TV Series Metadata

[kougei 5]

Hi there,

I had previously ripped all my DVD and Blu-Ray TV Shows to ISO and they were getting scraped and indexed well by Kodi (TVDb).

An ISO is in the Kodi recommended naming format

MAGNUM PI (1980) S01E01E02E03E04

Now I want to use Emby as my back-end Library database, shared by multiple Kodi devices, I have used the Emby NextGen plugin, and so far so good.

However, Emby will only create a single episode metadata for each ISO File, taking the first episode from the ISO name, with the exception that it does list all Titles, e.g.

Title: Don't Eat the Snow in Hawaii (1), Don't Eat the Snow in Hawaii (2), China Doll, Thank Heaven for Little Girls and Big Ones Too

But all the other Metadata is restricted to E01 only.

This is workable, as you have to play the same ISO and choose an episode from the DVD/BD menu anyway, but I miss having each episode scraped and catalogued as its own entry like Kodi does natively.

1) Is there a way to make the Emby Metadata Manager automatically create an entry for each individual episode, whilst maintain the path to the ISO File

2) Is there a way for me to manually create the Metadata entry for each episode, the Metadata Manager only allows editing of what is already there.

Otherwise, the below page says DVD and BD Folder Structures are supported, albeit not sure if this implies it would correctly create an entry fdor each episode or do what it is doing above.

Emby TV Naming :

"To be recognized as a dvd structure, the folder must contain either a VIDEO_TS subfolder, or a VIDEO_TS.ifo file. To be recognized as a blu-ray structure, the folder must contain a BDMV subfolder"

Is there a way of just creating an empty VIDEO_TS or BDMV in the same Season Folder as the ISO File, to fool it into recognizing a multi-episode DVD/BD?

Any help appreciated

[rbjtech 4249]

This has come up many times - and it's the same answer I'm afraid - the only way to get individual metadata is to have individual files.   

DVD/Bluray/ISO support is slowly dying - so it will be an uphill struggle to support this.

My honest best advice is to just use the likes of makemkv and convert the DVD's 1:1 to MKV files - there will be no quality loss (it's a 1:1 copy) and all apps will fully support these.   You will of course lose the functionality of the menu's, but this is obviously replaced with the ability to play, search etc in emby instead. 

[kougei 5]

Thanks, unfortunately its twice the effort at least, and maybe more to rip individual mkv episodes, rather than just rip and name the ISO, and yes, the goal is to preserve all the 'extras' on the discs and have them available on-demand.

But this isn't necessarily an ISO issue, it's more of what is possible in how Emby deals with meta-data, e.g. the Kodi experience is to allow individual episodes, to point to the same file path.

I guess, what I mean more, is, if I were to export the ISO's into DVD/BD Folder structures, would how Emby creates the meta-data change, or would it do exactly as it is already doing? 

Or is it possible to add fake iso files by renaming a text file, but have the ability to edit the File/folder path in Metadata editor and lock it?

[rbjtech 4249]

I agree that while the actual functionality is an automated process (you can actually just use the already ripped ISO as the makemkv input), you won't get nicely 'named' MKV files - just 'track-x.mkv' files - which then need to be named.

You can automate the naming etc of these files to some extent with various metadata tools (just using the radarr renaming function would be a massive help)  - but at the end of the day it is 'work'.    As I said, if you want to put a little effort in - it will reward you.

However - to answer your question above - inside the ISO, will just be TS files - which will have been authored but there is no guarantee that they will just 'play'.

The only 'hack' I can think of is using STRM files - but if you are doing that, then you may as well split them in the first place...

 

Edited August 22, 2022 by rbjtech

[ebr 14910]

16 minutes ago, kougei said:

yes, the goal is to preserve all the 'extras' on the discs and have them available on-demand.

Hi.  You can do that with individual files as well.   See the naming guide for TV.

17 minutes ago, kougei said:

if I were to export the ISO's into DVD/BD Folder structures, would how Emby creates the meta-data change, or would it do exactly as it is already doing? 

That would not improve the situation for you.

[rbjtech 4249]

I won't post the link here - but MakeMKV also has an 'advanced' option to automatically rename the tracks based on metadata found on the disk/iso - this 'may' help things.  Under 'general' settings enable 'Expert mode' to see/configure the options.   Look at the makemkv forum for advice/examples.

[kougei 5]

20 hours ago, ebr said:

Hi.  You can do that with individual files as well.   See the naming guide for TV.

That would not improve the situation for you.

Thanks, but they are already ripped, its hard to get the motivation to go through them all again.

I'd prefer the option to simply create dummy files for episodes, and edit the Path, and lock the meta-data.

Is there a way to access the database entries directly, assuming that the meta-data is stored in a database on the Emby Server?

[ebr 14910]

3 hours ago, kougei said:

Is there a way to access the database entries directly

We don't recommend trying to do that.  The STRM suggestion from RBJ is what you would want to do.

https://support.emby.media/support/solutions/articles/44001159147-strm-files

[kougei 5]

3 hours ago, ebr said:

We don't recommend trying to do that.  The STRM suggestion from RBJ is what you would want to do.

https://support.emby.media/support/solutions/articles/44001159147-strm-files

Thanks, I'd already gone down that path of creating faxte/text ISO files, and editing %USER%\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\programdata\data\library.db using DB Browser for SQLite, which worked initially but the next time the Library refresh was run, it would somehow remove the episodes from the Metadata, even though the database row was in place and unchanged, and just before I had the chance to investigate further, I saw your reply.

So I've just tested with strm files and so far so good.

MAGNUM PI (1980) S01E01E02E03E04.ISO is the original disc file

I've created 

MAGNUM PI (1980) S01E02.strm

MAGNUM PI (1980) S01E03.strm

MAGNUM PI (1980) S01E04.strm

containing the local network path to the ISO file

\\192.168.1.2\tvshows\Magnum, P.I. (1980)\Season 1\MAGNUM PI (1980) S01E01-E04.ISO

It will literally take me 30s to create these strm files for any ISO file.

The only housekeeping (because I want to maintain the original file-naming for Kodi compatibility) is to use MetaData Manager to edit the Title and Sort fields for the episode strings that are on the ISO, with the single episode title and lock it.

This now gives me full episodic meta-data and a single entry for each epsiode, which is exactly what I wanted.

Thanks all for the assistance.

[rbjtech 4249]

11 minutes ago, kougei said:

Thanks, I'd already gone down that path of creating faxte/text ISO files, and editing %USER%\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\programdata\data\library.db using DB Browser for SQLite, which worked initially but the next time the Library refresh was run, it would somehow remove the episodes from the Metadata, even though the database row was in place and unchanged, and just before I had the chance to investigate further, I saw your reply.

So I've just tested with strm files and so far so good.

MAGNUM PI (1980) S01E01E02E03E04.ISO is the original disc file

I've created 

MAGNUM PI (1980) S01E02.strm

MAGNUM PI (1980) S01E03.strm

MAGNUM PI (1980) S01E04.strm

containing the local network path to the ISO file

\\192.168.1.2\tvshows\Magnum, P.I. (1980)\Season 1\MAGNUM PI (1980) S01E01-E04.ISO

It will literally take me 30s to create these strm files for any ISO file.

The only housekeeping (because I want to maintain the original file-naming for Kodi compatibility) is to use MetaData Manager to edit the Title and Sort fields for the episode strings that are on the ISO, with the single episode title and lock it.

This now gives me full episodic meta-data and a single entry for each epsiode, which is exactly what I wanted.

Thanks all for the assistance.

ok cool - I have never tested on ISO's as I don't use them.

So by clicking the episode via the emby STRM link - it opens the ISO for playback ? (where you then manually select the episode ?)

[kougei 5]

1 hour ago, rbjtech said:

ok cool - I have never tested on ISO's as I don't use them.

So by clicking the episode via the emby STRM link - it opens the ISO for playback ? (where you then manually select the episode ?)

Yeah so you get the episode seperately indexed with metadata. When you click to play, you get standard ISO playback, which depending on authoring varies from, option to select a chapter or launch Blu-ray  menu, so then you select the episode from the Blu-ray menu when it loads. DVD and some BD ISO’s go straight to menu without giving a launch menu. Unfortunately some BD Java menus will just error, but those are Kodi issues, proper Java menu support has been available for some time, but never makes it into the official release.

This is using Kodi with Emby e then add-on and Embestuary skin.

 

[kougei 5]

So in case anyone has the same needs as me, | wrote a Windows Batch script to automate the creation of the strm files needed based on the original ISO filename and location.

Just save the below into filename.bat and edit and set the correct variables for your ISO files and location, right click the bat file and run as adminsiatrtor on windows to create an strm file for each episode that contains the direct streaming filepath to the file on your network. Maybe someone else will find this useful.

 

 

@echo off
set isoname=BIG BANG THEORY (2007) S08E13E14E15E16E17E18E19E20E21E22E23E24.ISO
set isopath=\\192.168.1.2\TVShows
set filepath=G:\TVShows
set tvfoldername=The Big Bang Theory (2007)
set tvseasonname=Season 8
set season=S08
set a=14
set b=24

:loop

if %a% gtr %b% goto completed

rem Pad a (1st episode) value, store it in padded
   set padded=0%a%
   set padded=%padded:~-2%
   rem Show padded value
   echo %padded%
   set /A a+=1

echo %isopath%\%tvfoldername%\%tvseasonname%\%isoname%>%filepath%\"%tvfoldername%"\"%tvseasonname%"\"%tvfoldername% "%season%E%padded%.strm

if %a% leq %b% goto loop

:completed

EmbyMakeEpisodes.bat