In version 2.4.8, there was a change made to support for TV Mosaic filenames for metadata extraction. I updated to version 2.5 Beta 1 on 11-October, and today noticed that all my shows are defaulting again to a 2019-05-05 date for metadata, despite the file recording date being in all file name as before.
Am I supposed to change something in order to get MCEBuddy to read the date from the file name?
I have uploaded 3 sample logs to the FTP site for your review. (username robtheone)
Saturday Night Live - Recorded Saturday, but metadata shows the correct Season/Episode, S45E03, but the Hosts being Adam Sander and Shawn Mendez, which aired on 2019-05-04.
NBC Nightly News - recorded Sat, Sun and Mon. All 3 episodes show a date of 2019-05-05. S2019E122-May 5 Sun, (1), and (2).
Meet the Press - recorded Sunday, showing a filename of S2019E18-May 5, 2019.MP4
In your file the embedded metadata already contains a date (year):
date : 2019
When there exists a date then MCEBuddy doesn’t overwrite it from the filename, hence the -05-05
If you want MCEBuddy to overwrite your metadata with the filename, then you need to enable the option in the Metadata correction page in the Conversion Task → Expert Settings
Thank you for this information. This seems to partially solve the issue. It fully solves the problem when the show is a weekly show, but for any show that is recorded daily, for some reason, the metadata is off by one day.
1st Example
Original File Name: NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt _20191020.mp4 - show recorded 2019-10-20
MCEBuddy File Name: S2019E284-Oct 19 Sat (Names the episode one day earlier). This is consistently one day off for every recording I ran through MCEBuddy.
In looking at the logs, for News, for example, I see OriginalBroadcastDateTime: 2019-10-20T00:00:00
RecordedDateTime: 0001-01-01T00:00:00
SeriesPremiereDate: 0001-01-01T00:00:00
CopyProtected: False
SageTV FileID:
SageTV MediaFileID:
2019-10-21T09:10:41 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData --> Checking for metadata title and ID correction
2019-10-21T09:10:41 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData --> Checking for metadata type correction
2019-10-21T09:10:41 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData --> Forcing show type -> Series
INFORMATION> 2019-10-21T09:10:41 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData --> Downloading Series details
2019-10-21T09:10:41 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData --> Overwrite title from internet -> Default
INFORMATION> 2019-10-21T09:10:41 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData --> Skipping downloading Banner file
INFORMATION> 2019-10-21T09:10:41 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData --> Recording Type Show
INFORMATION> 2019-10-21T09:10:41 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData --> Checking TheTVDB
–> Looking for Premiere Year information in text
–> No episode name to match
–> Looking for Premiere Year information in text
–> Found series match on TVDB by Original Broadcast Date. Updated video tags ->
Title: NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt SubTitle: Oct 19 Sat
I am not really clear on how TVDB made the jump from 2019-10-20 to 2019-10-19, but it also happened when I forced metadata from IMDB as well, exact same results, one day earlier than the actual recording.
2nd example:
Original File Name: Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen_20191017.mp4 - show recorded 2019-10-17
MCEBuddy File Name: S16E165-Lorraine Bracco; Dr. Oz.mp4. The season and episode number are actually correct, however the metadata showing is for the show that recorded one day earlier on 2019-10-16, S16E164.
Not sure if it’s related to the time that is being pulled from the filename:
OriginalBroadcastDateTime: 2019-10-17T00:00:00
The time of 00:00:00 may be causing TVDB or IMDB to pull data from the day before perhaps?
I have uploaded the two logs for review on your FTP site, under 2nd update subfolder
Thanks again for trying to assist with this situation. I appreciate it.
Could it be that MCEBuddy is applying local time zone to the claimed broadcast date/time?
If you are in the US, we are behind GMT by 5-8 hours, so 2019-10-17 at the stroke of midnight in GMT would still be 8pm on 2019-10-16 if you’re talking EDT (GMT-4).
I don’t know how MCEBuddy could detect 1) missing time info as different from a show that actually aired at midnight, or 2) that you don’t really care about the time and that MCEBuddy should just ignore that and just use the date (if it is midnight (00:00:00). If #2, this really needs to be on a show-by-show basis, since many shows in syndication don’t have any Premeir/Air date/time in the guide data, particularly for PBS and locally produced shows, and “strip” syndication of what are really web episodes from streaming sites/stations like TBD and DUST, etc.
→ Found series match on TVDB by Original Broadcast Date. Updated video tags →
Title: NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt SubTitle: Oct 19 Sat
Description: NBC Nightly News is the daily evening news program for NBC News and broadcasts from the GE Building, Rockefeller Center in New York City.
Network: WTVJ-DT
Network Affiliate:
Parental Rating:
Media Credits:
Genres: News
Season: 2019
Episode: 284
Banner:
Banner URL:
IMDB Id: tt0231035
MovieDB Id:
TVDB Id: 139911
Is Show Movie: False
Is Show Sports: False
OriginalBroadcastDateTime: 2019-10-20T00:00:00
RecordedDateTime: 0001-01-01T00:00:00
SeriesPremiereDate: 1970-08-03T00:00:00
CopyProtected: False
SageTV FileID:
SageTV MediaFileID:
OK, the date may be coming from TVDB, but the only changes I have made was to upgrade MCEBuddy to latest version. This was not an issue before the upgrade, so I imagine that something has changed in MCEBuddy to cause the date to be different. It “appears” that it has something to do with the time, because if I manually add in the time to the recording by renaming the file, I get the following results:
NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt _20191020.mp4 - MCEBuddy labels it as 2019-10-19 (1 day early, which doesn’t match) OriginalBroadcastDateTime: 2019-10-20T00:00:00
RecordedDateTime: 0001-01-01T00:00:00
SeriesPremiereDate: 0001-01-01T00:00:00
CopyProtected: False
SageTV FileID:
SageTV MediaFileID:
2019-10-30T15:32:23 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData --> Checking for metadata title and ID correction
2019-10-30T15:32:23 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData --> Checking for metadata type correction
2019-10-30T15:32:23 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData --> Forcing show type -> Series
INFORMATION> 2019-10-30T15:32:23 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData --> Downloading Series details
2019-10-30T15:32:23 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData --> Overwrite title from internet -> Default
INFORMATION> 2019-10-30T15:32:23 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData --> Skipping downloading Banner file
INFORMATION> 2019-10-30T15:32:23 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData --> Recording Type Show
INFORMATION> 2019-10-30T15:32:23 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData --> Checking TheTVDB
--> Looking for Premiere Year information in text
--> No episode name to match
--> Looking for Premiere Year information in text
**--> Found series match on TVDB by Original Broadcast Date. Updated video tags -> **
** Title: NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt**
** SubTitle: Oct 19 Sat
NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt _20191020_18301900.mp4 (only change is to manually add 18301900 (time begin, time end) to file name). - gets labeled correctly “SubTitle: Oct 20 Sun”
2019-10-30T15:32:23 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData → Checking for metadata title and ID correction
2019-10-30T15:32:23 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData → Checking for metadata type correction
2019-10-30T15:32:23 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData → Forcing show type → Series
INFORMATION> 2019-10-30T15:32:23 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData → Downloading Series details
2019-10-30T15:32:23 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData → Overwrite title from internet → Default
INFORMATION> 2019-10-30T15:32:23 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData → Skipping downloading Banner file
INFORMATION> 2019-10-30T15:32:23 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData → Recording Type Show
INFORMATION> 2019-10-30T15:32:23 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData → Checking TheTVDB
→ Looking for Premiere Year information in text
→ No episode name to match
→ Looking for Premiere Year information in text
→ Found series match on TVDB by Original Broadcast Date. Updated video tags →
Title: NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt SubTitle: Oct 20 Sun
MCEBuddy will then process the same exact file differently, even though the date is correctly specified in the filename, ONLY IF the time is manually added to the filename.
If no embedded/extracted metadata is found, then MCEBudddy look at parsing metadata from the filename. Currently it supports the following formats:
SHOWNAME_AIRDATE_AIRTIME.<ext> where AIRDATE is in YYYYMMDD format and AIRTIME is in HHMMHHMM (Start and End) format ( AIRTIME is optional). The underscore can also be substituted with a dash.
It says AIRTIME is optional, but apparently if you don’t have it, a daily, dated program will give the wrong information (1-day prior). Not sure if it is time zone related. I am East Coast USA time zone, (GMT -4). This recording begins at 6:30pm and MCEBuddy starts working on it at 7:02pm. Appears to be a date/time bug to me.
This happens on all daily recorded dated programs:
2019-10-21T09:10:41 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData → Trying to extract generic nPVR filename metadata → NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt _20191020
2019-10-21T09:10:41 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData → Extracted Original Broadcast Date from Filename → 2019-10-20
2019-10-21T09:10:41 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData → Extracted Title from Filename → NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt
2019-10-21T09:10:41 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData → Successfully matched Generic NPVR filename metadata
2019-10-21T09:10:41 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData → Looking for Season/Episode information in text
2019-10-21T09:10:41 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData → Video Tags extracted from file/name metadata →
Title: NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt
SubTitle:
Description: The latest news, going beyond the headlines to see how lives are affected by the world around them.
Network: WTVJ-DT
Network Affiliate:
Parental Rating:
Media Credits:
Genres: News
Season: 0
Episode: 0
Banner:
Banner URL:
IMDB Id:
MovieDB Id:
TVDB Id:
Is Show Movie: False
Is Show Sports: False OriginalBroadcastDateTime: 2019-10-20T00:00:00
RecordedDateTime: 0001-01-01T00:00:00
SeriesPremiereDate: 0001-01-01T00:00:00
CopyProtected: False
SageTV FileID:
SageTV MediaFileID:
The filename has 2019-10-20 and that’s what is also reflected in the dates. The Oct 19 in the Subtile isn’t a date but Text provided by TVDB (which is obviously incorrect but it’s coming from TVDB).
I’m not sure where you’re seeing the data being changed by MCEBuddy.
Thanks for the fast reply! So where I am seeing the data being changed is in BOTH the end file name and the embedded metadata that is read by Plex or any app I choose to watch the files in. The title and metadata are incorrect by 1 day.
For the examples I provided, a News program recorded 20-October will display as
NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt\Season 2019\S2019E284-Oct 19 Sat.mp4
Complete name : C:\Users\rj\Videos\TV Shows\NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt\Season 2019\S2019E284-Oct 19 Sat.mp4
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Base Media
Codec ID : isom (isom/iso2/mp41)
File size : 2.34 GiB
Duration : 22 min 28 s
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 14.9 Mb/s
Collection : NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt
Season : 2019
Part : 284
Track name : Oct 19 Sat
Genre : News
ContentType : TV Show
Description : NBC Nightly News is the daily evening news program for NBC News and broadcasts from the GE Building, Rockefeller Center in New York City.
Recorded date : UTC 2019-10-20 12:00:00
Writing application : MCEBuddy
Comment : NBC Nightly News is the daily evening news program for NBC News and broadcasts from the GE Building, Rockefeller Center in New York City.
Rating : Explicit
TVNetworkName : WTVJ-DT
LongDescription : NBC Nightly News is the daily evening news program for NBC News and broadcasts from the GE Building, Rockefeller Center in New York City.
RecordingTimestamp : 0001-01-01T12:00:00
IMDBID : tt0231035
TVDBID : 139911
SeriesPremiere : 1970-08-01T12:00:00
CopyProtected : False
The dates are off by one day in both the filename as well as the metadata. The program was recorded on the 20th, NOT the 19th! It is QUITE confusing especially on a show like “Watch What Happens Live”, when not only the dates are wrong, but all the guests listed in the program description are not the people in the recorded show.
What you’re referring to, Oct 19th, is NOT a date, it’s the name of the episode subtitle which is a text line provided by TVDB and not MCEBuddy or the file metadata. You will need to correct the information on TVDB - it has nothing to do with the metadata in the file or from MCEBuddy.
If you don’t like the episode name sent by TVDB then you can create your own custom file naming pattern and use the original broadcast date and time (which shows the 20th) to be used on your filename.
If that’s the case, why if I add the time to the file name, does it give me the correct date on both the file name as well as the metadata info? For the same exact show, same exact file, only difference is adding the time into the file name?
Does not really make sense to me. Are you now saying that the time is a required field to get the correct metadata?
Robert, there are more than one date being stored in “the metadata” for these files. The “Oct 19” is NOT a “date” field - it is the subtitle of the show. It might as well say “Last week’s episode” or “Season finale”. What may be happening is that Plex (or whatever you are using for a media server) is displaying the show subtitle - making a person reading that think that is some sort of air date.
FYI - this is very common with shows that are also uploaded for online viewing - the show “airs” on OTA broadcast one day, and the show also “airs” online the next day. So you tell me, which date is the “air date” for the show? The show producers are putting that text “Oct 19” as the subtitle field in the TVDB database, while putting “10/20/2019” into the show’s “air date” metadata field. Are you sourcing this over the air or online? I wouldn’t be surprised at all that an online source has the “online” broadcast date (which would be different and later than the original OTA premiere) in the “air date” metadata for the file, while retaining the subtitle to reflect the actual OTA broadcast date. i.e “new to you”. It gets even crazier when sites embed “air date” metadata that is the date you downloaded or streamed the media file (important for advertising and demographics and royalties).
I dont know how you can override or supress the display of the show subtitle all by itself in your media player, and display the actual show metadata field for broadcast date instead. I do know that is not something MCEBuddy can do.
You could ask nicely for a customization to add a special checkbox in the special processing rules dialog to supress show subtitle metadata so that there is nothing for your media player to display there that is making you think the subtitle is the show’s air date. Or even more specific to your individual desire, to have MCEBuddy replace the subtitle metadata field with the show broadcast date metadata field translated into words. Whether that is worth the developer time to do is not for me to say, or worth it to you to make an offer to support that development of a feature just for you.
You will have to attach the log for that file/conversion so I can see and compare what’s different about that conversion, adding that extra information may be causing mcebuddy to look up the metadata from a different site which has different metadata than TVDB.
The 2 log files are attached. The ONLY difference between the 2 is on one file I manually added “_18301900” to the filename prior to MCEBuddy processing it.
I have compared the 2 logs in Notepad++, and the only differences that I can see (not a professional at reading these logs), is during the metadata extraction process, the file with the time in the name gets 2 extra lines in the log:
2019-10-30T15:32:23 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData --> Trying to extract Original Broadcast Date and Time from Filename
2019-10-30T15:32:23 MCEBuddy.MetaData.VideoMetaData --> Extracted Original Broadcast Date and Time from Filename -> 10/20/2019 6:30:00 PM
So the original file (no time in the file name) gets:
OriginalBroadcastDateTime: 2019-10-20T00:00:00
While the file with the recording time added gets:
OriginalBroadcastDateTime: 2019-10-20T18:30:00
Original file from TVDB gets:
-> Found series match on TVDB by Original Broadcast Date. Updated video tags ->
Title: NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt
SubTitle: Oct 19 Sat
Description: NBC Nightly News is the daily evening news program for NBC News and broadcasts from the GE Building, Rockefeller Center in New York City.
Network: WTVJ-DT
Network Affiliate:
Parental Rating:
Media Credits:
Genres: News
Season: 2019
Episode: 284
Banner:
Banner URL:
IMDB Id: tt0231035
MovieDB Id:
TVDB Id: 139911
Is Show Movie: False
Is Show Sports: False
OriginalBroadcastDateTime: 2019-10-20T00:00:00
File with time added gets:
--> Found series match on TVDB by Original Broadcast Date. Updated video tags ->
Title: NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt
SubTitle: Oct 20 Sun
Description: NBC Nightly News is the daily evening news program for NBC News and broadcasts from the GE Building, Rockefeller Center in New York City.
Network: WTVJ-DT
Network Affiliate:
Parental Rating:
Media Credits:
Genres: News
Season: 2019
Episode: 285
Banner:
Banner URL:
IMDB Id: tt0231035
MovieDB Id:
TVDB Id: 139911
Is Show Movie: False
Is Show Sports: False
OriginalBroadcastDateTime: 2019-10-20T18:30:00
From there forward, I am sure there’s a lot happening behind the scenes, but the end result is VERY different for the same file. Different file names, and different embedded metadata.
S2019E284-Oct 19 Sat.mp4
S2019E285-Oct 20 Sun.mp4
Fulls logs attached for your review. Whatever information is in the subtitle field is NOT what I am questioning. I am questioning why the file names and metadata are different for the same exact recording and show.
This is being sourced from a HDHomeRun tuner via OTA antenna for the NBC local affiliate. It is not coming from an online source. The show aired live on 2019-10-20 at 6:30 PM local time in Miami.
It is then recorded by TVMosaic (used to be DVBLogic), who embeds some of the recording metadata into the file, but the only date they use is “year”, which is 2019, and MCEBuddy always comes up with a data of 2019-05-05 (odd, random date) for ALL of my episodes. So a year ago, a change was made in 2.4.9 that allowed the reading of the filename for the recording date. It has worked without issue for the last year, until I upgraded to 2.5.1, so now all date based, daily recorded shows end up with the wrong date in the file name and display metadata from the day before.
The subtitle isn’t the issue here, though it is on “Watch What Happens Live”. I brought it up because it is really the ONLY date I can find anywhere in the log where it is off by 1 day.
Hope this helps! Thank you also for your time as well! Much appreciated.
Thanks for the logs, I can see what’s happening between the 2 files.
When MCEBuddy tries to match the metadata from TVBD it needs 2 pieces of information to complete the match, in your case the 2 pieces are the show name the the original broadcast date which is used to “find” the right episode.
Specifically in the case of this show, it’s a daily show, a new episode every day, keep that in mind which is why you’re seeing the issue as explained below.
When MCEBuddy tries to match the Original Broadcast date and time, it tries to match the local timezone and UTC timezone. This is due to the way dates are stored in local files v/s network databases like TVDB. This is where the issue lies in your case combined with the point I made above about it being a daily show.
In the first case where there’s no time, the Original Broadcast date is stored as 2019-10-20, 12:00am (local timezone), but when it tries to match that information with TVDB using UTC timezone, the date switches to 2019-10-19 7:00pm, AND because your show has an episode EVERY day, TVDB returns a match and gives it Oct 19th as the subtitle name.
In the second case, there your filename has the time + date, it’s parsed as 2019-10-20 6:30pm (local time), so when TVDB tries to match it checks against local and UTC timezone, BOTH of which are now reported as 2019-19-20, hence it returns the subtitle as Oct 20.
This is happening because you have a show every day, if you had a show which didn’t have daily episodes then you wouldn’t see the issue.
The solution would be to ensure that HDHomeRun includes the time + date in the filename so that it doesn’t confuse TVDB while trying to match the dates. Hope that helps.
Which has worked flawlessly for the last year. For whatever changes have occurred in my upgrading to 2.5.1, I have added in the “Program Time” to the file name, and everything seems to process fine again with correct dates and metadata in the files
Program name_Program date_Program Time
I appreciate your time in researching this and finding a resolution.
