I have about had it with HT4. I have the Z10 Pro and I was about 3000 files in out of about 4200 to match and things were going along fine. I was half way through my Thriller category and I matched an unmatched movie. The screen did not refresh with my poster wall, it gave me this message. This happened to me once before and the recommendation was to delete my HT folder and start over. I tried this with some of the other recommendations like moving the HT folder off the Z10 box, use local files first, etc... It is a huge undertaking to re-scan and fix 4000 movies because the matching logic on HT4 s....ks and there are alot of misses for simple things like the apostrophe not being in Ocean's Eleven. I need to know if there is a way around this. I let it run for 6 hours last night and no change. Am I filling up memory on the Zidoo? How can I check Is there a memory leak? Is there a limit to the number of posters you can have? Is there a limit to the number of collections you can have? Categories? Something is triggering this error and I am not doing this again only to get 3K in and have it fail yet again. Any other recommendations for a movie manager that works?
I use Tiny Media Manager to organize my files. However, Sonarr and Radarr are the applications that do the initial renaming of my files. I just use Tiny Media Manager for metadata, but you can absolutely use it to organize your file names too. I personally follow a Plex naming standard that works for every home theater program out there except for HT which has serious scrapping issues in general. Just like you, my sources take hours to scan in and I cannot trust HT to match anything without using the NFO files ive generated in TMM, it will make ridiculous matches otherwise. Ive never gotten stuck on this particular message but instead HT will just crash for me when trying to load posters. Repeatedly. I seems to me like there is some sort of limit where the program will just become unstable after you reach it. Maybe its running out of memory? No idea.
Thanks for the response. Matching is a problem, but not the biggest problem I have. I scan files in groups so it's not overwhelming. But this error prevents the application from being usable. If I can never scan and match all my vids, I'm pretty much done. Thinking about installing Kodi on the Zidoo and see how it works out.
I feel ya... So I have 8,800 MATCHED films/tv...and 5,500 UNMATCHED! thats 15,000 total & many of the matched are wrong.. its been a work in progress for 4yrs now... Here is how I DEAL with this: 1- Make MANY HT backup files.. saves ur ass as corruptions r inevitable. 2- With >20 8GB shares..(24 2 b exact) I've accepted crashes/freezes etc are also inevitable.. but it's the closest to best solution available...(trust me) You can still ACCESS all files via Media Center if u know where they are! 3-the ONLY thing I've found which HELPS/prevents crashes is opening the RECENT app menu & closing any & all apps EXCEPT for HT.. usually ur player or viewer appears there... ODDLY I've found closing those either saves me from a crash or unfreezes when HT gets stuck??? 4- Once u manually match stuff & library is 95% CORRECT, at that point I'd EXPORT the NFO files to your media. THIS will save all your work & edits going forward with ANY poster wall... the only problem with this is that I still have 10- 20% bad matches in HT & last thing u want is INCORRECT NFO files in ur media..(that's a nightmare) so I have NEVER given ANY shares WRITE access bcuz honestly u can fu*k ur shit up good!! Best READ only (4 me).. ONLY give temp. write access when u r ready to export the NFOs. 5- Alternatively, u can fix with TMM as their NFO files scan pretty well with HT... To find stuff missing or incorrect u want a program like the PC app EVERYTHING, or LOCATE32 on Android if possible so u can easily & instantly perform a word or letter search to locate EVERYTHING u possess on disks. I have a 14yr old NETGEAR EVA9150 that still works GREAT..while it can't play everything anymore it still scans my ENTIRE collection by file name & recognizes DVDs & BDMV (video_ts & iso). So this basically FUNCTIONS as my search utility to check or lookup locations & actual names of all videos if I can't locate on HT4.0. surprisingly this 14yr old firmware BEAST still plays 1080p content that RIVALS all my zidoos & DUNES!! (no joke, upscales SD content like NOTHING I've seen! still!) plus Zidoo CANT play divx or PACKED XVID bitstreams or older avi's!! there's no PERFECT player, but my Z10pro is pretty damn CLOSE! & best option available.. BACKUP those HT poster files!! In at least TWO separate locations! best of luck
Tony, dude!! Awesome review and thank you very much. Got it, so HT is gonna fail, just a matter of time. I know where my files are and I know I can play them in the media center. Right now I have a KDLINKS A400 and I use it like that, but I really like the poster board concept. I have all my files on a 14TB internal drive in the Zidoo, but I'm thinking about putting TV on a external USB. Regardless I don't scan my whole library. I scan like my Action movies then clean that up. So if I get what you are saying, I should do a group and once I get it straight, for example once I complete my Action folder, I do an NFO export and HT backup. Then if I start comedy and the sucker hangs, I do a factory reset and restore the HT backup and start over with Comedy. I'm assuming that every NFO file export updates changes, so if I find one that matched wrong later and fix it the next NFO export will keep the update, right? I don't mind the work. I had all my ripped movies on an old codex and nobody can play these days and had to re-rip 2500 movies at one point. Is what it is. I just want to know that I'm not going to lose everything over and over again.
sounds like we have SIMILAR issues! lol the HT crashes aren't THAT bad..considering we DO have ALOT of files! that "fix" I mentioned about "recent apps" REALLY DOES work! sometimes u can tell it's gonna happen(crash) by length of wait time & IF u can open the recent apps menu BEFORE that u can OFTEN avoid HT restarting.. I doubt it's bcuz ur saving memory by closing apps, rather it appears to JOLT HT, or maybe STOPS a HT memory error b4 its too late??. no downside to scanning whole library.. the only absolute useful drive/mount/share separation which is useful is having MOVIES & TV eps on separate drives or separate folder directories... mine is jumbled together & with priority TMDB for movie & TV, HT4 actually scans a MIX better than ANY PC software or player!! yup.. better than Kodi, emby, plex, or TMM!! the TMDB TV scraper is actually pretty good except for RARE or foreign tv. Altho u DO get a slightly better result doing movie & TV SEPARATELY.. (genres will make no difference at all) but definitely categorize directories as YOU LIKE, makes finding what's important to u easier!! but YES..if u like doing in small chunks & tidying up u can then export NFOs.. that will keep those matches consistent in any future scans which should take 1min. if u change option to preferring scan of nfo FIRST..(bcuz no matching is needed) the BACKUP feature in HT4 is for different purposes.. its so u don't have to setup the shares or disks u will scan along with username & password.. AND it retains all ur custom ht edits/categories/watched, existing matches & catalog so u can perform a RESTORE at any time! (NOTE: u want the nfos for situations like when HT4 switched to JAVA.. All my backups from HT3 & initial HT4 vers. were USELESS.. I had to rebuild from SCRATCH! everything!! so the nfo's kinda FUTUREPROOF ur collection. TBH- I only use nfos for matching purposes..Seems like u r interested in TRACKING 'watched' & poster changes.. in my xperience i prefer the following OPTIONS based on my collection.. 1- I don't scan or STORE Posters in media folders. (prefer NO write access on SMB shares) for a couple reasons.. A) Aside risk, all the write activity & CRAP the scrapers loaded & changed & who knows, has LOST me a NAS drive! I gave ONE of my 25 drives WRITE access for a yr. to test.. THAT 1 drive is the ONLY of 25 which is now a PAPERWEIGHT!! so u can say I LEARNED MY LESSON! B) I find it's NOT necessary to store posters & (crap) & trailers on media.. as long as u have it MATCHED correctly, ALL the posters etc. will download or re-download from net into HT folder.. Trailers- I prefer streaming as local trailers waste alot of space & just make a potential MESS imho?? C) I prefer not to mess with the NFOS as far as non-static info. I want them to hold my match info & necessary references but with my paperweight I found constantly changing the nfos is PROBLEMATIC...but more importantly, not easily FIXABLE or even IDENTIFIABLE.. just get unexplained crashes..not even sure if there's an AGREED nfo format, which is problematic...so I prefer....'Keep it simple stupid'! lol D) So all the DYNAMIC data, (watched eps., bookmarks, trailer & poster locations) I prefer HT to manage.. bcuz that's its JOB!! No need messing with, changing, breaking MY MEDIA or drives. the NFOS purpose is really just a BACKUP & future proofing of the TIME CONSUMING personal work uve done!! the dynamic data like posters, trailers, resume pts is NOT a big deal or time consuming to repopulate automatically...its not tedious work & time u will have to PERSONALLY REDO!! what's important is ur TIME. & that's my true purpose creating nfos. they r supposed to be able to b used as u mentioned & desire.. IMO- ur just asking for trouble.. HT coding changes almost daily how they deal with & utilize nfos. it's not their fault as this is a field with constantly changing standards & parameters..& will likely be that way for many years. Consistency/Reliability, & cutting edge tech. seem to be mutually exclusive with ANYTHING.. by definition they're almost opposites!! LOL so to expect anything different here is not really realistic..imho... pick ur poison!
Wow! I don't understand you guys...... I have about 600 movies and out of them 6 are unmatched so you are doing something really wrong. It use to be bad a long time ago but has since been more or less fixed. "MovieName (Date).mkv" simple as that...... This Is HT4 not plex, not emby and not kodi.
Similarly I have over a thousand movies some dating back to 1933 to the most recent. About 600 TV series. The naming is simple Name of Movie (Date).mkv HT as it is now works really well in finding new items. I've tried Plex and Kodi on other platforms and I found them too fiddly in setting up, especially paths and in particular with the Popcorn series C200 and A500 when compared to the Zidoo. The only unmatched items were Tales Of The City TV series and that was due to conflicting names in both TVDB and TMDB as well as different releases of the DVD's of the series. All sorted now. Sorry to play the age card but if an 83 year old can sort it without getting hot and bothered methinks anyone can
Of course, everyone who has an issue with HT is the problem. The software is perfect, there are no issues. Gaslighting must be a community policy here. Merry Christmas.
Thanks everyone for the useful feedback. It seems to be working much better now (crossing fingers). I do a group and once I fix the unmatched in that group I export and backup. To Nicholas with the 600 movies, I have over 4000 and yes, they are not all named correctly which creates part of the problem. I also have issues with movies that have other same name movies or like name movies. For example the movie PAN matched the old Peter Pan movie. The movie Serenity could not decide between the 2005 or the 2019 version and some of that could be my naming again because the file was SERENITY.2018.MPG not 2019, but I'm not going to proactively try to fix 4000 movie names just so they match the first time. I also have a tone of foreign movies particularly Chinese, Thai, and Japanese and the matching is hard for those too. Anyway, great feedback and I'm hoping I can get through everything and move on. My new movies match fine cause I know more how to incorporate them.
Sure if I started a couple years ago with popular Hollywood films all my files would be nice & neatly named mkvs & matched. Maybe u did not see my collection is 15,000 titles (& not mainstream Hollywood) from over 22 YEARS of collecting.. Dvds, Avis, Dat, rmvb, wmv, divx, VIDEO_TS folders, ETC ETC.... (do u know the size drives I was using then?) 15,000 titles is just NOT easy to manage & rename.. Despite my issues, I said that HT has matched better than ANY software or hardware I know of! Even tho I have 6,000 unmatched my argument was that HT does a good job 'considering'. I am not blaming HT whatsoever as the majority of those unmatched have NO imdb!
I'm a rookie at this and just used TMM to rename my files. It also added the NFO, fanart and poster to the file of each movie. So, to get this info into the Zidoo, do I just rescan my source?
If you're happy with what TMM has done then I would completely reset HT4 before doing this to clear the database. (HT4 Settings/Library/Clear Data/Clear)
Just cleared per your guidance and rescanned source. Everything looks great! I have to go in and take care of a couple unmatched items. After that I would like to group items into collections. This is what I was doing before (using the web interface) when the posters crashed. Not sure I was doing it correctly though. I was using the method of editing the poster, and selecting "collections" and either picking a listed collection or creating a new one. However, I notice when clicking on the "collections" icon in HT4, nothing was showing up. I have every single Three Stooges episode. I would like to group them in three separate collections with Curly, Shemp and Joe. What is the best way to accomplish this? Also, Once I have this done, will exporting the NFO file save all these changes?
Depends how you want to do it - I don't use TMM but I think you can administer it all through there - create collections etc - and then export NFOs with the collection info in it from TMM once you've got it as you want it. You'll then need to rescan. Personally I just use HT to scan, get the library as I want it and then export NFOs and artwork once I'm happy all is correct, but that's not to say that's the best way - it's just that's how I've always done it.
Scanning with HT4 creates collections by default - but obviously grouping your Three Stooges episodes as you want would require creating custom collections which can either be done using the GUI or web interface.
So once again, while I was adding movies to collections using the web interface, the poster wall locked up on me again. I know I can use my NFO data that I created using TMM to restore the posters, but all the work I did putting the collections together will be lost. I tried added a few items to collections in TMM, but when I updated the scanned items, it didn't put them into collections, unless I did something wrong. I'm just trying to find a good way to back up my posters AND collection information. If anyone can shed some light on this for me I would appreciate it.
