WMC Movies -- Missing Icons

[McGary]

Okay, this is a problem that's bugged me for a long time, but now that I've got a nice new guide (EPG) I was hoping that perhaps that would change things, but it doesn't … so I thought I'd at least ask to see if anyone knows how to change the behavior …

=> We record a LOT of series and movies. In addition to 16TB of recording space on my HTPC (an 8TB and 2 4TB drives), I have network shares named "Movies from TV" and "Archived Series" on a server that has 80TB of space … so I'm not likely to run out of recording space anytime soon

=> As we finish watching series I move them to the "Archived Series" share, and it is NOT normally assigned to the list of locations for "Recorded TV" on the HTPC, so all of the archived series don't clutter up the Recorded TV listing. This works fine -- when we want to watch any of the old series, I just drop down to the settings; add that share to the library, and then we can watch what we want and all is well. When I want to get them all off of the Recorded TV list, I just remove that share from the library -- about a 30 second process.

=> The movies are what I find frustrating. Movies that we record show up in both Recorded TV and on the Movies list, complete with the appropriate icon. This work fine. However, to get them off of the Recorded TV list, I move them to the "Movies from TV" share. They then only show on the Movies list. This is fine -- and works perfectly EXCEPT the icons don't show up -- the movies list only shows the titles. The icon is still there somewhere, because if I move the file back to any of the folders included in the Recorded TV library, the move will show up again in Recorded TV and will have the appropriate icon displayed both there and in the Movies list. I could, of course, just add the "Movies from TV" share to the Recorded TV library, but then the Recorded TV list would be way too big -- we have over 2000 movies !

=> There's another interesting anomaly r.e. the movies list. Not only does it only show the titles; but if you click on a movie, the display will only show the title and the timing for the movie -- NOT the description. If you click on Play so it begins to play, and then immediately Stop it, then the description will show.

Any ideas on any tweaks or settings that might change this behavior?? If some setting would cause WMC to not list movies in Recorded TV since they're shown in Movies, that would easily resolve this, since I could just assign the "Movies from TV" share to the Recorded TV library.

Not a big deal -- we've lived with this for several years -- but it would really be nice to get it resolved if anyone knows how to do so.

[garyan2]

When you record a program in WMC, all the guide data for that program is kept in the database for viewing in "Recorded TV". Not all of that data makes it into the metadata of the .wtv file itself; character names and artwork being 2 that don't make it. So as long as the recorded movie is in the Recorded TV library, you will have all metadata as long as it is still remembered. If you move a recorded program out of the Recorded TV folder for long enough, then it is probable that the garbage cleanup will remove that information from the database.

When you move the movie to the Movie library instead of the Recorded TV library, it only looks at the file itself and not the Recorded TV so you don't get character names, artwork, and other stuff. Evidently, it doesn't read the file's metadata until it starts playing and doesn't keep that information in the database. It's been a long time, but in the past I included a dvdid.xml file, or something similar, with the recorded movie that WMC will read, That xml file can link to a coverart image to be shown as well.

[McGary]

The data must all still be there, because if I add the "Movies from TV" share back to the recorded TV library, ALL of the movies then show up in Recorded TV (as I'd expect) WITH all of the icons, etc. It's just that I really don't want over 2000 entries in Recorded TV !!

I guess the bottom line is there's no way to exclude the movies from the "Recorded TV" and still see the icons and other info. WMC is smart enough to display recorded movies in the Movies list --- too bad it isn't smart enough to exclude them from Recorded TV list. I was hoping there might be a "tweak" to do just that.

[garyan2]

Not that I am aware of without a lot of effort to create an xml file for each and every movie. I've never had a reason to look before, though.

[McGary]

Clearly not worth the hassle. I was just hoping that there was some relatively simple tweak I wasn't aware of that would do this. The simplest thing would likely be to leave everything in the "recorded TV" library, but have some way to exclude everything that's designated as a Movie from showing up in the Recorded TV display, since it's displayed in the Movies list. That way there wouldn't be any issue with the metadata, icons, etc.

If I built an .xml file for every movie, would that let the icons and metadata show up in the Movies list? If so, is there a link that would provide some guidance on how to do that? Clearly "catching up" would be a major chore that I may/may not ever actually do -- but it wouldn't be so bad to do it as I move individual movies going forward.

[jachin99]

If I read your post correctly then it sounds like because the share you use isn't a part of the recorded tv library, wmc isn't looking for the embedded coverart in the wtv files. Have you tried nesting your movies inside of a folder that is named after each individual movie? If you do this, and copy the movie cover image into this folder then rename it folder.jpg it might work. You don't even need the xml files anymore I believe because those were used for online lookup, and Ms discontinued that service earlier this year. Folder.jpg only works when your movies aren't included in the recorded tv library. Look up yammm and if it still works, then it might grab all of your folderart for you provided you have named your files correctly. Try one and see what happens

[McGary]

Sounds like a good thing to try -- but I'm not clear on exactly what you're suggesting …

My movies are all stored in a folder named "Movies from TV".

So, picking one at random, the filename is "Matchmaker Santa_HALLHD_2015_11_08_14_58_00"

Are you suggesting I create a subfolder named "Matchmaker Santa" and move that movie to it?

… and then copy the cover image into the folder and name it "Matchmaker Santa.jpg" ??

I found a download for yammm (yammm_setup_w8_13_10_26_0827.exe) => I gather you're suggesting I install this and it will extract all of the appropriate folder art (or download it) … is that correct? If so, do I then need to create a folder for every movie and put the appropriate cover art in the folders?

If this works, that would be great. Clearly it will take a while to restructure this for ~ 2000 movies … but I'd start doing it for every new recording as I add them; and would probably do a dozen or two every day until they're all done [on a "binge" day I could probably do a couple hundred]

[McGary]

I downloaded YAMMM, but it won't install on my HTPC (requires at least Win8).

So … I added a 2nd hard drive to a Win10 VM, copied a dozen movie files to it, with some in the main folder and a handful in folders by themselves with the folder name the same as the movie name. Then installed YAMMM and "pointed" to these folders. But nothing happens. Yammm apparently needs login credentials for a "remote share" … but I don't have any shares for this test. Do I need to set up an account at some database?

[jachin99]

Because your setting up your share on a VM I would make sure you have shared your movie folder and this share is visible on your win 7 PC. I would then give yammm the login credentials for your VM. Here is a tutorial about how to setup yammm. https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1 ... brary.html

As I said earlier you won't get all of the metadata but you should get covers and descriptions. You have to name everything just right in order for yammm to perform it's lookup in the movie database.

[Space]

Just my 2 cents...

I've had movies that were recorded on WMC stored on external storage for a long time and then when brought back online, the metadata seemed to all be there, so I'm not sure that any purging of this data is done (maybe it only purges data when WMC deletes the recording itself), although I would have to say that it sounds like a bad idea to not have some mechanism to purge this old data.

As for removing movies from the "Recorded TV" section, while still having them in the "Movies" section, this has been discussed many times before and there has never been a solution. However, one way is to use an addon that replaces the interface for playing back recordings, such as www.recordedtvhd.com (now free, but unsupported). Note that I have never used RecordedTVHD, so use at your own risk. Also note that some API changes at TheTVDB have caused RecordedTVHD to be unable to pull some metadata, so unless that is fixed, it may no longer be a good option.

[McGary]

Because your setting up your share on a VM I would make sure you have shared your movie folder and this share is visible on your win 7 PC. I would then give yammm the login credentials for your VM. Here is a tutorial about how to setup yammm. https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1 ... brary.html

Okay, I tried to follow this, but had limited success. First, I downloaded the "file2folder" batch file, and applied it to my test folder with a dozen movies. That worked fine -- the folder structure is as expected, and the movies all show in Media Center. Then I got the Windows 7 version of yammm, and updated it to the latest version per the discussion in that thread. I set the settings as close as I could to what's displayed -- the pages are different since it's a much newer version than the one shown in that thread. But as near as I can tell it's not DOING anything … there are no "folder.jpg" files in the folders.

As I said earlier you won't get all of the metadata but you should get covers and descriptions. You have to name everything just right in order for yammm to perform it's lookup in the movie database.

Okay, the names used are identical to the recorded movie names -- and I also selected the "rename" option for yammm (as suggested in the setup details). There's no status info, or "download now" button or any such thing in yammm. Any ideas??

Just for grins, I looked up some art for one of my movies (a Jesse Stone movie); downloaded the art -- it was a .png, so I loaded it in photoshop, saved it as a .jpg, moved the .jpg to the movie folder, and renamed it folder.jpg just to see if anything would happen. NADA … Media Center still just shows the name … no icon.

The link you provided is very encouraging -- the first thing it shows is two graphics "With and without poster information." The first picture is exactly what I'm getting (have for years) … the 2nd picture shows icons for the movies (exactly what I'd LIKE to get ).

But it indicates that to get this you only have to move all the recordings to individual folders, which "file2folder" will do (and it indeed does that). And then you have to "... download a file for the movie you would like as a poster and save it in the movie folder and name it folder.jpg. Do this for each movie."

I did that for one movie (Jesse Stone) ... and it had no impact.

The instructions also indicate that if you install yammm it will "... automatically rename folders/files, download folder.jpg & DVDID.XML files for Media Center to read from" => implying this will provide the artwork for icons and also the metadata for the full description of the recordings.

Clearly I'm not doing something here -- hopefully something really simple I'm overlooking. Any ideas/suggestions ??

While I'd LOVE to get yammm somehow getting all the artwork (folder.jpg files) for the movies and the full description so the movies page would work like the 2nd graphic shown in the tutorial, even if I could just get it to display the icons by adding a folder.jpg picture to the movie folders that'd be an improvement. Not that I'm enthusiastic about downloading 2000 icons and adding them to the folders ... but I could do a few dozen a day for a month Still wouldn't have the descriptions, however, so yamm would be a MUCH better solution.

[McGary]

Just my 2 cents...

I've had movies that were recorded on WMC stored on external storage for a long time and then when brought back online, the metadata seemed to all be there …

Agree. If I add my "Movies from TV" folder to the Recorded TV library, all of the artwork and descriptions are still there -- and this has over 2000 movies recorded over at least 5 or 6 years. It'd just be oh-so-nice if I could get all that displaying in the Movies library without also having them all show up in Recorded TV.

Obviously one "solution" would be to just add the folder to Recorded TV when we want to peruse the movies, and remove it later ==> but (a) this is a hassle (minor for me; MAJOR for the wife); and (b) I doubt my wife would consider this even an option

I suppose we'll just continue to live with the names-only (as shown in the "without poster information" picture in the thread about setting this all up) ... but it's frustrating to know there IS a solution and not be able to figure out exactly what needs to be done to get there.