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Anyway to disable local IMDB lookup?

  • I have posted before about an issue with searching for IMDB information on complete folders. I have nailed down to the issue with windows by design allowing the "system volume information" to be seen by all network attached devices. See this folder shows up when you share the root of any drive even if that drive is simply a mounted folder. Since noone on the XBMC team cares to block this folder from showing up (cause I am probably the only person on the planet to make use of folder mounted drives) I have learned to live with it so I can have clean file organization reguardless of the size of my library or number of drives I must use / add / remove / etc...
    Anyway back to my request. Since the issue with IMDB folder search lies in the fact that it attempts to drill down all folders looking for IMDB information that *may* be stored there, but the System Volume Information folder is inaccesable. So the lookup fails and creates blank spots (such as it is) in the DB resulting in a failed search. So is there a way to stop the IMDB search looking inside folders it sees? Just scan the files in the folder level you are on and NOT look for networked cached IMDB info?


    Appreciate any help and really love XBMC.
    -Cold Realms


  • Understood. There is a bug in there. Xbmc doesnt like that it cant get access to a folder in its lookup "tree". You said earlier that it prompts for authentication. That's correct behaviour. It should do that. The problem however is on the failure to access the folder. This failure is aborting the rest of the scan waiting to happen, and the items waiting for the batch database commit are lost in the process.

    If you put in administrator credentials when it tries to gain access to the "System Volume Information" folder, the scan will likely complete successfully.

    Now I think I know how this may be related to the "blank spots" in the database (assuming of course that they are actually items with no title.) There's probably a partial commit getting done where the files are getting stored to the database associated to a move id. But, the part where the imdb info is retreived and linked back the the movie id is getting aborted, leaving those items blank.


  • I appreciate your help, i really do but let me explain. (read all before commenting as the top half is just explanation)
    1) I do know that i can individually select each item but thats 400+ movies and thats alot of clicking.
    2) I have little choice of removing "top level sharing" as for ease of navagation and server upgrades I mount each volume (action, comedy, etc) within a folder named appropriatly (ie action drives mounted within the action folder so the structure on the server is as such:
    -media
    --action
    ---(mount point for logical drive 0 containing action movie files)
    ---(another mount point this time for logical drive 1 also containing action movie files)
    ---Now listed in the action folder is movie files ALL in .avi formate ALL named the EXACT IMDB movie name without clunky navagation folders.

    This allows me to add / remove drives to the action (or any other folder) without altering ANY shortcuts on the multitudes of media programs / systems I use. To the front end programs the alterations are completly transparant. With 9 HDD and adding new ones every 6 weeks or so and me having 2 Xboxs, 4 media portal pc's and 3 reg pc's this is the easiest way to manage my files.

    As to the IMDB assosiating the wrong information that is simply not the case the IMDB dadtbase actually NEVER gets queried because when it hits the system volume information folder and fails to open it and the process ends.


    ~The Real Problem~

    I believe this is actually a bug, When condition exists where a folder cannot be accesed due to access rights then IMDB stops the look up. Shouldn't the correct error procedure be to simply ignore the access denied condition and continue to proccess the accessable files / folders? So dispite my specific issue (and odd setup) this logic error exists as shown below...

    I tested it on a 3 folders, one with ONLY media files no folders, one with media files with both empty folders and movie files stored in subfolders, and one with media files and a folder with access rights denied to the XBOX. The folder with only files scaned the IMDB just fine, as did the folder with folders in it. The folder with the media files and locked folders failed the IMDB lookup. Fully reproducable results taking my setup oddities out of the loop.

    If you could test this yourself and verify this then please move this to the bugs section. If you cannot then well hell I dunno.... I have tried on evey build for the last few weeks and wiped the install folder many times. Glad I only whiped 1 XBOX :)


  • Just wanted to say "Thanks" to whichever dev fixed the issue. I click past it as before but this time the scan continues and the thumbs are there. so thanks MUCH!


  • The term "blank spots" refered more to false information holders (leading me to think the IMDB was simply not sowing. Anyway so it recursavly looks for files to lookup but what is failing is when it gets to the "System Volume Information" folder it naturally cannot access it so it throws up the username and password screen the ONLY way to get that screen to go away is to hit cancel but when I do that the whole IMDB lookup proccess ends and thats it. So what I am wondering is how to I stop it from trying to access folders and just look at files?


  • The term "blank spots" refered more to false information holders (leading me to think the IMDB was simply not sowing.
    Incorrect information is due to Xbmc associating the wrong movie to a file. Its unrelated to the "System Volume Information" folder. There's not much that can be done about this other than you, the user, renaming your files to be more description. "Movie.avi" is bad. "Superman Returns.avi" is better.

    It's also good to know that the Query All function is highly dependant on multipart movies being stacked correctly. Names like "Superman Returns-cd1.avi" and "Superman Returns-cd2.avi" work best. This way, you get just one item in the database titled "Superman Returns" with both parts associated to the movie.

    In the case of dvd folders, the folder name is assumed to be the movie name. Xbmc looks back from where the VIDEO_TS.IFO folder is found so both "Superman Returns/VIDEO_TS/VIDEO_TS.IFO" and "Superman Returns/VIDEO_TS.IFO" are understood.

    So what I am wondering is how to I stop it from trying to access folders and just look at files?

    Simply dont use Query All from your root location. It's designed to recursively look through the entire folder structure starting at the point where you invoke that command. You have a few options...

    1) Compile your own customized version of Xbmc. Since Xbmc is open source so you can modify it however you want to suit your own particular needs.

    2) Dont use the disc root as your share point. Add a toplevel folder name like "Movies" and put all your stuff in there. You then set up your source to go directly to something like "smb://computer/diskc/movies/". Now you wont see the "System Volume Information" folder.

    3) If you have lots of folders in the root of your disc, you can enter each of those folders and run the "Query All" from there.

    4) Dont use "Query All", and instead use the "Query Info" command. This will lookup the currently highlighted item ONLY. This works a little funny so I'll explain:

    If you're looking up a file, be sure to stack first otherwise it wont pick up the other parts. (It assumes you know what you're doing.) And if you then lookup the other parts individually, you'll have duplicates, each of which is not the entire movie.

    If you have each movie in its own folder, you can do the lookup on the folder, itself. In this case, Xbmc does the lookup using the folder name is the movie name and stacks the contents of the folder, and assumes the the first video item as the movie. DO NOT use this if you have more than one movie in a folder, or if they contents do not stack correctly.


  • As a point of clarification, it's not looking for local IMDB info. It's recursively looking for video files to lookup up on IMDB and add to the movie database.

    If Xbmc cannot find any files in that folder, there should be nothing to look up on IMDB. But, if something is being added to the database, it sounds like a legimate bug.

    I'm not really sure what you mean by "blank" spots in the database. Post a screenshot clearly showing this. A link to your database file would be useful as well.







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