Shows being misidentified as movies

General Discussions Plex Features
1

With the recent update to add live tv, I thought I’d look at the DVR functionality again. I stopped last time and went back to an existing NextPVR instance as I found that Plex was misidentifying shows as movies.

I’m not sure what the criteria is for a movie…if it’s only the absence of S0xE0x in the description, but I know of two 5 day a week shows listing as movies.

And being a movie the gui seems to expect to record one instance, and doesn’t give me an option to record a series.

How can we help plex identify shows? I know you’re pulling EPG from the tuner, what about using XMLTV - at least that would give me the option of adding data to the XML file if I can’t get any other changes.

2

We’re not pulling EPG from the tuner, we’re getting it from Gracenote, which may be the culprit.

Where are you located?

I’m not sure the best way to handle something like this, but I can ask and will let you know.

3

In NZ.

Surely gracenote is just used as a “I’ve got a programme entry called masterchef australia, what is this?”

4

Nope, Gracenote gives us all the EPG data, channel mappings, etc, so in the Program Guide if it says ‘Movie’ when it’s actually a TV show, it’s on them.

5

Oh really. Ok, so how can I get gracenote fixed? Is there a process, or a place where their entries can be reviewed, altered?

I’d have thought rather than a central worldwide repository of shows/movies, using the localised program guides would make more sense.

6

So how do I get gracenote updated. Is that something I can do, or does it have to come from plex?

7

@psycik I feel your pain. I have been working to improve our parsing of the EPG data we get from Gracenote. Sadly so much stuff in NZ is missing the Season/Episode data, or is is hidden in the Synopsis, or worst still, Movies are tagged as “Episode” or “Programme” so they get parsed as a show. or sometimes something on 20/20 or another “special edition” news story that should be a documentary is tagged as a “Episode” instead.

I’m hoping we can improve things over time, but for the most part the issue does stem from the data we get from Gracenote.

An alternative option you could try is to use an XMLTV feed (which you can use as an alternative to the Gracenote EPG during the DVR setup process) such as the one this NZ guy has for his TVHeadend setup http://www.matthuisman.nz/2016/10/freeview-nz-xmltv-epg.html

8

@chrisallen said:
@psycik I feel your pain. I have been working to improve our parsing of the EPG data we get from Gracenote. Sadly so much stuff in NZ is missing the Season/Episode data, or is is hidden in the Synopsis, or worst still, Movies are tagged as “Episode” or “Programme” so they get parsed as a show. or sometimes something on 20/20 or another “special edition” news story that should be a documentary is tagged as a “Episode” instead.

I’m hoping we can improve things over time, but for the most part the issue does stem from the data we get from Gracenote.

An alternative option you could try is to use an XMLTV feed (which you can use as an alternative to the Gracenote EPG during the DVR setup process) such as the one this NZ guy has for his TVHeadend setup Freeview NZ XMLTV EPG Listings

I’m pretty happy to use XMLTV, I already have the grabber running for a nextpvr system. I’m also pretty happy to play with the xml that comes out, as i had some tools for doing this back in the day.

Do we know what I’d have to do in the xml tv to make the distinction between show and movie, and/or get the show name correct (from thetvdb/gracenote?)

9

SO I just had a go with the XML, and I’m getting a:
Jun 02, 2017 12:09:10.563 [3216] VERBOSE - * lineup => lineup://tv.plex.providers.epg.xmltv/c:/plex/dvb-t.xml#My%20Program%20Guide
Jun 02, 2017 12:09:10.564 [3216] ERROR - Error parsing XML.
Jun 02, 2017 12:09:10.564 [3216] VERBOSE - It took 0.0 sec to serialize a list with 0 elements.
Jun 02, 2017 12:09:10.565 [3328] DEBUG - Completed: [127.0.0.1:58298] 400 GET /livetv/epg/channels?lineup=lineup%3A%2F%2Ftv.plex.providers.epg.xmltv%2Fc%3A%2Fplex%2Fdvb-t.xml%23My%2520Program%2520Guide (19 live) GZIP 4ms 521 bytes (pipelined: 2)

With no further info. I haven’t found a log yes that shows the reading of the XML. This is the same xmltv file that nextpvr has been using for years.

10

Interestingly, I just tried the http://www.matthuisman.nz/2016/10/freeview-nz-xmltv-epg.html xmltv file and plex didn’t like that either.

11

@psycik regarding the attribute to determine if it is an episode or not, we look for the custom original-air-date element or else the standard episode-num element. if it has neither of those, it’s not an episode (according to us)

How are you providing PMS with the path to the XMLTV file? If it is on windows please use \\localhost\c$\path o\xml\freeview.xml in the path for XMLTV EPG (known issue we are working on)

12

@chrisallen said:
@psycik regarding the attribute to determine if it is an episode or not, we look for the custom original-air-date element or else the standard episode-num element. if it has neither of those, it’s not an episode (according to us)

How are you providing PMS with the path to the XMLTV file? If it is on windows please use \\localhost\c$\path o\xml\freeview.xml in the path for XMLTV EPG (known issue we are working on)

So for the purposes of testing, I put it into the plex folder with the plex cache (ie C:\Plex\dvb-t.xml) so it was local to the server both times.

Both files were listed as missing or invalid.

13

can you try \\localhost\c$\Plex\dvb-t.xml as the path in the DVR setup wizard?

14

@chrisallen said:
can you try \\localhost\c$\Plex\dvb-t.xml as the path in the DVR setup wizard?

Ok, that worked. So UNC works rather than local paths? I assume if I wanted that off a server that would also work?

15

So that loaded it through, but the same problem remains, “Masterchef Australia” and “Shortland Street” as still identified as movies.

In this scenario, is gracenote still used?

BTW, where in NZ are you?

17

I’m picking this is the XMLTV entry:

  <programme start="20170601130000 +1200" stop="20170601145500 +1200" channel="1200">
    <title>Masterchef Australia</title>
    <desc>Today the top eight contestants will take a trip down memory lane as they discover that this week's mystery box challenge is one they have faced before.</desc>
    <category>Series - Reality</category>
    <rating>
      <value>G</value>
    </rating>
    <star-rating>
      <value>8/8</value>
    </star-rating>
    <subtitles type="teletext" />
    <credits>
      <actor>Gary Mehigan</actor>
      <actor>George Calombaris</actor>
      <actor>Matt Preston</actor>
    </credits>
    <icon src="file://C:\Users\Public\NPVR\Media\Shows\TV Series\58628a4f-fb58-4200-82a4-5f727593b0e8.jpg" />
  </programme>
fsdf
18

@psycik you would need to get original-air-date into there, or valid Season and Episode numbers using episode-num

something like <episode-num system="xmltv_ns">6.45.</episode-num> would be the value for that episode (season.episode.part indexed from 0) which translates to S07E46 (notice the trailing . and the lack of part in the example.

You can read more about this here http://xmltv.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/xmltv/xmltv/xmltv.dtd

Without PMS being able to detect that it is an episode, it will fallback to type=Movie

19

@chrisallen said:
@psycik you would need to get original-air-date into there, or valid Season and Episode numbers using episode-num

something like <episode-num system="xmltv_ns">6.45.</episode-num> would be the value for that episode (season.episode.part indexed from 0) which translates to S07E46 (notice the trailing . and the lack of part in the example.

You can read more about this here CVS Info for project xmltv

Without PMS being able to detect that it is an episode, it will fallback to type=Movie

How are dated shows referenced, ie One News?
And How is the show name found in gracenote? by name or by ID? And do they have everything, even thetvdb didn’t used to.

20

Any update to this? Is there any way of getting data into gracenote?