse can read the files anyway, surely it wouldn’t take much to be able to read them locally?
As mentioned on another thread, I have a series set which broadcast as 3 x 90 minute episodes (and this what the online database has) and the release version is 6 x 45 minutes. Short of merging the ripped episodes, I don’t know what else to do as nothing has worked. TVDBs response… edit the local .nfo file!
When it says it needs to ‘match against’, it means the TV show needs to exist in the database of TVDB… if it doesn’t, you can join the database and add the show there…
Of course the show must exist in the database. But what is the procedure to “match against” TVDb? Is it the filename? The folder? What makes it match? That is my question.
I am certainly not going to clutter TVDb up with random stuff that has nothing to do with their mission.
The match is on name and year I believe by file name.
As for cluttering up TVDB… I don’t think anyone is suggesting you should. I certainly didn’t suggest cluttering. But it’s either a TV show or it isn’t! If it’s a TV show then it should be in the database and if it’s not present, it should be added.
The match is on name and year I believe by file name.
As for cluttering up TVDB… I don’t think anyone is suggesting you should. I certainly didn’t suggest cluttering. But it’s either a TV show or it isn’t! If it’s a TV show then it should be in the database and if it’s not present, it should be added.
But a lot of things are recognized without the year. In any case, I followed the naming procedure per the documentation - Actual TV Show (1999)/Season 1/S01E01.mp4 - and that didn’t work. So, I’d really like to get @james to weigh in, since he posted the solution from 2017.
In the other thread, it looked like the suggestion was to clutter TVDb. What I am trying to add isn’t a TV show - it’s a web series. I want it organized in the same fashion as a TV Show because that is what makes sense. It’s not a movie. It should be in a folder with separate episodes and each episode should have art/metadata.
Hopefully he will come back with an answer and solve both of our problems. Like I said in my previous post, I haven’t got Infuse to work properly with TV Shows either… they sit in ‘Other’ and are all single files if I’m using local metadata. That local metadata is exactly the same as the metadata on TVDB so why it’s interpreted differently is anyone’s guess!
And yes, I think you’re right. With TV Shows the year seems to be irrelevant. I’ve tried with or without the year and it still seems to find a match. My structure is… /TV Shows/Name/season 1/name-S01E01.mkv and I’ve tried all other combinations listed but the result is the same. So hopefully, someone will be able to solve this as to me, it looks like Infuse can’t read .nfo files locally at all and the file structure alone simply doesn’t work.
Ah, I didn’t realise it was a web series. So yeah, adding to TVDB is not the way to go unless they have a separate category for it.
I shall keep an eye on this thread to hopefully, see an answer soon as it’s pretty frustrating.
I shall keep an eye on this thread to hopefully, see an answer soon as it’s pretty frustrating.
It’s very frustrating. The “TV Show” method of displaying files is very effective - a folder with separate, related episodes and art/metadata for the series plus each episode. The “Movie” format is not appropriate for everything, so we need to be able to have custom data that works in the “TV Show” media category.
So for matching tv shows with thetvdb, you need to match the name exactly. So if it shows a year in the name when browsing the site, add it to your file names/folders. If you add a year when there isn’t one you could get incorrect results.
This is different from movies because the year is added as a secondary attribute when searching TMDb. Infuse matches based on the order of results returned from the two sites.
I don’t actually have an issue with finding a match with TV Shows though. For me it’s about being able to alter the .nfo files once extracted from TVDb and choose to have Infuse read the local files over the TVDb ones. TVDb is great but it’s not always correct as TV show broadcasts/publications can differ by region.
Also, I think the ability to create .nfo (.xml) files would be beneficial in the instance of the web series above, home videos etc which aren’t going to be present in TVDb.
If so, how? Is that just a matter of naming the folder/files? E.g. Existing Show/Season 1/S01E01.mkv ? And then I would include custom metadata in S01E01.xml ?
Thanks! I will do so.