[mythtv-users] MythMetadataLookup questions

[Robert McNamara]

On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 3:14 PM, Stefan Dahlin <raptorjr at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>I think this page summarizes the changes as well as what needs to be done
>>for existing users
>>
>>http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Enhancing_Recordings_with_Metadata_Lookup
>>
>>Kevin
>
> Well, i guess i did remember the commit message, since i've done all that.
> But still i'm missing a lot of artwork that were present when Jamu was used.
> Is mythmedatalookup not as good as Jamu to find the right information?
>

It sounds like you've done the few automatic steps at the top, but not
done the manual steps required where a definite match cannot be found.

JAMU worked on a "get artwork at all costs" basis.  Myth's new
metadata lookup code works on a "get correct artwork at all costs"
basis.  Jamu frequently made the wrong decision about what artwork
went to what recording because it was extremely lax about matching.
MythMetadataLookup works automatically when it is nearly certain to
give the correct result, and leaves things alone when it can't.  From
your description, and it's difficult to tell for sure based on the
limited data presented here, you've run the few steps that I've
provided to try to bring people as up to date as possible
automatically, but have not taken the time to "fill in the gaps" where
items could not be conclusively matched.

> I do appreciate all the effort put into Myth, and think that
> mythmetadatalookup is the right way to go instead of Jamu, but i think that
> mythmetadatalookup should be as good as Jamu or better to find things
> automatically. As it looks know it isn't. But if there is anything i could
> do to help testing to get it to be better, let me know.
>

I disagree.  MythMetadataLookup isn't as good at matching as JAMU--
It's better.  It's a matter of your priorities.  MML is engineered to
do everything it can possibly do to provide accurate results-- JAMU
was written to provide *a* result, which was hopefully accurate.  If
MML were one iota more aggressive in making matches, it would start to
introduce an unacceptable number of false positives to the results.
Since it's my code (and therefore operates according to my
priorities), it wasn't acceptable to have more than a minute
possibility of making the wrong choice of metadata.  I was tired of
seeing Conan the Barbarian instead of Conan the Comedian.

> Anyway, i have the following problems. I switched to another theme, it seems
> to have more options regarding metadata than the one i used. But if i switch
> to Arclight i can see that a lot of my series have a inetref, but still i
> dont get any artwork for them.

If your series (and here I mean the recording rule) has an inetref,
then the next nightly run of mythmetadatalookup --refresh-all-artwork
will pull in available artwork for it.  If you feel that any output is
in error, then you need to provide logs of the --refresh-all-artwork
run and a dump of the recordedartwork table in the DB.  I suspect that
everything is working fine and that there is some other subtle
misconfiguration in your system.

> With Arclight i can see artwork for some recorded movies, but if i switch
> back to Blue Abstract theme that i normally use, i see the artwork for other
> recordings too. Shouldn't artwork be shown independent of which theme is
> used? And since Arclight show some artwork it should be capable of showing
> all? And by all i mean the artwork that have been downloaded, i still have
> movies/series with inetref that dont have artwork, but did when i used Jamu.
>

Works for me (tm).  All my series have inetrefs assigned, and artwork
is successfully pulled for all of them, and all artwork shown in my
theme (Arclight) appears, every time.

Make sure you are using Arclight 25.11 or later.

> Is it possible to change inetref and search for metadata in the Watch
> recordings screen? And get a list of hits if there is more than one? To me
> it feels like the logic place to be since the Upcoming recording screen dont
> show any artwork, so you dont know if it worked or not.

You can edit the rule for a recording by highlighting it and pressing
"E".  Then you can step through the same exact steps to set artwork as
documented in the wiki.  Also shown on the wiki is what happens when
multiple matches are found.  You need to be using a theme which is up
to date-- to the best of my knowledge, blue-abstract is not, though I
believe its author uses master and usually updates things promptly, so
I'm sure the full range of functionality is coming.  Also note that if
you are using Arclight, you need to be using current Arclight (>=
25.11), not an old copy.

If you are using a theme which uses artwork on the "Metadata Options"
screen (Arclight and MythCenter-wide both do) you can immediately see
the artwork assigned to that rule.

Based on the random nature of the stuff you are reporting, I strongly
suspect not performing the manual setup of missed recording rules, and
probably a mismatch of old themes.

> Well, if i seem confused it is because i am, Jamu worked almost completely
> automatical(even though some Swedish titles didn't work) but now i cant seem
> to get much to work. But i guess it is a work in progress, dont know if i
> maybe stumbled on some bugs? But i'm still a little unsure if i'm doing
> something wrong. Everything could be my own fault.

Again, the goal of JAMU and MML are different.  They both provide you
with artwork, but one puts accuracy above automation.  Based on
working through the steps documented on the wiki with several dozen
users, there is an average automatic (and correct) matching of 90%+ of
rules and recording when configured correctly.  It sounds as though
you have performed the "cheat sheet" steps and failed to perform the
work to fill in the gaps.  Once you have your recording rules and
recordings up to date, all further recordings will inherit the correct
information and artwork.  Also note that the primary goal of
MythMetadataLookup is *not* just artwork-- it's filling in the other
information such as season and episode, and when we expand the DB
schema, other missing information that brings recording and video
metadata into parity.

I'll try to summarize how one should migrate to MML here, even though
I have done so fairly extensively, and with screenshots, in the wiki:

1) run mythmetadatalookup --refresh-all-rules

This performs a lookup on all recording rules.  Any rules/titles which
are conclusively matched will get an inetref/season/episode.  This is
conservative-- it will only set this data if it is nearly certain to
be correct.

2) run mythmetadatalookup --refresh-all

This takes all the inetrefs which have been found for the rules, and
copies them over to recordings made on that rule.  It also attempts to
perform a lookup for the remaining recordings, again insisting on
accuracy.

3) run mythmetadatalookup --refresh-all-artwork

Performs an artwork lookup for everything matched in the two steps
above.  For each season of each show with an inetref, the top rated
coverart, fanart, and banner will be downloaded.  As mentioned on the
wiki article, this is contingent on the Fanart, Banner, and Coverart
storage groups being defined on the master backend.

4) Perform "manual" confirmation of lookups on remaining recording
rules by editing the rule, selecting "Metadata Options" and selecting
from the list of presented choices.  This MUST be done with a theme
which is current.

In most properly configured setups, most rules and recordings should
now have inetref, season, and episode assigned to them.  For those
that do not, you should go to the "Metadata Options" step for each
rule.  Because of the conservative (accurate) nature of MML, an item
with multiple identical or near identical matches will never be
automatically paired with an inetref.  We rely on the user to give us
the answer.  In JAMU, with shows such as Castle (which appears at
TTVDB as "Castle (2009)") there was a text file mapping between title
and TVDB/TMDB inetref.  This is more or less the same thing, it's just
much more friendly.  If the rule already has an inetref assigned, no
lookup takes place.  If a rule has no inetref, a lookup is
automatically performed when entering the metadata options screen.  If
there is one result, and the item is found to be a Movie, it will be
in the inetref field, and Season and Episode will be 0.  If there is
one result, and the item is determined to be TV, the inetref will be
in the field, and the season and episode will be set to something !=
0.  If the recording rule is generic, this will be season 1, episode
1.  If the recording rule has a subtitle which can be matched, it'll
be the exact season and episode.  This information is a "hint" to
future runs of the metadata grabber for deciding which grabber to use
on recordings made from the rule.

If *multiple* matches are found for an item, and you are using an
up-to-date theme, you will see a list of possible matches from which
to choose.  Simply select the correct one and the fields will be
auto-populated.

When you are satisfied with the inetref/season/episode information,
you can now either manually set artwork for this rule (by picking from
the artwork buttons on the screen) or simple hit "Done" and then
saving the rule.  If you fail to save the rule after doing this, your
changes will be lost.

If you have done ALL of these steps, and ALL of your rules have
inetrefs, and you still aren't seeing artwork, then you need to
provide a dump of the recordedartwork table and log output of
mythmetadatalookup --refresh-all-artwork.

In closing, MythMetadataLookup is fairly feature-complete at this
point.  I would say it is 95% of what one should expect to see in the
release of .25.  When configured properly (and yes, for legacy setups
this may mean some legwork) it is far, far more accurate and
featureful than the old "image hunt" (which I also wrote) artwork
display.  Each season of each show gets it's own artwork, there's no
expensive regexp hunt for files across tons of directories and hosts--
just a static assignment of artwork to inetrefs, and inetrefs to
rules/recordings.  In cases of one off or unusual rules, it's possible
to set artwork manually from your local system.  MythMetadataLookup
hooks into all the same metadata grabbing logic usable in MythVideo,
meaning we can now easily add taglines, plot, etc. from metadata
sources to recorded content.  All of these are huge advantages over
the old way.

Robert