Komet
Fuzzy episode search and/or tracking episode order changes
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. For the last couple of weeks I have been converting my library to MediaElch (Media Center Master seems to be defunct). I know MediaElch is primarily for use with Kodi (I use Plex), but I primarily use it for episode naming for tracking purposes. Why tracking? Well, over the years, I have found that episodes move around, especially specials (Season 00). Shows that are notorious for changes SpongeBob, Ren & Stimpy, Dragonball (Z, Super).
Heck, I just ran into a shift in an older show from the 60's that I would never have expected, The Flying Nun. I only spotted it because I was happened to be watching while scraping (original filename and new scrape showing up). Usually I pay attention to specials, and ignore normal seasons, unless an episode does not get scraped, then I manually go through each episode and find out what happened before rename (since I use the name of the file as the source of the episode name, I can track). So hopefully I did not miss any. I just finished my MediaElch library conversion 400+ Shows and 16000+ Episodes.
So the pain of the issue, is that I spent more time moving episodes around than I spent building MediaElch Library. For those using Kodi, there probably would be no future pain, since Kodi (probably) uses the generated .nfo files. I would only run into future issues, when I have to rebuild my Plex server, or move things around and Plex re-scrapes show. But I would think some would like to keep episode ordering whit what is on their favorite server (TheTVDB is mine, and yes I will probably be paying, depend on how much).
I do not think there is a good, easy, trustable solution for fully automating a solution. Issues that I run into are where episode move and shift (say s02e10 became s02e05, so move and shift episodes up). Or episodes from one season move to previous season (happens with a few new series often as new content comes out). Specials are constantly moving around, getting inserted, or timeline getting updated, or just getting deleted (such a The Transformers (1986) movie in The Transformers series, where there was 2 entries, one for full screen and the other for widescreen, but now there is only one entry). So lots of issues.
Describe the solution you'd like I think the easiest bet would be detection. So on a new scrape if the filename looks like it has episode title as well, do a fuzzy compare with what is in the online database. If it is 90% of the way there, then success. I think the ideal solution would be to display episode highlighted where instead of just showing scrapped episode title, also show the detected filename title. This way the user can see the problem. If the user does not think there are any problems, the the user can use the GUI to rename using the online database name, or go to the files and rename file manually (which would then require a refresh and re-scrape).
There could be a second level to this detect changes, but is more difficult. The GUI could suggest what it thinks the new season/episode number should be for the file in question, where right click and accept suggestion would be ideal. Then the user can do the episode adjusting in the GUI. This way the user does not have leave the GUI or go to the files and manually rename them.
Aside from scraping the first time. Next to refresh, could be a button to go through library and detect title changes, or episode shifts.
Describe alternatives you've considered I've not found any alternatives, other than manually finding these types of changes (i.e. during a scrape, manually look at my filenames and compare to the scraped name). I've debated writing my own script to detect these types of changes, but at that point I would be reimplementing a lot of what is already in MediaElch, so in other words too much work.
Hi,
wow, a long post. I'll try to answer or comment each bit. :)
I just finished my MediaElch library conversion 400+ Shows and 16000+ Episodes.
Wow! That's a lot of episodes. :)
TheTVDB is mine, and yes I will probably be paying, depend on how much
I hope that TheTvDb improves their APIv4. Because in its current state, MediaElch won't be able to use it. I've opened support tickets but didn't get an answer, yet.
Overall: I like your idea. I have some ideas how we could improve that as well. However, due to the number of feature requests and bugs, I don't think that I'll be able to work on this in this year. :-/
