Bizarre Issue: Missing Movie in Second Player

I have attached the NFO file for a movie that comes from a custom collection (MCU) I created. I don't see anything in it about "<set>." I know when I added the Z9X Pro, I had it scrape the movies with priority from the NFO data created by the 5000 and my custom collections were not there. I had to recreate them on the Z9X Pro.

 

And this is getting even weirder.

I did an experiment. I renamed the movie folder (not the MKV file) to just "On Stranger Tides," dropping the Pirates part. I then scraped just that one folder and this time, the Z9X Pro found the movie! (Before I renamed the folder, even the file manager could not see the folder.)

HOWEVER, after finding On Stranger Tides, and automatically adding it to the Pirates collection, the Z9X Pro DROPPED the pirate movie Dead Men Tell No Tales from both the collection and Home Theater entirely. So now the one movie is there but another is missing.

And the whole time, the 5000 has kept all five movies.

After I rename the folder back to include the "Pirates of the Caribbean" in front, the Z9X Pro refound Dead Man Tell No Tales and again can't find On Stranger Tides.

 

Was that NFO created with the Zidoo? if so it must have been created before the custom collection was created, hence why it's not there.

This is from one of my NFOs with a custom collection:

Code:

<set>
<name>Unbreakable Collection</name>
</set>

 

So I think Stranger Tides may have been scraped as Dead Men, presumably without using the NFO, so when it found Stranger Tides in a different directory, Dead Men was removed and Stranger Tides reinstated correctly.

Don't forget that any changes you make to files will also affect the 5000.

Before we move on here, on the Stranger Tides screen, what does it say for "information source"?

 

Yes, the NFOs were created with the Zidoo 5000. I opened up the NFO from a different movie in the custom MCU collection... Thor. This movie shows that the "set" is Thor Collection, not my MCU collection that it actually is in. I swore I did not export the NFOs until after I had created the custom collections.

At this point, I am wondering if I should delete all the NFOs and start over with the exporting?

Or can I overwrite the existing NFOs?

 

Because of not wanting to mess anything up further, I undid the folder name changes that I had experimented with.

The four pirate movies (all but On Stranger Tides) currently seen by the Z9X Pro all show they obtained the information from the NFO (down in the bottom left corner).

 

If the NFOs were created after the custom collections had been created and movies moved into them then the <set>...</set> entry would reflect the custom collection, not the previous one.

So yes, forgetting the Z9X for the moment, I'd make sure I was happy with the library in the 5000 and then export NFOs and artwork but leave the overwrite box ticked - that way all the NFOs will be rewritten with the latest info from the 5000.

So what does Stranger Tides say at the bottom on the Z9X now?

 

As for the NFOs on the 5000, I just redid them and had the player overwrite the old ones. I then opened up Thor's NFO again (which I attached here) and it still shows it is in Thor Collection. To be clear, there is no "Thor Collection" on my Home Theater wall. Thor is part of a custom MCU collection. I disbanded the Thor Collection when I set up my movies.

Regarding Stranger Tides on the Z9X Pro, it is no longer showing, as I put the movie folder back to the original name. I am happy to try any renaming you suggest.

Once again, THANK YOU for your help!!!

 

Does the date stamp of the Thor NFO show it was created just now?

 

No. It is showing it was created on October 13.

What if I manually delete the NFOs for the movies that are in my custom collections and then regenerate NFOs?

 

No idea what's happening here, but I would always make backups of NFOs before deleting just in case.

 

I only have two custom collections: MCU and DC. I backed up the NFOs from all those movies into a separate folder on my computer and deleted the NFOs form the movie folders. I then rebuilt the NFOs.

I opened up the NFO for Thor, and again, it listed "Thor Collection" under set, not my MCU custom collection. Are you sure the NFOs should include the custom collections?

 

As an update, I cleared the data from the HT of the Z9X Pro and reran scraping, giving priority to the NFO files, and still the player did not find the On Stranger Tides movie. I guess it is not meant to be seen on this player!

 

I'm just wondering if it's to do with the file path for the movie file in the NFO.

My movies live on a NAS drive separate from the players, so the address is the same for any machine on the network.

So for all players, my URI is like:

/192.168.0.130/Shared/4K3/Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides/Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides.mkv

And naturally this is universal so works for any player on the network, in fact, any device on the network.


Yours reside on a local drive to the player that creates the NFO files and the URI is a local path like:

/storage/CA9807DA9807C443/MOVIES/Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides/Pirates Of The Caribbean On Stranger Tides (2011).mkv

which is only applicable to the 5000 - this URI would make no sense at all to anything else on the network.

Now this only applies to the file and the players can use relative paths as well as absolute paths, it's just that the players create and absolute path - something I was promised would be changed last year but never was.

So a relative path for your URI would be:

/Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides/Pirates Of The Caribbean On Stranger Tides (2011).mkv

And that would work fine because you've already told any players that the movie folder is MOVIES on the 5000.

 

I am following most of your thoughts on the file paths, but not sure if you think there is a solution if that is the problem.

On another front, I deleted the NFO file from On Stranger Tides and rescanned the drive using the Z9X Pro. Once again, the player found On Stranger Tides, but did not find Dead Men Tell No Tales.

For On Stranger Tides, the information screen is showing "Information source NFO," but the NFO was deleted from that movie's folder.

 

I thought I had found an imperfect solution, but nope. I copied the Dead Men Tell No Tales (the current movie not to be found by the Z9X Pro) to my other internal HDD. By doing so, the Z9X Pro finally saw all five Pirate movies at the same time. However, the 5000 now saw two copies of Dead Men Tell No Tales. So, I deleted the Dead Man Tell No Tales movie folder from the original HDD. Now the 5000 sees the five movies and the Z9X Pro is no longer seeing On Stranger Tides.

OMG.

 

The problem is that every time you change a directory name or a filename, the database gets updated. Then the NFO is no longer valid.

And what happens in the database stays in the database...

Database housekeeping is abysmal and every change you make, every file you play, everything you ever do that impinges on the database stays there until ultimately some entry in one table crosses with another in another table and the whole thing goes tits up.

I clear and rescan my database very regularly, almost daily sometmes, because of all the testing and fannying about I do, so my database is as clean as it gets, but I think we're at the stage with yours where you need to be back on an even playing field.

It's up to you how far you go with this, but I'd do the following - not saying you have to do all this, but this is just what I'd do.

1. For MKVs have each movie in its own folder and make sure the folder name is exactly the same as the mkv filename and that's as close to the TMDB name as possible taking into account illegal characters not allowed in folder/filenames (eg Mission: Impossible > Mission Impossible or Mission - Impossible)

2. For ISO or BDMV make sure the folder name is as close to the TMDB name as possible taking into account illegal characters not allowed in folder/filenames.

3. Do not have the year in the folder/filename unless needed (eg. Ghostbusters and Ghostbuster (2016)). The HT scraper gets confused by numbers. No idea why, it just does and always has done. Movies like 1917 and 2012 are a real arse.

4. Keep all the artwork if you're happy with it, but delete all the NFOs then check the're all deleted. I'd use a DOS prompt for this, but you can do it in Windows using the search box.

5. Completely reset HT4 on the 5000, set HT up as you want - poster size, main interface layout order, walllpaper etc etc

6. Make sure the Poster Folder is set to "Custom Folder" (leave the default location of storage:// as is)

7. Make sure "Use Local Images" first is on if you've kept the artwork but NFO priority is off.

8. Add your source(s) and rescrape.

9. Check all the movies are correct - remember, if you kept the artwork, they may look ok but the scrape may still be wrong - check names - easy to do by keeping the name under the poster.

10. Once you're happy everything is ok check it again!!

11. Now export NFO and artwork but I'd untick overwrite because there's no need for it - the NFOs were deleted already.


At this point you should have a clean and shiny database.

Now go to the Z9X Pro and do everything above from #5 onwards, but in addition to local images in #7 also enable NFO priority.


Now if anything is different between the 5000 and the Z9X we know the Z9X doesn't like the NFOs, presumably because of the local paths.

 

Just to make life even more complicated, there is a reversion in this firmware:

Manually created Collections and movies that are manually added to an existing Collection do not include the <set>..</set> entry when you export NFOs.

Movies that were in a previous collection before being moved to a new one will show the earlier collection in the <set>..</set> entry.

So that issue where the old collections were showing in the NFOs is due to this bug.

This is particularly annoying because I first spotted this bug back in February 2021 and it was fixed in v6.3.0.

Jeez.

 

Thank you for all the information. When I have the time and inclination to start over, I will follow your steps above. At the moment, I will just tolerate the one missing movie from the Z9X Pro. As much as I hate something being off, the thought of starting over is a really overwhelming.

Thanks again!!

 

Must admit I always find it somewhat exciting and cathartic, but that might just be me