Add-on:The TVDB

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Revision as of 02:35, 11 January 2013 by >Soobz (Initial write of debugging show not found; to be completed.)
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The TVDB
http://mirrors.xbmc.org/addons/frodo/metadata.tvdb.com/icon.png

Author: Team XBMC

Type: TV information
Repo:

Summary: Fetch TV show metadata from TheTVDB.com
Home icon grey.png   ▶ Add-ons ▶ The TVDB

TheTVDB.com is a TV Scraper. The site is a massive open database that can be modified by anybody and contains full meta data for many shows in different languages. All content and images on the site have been contributed by their users for users and have a high standard or quality. The database schema and website are open source under the GPL.


Scraper settings

Set.content.thetvdb.settings.png
Use DVD order
Use DVD order instead of broadcast order.
Use absolute ordering (single season)
Treat show as having only one season so that file names only require episode numbers. Often used for single series and anime. See here for how to name such files.
Enable fanart
Download Fanart or not.
Prefer posters
Download posters instead of banners. Be sure to also toggle the layout setting for your skin: For Confluence (default skin) see: Add-on:Confluence/Settings#TV_shows
Language
Language to use for summaries and other metadata.

Understanding Season Ordering on theTVDB.com

To get a match for episodes you need to understand thetvdb.com data has 3 different ways of ordering the episode numbers;

  • DVD Order
  • Absolute Order (aka Single Season)
  • Aired Order

In the configuration of the TVDB Addon if neither of the 2 tick boxes for DVD Order or Absolute Ordering are ticked then the order of episodes will be in Aired Order and this is the default listing order for the the TVDB addon.

You can see these options on thetvdb.com at the bottom of the page and when trying to match the order with how your files are named, you can confirm it with the page URL eg. http://www.thetvdb.com/index.php?tab=seasonall&id=71361&lid=7&order=absolute the other options in this case were DVD and aired.

Please note that there is a global setting for these and also each folder has it's own setting which can be checked via Video->files->"highlight show folder"->context menu->change content->settings. The folder's setting has precedence over the global setting.

It is also important to understand thetvdb.com does not have absolute ordering for some shows and thus ticking the Absolute Order button may result in the episode number not being found and thus no match found or an incorrect match. Additionally whilst absolute ordering may exist on thetvdb.com, that data may not be available to the scraper due to the way thetvdb.com feeds that data out - see the section on debugging show matching (yet to be completed).


Debugging Shows Not Found

(incomplete; Still Editing)

Before doing anything else, make sure your folder and file names are done per Video library/Naming files/TV shows. Change Content of your TV Show folder to match that naming convention. Hilight folder, press I (or context->information), then do a Refresh. If that doesn't fix it then you will have to delve into your log.

Enable debuggingwhich adds additional information to the log file. Restart XBMC, and do a Video->Files->Context(C)->Information(I)->Refresh on a folder where the episodes are not found. Close XBMC.

Open your log file in a text reader. Every fault in finding shows is going to be slightly different, but assuming your folder names match thtvdb.com names then using the example that follows you should be able to work out what is going wrong.

Search for a line that starts DEBUG: VideoInfoScanner: Found episode match. eg.

09:15:12 T:6756   DEBUG: VideoInfoScanner: Found episode match smb://networkpc/video/tv series/inuyasha/inuyasha - 001.mkv (s0e1) [[\\/\._ -]([0-9]+)([0-9][0-9](?:(?:[a-i]|\.[1-9])(?![0-9]))?)([\._ -][^\\/]*)$]

If no "Found episode match" then check your names again because this means it could not find your show name.

In this example, it found an episode (s0e1), which means it found episode 1 and it is either a special episode or the TV Show is in absolute order, and in this case the show is indeed named for absolute order as is common for Anime. Note specials are always in absolute order, thus in either case the tick box for Use Absolute Ordering should be ticked for this folder. If the show was in Aired Order it should have been named something like "inuyasha S1E1", and XBMC would have matched (S1E1) instead - which is the default match.

So now we at least know XBMC can find an episode. Next XBMC asks the scraper to find that episode from thetvdb.com - it may prompt you for the correct show name first, and in this example there is ambiguation with a similar show name called "Inuyasha: The Final Act" . Having found the (in theory) correct show, the scraper will download the entire show/episode list from thetvdb.com who provide it as 3 xml files enclosed in a zip file. Scrolling further through the log file you should see a line similar to;

09:15:12 T:6756   DEBUG: ADDON::CScraper::GetEpisodeList: Searching 'http://www.thetvdb.com/api/1D62F2F90030C444/series/71361/all/en.zip' 
using The TVDB scraper (file: 'C:\Users\soob\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\addons\metadata.tvdb.com', content: 'tvshows', version: '1.4.5')

The number following /series/ ie. 71361 is in fact the unique show identifier on thetvdb.com, and if you search thetvdb.com you can see that number in the results, eg. http://www.thetvdb.com/?string=inuyasha&searchseriesid=&tab=listseries&function=Search. Clicking on the show, you can see the seasons, choose All, and you can see them by default in Aired Order, and at the bottom of the list you can choose to view them in Absolute Order.
(/Still Editing)


See also