Add facility for using more than one metadata source at the same time, to facilitate providing local metadata.

[Former user]

There's a problem with serving videos which have no metadata available on any database. This might include private videos, and videos with contents unsuitable for public disclosure. Also, some movies and series have names which are not unique enough for easy searching.

A further problem might be when some part of a series was aired with very different titles in different places, and in different order.

The basic effect I'm after is that I should be able to override any public data, or provide local data when there is no online data.

I should be able to define a series name and the seasons, and for each episode the name to be displayed, and the episode number of which season.

If I provide local data for a series or a movie or a single episode in a series, that data should take precedence over any online data.

The obviously ideal way would be to allow more than one metadata source at once, with a preference order.

I don't have any opinion as to how this might be best implemented, but a limited list of metadata sources that could be populated from a set and then re-ordered if needed?

Another, supersimple way could be a special form of video filename, causing local data to be used for that video. Even simpler would be if that local metadata could be taken from the filename, possibly with a redirection facility.

E.G a filename looking like

--SeriesNameS10E03EpisodeNameYYYYMMDD-*- file info.ext

would cause that video file to be presented as the 3rd episode in season 10 of SeriesName, with the name EpisodeName, and an airing date of DD/MM - YYYY

If any of series or season were so far undefined, seeing this file name would cause serviio to define the series and/or season. If it was a case of double booking, so be it, present a double entry. The user is king, and responsible, in this scheme.

A possible redirection scheme might be a filename like -@[e-mail], and the metadata could then be taken from that metadatafile. Or from online databases, for any metadata not available in the metadata file.

[Petr Nejedly]

http://forum.serviio.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1833&p=9918#p9804
http://forum.serviio.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1801#p9585

[Former user]

for the tv shows, many programs like tvrename (http://www.tvrename.com) can generate .nfo files wich are already read by serviio. Better still focus on few metadata sources but use them advisedly.

read file name-> check for existing local nfo -> if exist then use it else fetch from online

[Former user]

forgot to log in before posting (#4). Sorry

[Former user]

Tvrename is windows only.

I'm running a server with no trace of a windows box anywhere near.

[Former user]

That last anonymous was me...

[Petr Nejedly]

extractors should have a flag (e.g. chained). It'll run extraction (priority based) on all chained extractors and the first non-chained that returns some metadata. That way it'll use descriptive metadata from the first descriptive source (online, nfo, xml) if finds, but still will have local thumbnail and embedded metadata.

[Petr Nejedly]

http://forum.serviio.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=13271#p78891

This suggests to have a diferent metadata retrieval method per shared folder. Maybe in the new console design.

[DenyAll]

Yet another suggestion, which may be easier to implement and doesn't rely on console redesign: Similar to ticket #582 where a ".nomedia" file is used to ignore scanning a folder completely, perhaps use a file named ".metadata-nfo" within the folder to act as a switch that overwrites the prevailing metadata scheme, and uses .nfo files for all media within that folder (and sub-folders?).

If you want you could extend this scheme to force using the online system (where the default is something else) eg. ".metadata-online"; or use the Swisscenter system eg. ".metadata-swiss"; but I think it will be switching to .nfo files that will be most used.