Add folder exclusion (and possibly inclusion) input box to task settings

[zhulick]

Folder exclusions in watch folders is awesome, and works great. I would love to see the same box added to the task settings (maybe as part of advanced settings) and inclusion logic added as well.

As i mentioned earlier, i’m currently slicing through a LARGE tv archive folder located on a network. My folder structure is Group/Category/Quality, so it looks something like this

Oldtv
-Comedy ZZZ
—Med
—Low
-Action ZZZ
—High
—Med
—Low
-Cooking Shows ZZZ
—Low
etc, etc, etc, So main folder, category folder and quality folder. There are about two dozen category folders and each has at least one (most have 2-3) quality sub folders.

I have 3 tasks dedicated to Oldtv, appropriately named - low, med and high. Low hits all the low folders etc.

This is where folder exclusions is a huge time saver. I do not need to enter Comedy/Low and Action/Low as separate watch folders in the gui. I would need dozens upon dozens of them with my setup. Instead i can create one watch folder to target all the low folders by excluding all the mediums and high. Oldtv as the watch folder with ZZZ\HIgh*;ZZZ\Med* as the exclusion works great. I can then create a separate watch folder which again uses Oldtv but with ZZZ\HIgh*;ZZZ\Low* to target medium folders using medium action and on and on…

So instead of dozens of watch folders exclusions allow me to get away with 3. That said, it’s three identical instances of the same LARGE network folder and mcebuddy treats it as such by scanning this LARGE folder 3 long times.

Two of those 3 long scans are unnecessary, and adding the same folder exclusion dialogue box in task settings could fix that. This way ZZZ\HIgh*;ZZZ\Med* exclusions could be applied at the task level. Only one instance of Oldtv would need to be scanned since all low/med/high tasks would not need a separate watch folder each. In other words from dozens upon dozens of watch folders to just one

Alternatively, i would love to see inclusion logic (include only) added, if possible. So adding something like ~ZZZ\Med* would include only the medium folders, exclude all else. It’s much easier to add one inclusion then multiple exclusions, and it’s harder to mess up/safer, plus it allows to add folders other then low/med/high without having to deal with entering exceptions for each etc. Inclusions open up a lot of possibilities, and it would be great to see it implemented.

thank you.

[Goose]

Have you explored the filename filter and monitor location linking options in the conversion tasks?

[zhulick]

I did it earlier in the Filename filter and couldn’t get it to work. I assumed that it wasn’t possible, but i probably just had the syntax wrong. Just tried it again with “path:ZZZ\Med*” (no quotes) and it worked.

This is a huge time-saver for me. Thank you for pointing me in the right direction.

note: for some reason the forum software is stripping out the two asterisks - one before ZZZ and one after.

[zhulick]

So i’ve been playing around with folder exclsuions/inclusions at task level for the last couple of hours and it’s working great. So great, in fact, i may end up reorganizing how i keep my files.

Basically, this allows me to setup a keyword/trigger at folder level and associate it with a particular function. I can do this at any folder level, including the sub, sub-sub folders from the top folder all the way down to individual season folders if i wanted to. I can even setup overrides… This is pretty awesome and surprisingly powerful

Oldtv
-Category 1
—Folder 1 ZZZ-low
----Show 1
----Show 2
—Folder 2 ZZZ-med
—Folder 3 ZZZ- hiigh
-Category 2
—Folder 1
—Folder 2 ZZZ-low
-Category 3 ZZZ-med
–Folder 1
----Show 1
----Show 2 YYY-lownoise
----Show 3
–Folder 2
-Category 4 ZZZ-high
–Folder 1
–Folder 2
-Category 5
–Folder 1
–Folder 2

In this structure Category is something like “Comedy” and folders 1 and 2 are something like " British Comedy" and “Animated comedy” etc. Category 2 is “Crime” etc, etc, etc.

Total of 4 actions take care of everything. Low, med, high, and lownoise. Lownoise action can also act as override.

Above is the example of what i use for low.

Using this folder structure and these 4 actions, the following would happen.

Category 1 - each folder gets it’s own individual settings.
Category 2 - Folder one is skipped, folder 2 gets it’s own settings.
Category 3 - Folder1/Show 2 will get lownoise settings, everything else gets ZZZ-med
Category 4 - Everything is ZZZ-high
Category 5 - Entire folder and all subfolders skipped.

Like i said, this is great. It allows me much more flexibility then i previously expected.