GenreCleaner doesn't work for me

[enthous 0]

I just downloaded the GenreCleaner plugin, defined a bunch of stuff in settings, and then scanned my library.  I expected the genre of my movies to change if I mapped an old genre to a new one.  Nothing happened.  

 

I scoured the forums and saw a disturbing entry in one of them:  a reply to a user that asked if he had defined any of his own genres.  Am I to understand that this plugin doesn't do anything if I've defined even a single genre of my own?  

 

If this is the case, first, let's see that in the documentation (such as it is).  Second, how to I get rid of my definitions and revert back to just the downloaded genres and get this to work right?  I don't even know which ones are mine vs ones that got downloaded automatically.

[ebr 16169]

I don't know what post to which you are referring but this thing is designed to allow you to define your own genres.

 

Can you provide a little more detail about exactly what you did and provide the server log from the scan after you first setup Genre Cleaner?

 

Finally, if "nothing happened" then I guess there would be nothing to revert...

[enthous 0]

First, here's the post I was talking about.  I must have misunderstood what "local" meant:

 

 

About my problem:

 

I used to have all my metadata locked, but I went through and changed a large number of them by unlocking Genres. Some of them are still locked and I'm not looking at any of those to see if this worked.  There are so many it will be a while before I get Genres unlocked on all of them.

 

Here's some of the things I mapped.  After this I expected I wouldn't ever see Action or Adventure as a genre, just Action & Adventure.  Similarly I don't want to see Film-Noir, just Film Noir, etc. 

 

 

As an example, here is my entry for Casablanca.  I expected it would no longer show the genre Classic B&W any more, since that was mapped to Classics, and although you can't see it in the above screen snap, the genre War was mapped to Period & Historical.  The Classic B&W and War genres are still showing in this film.  Classics was manually selected; I don't think GenreCleaner did that.  There's also no Period & Historical.

 

 

As for the log, there's a ton of logs and I couldn't tell you which one was right after I did this.  Would it help if I uninstalled and re-installed, then did the mapping and got the most recent log?

Edited December 3, 2015 by enthous

[enthous 0]

I just did a Refresh of Casablanca, and now War is gone and Period & Historical is there (yay), but Classics and Classic B&W are both gone:

 

 

I've attached the most recent log.

 

 Log.txt

 

 

[ebr 16169]

I was just about to ask you to manually refresh the item.  I'll look at the log to see if I can determine why those other genres aren't removed.

[ebr 16169]

Can you please turn on debug logging and try again?

[enthous 0]

Since Casablanca no longer had the genres I moved to another one in the Classics B&W category:  Goodbye Mr. Chips.  Screen snap before the refresh:

 

Screen snap after the refresh:

 

Log after refresh with debug on.txt

[Happy2Play 9780]

Is the cleaner case sensitive?  Look at your mapping "Classics (Classic B&w) and genre is Classic B&W.

 

But I think the issue is a refresh.  What kind of refresh are you doing?  I believe you are doing a Refresh all which is replacing all you custom metadata since Classic and Classic B&W are not genres listed on the providers metadata. 

 

Confirmed this theory with a test by adding Funny as a genre and did a refresh and it was removed.  Has nothing to do with Genre cleaner.  The Genre cleaner task is run during library scan not a Refresh.

[ebr 16169]

I think Happy nailed it...

[enthous 0]

This whole thing started because the cleaner wasn't making changes when I did a scan, so I tried Refresh. I did that because in other threads relating to the Genre Cleaner there were suggestions to Refresh.   In fact, ebr was going to suggest I try refresh but I already had.  

 

So to recap: if I don't Refresh I don't get any Genre Cleaner effects.  If I do Refresh, I lose any genres I added myself and only get the ones downloaded from the internet. Can anyone say Catch-22?   

 

I've done some testing with Refresh.  If I use Refresh: add missing data only, Genre Cleaner will modify the genres.  However, as long as I leave Genres unlocked, they'd get removed the next time the data is automatically Refreshed.  This seems to go back to the cleaner only works on downloaded genres.  Technically it may work on added genres, but as soon as an auto refresh is done, they'll be gone.  Also, it's case insensitive.  I tried both Classic B&w and Classic B&W and both were folded into Classics when I did a missing data Refresh.  I have yet to get any action on a library scan.

 

So it's useful for those automatically downloaded genres, but if I want to add a genre not provided I need to make sure it's the right one and then lock it.  I guess that makes sense.  I was hoping to be able to use it for folding in genres I added and now don't want, but it looks like I'll have to do that manually.

[Happy2Play 9780]

What do you mean a automatic refresh?  The only time metadata is refreshed is if there is no metadata or you manually start one.

Edited December 8, 2015 by Happy2Play

[Luke 42077]

The genre cleaner plugin is designed to allow you to setup a few simple rules, set it and forget it. If you are customizing genres on a per-title basis then it is probably not for you.

[enthous 0]

That's pretty much what I said in my post, except I didn't conclude it's not for me, only that I can't use it on all my items. I'm using it for the vast majority of my films for which I use the downloaded genres and it seems to work fine, although I'm still not sure why a library scan doesn't seem to trigger it. I have a large number of old 40's movies that I want classified as Classics and I'll do those manually and lock them. For some reason they don't get the Classics genre downloaded. If Casablanca isn't a Classic, I'm not sure what the genre would be used for. Perhaps I'll make them a collection rather than use a genre.

 

Thanks for all the help. I think I've got it now.

 

BTW, as far as I'm concerned this topic can be locked.

Edited December 8, 2015 by enthous

[ebr 16169]

Just to further clarify what was going on for you - as you discovered it had to do with the type of refresh.  If you do a full refresh, then that says "ignore what I have stored locally and go get new data".  That, obviously, is going to overwrite the custom genres you put in.  This part doesn't really have much to do with the plug-in it is just how the main system is designed.  So, if you want to have custom-added genres, then you can't do a full refresh like that without having them locked - which then puts you in this quandary with the cleaner not being able to clean them.

 

I think you understood all that now but just for everyone's clarification.  I'm glad you've got it working well enough for you now.

[enthous 0]

I've also found I need to be more patient. I'm now having a whole new adventure with my music genres. At first I thought it wasn't working, but I found if I go away and leave it, when I come back the cleaner has done its thing. It's not as instantaneous as I expected, but it's working. Perhaps it's the refresh of a big library that's taking so long. Do the genres I set in iTunes have anything to do with what's showing up in Emby?

Edited December 8, 2015 by enthous

[Luke 42077]

Not itunes but rather the embedded music tags. And yes it's done as part of the library scan. In a perfect world we would probably have a control panel inside the plugin allowing you to manually run it and do all sorts of things but there's just not enough time available to allocate to that.