I have been using MCEBuddy with PlayOn for awhile and everything has worked properly so this is not an issue with MCEBuddy. Recently I started using another software called StreamFab and MCEBuddy does not differentiate the tasks between Movies and Shows. I figure StreamFab is not properly tagging the files but was wondering if there is a workaround? Everything dumps into one folder but I have existings conversion tasks to move the files to the appropriate place tv, movies, sports etc but since MCEBuddy doesn’t know the show type it all dumps into tv.
How does SteamFab save the metadata, as a separate file or does it embed it into the video itself? Do you have any sample you can upload to our server?
It’s embedded, do you want the full mp4?
We need more sample to add this feature. Can you upload some sample recordings (ideally short, like just a few minutes) to the server for us to analyze. Would like nice if you can provide a sample of each of these types:
- Series/show
- Movie
- Sports
- News
- Documentary
You can upload them here (create directories for each type):
Ok, I have shows and movie samples which I’ll upload later today. I’ll have to first record the other types, so might take a bit longer.
Hey, sorry the delay, thanks for the samples. We’re looking into it and I’ll post back with an update.
Thanks, and no problem. I look forward to an update.
You can try today’s 2.5.8 beta build, it has improved support for reading Streamfab metadata but note that the metadata doesn’t contains information about the type (movies, documentary, news, sports etc). So everything will be treated as a tv show. If you want you can use the force show type in the Conversion Task → Expert Settings page to set the show type to a Movie or Sports
I see. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the “Force Show Type” setting will have to be applied manually for each recording, correct? Meaning it won’t be an automated solution?
I understand that the “Content Type” tag is not available in StreamFab metadata. Is it possible for some sort of “guess” logic? Here is what I’m thinking (though I don’t know how the code is structured, so this might not be easy or straightforward):
- Try looking for the title in the movie metadata provider (online)
- If that fails, move to the next metadata (TV Shows) provider (e.g. TheTVDB)
- and so on…
Not a fool proof method, but hopefully better than treating everything as a TV Show.
Right now, users of StreamFab are downloading all types of content from dozens of sites, so a slightly more dynamic solution with be very welcome.
Thanks for all your work.
You can do it for each conversion task; specify a selection filter for each task to process a particular set of files
and then force that conversion task to a specific show type
Thanks @Goose for the detailed response with screenshots. Here is where I’m stuck:
Let’s say I’m recording from Prime Video (PV). StreamFab puts all PV recordings (Movies, Shows, Sports) in one folder, called PV. I have an MCEBuddy coversion task which monitors this “PV” folder and converts/renames whatever it finds. Of course, in the current setup, it treats all recordings it finds as TV Shows.
Now, I’m unable to figure out how to create 3 conversion tasks instead of one, with the “Selection Filters” ensuring that each one only picks up one caregory (Movies, Shows or Sports). If this is not possible, then I have to rely on a very cumbersome manual process, where I create a conversion task for each new movie/show/sports I record, with the Selection Filters hard-coded to that recording’s name. This of course doesn’t scale, especially when I don’t know in advance what I’ll record today.
You’ll have to look for patterns in your filename or the metadata. For example if you notice that all your sports recordings have the word vs in the filename or the title, create a conversion task with the filter matching for *vs* and set the type to sports. Similarly for shows maybe it has a specific show name that you’re recording (eg House or CSI) and set them to Series. The default task can handle the unmatched and set it to movies (use negative filters for the default task so it matches everything except XYZ).
Thanks again, very helpful suggestions. This also gives me an idea: Maybe I can look for an “episode separator” like SXXEYY or something similar, to increase the detection rate for TV Shows.
In the meantime, I have requested the StreamFab team to add the ContentType tag to their metadata/ID3 tags if possible. I’ll let you know if they do it.
Additionally, I have been testing this program called FileBot (not sure I can post a URL), which could be a stopgap solution. It is able to download metadata and add it to files, and has been almost 100% accurate in my limited testing so far. Now, I have to create a SteamFab → FileBot → MCEBuddy queue to ensure MCEBuddy has updated metadata to work with. Of course, it would be ideal if this could be done without introducing yet another program (and point of failure) to the workflow. 