@“MovieFan.Plex” …
Just curious, does the upcoming “fix” also get rid of the disappearing artwork issue? To recreate that issue, read my post just a few up from here in this thread for Arrow S05E30. Seems too coincidental to be totally unrelated. 
I missed that. Not sure that was filed. Let me see if I can find any info about it.
@“MovieFan.Plex”
The v1.3.x version seems to have broken a few things related to Media Agents which have been reported in other forums here. I know the XBMCnfoTVImporter no longer processes Season Posters and maybe other types of posters correctly after v1.3.x. Downgrading back to v1.2.7 fixes the issue.
I hope the artwork and order is fixed soon
@MovieFan.Plex said:
think there would be such an impact
And this exact statement is why I express frustration, and don’t hang out publicly as much here as I once did.
Thank you and your team for your hard work, but too many impacts over the past few months seemingly for the few than the greater good have caused me to be wary of any update I ever see.
Back more on topic, I’d love for Plex to include a dvd order feature without me having to use rarely updated hacked agents.
@“MovieFan.Plex”
The new PMS version Version 1.3.3.3148 seems to have returned my shows back to the right order! Thanks guys.
The release notes didn’t sound too hopeful…
- (TV) Episodes without season and episode numbers were sorting ahead of all others. (#5777)
- (TV) Scanning a show with a new episode could leave the episode unlinked to its series until a library refresh. (#5939)
We did have season and episode numbers, so that didn’t really sound like the problem. Curious, how does an episode without that basic info even get scanned into the library in the first place?
I guess time will tell, but I’m pretty sure TBDB is going to drop the ball on that one if those notes do, in fact, indicate a change to the Space Plex-Time Continuum.
although not completely related, artwork is not fixed, you can’t display artwork from nfos using the agent…
@leelynds - How about the image thing? I haven’t had time to check myself.
@“MovieFan.Plex” said:
How about the image thing?
Looks like that is fixed too. Using the fake Arrow S05E30 example, all season posters and episode thumbs showed up as expected, and episode 30 shows up logically at the bottom of the list…
Of course, episode 30 shows me a thumb of Popeye the Sailor, because it’s using a thumb generated by Plex, but I wouldn’t expect anything different, since that is what the file really is. 
@samfisher5986 said:
although not completely related, artwork is not fixed, you can’t display artwork from nfos using the agent…
TV episodes matched with the DVDOrderAgent display the thumbs used by the TVDB as expected, or the sidecar image file named according to the naming method Plex suggests. There are no actual .nfo files there though, in this case.
I use the XBMCnfoMoviesImporter on one library, but I just scribble out some quick nfo files that don’t reference image files. I do add sidecar image files for posters and backgrounds, and those all work. I guess the local media assets agent kicks in to recognize those images. For properly generated nfo files, it may still be broken.
@leelynds said:
Of course, episode 30 shows me a thumb of Popeye the Sailor, because it’s using a thumb generated by Plex, but I wouldn’t expect anything different, since that is what the file really is.
You poor Man… There’s no need to punish yourself that way. You’re already being punished by having Polar Bears constantly eating your pets, having no TV and living in a country that is not France, but is filled with a bunch of French people.
My test file is a movie extra from Spellbound (1945) about the lovely Ingrid Bergman. When a match fails Plex generates an image of her so there’s a little bitterness cause the match failed, but she makes it allllllll better… I can send it to you if you like to treat yourself once in a while.
BTW, switch up to Wolverines as pets - I hear not much will tangle with one of those things, but do refrain from whacking it on the nose with the newspaper when it pees on the carpet.
Speaking of nfo files, I am informed that MCEBuddy will work with those when the embedded metadata in my WTV files is Notorious (1946) (get it? Ha!) in it’s inaccuracy and fails to match. I can change the file name to a perfect matchable file name, but MCEBuddy will stubbornly use that bogus metadata from the Network. Is the correct filename the only thing I need to put in that file? Is there anything special I need to do?
@JuiceWSA said:
Speaking of nfo files, I am informed that MCEBuddy will work with those when the embedded metadata in my WTV files is Notorious (1946) (get it? Ha!) in it’s inaccuracy and fails to match. I can change the file name to a perfect matchable file name, but MCEBuddy will stubbornly use that bogus metadata from the Network. Is the correct filename the only thing I need to put in that file? Is there anything special I need to do?
I’m attaching a couple of nfo files here. You can experiment and see if it works. One file is the example I use when I occasionally use an agent that requires an nfo file. It’s pretty basic, and doesn’t contain a whole lot of information, but enough that it shows up in Plex. I make up libraries for special occasions like Christmas and Halloween and add TV episodes to a movie library, because the default movie agent doesn’t find TV episodes reliably.
The other is a nfo file generated by MediaElch (I found a link here someplace for that, and just wanted to see what it does) Don’t actually use that program at all. I suppose you could change the http links from the real example to file locations, but not sure. Or install that program and copy the generated file it creates to the location MCEBuddy needs to find it.
To work in Plex, I found that naming image files movie_name-poster.jpg, movie_name-background.jpg, etc worked best when you matched with a different agent. I would imagine the local media assets kicks in to find them in this case.
Yes, the polar bears can be a problem, and since TV viewing can be rather sparse, we do have time to goof around with weird, geeky stuff like this in either of the official languages. Even if we don’t understand one of them at all. 
BTW, switch up to Wolverines as pets - I hear not much will tangle with one of those things, but do refrain from whacking it on the nose with the newspaper when it pees on the carpet.
I have two dogs. Once in a blue moon I find a bonus attraction in the house if I’ve been gone for a long time. All it takes is, “Hey, who did that?” and the guilty party skulks to the back door with head down and tail between his legs.That amuses the hell out of me, and all is forgiven pretty quickly.
Ah, thanks. I’ll experiment.
Apparently all I need to do is put the nfo file (with the correct file name therein) named like the file MCEBuddy is going to work on in the same place Bud is going to find it, then Bud will stop using the embedded metadata in the WTF file. At least we hope that’s what’s going to happen.
If there were some miraculous program that would crack a WTF file so I could whack it’s metadata that would probably be easier, but I haven’t found one of those yet.
Pets… they keep us young (unless they’re Wolverines then they eviscerate us in our sleep).
I forgot to mention that MediaElch actually downloads the images, and places them properly in the folder. Maybe that’s the best, quickest solution (workaround) for your “WTF” files.
I don’t need any images. What I do need is to stop MCEBuddy from reading the bogus metadata in a WTV file and ignoring a perfectly good file name to create a file and structure that is invisible to Plex.
Allow me to explain a bit further:
I record TV Shows off the air with my ancient AverMediaHD PCI Card and Windows Media Center. That’s been working fine for more than a decade. Several years ago I added MCEBuddy to the mix. Bud monitors the Recorded TV Folder and picks up anything new setting to work converting the WTV file with an MPEG2 vid stream to a file I can direct play across all my devices while renaming that file to Plex Perfect naming if the embedded metadata is correct according to TVDB. Bud, if all goes well and a match is made, creates the proper folder structure and places the file in a TV Show or Movie Library depending on the match it made. Very cool and automated.
The problem is in the EPG that is created by the network and ultimately written in stone inside that effing WTV file. Those guys creating that info apparently don’t read TVDB so if the program name isn’t stupidly obvious they’ll call it something completely off the wall making a match impossible. Bud responds after a wonderful conversion by sticking it the TV Show library like this:
MCEB-TV/
…The Beverly HeelBeelies/
…Season
…The Beverly HeelBeelies - SE - Elly Mae’s House of Pain, No Pleasure.mp4
As you can probably guess that file name and structure is invisible to Plex in a TV Show Library. Bud couldn’t match the name so it couldn’t find the Season, or the Episode number so it simply doesn’t add anything there. If Bud would put an ‘unmatched’ item in MCEB-Movies I would at least see it and know I had to fix it, but NoooooOOOOOoooo!
The goal is to get Bud to ignore the embedded and bogus metadata in that WTV file. One would think a proper file name would do it, but Bud bypasses a perfectly good file name insisting on using the bogus metadata - taking years off my life!
I am told by the developer of MCEBuddy that’s harder to fix than it seems - or he would have already fixed it - but I can use a nfo file tricking Bud into using that instead of the bogus metadata. I’m going to try it.
It would be much easier, in my mind, to have a program that would allow me to actually see what’s inside a WTV file in the metadata department and change it to something that isn’t bogus, or delete it entirely before Bud sees it, but NooooOOOOOoooo! MS apparently has those files locked down tighter than the terlit in the Oval Office.
That pretty much sums up my only issue with Plex and MCEBuddy. Now to discover the solution.
Heh, heh, - well, MediaElch does create generate nfo files for movies and TV shows and I think it uses the same databases as Plex, , and I would guess they are in the correct format cause it’s supposed to work with Kodi. As I said, I don’t really use the program. An annoying extra step to take, and an extra program on your computer you might not use except to create those files, but maybe worth it if it works.
I’m on the hunt so I may explore the possibility. I’ll try the nfo file first.
Thanks again.
@JuiceWSA What version of MCEBuddy are you using? I’m using 2.4.5 and the NFO file takes precedence over any metadata in WTV files.
Oh yea. @leelynds walked me through it here:
I too am on 2.4.5
I have Movies - or ‘unmatchables’ I want to put in my MCEB-Movies Library so they’ll at least show up - working well. I’m still having issues with TV Shows and if you have any handy tips they would be most welcome.
Just check the conversion log to confirm that MCEB is acknowledging it is a valid XBMC NFO file. MCEB has rejected some of my NFO files if any of the fields contain a “&” character. I haven’t been able to confirm if there are any other special characters that it doesn’t like but it might be something to look at.
An example tvshow file :
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <tvshow> <title>NASCAR 2016</title> <year>2016</year> <plot>The 2016 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series is the 68th season of professional stock car racing in the United States and the 45th modern-era Cup series season. .</plot> <genre>NSCS/Pocono</genre> <premiered>2016-02-12</premiered> <studio>Fox - FS1</studio> </tvshow>
An example episode file :
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <episodedetails> <xshow>NASCAR 2016</xshow> <title>Nascar Racehub 2016-12-13</title> <season>1642</season> <episode>2310</episode> <genre>NASCAR/Post Season</genre> <aired>2016-12-13</aired> <studio>FS1</studio> <plot>Best of the Year episode </plot> </episodedetails>
I used forums.thetvdb.com/viewtopic.php?t=7940 as a reference.
I use Excel to update fields and a macro that will output to episode NFO file.
Just make sure that episode NFO and source file have same name.
Edit to add: I also had some problems with this particular Plex library when Local Media Assets (TV) were enabled as secondary agent. I suspect that content of one or more of the NFO files might have caused some conflict, but disabling the Local Media agent solved that problem. I will probably need to revisit this problem in the near future.
Also, I’m still at Plex server version 1.1.4.2757 and xbmcnfotv version 1.1-62-gd239f3d-189.
