Hello everyone, I am recording a television show where some of them have the correct episode title and some don't have an episode title at all. Its for my kid, so we keep a lot of these around. I went through all of the episodes that didn't have a title and updated the metadata fields for subtitle and episode name, and deleted a whole bunch of duplicates. When I restarted MCE, it realized that a bunch of them were gone, and only showed the correct number of episodes, but the ones whose metadata I fixed didn't have episode names. I tried rebuilding the MCE databases with FixWin and that didn't do anything at all. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

The Metadata is embedded in the files, you can edit it with this utility

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/toub/archive/2005/05/12/416874.aspx

I tred this, but the metadata appears to be correct in that editor, its just never updated in MCE. Thanks for the response though, any other ideas?

The link below was not exactly for your problem, but may fix it.  It essentially rebuilds the MC.  If your MC was working correctly at one time I think this may put it back to that state.  I used it successfully.  Only issue at all was I had to reset all my shows to record.  It was like starting with MC all over.

http://mymce.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/fixing-media-center-has-stopped-working-in-windows-seven-media-center/

 

 

 

diehard2

I tred this, but the metadata appears to be correct in that editor, its just never updated in MCE. Thanks for the response though, any other ideas?

 

aaah the infamous problem with updating the metadata. There is no solid solution for this. You may try to move the recordings to a different directory and back again, restart PC, rename them etc. For some people this works.

diehard2

I tred this, but the metadata appears to be correct in that editor, its just never updated in MCE. Thanks for the response though, any other ideas?

The following applies to Vista; Windows 7 may or may not behave in a similar fashion.

In Vista, the main information file is "recordings.xml".  In this file MC stores the metadata for recordings, and this is what it uses to display the programme information.  When you update the metadata in a DVR-MS file, the metadata in "recordings.xml" is not updated, and this is why you still see the old information.

For a recording that is not part of a current series, you can do the following:

(1) Shut down Media Center.

(2) Using Windows Explorer (or the command line), move the DVR-MS files that you want to change to a different folder.

(3) Start up Media Center and display the contents of "Recorded TV".  MC will notice that some of the DVR-MS files have vanished, and delete their entries (including metadata) from "recordings.xml".

(4) Shut down Media Center.

(5) Using Windows Explorer (or the command line), move the modified DVR-MS files back into the "Recorded TV" folder.

(6) Start up Media Center and display the contents of "Recorded TV". MC will notice that there are some new DVR-MS files, and create entries for them in "recordings.xml", using the metadata extracted from the DVR-MS files.

So that is the basic procedure. The reason why this sometimes appears not to work is related to series recordings.  If you set up a series to record, and watch and delete each episode soon after it is recorded, how does MC know that it should not record the episodes that you have already watched and deleted?  The answer is that for series recordings, MC retains in "recordings.xml" entries for all programmes in the series that it has recorded, even those which have already been deleted.  Consequently, if you move DVR-MS files that belong to a current series from "Recorded TV" to a different folder, MC does not delete their entries from "recordings.xml".  As a result, when you move those files back into "Recorded TV", MC does not update "recordings.xml" with the metadata from the files.  Hence it appears that your metadata changes are ignored.

The solution to this problem is to delete from the recording schedule the entries for series whose DVR-MS metadata you want to change.  Do this after you have moved the files from "Recorded TV" to a different folder.

BUT you need to understand the implications of doing this.  Deleting the series from the recording schedule causes MC to forget all episodes that it has recorded in that series.  When you move the DVR-MS files back into "Recorded TV" and re-create the series in the recording schedule, MC will record all episodes that satisfy the recording criteria and which do not exist as DVR-MS files in "Recorded TV".  This will include any episodes that you have already recorded, watched, and deleted, and which you do not want MC to record again.

I do not have Windows 7, but as I understand it Windows 7 uses a database file in place of "recordings.xml".  However, if the rules that Windows 7 uses to update this database file are the same as those that Vista uses to update "recordings.xml", the procedure described above should work for Windows 7.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

 didn't seem to work in windows 7.  any other ideas?