[Colorman]

First of all, sorry if this has been answered already, I'm having a hard time searching the forum 😅.

I have a TV show with the following structure:

structure:
Monogatari (2009)

| ... <seasons>

|-09. Onimonogatari

| |-Onimonogatari S09E01 - Shinobu Time, Part 1.mkv

| |-Onimonogatari S09E01 - Shinobu Time, Part 1.nfo

| |-Onimonogatari S09E02 - Shinobu Time, Part 2.mkv

| |-Onimonogatari S09E02 - Shinobu Time, Part 2.nfo

| | ... <more episodes>

| ... <more seasons>

|-tvshow.nfo

|-<fanart>

The nfo files contain all the necessary information, so I'm using the local NFO scraper. This used to work just fine, and the whole series would be scraped into my TV shows, but after a recent migration to a new device I had te rebuild my library, and now some episodes aren't getting added. Specifically, I see Onimonogatari E01, but not E02 or any of the other episodes in the season, and seasons 10 and 11 don't show up at all.

I've been struggling to figure out what's wrong for a few hours, so I thought I'd finally ask here. I don't think anything is wrong with the NFO files, but I've added them anyway:
tvshow.nfo: https://paste.kodi.tv/vakewopege
S09E01 NFO: https://paste.kodi.tv/qibodekiye
S09E02 NFO: https://paste.kodi.tv/adicuvabuv

I've tried removing and re-adding the series from my library several times across several reboots, but the same episodes are always missing.
Thank's in advance!

[Karellen]

I don't think anything is wrong with the NFO files, but I've added them anyway:

The nfo files aren't the best I've seen. Sonarr always makes really cra**y nfo files. They have opted for a "one size fits all" for all media centres, but really not fully compatible with any of them.
But, what is there should work anyway, displaying the bares minimum of info in the library views.

A Debug Log that captures you scanning the show will also be helpful.

[Karellen]

I tested your nfo files and it all worked correctly...



Maybe you should use the Digital order at TheMovieDb and scrape the tv show instead... https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/46195/epis...0043a57f5c

[Colorman]

The nfo files aren't the best I've seen. Sonarr always makes really cra**y nfo files. They have opted for a "one size fits all" for all media centres, but really not fully compatible with any of them.
But, what is there should work anyway, displaying the bares minimum of info in the library views.

These aren't actually generated by Sonarr, I found them off a random Reddit post and made a script to change up the season order, split up some seasons, add mediainfo and unique IDs. I'm fine with the bare minimum, as long as my episodes show up.

 
A Debug Log that captures you scanning the show will also be helpful.

Here's a fresh kodi.log after a reboot and me selecting "Refresh" on the series info screen (logging level 3): https://files.colorman.me/s/vUtyTJF
(it seems to be too big to upload to paste.kodi.tv, so I've also saved it to the Internet Archive)
I'll also mention that I'm running Kodi from OSMC on a Vero V in case that's useful.

Also, thanks for the quick response, I really appreciate it!

[Colorman]

I tested your nfo files and it all worked correctly...

Huh, I hope it's just a weird temporary glitch for me then. The log even shows

log:


2024-04-17 22:57:24.702 T:2862    debug <general>: VideoInfoScanner: Found episode match smb://192.168.50.222/storage/Vault/Video/Anime/Monogatari (2009)/09. Onimonogatari/Onimonogatari S09E02 - Shinobu Time, Part 2.mkv (s9e2) [s([0-9]+)[ ._x-]*e([0-9]+(??:[a-i]|\.[1-9])(?![0-9]))?)([^\\/]*)$]

so it's definitely being picked up at some point.

Maybe you should use the Digital order at TheMovieDb and scrape the tv show instead... https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/46195/epis...0043a57f5c

I've been trying to build up a library that doesn't rely on external scrapers, but I'll keep it in mind as a last resort. I could try reinstalling OSMC as a before-last-resort.

[Colorman]

Okay the log can see the files, but not the NFOs? It seems to load NFOs for 88 episodes, but there are 103 mkv/nfo pairs in total, so 15 of them aren't loaded. The files are all stored on an SMB share hosted on a Truenas server, all with the same permissions. Do SMB filepaths get mounted anywhere so I can check what Kodi sees in the folders?

[Karellen]

so it's definitely being picked up at some point.

Yep, Kodi has discovered the video files and listed them, and using the Regex search pattern allocated the correct episode numbering Onimonogatari S09E01 - Shinobu Time, Part 1.mkv (s9e1)

Okay the log can see the files, but not the NFOs?

Correct. For some reason it cannot see/read/use the nfo files. Seems S09 in part is missing along with S10 and S11. Probably others, but those stood out immediately.
Most common reason is the actual nfo file is non-compatible. Ensure the files are encoded in UTF-8. Also ensure the file isn't something like filename.nfo.txt which can happen when people use a word processor to create them.

Those nfo files worked for me because I created the file here and pasted the content inside it. So try recreating a couple of those files again?
Also check permissions on the files. Maybe some glitch has had the permissions revoked.

[Colorman]

These are the permissions of the files on the server hosting them:

ls -l output:
[/mnt/storage/Vault/Video/Anime/Monogatari (2009)/09. Onimonogatari]$ ls -l

-rwxrwx---+ 2 apps     apps     1501468605 Sep  8  2023 'Onimonogatari S09E01 - Shinobu Time, Part 1.mkv'

-rwxrwxr-x+ 1 colorman colorman       2093 Feb 26 21:25 'Onimonogatari S09E01 - Shinobu Time, Part 1.nfo'

-rwxrwx---+ 2 apps     apps     2281320143 Sep  8  2023 'Onimonogatari S09E02 - Shinobu Time, Part 2.mkv'

-rwxrwxr-x+ 1 colorman colorman       2090 Apr 17 21:00 'Onimonogatari S09E02 - Shinobu Time, Part 2.nfo'

-rwxrwx---+ 2 apps     apps     1646205162 Sep  8  2023 'Onimonogatari S09E03 - Shinobu Time, Part 3.mkv'

-rwxrwxr-x+ 1 colorman colorman       2109 Feb 26 21:25 'Onimonogatari S09E03 - Shinobu Time, Part 3.nfo'

-rwxrwx---+ 2 apps     apps     1510471002 Sep  8  2023 'Onimonogatari S09E04 - Shinobu Time, Part 4.mkv'

-rwxrwxr-x+ 1 colorman colorman       2075 Feb 26 21:25 'Onimonogatari S09E04 - Shinobu Time, Part 4.nfo'

All NFO files have the same permissions and the same file extensions.

file output:
[/mnt/storage/Vault/Video/Anime/Monogatari (2009)/09. Onimonogatari]$ file Onimonogatari\ S09E01\ -\ Shinobu\ Time,\ Part\ 1.nfo

Onimonogatari S09E01 - Shinobu Time, Part 1.nfo: HTML document, ASCII text, with CRLF line terminators

[/mnt/storage/Vault/Video/Anime/Monogatari (2009)/09. Onimonogatari]$ file Onimonogatari\ S09E02\ -\ Shinobu\ Time,\ Part\ 2.nfo

Onimonogatari S09E02 - Shinobu Time, Part 2.nfo: HTML document, Unicode text, UTF-8 text, with CRLF line terminators

Now this is the only substantial difference I've seen so far: the one encoded in UTF-8 is the one that isn't working. I'll try contert them to ASCII and report back.

[Colorman]

That did not help, and seems I was a bit wrong above: the files *are* in fact encoded with UTF-8. The first only contains characters in the ASCII set however, and the second contains the quotation marks “ and ” which are not in ASCII.

[Karellen]

Did you try creating a new nfo file and copying the contents over?

[Colorman]

Okay, I managed to fix it but not sure what part of the process actually caused it to work:

1. Reboot mediacenter.
   
2. Removed every single Media>Video source, then went to the File Manager and removed all sources pointing to my Network Location entirely.
   
3. Add back a single File Manager source pointing to the Videos folder on my SMB share.
   
4. Navigate into the new File Manager source, find the "09. Onimonogatari" folder, open all the NFO files with "View as text" (verifying that Kodi can actually see the NFO files).
   • Everything looked fine, I could play the files manually and view all the NFO files.
     
5. Navigate into Media>Video and add a video source pointing to Video/Anime, using the local scraper. When it asks to update library, I press "No".
   
6. Navigate into the new Anime video source, find Monogatari (2009), options and select "Scan into library".
   
7. Now Monogatari under TV Shows has all episodes.
   

I wonder if Kodi scanning the entire folder somehow "overloaded" the SMB server, causing it to not respond to some NFO file access requests, subsequently making Kodi think the files were no longer there?

Anyway, thanks for helping me debug @Karellen, wouldn't have known how to get started otherwise!

[Karellen]

Anyway, thanks for helping me debug @Karellen, wouldn't have known how to get started otherwise!

You are welcome.
Glad it is working again.