First I just want to say that this is a great program and I appreciate all the time and effort you've put into it.
The current problem I am having is that I cannot figure out how to get all of my recorded episodes to be renamed & moved into one main folder. I want to do this because I run a program called MCEBuddy that will automatically convert dvr-ms & wtv files to other formats and remove the commercials. The problem occurs though because MCEBuddy can only watch one folder without subdirectories. I cannot convert first because the conversion strips the metadata out and MCEZ sort would not work after that. So I need to run the sort first and then the conversion and this can only work if all episodes of all series are moved to the same directory with no other folder structure. Is this possible with your program?
Thanks for all your help.
It isn't possible right now, but it shouldn't be a huge problem to add it except finding the time to do it. Potentially next weekend, let me see what I can do.
That sounds great. Thanks a ton for the great support.
Well it's a week late and hasn't been as tested as much as I would like, but I've just uploaded a new version.
Highlights of the new version:
1. As requested, it can dump all files into a single directory instead of sorting by series and season. Look at the updated configinfo.xml and set blank values for these two values as shown below:
<series_folder_name_format></series_folder_name_format> <season_folder_name_format></season_folder_name_format>
2. My favorite new feature is the schedule culler. It will look at the shows that are scheduled to be recorded in the future, check to see if you have already archived each show, and if it is already archived, it will cancel the scheduled recording. This frees up your tuners to stop them from recording shows you've already gotten. For me, there are a number of shows that I've got almost all the episodes for and I'm just trying to get a few missing ones. But since the shows air several times a day, it will tie up tuners all day long recording shows trying to find those episodes. The culler will cancel the vast majority of these recordings and free up the tuners while still looking for those missing few episodes.
To use the feature, set the new configinfo.xml value to the number of days you want to look into the future schedule. So if you set it to 2, it will look through the next 2 days of schedule and cull already archived episodes. If you set it to 0, it will turn off this feature. I normally run this program every few days, so I set the value to 5.
3. A few bug fixes.
Let me know if you encounter any problems with the release.
I need to point out a small problem in the way this program works. I search thetvdb.com for the episode information by the original air date. This works really well for the most part, but there is a problem in the API for thetvdb.com such that if multiple episodes aired on that same date, thetvdb.com will only return one to me without letting me know there were multiple episodes.
As an example, here is what can go wrong. Earlier this season Family Guy aired a couple new episodes the same night. If I had run this program, it would have checked thetvdb.com for the first episode, thetvdb.com would have returned the information for one of the episodes, and the episode would have been renamed and sorted with that info. The program would then have queried thetvdb.com for the information for the 2nd episode (with the same air date), and it would have gotten back the same information it got with the first episode. It would then assume that episode had already been archived and would delete the 2nd episode even though it was actually a different episode.
So it is possible for this program to delete shows you have not watched and do not want to delete. I've requested twice for the API for thetvdb.com to be updated to fix it, but it doesn't appear to be a priority. If this is a major concern for you, you can set <delete_duplicates> to false (the default value) in ConfigInfo.xml and it will prevent the program from deleting the 2nd episode and you can handle it manually. Note that it is still possible for the 1st episode to be incorrectly named since if episodes 6 and 7 air on the same night and I query thetvdb.com for information for episode 6, it might return the info for episode 7 and I have no way of knowing that is wrong.
If anyone considers this a major problem, just mention it here and I will see if I can add some sort of secondary check into the logic to try to reduce the likelihood of this happening.
Wanted to point out that if you dump everything to a single directory for MCE Buddy to work on (as requested), then you move the files to a different location once MCE Buddy has processed them, the schedule culler will not work. I have a way around it, if you need it, let me know.
Hey woolooloo thanks for the program update. I'm not sure exactly what the problem is but anytime I try to run the program with files in the recorded tv folder the program freezes. It will work if no files are in the folder, but if just one file is in the folder then it will freeze. I have tried changing the drive of the recorded tv folder, but that didn't work and I've tried both sorting the series into separate folders and just one directory. Everything freezes the program. Do you have any ideas on what could be going wrong? It freezes right after starting up so the only thing that appears in the log is as follows:
2/8/2010 6:47:49 PM: MCEZ Sort v1.20 sorting files in X:\recorded tv
Hmm, I guess this could fall under the "hasn't been tested as much I would like" category. It works with my configuration files and on my 32 bit system. Let me try to run it on my 64 bit system to see if that could be a problem, and also please send me the text of your ConfigInfo.xml and SeriesInfo.xml files via private message so I can take a look at them.
Looks like it is related to 64 bit, not sure what went wrong with my build, but I have rebuilt my machine and my development environment since the last time I worked on it. I'll try to get a fixed version up asap.
Just put out an updated build that should work on x64 and x32, let me know if you have any more problems.
Link is in the very first post so we don't have orphaned links everywhere.
sdmf392, you may have already noticed, but if you need everything dumped to the same directory, you will probably have to manually tweak the folder values in SeriesInfo.xml for any series that you had in there previously.
I just tested the new build and it works fantastic from the direct .exe. However, when I set it up in the schedule tasks it has the same issue where it freezes upon start of the program. My config and series files are the same. All I have the scheduled task doing is starting the program triggering daily at midnight. Any ideas on what might be the problem?
The configuration files need to be in the same directory the program executes in. The scheduler may be running the program in a different directory context. Is there a setting for "working directory" or something like that when you set up the scheduled task?
I just took a look at the Win7 task scheduler, I think you need to set the "start in" parameter to the directory with your config files.
Every time I run the program I get the following message for each file:
Processing file: C:\recorded tv\The Big Bang Theory_KCBSDT_2010_02_08_21_29_00.wtvReading metadata from fileCannot read metadata, file may be in use. SkippingFini
Was wondering if you could shed some light on what I might be doing wrong.
TrojanZ: Every time I run the program I get the following message for each file: Processing file: C:\recorded tv\The Big Bang Theory_KCBSDT_2010_02_08_21_29_00.wtvReading metadata from fileCannot read metadata, file may be in use. SkippingFini Was wondering if you could shed some light on what I might be doing wrong.
I've only seen that message if it tries to process a show that is still being recorded. I can only imagine that the files are locked by some other process. Are you doing any other post-processing (commercial detection maybe?) that could be locking the files?
