2013-11-24, 22:54
About two years ago with the release of Windows 8 previews, it became clear that Microsoft has changed their thinking around Media Center. As a result, I started to move my HTPCs that were all running Media Browser to XBMC Eden.
We’d spent a long time creating and getting the metadata just the way we liked it thanks mostly to Pete Souza’s Media Center Master application. So it was natural to try and continue to use his application and continue to benefit from the local metadata we’d
built up over the years. This has always given us a high level of control that local metadata offers for all those shows that aren’t easy to fit into thetvdb world.
However, how the XBMC library handles Specials (Season 00) shows was/is different to Media Browsers. Basically, unless the <displayseason> and <displayepisode> are set correctly in the metadata for XBMC, it will automatically place them at the start of each and every season.
In the case of one show, it meant there where 40+ specials, and only 6 actual season episodes in most seasons. There are of course lots of tools that will try and position the specials inline with the season they ‘appear in’, but we preferred having them in the specials folder just like Media Browser.
So I created a tool to recursively walk the TV shows looking for .NFO files contained in the season 00 folders. Once found, examine the episode number and set the <displayseason> tag to -1, and the <displayepisode> tag to the same episode number it has in the specials folder…
So a show with S00E61 , would be :
<displayseason>-1</displayseason>
<displayepisode>61</displayepisode>
XBMC ( GOTHAM with local information scraper ) , will then only display the episode in the SPECIALS folder , and not at the start of each season. (tho you might need to refresh the episode data)
How to use
The tool is very simple to use, simply select the folder containing your TV shows and press process. It will recursively search all the folders looking for specials and update their .NFOs. When complete, a refresh of the special episodes over in XBMC and that’s
pretty much it.
XBMC Tools - Specials Folder Override - Bulk Update Tool
If its useful and helps you have your Specials where you want them , cool , enjoy
We’d spent a long time creating and getting the metadata just the way we liked it thanks mostly to Pete Souza’s Media Center Master application. So it was natural to try and continue to use his application and continue to benefit from the local metadata we’d
built up over the years. This has always given us a high level of control that local metadata offers for all those shows that aren’t easy to fit into thetvdb world.
However, how the XBMC library handles Specials (Season 00) shows was/is different to Media Browsers. Basically, unless the <displayseason> and <displayepisode> are set correctly in the metadata for XBMC, it will automatically place them at the start of each and every season.
In the case of one show, it meant there where 40+ specials, and only 6 actual season episodes in most seasons. There are of course lots of tools that will try and position the specials inline with the season they ‘appear in’, but we preferred having them in the specials folder just like Media Browser.
So I created a tool to recursively walk the TV shows looking for .NFO files contained in the season 00 folders. Once found, examine the episode number and set the <displayseason> tag to -1, and the <displayepisode> tag to the same episode number it has in the specials folder…
So a show with S00E61 , would be :
<displayseason>-1</displayseason>
<displayepisode>61</displayepisode>
XBMC ( GOTHAM with local information scraper ) , will then only display the episode in the SPECIALS folder , and not at the start of each season. (tho you might need to refresh the episode data)
How to use
The tool is very simple to use, simply select the folder containing your TV shows and press process. It will recursively search all the folders looking for specials and update their .NFOs. When complete, a refresh of the special episodes over in XBMC and that’s
pretty much it.
XBMC Tools - Specials Folder Override - Bulk Update Tool
If its useful and helps you have your Specials where you want them , cool , enjoy