Plex, Serviio, XBMC, Need Something That Just Works

[tential]

Really? Without nfos? Nice. I should edit my post to say XBMC on that part. I only let Kodi scrape my movies library without nfos so far. I have noticed the scraper is faster, good news all around.

The scraper was improved under helix.
I have a c2d machine with helix and my other machine still runs Gotham. I feel helix still is faster on the c2d machine but could be placebo for all I know.

I also run everything through filebot where before I didn't but I feel it's only gotten more polished of an experience.

All these media center apps will only improve more now that they're hitting mainstream and much more effort is being placed on getting them integrated. I'm hoping that netflix/Amazon prime etc work with people for integrating into their application. I'd like to see them integrate with plex. Preferably with Kodi but I doubt it'll happen.

 

[wiretap]

I use MediaBrowser3.... I love it over everything else.

This.

The new MediaBrowser Server works best that I've found. Numerous scraping sources, auto-organization and folder monitoring, virtual folder links/pooling, Kodi/XBMC support w/ NFO's, web channel podcast support, tons of plugins, etc.

I also use MediaCenterMaster to scrape metadata which works very well with almost any frontend media center.

 

[BeeBoop]

Okay, I believe that I figured out the problem. It's the power line adaptors. I finally ran an extremely long wire from my PC to the living room and I haven't noticed any buffering.

Now, I need to figure out how to fish hook Ethernet cables without destroying anything.

 

[jqderrick]

A little late to the part here, but I had the same issue with PLEX where it wouldn't pick up some of the shows and movies that I kept in the directory. It was really frustrated and I was seriously considering a different program. During my troubleshooting I was able to fix the issue by moving all of my files to a new folder (called Fuck You Plex) and after moving the files to a new folder....everything works like it's supposed to. All movies were picked up and I was able to edit movies as well.

Just a thought!

 

[JeffMD]

jq, also keep in mind that I find that you can have a movies directory, and then a video files directory. In the movies directories if they are not found in a movie database then it will not be recognized and added.

 

[tential]

jq, also keep in mind that I find that you can have a movies directory, and then a video files directory. In the movies directories if they are not found in a movie database then it will not be recognized and added.

logs and forums are your friends as to figuring out why movies/tv shows won't scrape.
My largest issue is that I end up restructuring all of my backend where my files are located, then, I have to restart my library because of that.

Except, I have certain TV shows that it isn't sure which show it is, so I have to manually tell it. Certain Movies that are the same way. And certain TV shows that are DVD order instead of TV airdate order and need to be switched.

That's about the most annoying thing. But the only plan I have right now is to move Anime to its own folder so that I can choose another scraper if I want to, or just so all my anime is together and in a separate place than TV shows, so when I browse TV, it's ONLY TV, and Anime is ONLY anime.

Decisions decisions..... I'm sure I'll restructure my DB again once I hit 50TB+ storage. Just not in the mood right now! Plex/Kodi has just made me a massive digital hoarder.
I'm scared for when I get google fiber what'll happen to my library size....

 

[slag]

A little late to the part here, but I had the same issue with PLEX where it wouldn't pick up some of the shows and movies that I kept in the directory. It was really frustrated and I was seriously considering a different program. During my troubleshooting I was able to fix the issue by moving all of my files to a new folder (called Fuck You Plex) and after moving the files to a new folder....everything works like it's supposed to. All movies were picked up and I was able to edit movies as well.

Just a thought!

It's all in the naming. I had to specifically rename a folder to "A Christmas Story(1983)" and inside that folder named the movie "A.Christmas.Story(1983) for plex to pick it up. Without the date there, plex wouldn't see it.

Kodi still has issues with 3d content naming though. Even though I put .HSBS. or _HSBS_ or whatever in the folder and file name, it doesn't show the box art as being a 3d movie and only if you select it will it show its a 3d movie right near the rating. It would be nice if it picked the correct box art natively instead of having to manually put the picture in the folder so my kids would know which is the correct movie off the bat. I have Avatar extended cut and Avatar 3d and I can't remember if it shows both movies or only "Avatar" generic as the movie.

I use kodi as a front end for local viewing but have the plex service running in the background on ubuntu and it all works well with 4 GB of ram on an intel nuc setup (celeron haswell core).

I set plex to use 4 mb internal streaming and don't have any issues streaming hd content. Looks good enough to watch and enjoy.

 

[Binky]

Okay, I believe that I figured out the problem. It's the power line adaptors. I finally ran an extremely long wire from my PC to the living room and I haven't noticed any buffering.

Now, I need to figure out how to fish hook Ethernet cables without destroying anything.

In my experience, powerline is only useful for low throughput devices. I use this for my sprinkler controller, only. These devices also seem to fry themselves on power surges, making them a frustrating long-term solution.

Try Moca/Deca devices like the Actiontec 2500 if you have cable TV wiring in your home. Moca can coexist with cable TV, and Deca can coexist with satellite TV. There are cheaper options based on older routers, but I forget the names and model numbers. I use the actiontec 2500 boxes (Moca) I have decent playback in one location in my house, and so-so playback in another. It is much better than powerline, but still nowhere near as good as Ethernet.

 

[Aikouka]

It's all in the naming. I had to specifically rename a folder to "A Christmas Story(1983)" and inside that folder named the movie "A.Christmas.Story(1983) for plex to pick it up. Without the date there, plex wouldn't see it.

I assume that Plex does see it, but it fails to scrape it properly. I run into this problem a lot with anime as you have to be somewhat particular about the titles. Also, it's highly recommended to follow what's called the scene naming convention for movies and TV shows.

Movies: Title.Separated.By.Periods.Year.Resolution.Source.Codec-Group (e.g. A.Christmas.Story.1983.720p.BluRay.x264-GroupName)

TV Shows: Title.Separated.By.Periods.Year.S##E##.Resolution.Source.Codec-Group (e.g. Supergirl.2015.S01E01.720p.HDTV.x264-GroupName).

To note, the year is normally omitted if there aren't multiple shows with the same name. Also, if you want to insert the title of the episode, do it after the period following S##E##. (e.g. Supergirl.2015.S01E01.Pilot.720p.HDTV.x264-GroupName) Also, most of this stuff is removed by the scrapers. It really just cares about the first two groups for movies (name and year) and first three for TV shows (name, year, episode number).

 

[biased]

I assume that Plex does see it, but it fails to scrape it properly. I run into this problem a lot with anime as you have to be somewhat particular about the titles. Also, it's highly recommended to follow what's called the scene naming convention for movies and TV shows.

Movies: Title.Separated.By.Periods.Year.Resolution.Source. Codec-Group (e.g. A.Christmas.Story.1983.720p.BluRay.x264-GroupName)

TV Shows: Title.Separated.By.Periods.Year.S##E##.Resolution. Source.Codec-Group (e.g. Supergirl.2015.S01E01.720p.HDTV.x264-GroupName).

To note, the year is normally omitted if there aren't multiple shows with the same name. Also, if you want to insert the title of the episode, do it after the period following S##E##. (e.g. Supergirl.2015.S01E01.Pilot.720p.HDTV.x264-GroupName) Also, most of this stuff is removed by the scrapers. It really just cares about the first two groups for movies (name and year) and first three for TV shows (name, year, episode number).

I'm dying to know how you got a good media scraper from something like kodi from scene releases. It will give me some of the most obscure and random names which are most definitely not the movie that it had selected leading me to a library filled with images of movies which are not them. Frustrating to say the least, I'm also very hesitant/don't want to rename them all because I like the original scene release as it was intact but still wish to enjoy the benefits of the posters. Is this asking too much? My library is a pretty good mix of east, west, animation (west and east) and even some middle eastern films but the scraper just seems to hate me. I'm pretty intent/set with kodi mostly because it has plugins I like for news.

Sorry for the wall of text, I know you don't know me but I was hoping you could help a former anime fan (i still like the old stuff!--just not so big on the newer stuff).

 

[Aikouka]

Sorry for the wall of text, I know you don't know me but I was hoping you could help a former anime fan (i still like the old stuff!--just not so big on the newer stuff).

Unfortunately, I can't really help you much, because I use Plex rather than Kodi. I can tell you that Plex has a good scraper and metadata pair for anime: Absolute Series Scanner and HamaTV respectively. The Absolute Series Scanner replaces the previous one called BABS (Better ABsolute Series scanner), which had trouble with certain characters such as the semi-colon, which made series like Steins;Gate impossible to scrape.

Back when I used XBMC/Kodi, I used to use third-party programs to scan my media. Although, I don't think any of them were particularly designed around anime.

 

[cyclohexane]

Pled has always worked for me. Only issue is the lack of support for HEVC/x265.

 

[biased]

Unfortunately, I can't really help you much, because I use Plex rather than Kodi. I can tell you that Plex has a good scraper and metadata pair for anime: Absolute Series Scanner and HamaTV respectively. The Absolute Series Scanner replaces the previous one called BABS (Better ABsolute Series scanner), which had trouble with certain characters such as the semi-colon, which made series like Steins;Gate impossible to scrape.

Back when I used XBMC/Kodi, I used to use third-party programs to scan my media. Although, I don't think any of them were particularly designed around anime.

I've seen the third-party apps and while many of them do look fine for anime what I was more interested in was how you got it to scrape scene releases when there are things like /Iron.Man.3.2012.720p.Bluray.x264-HDEX/im3-hdex.mkv or say /Tiny.Toons.Adventures.S01.DVDRi.XviD-aAF/aaf-tta-s01e01.avi

how you could possibly scrape that or if the folder itself does it?

 

[Aikouka]

I've seen the third-party apps and while many of them do look fine for anime what I was more interested in was how you got it to scrape scene releases when there are things like /Iron.Man.3.2012.720p.Bluray.x264-HDEX/im3-hdex.mkv or say /Tiny.Toons.Adventures.S01.DVDRi.XviD-aAF/aaf-tta-s01e01.avi

how you could possibly scrape that or if the folder itself does it?

I know that with the anime scraper, the folder name actually seems to matter more than the filename. For example, I could never get the second season of Owari no Seraph to match when I used its official name. I just changed the folder name to Owari no Seraph 2, and it worked fine. As for those, I do recommend renaming the actual files. My folder names are always "Movie Title (Release Year)". For example, my structure would be...

\Iron Man 3 (2012)\Iron.Man.3.2012.720p.Bluray.x264-HDEX.mkv

 

[adamantine.me]

Hi BeeBoop,

I experienced the same frustration you are probably experiencing now. With my NAS4Free machine I tried running Plex and Emby servers - both had their own kinks, though Emby was easier to setup and get running, but stopped working when I had to switch routers for a new ISP. I had read a little about the Raspberry Pi 2 and how its CPU and memory are actually quite formidable now. I found a really simple solution.

I made a post about it and documented my process. It didn't take more than an hour or two to assemble everything, hook it up, install the OS, and access the media over the network via Ethernet. I could have done it over WiFi but I was right next to my splitter so I didn't have to. I know you already have your HTPC built, but the Pi 2 would only cost another $40 if you have a spare HDMI cable, USB WiFi, etc. You could setup your existing machine as a home server using any number of operating systems. Just a suggestion, I found it to be really easy and intuitive.

 

[slag]

That is something that can be tweaked. Increase your cache:

http://kodi.wiki/view/HOW-TO:Modify_the_video_cache

You know that is my vote, nothing is better than Kodi.

Edit: It should be doable. Heck nowadays three of my primary viewing areas are connected by freaking 802.11N.

I've found that plex works better than kodi, but that's just my observation through a wireless 2.4g network.