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No expert and just suggesting a possible route to troubleshoot. Would I be right that you are running some form of add-on to display up-coming TV episodes? If so I wonder whether removing that and trying scraping again (without Ember), might be an option for you (don't know anything about the add-on, or others for that matter).
There is always an assumption that the fault lies with the scraper. But, I can only speak from my own personal experience, where I have a bog-standard default installation (no add-on's of any kind only addition is the use of Aeon65 skin) and have had no trouble scraping and haven't had (other than tvdb downtime) in almost the last 18 months. Not boasting and I might add perhaps I've just have been lucky.
I feel your pain that it doesn't just work, but I often wonder whether the bells and whistles might just be more of a contributory factor than perhaps we and others are prepared to recognise.
Not a solution as I say, but sometimes you just have to strip things backs to their base components, get it up and running, then add the 'bells and whistles' until you find the one that is causing the problems - as we do with computer hardware problems. All too often users just jump right in and add everything in the one go and then have issues - not having a pop at your anybody else I might add.
Might be worth getting right back to basics and see if that helps. Good luck.
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2011-01-20, 19:44
(This post was last modified: 2011-01-21, 05:06 by soundbyte.)
Thanks for the reply. I'm using no add-ons other than Ember to scrape my TV shows and movies. Presently, everything works great for the movies...I just run into trouble with the TV shows.
I suppose I could delete all the local nfo files for all my TV shows and let XBMC scrape. Still seems like an odd problem to me. XBMC recognizes the file exists, but doesn't want to add it to the library until after Ember generates an nfo file for it. I wouldn't mind if XBMC scraped the show itself, but the issue lies that XBMC doesn't even initiate the scraping for new episodes.
EDIT: This might sound like a stupid question, but where does the default scraper store the images, nfo, etc that it downloads? I see the thumbnails are put into the userdata folder, but it doesn't appear to do so in any organized fashion. In case I want to change out a downloaded thumbnail or modify the nfo file for a show, where do i look?
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Just a shot in the dark....
Could you turn off the option CLEAN FILE AND FOLDER FILENAMES ?
just for the fun of it?
You can do a great deal of problem solving yourself and learn a great deal and share this information with us by doing the following steps:
Create a TEST folder somewhere on any harddisk
In there, create a subfolder called TVSHOWS
In there create a subfolder called THE WIRE
In there create subfolders called SEASON 01 ( do for all seasons)
Copy 1 or 2 episodes in the appropriate folders
Delete all extra information, delete the .actors folder, the .tbn, the .nfo, all of it except your actual episode.
Temporarily move your old THEWIRE folder to a location so that XBMC would scan them and delete them from the library as well...
Clean your XBMC library
Add a new media source to xbmc and point to the TEST folder, set it up, and let it scrape for the information (DON'T MAKE THEM WITH EMBER)
It probably scrapes the info and shows up in the library
Now add a couple of episodes and see if they are picked up by the startup scan...
If all works, there's your problem.... I know it sounds crazy, but XBMC scrapers simply work. This isn't a general problem, so there must be some setting that got frakked up somehow... Just try it to eliminate any possible causes that might interfere...
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Your solution worked! It appears Ember is the source of the problem!!!
I guess for whatever reason, XBMC doesn't attempt to scrape some files of a folder if most of the files within that folder already have local content (nfo, thumbnails, etc). I imagine this would be something for the coders to fix. Thanks for the help!
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Oh, you didn't know that... sorry i thought you knew...
Yes, when there is an .NFO file in a folder it doesn't scan the internet but loads the .NFO, that's the whole point of having an NFO. In Dharma however you can press RELOAD in the movie information menu. XBMC will tell you it has found local information (the .nfo file in your folder) and if you want ignore it and refresh from the internet. If you do this, you can also scrape fanarts and thumbs again.,..
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I knew that. However, say I have local nfo files for episodes 1-6 of a show. When I add episode 7 and DO NOT have local .nfo file for it, XBMC will not attempt to scrape it at all. Because it doesn't get scraped, it never appears in the library.
So if it appears if there is a single .nfo file in a TV show folder, XBMC will bypass scraping any new video files that are added to that folder.
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i partially agree with steelman...
3rd party mediamanagers are a pain for me too when it comes to NFO files. Sometimes it differs per skin in xbmc what they import... some skin expect a tvshow.tbn, while others look for a folder.jpg or tvshowname.jpg before that..
I usually let XBMC scrape everything, and export it as well to single files... and AFTERWARDS i change some fanarts or season thumbs with ember
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So, I would really appreciate any help. Have read through lots and lots of posts about my problem, haven't seen any solutions.;
I want to be able to access my tv show from the tv show button on the main menu of the home screen.
I have all my tv shows on an external drive. When I hit add source under videos/files it adds a heading for tv shows both under video files, as well as the library, and put a tv show on the header bar on the home page. When I go into video/files/tv shows, every single show and episode is there. no problem. When I go into the tv show button on the main menu on the home page, only a few show up, and some aren't complete. The thumbnails and fan art and artwork is all there in both places.
To answer a question in advance, every single tv show is named exactly the same folder wise - example - Breaking Bad ( folder) - Breaking Bad - Season 1 (folder) - sO1eO1 -title, sO1eO2-tile, (ea episode in a separate folder) . As I mentioned, Everything shows up in the video section,
I have tried removing the source and re-adding it, I have tried many times to just update the library, I checked tvdb and made sure my show names were there and the same, Have tried using different naming, ie; 1x01...
I have a simple set-up. using confluence, running on a windows 7 machine.
Please, Please please someone tell me you have figured this out!!!!
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Hopefully just a typo (Breaking Bad - Season 1 (folder) - sO1eO1 -title, sO1eO2-tile), but if not make sure you use numerical '0' and not capital letter 'O' in the filenames.
Provide a debug of an attempted scrape - remember to switch on debugging and provide a link to the pastebin site of your choice - do not paste logs in forum.
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2014-07-22, 05:21
(This post was last modified: 2014-07-22, 05:29 by dancesportla.)
Oh, forgot to mention, some of the shows did have all episodes in one folder, said folder marked by season, and still didn't show up under the tv show header. ( Again, I reiterate that they show up in the video/files/tvshows section just fine. I also tried taking some of the single season shows out of a "season" folder and just putting them in a folder marked by the show title, and renaming them ep.01, ep.02 as per wiki suggestion. This also made no difference to where the episodes show up. I think I already made mention but the artwork, thumbnails and info is all listed under tv shows on main menu so the scraper or program does send that stuff to the tv show header, just not all the files it has in the video section......arghhhhh!
Sorry, this post meant to be First. Thanks to both for your responses and much needed help.
1. As to Steelman1991"s advice, it was a typo, only used numeric 0, but just for giggles I went in last night and changed every show file to the 1x01, 1x02 name system. Then removed source and then redid the source. It all came back exactly the same- all shows episodes seasons show up in videos/files/tv shows, but only about 1/4 show up under the tv show header on the main menu ( and they are the same ones that showed up ther last time)
2. As to Black_Eagle's suggestion, some of the shows already had the episodes in one folder named for show without having ea show in a separate folder and they still didn't populate the tv show header, ( but did show up fine under videos/files/tv shows! I then tried renaming shows with only one season as per the wiki - Show folder, then ea show ep.01, ep.02 etc. This also didn't affect where the shows showed up
As a NOOB, but not an idiot, I really appreciate you all helping me to make better use of this great XBMC program!!!!
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For all who helped earlier, finally got it all worked out!!! Thanks Black_Eagle!! That turned out to do the trick. The thing holding it up was some erroneous stuff in a folder that I guess was messing it up that I missed going back through. You guys are the best!!! Thanks sooooo much!!!!
