@johnm_ColaSC said:
You might get duplicated years with %showname% (%airyear%) or %showname% (%premiereyear%). The year is included in the %showname% from what I have seen at least.
Yeah, I think you’re right, and thanks… I noticed that when looking in the MCEBuddy log file, but didn’t notice it in the folder structure because the recording was flagged as a movie. I’ll fix that as well.
@MAScooby said:
I may have figured it out… It looks like the manually added file was being deleted before or in the middle of being processed. I expected that move would happen after conversion, but that may be the same issue you were referring to with archiving.I turned the delete off in the General settings and removed the Destination in the conversion, at which point Comskip was able to remove the commercials, but the MKV file was left in the .grab folder tree & never showed up in my library (I figured Plex would move it after postprocessing, but maybe not).
Yes, that’s the issue I was referring to.
Just to confirm:
You removed the tick from “Delete manually added original file” and you left the Destination directory empty and you have added the script in the Plex DVR options. Result is that the converted file is being left in the .grab folder, Plex won’t move it?
Looks like it’s finally working. I did get some funky file naming from trying to use %premieredate% … it actually showed up as “Show Name (YYYY) ()” so I just removed that field.
I’m testing one more recording now, but I I think I must have had some NextPVR/Plex configuration mix-ups going on.
Thanks for the sanity checks & assistance!
@johnm_ColaSC said:
Almost identical settings. About the only difference I see is that I use some custom file renaming to actually move the file into the appropriate library when mcebuddy completes.
That’s completely pointless. By doing that you lose all Gracenote Metadata for the recordings.
If you do it that way you can do it without a script. Simply let Plex move the recordings to the destination like it does by default (without script). Then add a monitor location to MCEBuddy which will then convert the recordings. Same result.
Relevant part from my guide:
While your setup is now fully automated, it does have one major drawback. All Gracenote Metadata will be lost this way. Why is that important? Gracenote provides the EPG (electronic program guide) for Plex. When media is finished recording Plex will start with adding Gracenote-provided metadata. Then it will attempt to enhance it with TVDB metadata. Problems start to arise if you watch your random woodworking show, sports, news and documentaries, everything that doesn’t match with TheTVDB. This is especially a problem if the country you’re living in doesn’t have English as their primary language (TheTVDB has way more content for English stuff). In practice this means that there won’t be any item description, photos and the name of the item itself will be the recording date, not a normal name. Gracenote metadata can currently not be saved within the recordings, it’s all saved in the Plex Media Server. The moment you replace the original recording with your MCEBuddy converted file, all Gracenote metadata will be lost.
The whole point of the script is to retain the Gracenote Metadata.
@Wiidesire said:
Just to confirm:
You removed the tick from “Delete manually added original file” and you left the Destination directory empty and you have added the script in the Plex DVR options. Result is that the converted file is being left in the .grab folder, Plex won’t move it?
I’ll play with it a bit more, but the process that @johnm_ColaSC outlined seems to be working for me: I’ve added a destination directory, and added the file rename logic.
Plex is able to ID the show once MCEBuddy moves it in, despite the Gracenote metadata loss.
I do still get an error indicator in Plex, even though it’s working:
I assume that’s due to an exit code 2 that comskip is generating, or the handful of these that show up:
ERROR> 2017-07-07T12:00:12 → StartAppWithAdminPrivilegesFromNonUISession WTSQueryUserToken failed (No logged on users) with error 1008. An attempt was made to reference a token that does not exist.
EDIT: See below for update on the error code…
@MAScooby said:
Plex is able to ID the show once MCEBuddy moves it in, despite the Gracenote metadata loss.
Only because the show exists in TheTVDB. If it doesn’t you’ll want Gracenote Metadata, e.g. for sports, news etc.
@Wiidesire said:
@MAScooby said:
Plex is able to ID the show once MCEBuddy moves it in, despite the Gracenote metadata loss.
Only because the show exists in TheTVDB. If it doesn’t you’ll want Gracenote Metadata, e.g. for sports, news etc.
Yep, understood.
@Wiidesire said:
Just to confirm:
You removed the tick from “Delete manually added original file” and you left the Destination directory empty and you have added the script in the Plex DVR options. Result is that the converted file is being left in the .grab folder, Plex won’t move it?
Confirmed. I just recorded another show, and the file’s still sitting in the .grab folder. It looks like MCEBuddy completed successfully but Plex didn’t move the file after that…
Saw this in the PMS logs:
Jul 07, 2017 12:30:10.202 INFO Library section 2 (TV Shows) will be updated because of a change in E:\TV\WBZ News (2008)\Season 2017
Jul 07, 2017 12:30:10.201 ERROR Couldn’t rename file E:\TV.grab\bb9b458417e0d825946660667e1d50a0a169f490\WBZ News (2008) - 2017-07-07 00 00 00 - Episode 07-07.mkv to E:\TV\WBZ News (2008)\Season 2017\WBZ News (2008) - 2017-07-07 00 00 00 - Episode 07-07.mkv: The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process
Jul 07, 2017 12:30:10.201 INFO Library section 2 (TV Shows) will be updated because of a change in E:\TV\WBZ News (2008)
Jul 07, 2017 12:30:10.198 ERROR DVR:Recorder: Postprocessing script ‘D:\Program Files\MCEBuddy2x\PlexScript\MCEBuddyScriptv2.bat’ exited with error code 255.
EDIT: MCEBuddy didn’t even finish its conversion until 12:35:20.
EDIT: I think the for loop may be broken in my version of the script… Testing a fix now.
If you want to put the file back in the exact same spot leave the destination stuff blank. I had that issue.
@MAScooby said:
EDIT: I think the for loop may be broken in my version of the script… Testing a fix now.
The issue seems to be that ~1 notation doesn’t work in Windows 10, so I’d tried to quote out the “D:\Program Files” but, inside the for loop of the script, I think it’s treating that quoted space as a delimiter despite the “delims=” switch.
Works perfectly fine on my Windows 10 machine. From my script:
C:\Progra~1\MCEBuddy2x\MCEBuddy.UserCLI.exe
@johnm_ColaSC said:
Works perfectly fine on my Windows 10 machine. From my script:
C:\Progra~1\MCEBuddy2x\MCEBuddy.UserCLI.exe
Yeah, I just figured out that 8dot3name is a per volume setting, and it looks like it’s enabled for my C drive but disabled on my D drive.
I’m not sure yet whether that’s just a result of the way I formatted the D drive or if it’s a Win10 default of some sort (probably the former).
Now I have to figure out whether to enable it on D or get the for loop to work without it…
or install mcebuddy to the C: drive and not mess with your D drive. You can always point the working folder for mcebuddy to your D drive. Mine points to my G: drive.
Yeah, I may go that route, but there should be a way to get the for loop working. 
Confirmed that the final issue was with the script’s for loop not working due to 8dot3name being disabled on my D volume. Just finished scrubbing two different recordings with seamless moves to the TV shows library.
@Wiidesire thanks again for the script & pointers. 
Anyone have a working link to this script still? It appears the zippyshare link from the redit page is not downloading the script for me.
There is a download link on the zippyshare page. Just looked at the page myself. Just be careful on the site. I see it still has lots of popups.
Thanks, I just tried again (same download button as before) and it worked this time.
Here’s the script - the zippyshare reeks of spy/malware.
@echo off
C:\Progra~1\MCEBuddy2x\MCEBuddy.UserCLI.exe --command=engine --action=start
timeout /t 2 /nobreak > NUL
C:\Progra~1\MCEBuddy2x\MCEBuddy.UserCLI.exe --command=addfile --action=%1
timeout /t 10 /nobreak > NUL
:loop
for /f "delims=" %%o in ('C:\Progra~1\MCEBuddy2x\MCEBuddy.UserCLI.exe --command=jobstatus --action=%1 --quiet') do set status=%%o
if %status% == "not present" (
Exit
) else (
timeout /t 2 /nobreak > NUL
goto loop
)
I’ve found the best result is to not specify a destination or even a monitor location in MCEBuddy - when the script completes, PMS will move the file out of the grab folder on its own. Similarly, don’t have MCEBuddy rename the file - PMS has named it correctly for the association with its metadata. No need to mess with it
Thanks to all for posting in this thread, and especially to @Wiidesire for the great guide.
I resisted as much as I could with trying out (and paying for 
) MCEBuddy, but after all the hassle I was getting with Plex’s built-in comskip – older version, weird processing artifacts, commericials that didn’t get detected the first time but on a second time it did – I made the jump.
Having all the information here made it a snap. Much respect and appreciation to all. 
