Meta-Metadata tweaking

Channels DVR Server Feature Requests
#1

You guys have done a fantastic job of making it practical (if sometimes a little clumsy) to subscribe to and record both TVE and various internet streaming sources like Pluto and Stirr. HOWEVER

As we all know the metadata in the EPGs for these channels is all over the place...
Now I don't expect you guys to fix this, at least not right away (though one day would nice...)
But what I think might be feasible in the short term is if we can "recategorize" recorded items in the correct category. For example if a movie, because of bizarre EPG data, is recorded as a "TV Movie" or even as a TV Episode, it would be nice to be able to recategorize it as a genuine movie, appearing in the Movies section of the UI, not the TV section.

#2

You can Import the recorded movie as a Movie and then correct the metadata as required. Then delete the offending recording.

#3

Yeah, there are workrounds. But why not just make the process as easy as possible?

#4

Agree.
Edit metadata for recordings like we can for local content imports and Videos.
May even be possible now, but not sure how. Think I remember doing it once, but could have been an import?
There is no perfect EPG source.

#5

Ive got a weird show that i record that uses a plex EPG.
EVERY show on this channel (wire2fish) is marked as season 1 episode one.

I wish i could manually change the season and episode numbers like i do on all my imported content, without having to take the extra steps of reimporting these as local imports.

#6

I’m confused. You can edit the metadata of recorded items. You can change the season and episode numbers of them.

#7

So consider a channel like Stirr Movies. The EPG for this (for whatever reason) marks all the movies as TV episodes (of a show with the name of the movie).
If you record such a movie, it is then categorized as a TV show and sits in the TV show area of Channels.

As others have pointed out, you can work around this by moving the show to another drive, deleting it from the TV section, and re-importing it as a movie. But this is a multi-step process losing the metadata that was already created for the movie and requiring, for example, that you also remember to rescan the newly imported movie for commercials.

Much nicer would be if I could simply click/long-tap on an item that's currently categorized as TV and recategorize it as a movie (or vice versa, I guess. (That's less common, though may be worth doing for things like standup comedy specials which feel more TV than movie.)

#8

Yes, this is different than just editing metadata though. Channels tracks movies and tv shows separately in the database.

There’s plans to offer the ability to do this, it’s just not something we’ve gotten to yet.

#9

I submitted a fix for this in https://github.com/robbiet480/stirr-for-channels/pull/5

cc @HankLloydRight

#10

Hence my term meta-metadata :slight_smile:

#11

Oooh, I'll try that next time I update the server!

Obviously that's great, but is this sustainable? Do you want us to give you a list of all the known channels that seem to categorize movies as TV shows? Or is this a more generic fix (some sort of cross-compare of the title with IMDB or something?)

#12

You can edit this metadata in the web UI.
Find the TV show in the Web UI, choose the episode, click on the Options Menu and choose Edit Metadata.

What you can't do right now (which was my point) is recategorize a TV Episode as a Movie or vice versa.

#13

It works on all channels where the name of the channel ends in "Movies"

#14

Nice. I'll make this change to nocords.xyz when I return next week.

#15

Hi Jon,

I was confused too.

A couple of weeks ago I made a bunch of recordings using a custom plex channel (wired2fish). As previously mentioned their guide data for this particular show has every episode marked as season 1 episode 1 with random dates.

So I spent several hours using the metadata editor trying to change these with no luck. I was getting ready to try and work around it by reimporting these as local files and seeing if i could change the season and episode numbers that way. I never got around to it, and was traveling for a week or so and forgot about trying this.

After I read your comment this morning, I went back to double check this morning and lo and behold the metadata editor works just as expected without any work around. Very strange that whatever was going on seems to have fixed itself.

This morning I did notice a minor issue that if you want to change the season and episodes back to “none”, once you assign a season and episode, you cant assign “none” any more. You can change the season to a different season, episode to a different episode, but “none” is lock out once you change the recorded files metadata.

#16

OK, so is it correct to say that this should only start working once the nocords fix is also in place?
Right now I have the latest server, but don't see a change on Stirr Movies.

Other channels that seem amenable to the same fix that I am aware of include:

(with movie somewhere in the channel name)
FilmRise Free Movies
MovieSphere (one word...)
The Movie Hub

(Mostly movies, but without Movie in the channel name)
Midnight Pulp
Cinevault: Classics
Cinevault: 80s

#17

I removed my "ends with Movies" check and have updated the code to look at all the channels in the "Movies" category on the Stirr page instead. Additionally, any description that includes [Rated XX] or [Not Rated] will be marked as a movie.

The other channel categories (like Sports, Music, Classic TV) should also end up as genres on your recordings, so you can use them for search or smart rules.

I also noticed some episode names and descriptions had markers like S1E3, S1:E2, (S2,E19) etc. These are now parsed out and exposed to the channels EPG.

3 Likes
#18

Sounds great! I'll test this and let you know what I see over the next few days.

1 Like
#19

Ok, I'm back and on the nocords.xyz links I made the two PR changes here: https://github.com/robbiet480/stirr-for-channels/pull/5

Please wait 30 minutes for the cache to update and see if the desired changes have been made.

1 Like
#20

So guys, what do we expect to be the changes after both the Channels DVR server-side changes and Hanks' changes?

Right now I am running the latest server-side as of a few hours ago, and I get stirr (video and EPG) via https://nocords.xyz
I still see stirr movies as TV shows. Is there some additional change I should be making?