Movie posters not returned where the Movie Title includes the prod year in brackets

[jordy1955]

Hi Folks,

I use EPG Collector to source and create the xmltv file for NPVR to use and EMBY as my media server on Win10 pro (v1809).

I am trying to improve the number of TV Series and Movie poster images that are shown in EMBY and have discovered that if the Movie name supplied to NPVR contains the Production year eg "Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015)". NPVR fails to find a match and does not return a poster image and any extended metadata (Actors etc) - This causes about 30-40% of movie searches to fail. If I remove the prod year from the title, a match is found every time and the poster and metadata is downloaded as expected.

Using EPCGs Edit tab, I can remove everything enclosed in brackets and this works great, NPVR is then able to correctly search for and download 100% of movie posters. However this creates a new a problem - in that removing everything in brackets from the epg titles also removes things like (AU) and other bracketed info that is necessary to correctly identify some TV shows (Series etc) Scandal is such a one; the correct name for it to be identified properly on TVDB is "Scandal (2012)". So, removing the bracketed info results in none of these shows being identified thus no metadata or poster is downloaded.

Can NPVR's metedata search function be modified to ignore the Production Year when included in Brackets as part of a Movie title.
thanks

jordy

[sub]

It can't do this today. It currently assumes the title is the title, and that whole string will be sent to themoviedb etc when searching for show artwork.

In general, the EPG typically has just the title in the title field, and the year is stored in a separate field. I can look into adding support for this, but for the short term your best bet is probably to remove that extra text.

[jordy1955]

Thanks @sub. I figured that would be your response. No probs. I'll keep going as is until then Just appreciate that you will have a go at it.

Not sure if they are also populating the prod year in it's own field within the epg, so maybe you could look at parsing the year from the brackets and using that to select the correct movie where there are more than one with the same title. Just a thought

cheers

jordy

[sub]

Is this info EPG Collector was adding, or stuff your broadcaster is including in the title?

[jordy1955]

Is this info EPG Collector was adding, or stuff your broadcaster is including in the title?

Soory for the delayed reply.

This is stuff included by the broadcaster. As I said, by using EPGC I can modify the titles but that in itself cause other issues. It seems that I can't win that way...

One other thing I've just noticed is that NPVR is returning non English posters. It has just returned a Greek poster for "Married With Children". Any chance we can specify the language for searches. Don't think I can set that atm.

thanks


jordy

[sub]

It could be a case of not getting an exact match because the show name was actually "Married... With Children", so a search probably just returned an shows that vaguely matched, and thetvdb for whatever reason might be ranking this Greek show before it. Usually they do a pretty good job with these searches, but sometimes we get unexpected results.

I do currently pass an 'language=all' parameter, which I could make configurable in an upcoming release.

In the mean time, you could try using the Video library to browse to the directory with the record, and hit the 'metadata' option in the top menu, which will do search and return all the results, allowing you to select another one.

[jordy1955]

re Married... with Children, my oversight, i used that as an example without checking that the title was correct, I fixed it by editing the show title in EPGC. NPVR now downloads the correct poster

Two things with regards to Language and incorrect artwork:

1: On the "Artwork" tab there is a field that enables selection of preferred Artwork language. This field defaults to blank, I can select "English" from the list but it is not retained, every time I return to this tab the field is blank again.
2: Selecting (double clicking) a Show / Movie from the Guide, brings up a dialogue providing details of the show, including the current poster - if there is one. clicking on the poster searches TVDB etc for a match. This will allow me to download a poster (where there is one available), however if there is already a poster - albeit an incorrect one - it will not allow me to download a replacement (correct) poster.

Qoute: "try using the Video library to browse to the directory with the record". Could you be a bit more specific on this please?, not sure where to look for the "Directory with the record"

Edit: just now NVPR would not allow me to download a poster - even if one does not exist - permissions maybe?

Thanks jordy

[sub]

I think I've address most of these for the next build (4.2.4)

[jordy1955]

@Sub, Thanks for the update.

1: is fixed - at least the language choice sticks now. I'll keep and eye on it and advise if it downloads a poster with incorrect language.
2: Does not appear to be fixed.
Example:
TV Show: Rizzoli & Isles
Local TV Networks used "Rizzoli and Isles" as the epg title. With this title, NPVR finds the correct show - Rizzoli & Isles, but will not download the poster. There are 12 posters in TVDB at least one of which has English as the language.
After I edit the title using EPGC to the correct name - "Rizzoli & Isles", NVPR correctly identifies it and downloads an image straight away using the process described above - dblclick show in TV Guide > click on blank poster > NPVR finds correct show in TVDB and downloads the poster without further interaction.

EDIT:
Found another example:
TV Series: 2 Broke girls
Local TV Networks used "Two Broke Girls" as title. NPVR correctly identifies it as "2 Broke Girls", but will not download the poster (20 available on TVDB). Correcting the title enables download of poster.


Thanks for the efforts

Jordy

[sub]

Honestly, it's never going to know about differences like "Rizzoli and Isles" vs "Rizzoli & Isles", or "Two Broke Girls" vs "2 Broke Girls". NextPVR has no way to know that your broadcaster entered their DVB EPG show descriptions with slightly different spelling to what the show is known as on thetvdb etc. All it can do is run the query, and hope thetvdb will find the right match. This is precisely why I made it possible to click on the poster to have it show the list of results, to allow you to force the selection of another possible match.