Missing metadata in VideoObject

Hi,

 

I've created a VideoObject and added it to an ObjectContainer...

Adding informations like:

  • tagline
  • genres
  • original_title
  • originally_available_at
  • ...

ended in the result that only a few informations are available within the webinterface. I can see only some of them but the rest is missing. Only the important ones are visible. Is there something to remember to add and display this metadata?


Greets

Sascha

 

For example: the "genres" metadata is just a list of genres...

Or is a special format required for this metadata?

I'm not sure that many of those make sense if you're just using a generic video object, those probably make more sense when using a MovieObject, EpisodeObject, AlbumObject, etc.

The docs seem _horribly_ out of date on this area, but from what I can glean from them in a few places it says a "list", so guessing genres would be a python list if anything.

Lastly not all Plex apps show all metadata, it's a bit all over the place.  Plex/Web is not my first choice when it comes to testing channel content, that's for sure.

I take that back ... they are not so out of date:

http://dev.plexapp.com/docs/api/objectkit.html

The client apps (and their developers) have the final say on what metadata is displayed. As channel developers we can ask that they make use of all the available metadata. If you can confirm that the metadata is included in the XML generated by the channel and not displayed, rather than it being a case of the metadata not being properly passed by the channel framework, then we can notify the Plex/Web developers and hopefully it will be rectified.

Hm, the developer docu says that there are fields for "countries, genres, writers, ..." for MovieObjects.

So I cannot understand why these fields shoudn't be displayed? Perhaps this is a bug?

Example XML data for MovieObject:

<MediaContainer [...] type="movie" rating="6.2" year="2013" duration="7140000" title="The Internship" tagline="Hiring them was a brilliant mistake." originallyAvailableAt="2013-06-07"originalTitle="The Internship" summary="Two recently laid-off men in their 40s try to make it as interns at a successful Internet company where their managers are in their 20s." art="http://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w500/a2zcTbgltNDBm8tkXAYmGv0uplR.jpg" ratingKey="[...] "thumb="http://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w342/njTsMdL5ZXzgYGUFf8oODjKkDKI.jpg">

<Media videoCodec="h264" container="mp4" audioCodec="aac">
<Part container="mp4" key="[...]""file="">
<Stream index="0" selected="1" streamType="1" codec="h264" id="1"/>
<Stream index="1" selected="1" streamType="2" codec="aac" id="2"/>
<Genre tag="Comedy"/>
<Country tag="United States of America"/>

Wether "Comedy" or the "Country" appears while displaying the movie information...

Looks like those metadata fields aren’t included in the client layout (either by oversight or choice). With which apps have noticed this behaviour? I’ll bring it to the attention of the appropriate developers.

I think for movies Genre and Country are used as filters in Plex/Web:

filters.png

Hm, perhaps the genres are used for this, too.

But, the informations shown in the screenshot are used if the media resides local. And with the object informations documented at http://dev.plexapp.com/docs/api/objectkit.html#MovieObject it is possible to show these informations for media located somewhere else (where the channels looks for the media).

The problem which exists is that it seems that there's a bug now using/showing all given informations.

- genres

- countries

...

The screenshot shows the local media

![post-185122-0-10666500-1394725850.jpg|690x368](upload://ibc9300imwt1g8UJcEsiXu5roPc.jpg)

PS: Currently noticed that "directors" is one of the working fields.

I've checked what plex.tv/web shows: It's less than the local webinterface shows. For example the initial release date is missing, the year and so one...

For me it sees that both interfaces have issues interpreting the information provided by a channel. The XML data shows these informations but they aren't used to display them to the user. I think we should open a bug report at this point.

Well, you're half right :)

There was apparently a bug which was preventing the "genres" from being listed. The "countries" are excluded by design since that metadata is not displayed for any media in any part of the Plex ecosystem.

I can't comment on other metadata fields without specific examples. In some cases it may be that the metadata is "missing" due to an oversight but, I suspect that in most cases it a design choice. I'm sure there are arguments to be made for adding as much metadata as possible to the available views but those arguments are somewhat blunted by the lack of "official" channels which are able to provide that metadata.

I've created a working-Matrix for MovieObject metadata fields based on http://dev.plexapp.com/docs/api/objectkit.html#MovieObject and
Plex Media Server 0.9.9.6:
 
genres
Plex/Web: missing
plex.tv/web: missing
 
tags
Plex/Web: missing
plex.tv/web: missing
 
duration
Plex/Web: OK
plex.tv/web: missing
 
rating
Plex/Web: OK
plex.tv/web: OK
 
original_title
Plex/Web: missing
plex.tv/web: missing
 
source_title
Plex/Web: missing
plex.tv/web: missing
 
title
Plex/Web: OK
plex.tv/web: OK
 
year
Plex/Web: missing
plex.tv/web: missing
 
originally_available_at
Plex/Web: OK
plex.tv/web: missing
 
studio
Plex/Web: missing
plex.tv/web: missing
 
tagline
Plex/Web: OK
plex.tv/web: OK
 
summary
Plex/Web: OK
plex.tv/web: OK
 
trivia
Plex/Web: missing
plex.tv/web: missing
 
quotes
Plex/Web: missing
plex.tv/web: missing
 
content_rating
Plex/Web: missing
plex.tv/web: missing
 
content_rating_age
Plex/Web: missing
plex.tv/web: missing
 
writers
Plex/Web: OK 
plex.tv/web: OK
 
directors
Plex/Web: OK
plex.tv/web: OK
 
producers
Plex/Web: missing
plex.tv/web: missing
 
countries
Plex/Web: missing
plex.tv/web: missing
 
thumb
Plex/Web: OK
plex.tv/web: OK
 
art
Plex/Web: OK
plex.tv/web: OK
 
Hope this helps and gives an overview what works and what not... Writing a movie channel makes it nearly impossible to provide important and user friendly informations about a movieclip.
 
Greets
Sascha

Any news on that? Did my working matrix help to identify the missing stuff?

The year, content rating image, and media tag images (video resolution, audio codec, audio channels) will be added in the next update to better match the preplays for library content.

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