Hi Thoatswold!

Of course! In the future I hope to make a guide, once this beta has gone through the testing phase.

Since you managed to download a TV show, I'm assuming you correctly selected at least one data provider (TVDB, TMDB, TVMaze).

So it sounds like you did everything right, so maybe we should see what the AutoDetect "log" says.

Option 1;

After step 3 you should see the files in the "Selected Files" list.
If you do NOT see anything in that list then something is going wrong. 
Something that happened to me during testing: accidentally dropping the wrong files on RMTV (I dropped .nfo and a .jpg file on it - which are not movies).
If notifications is enabled, then a message should have popped up saying how many files were imported.

Now, let's say there are files listed, then you can hover over the file to see the results of the AutoDetect.
And you may be able to see why it went wrong.

Option 2;

Basically the same as Option 1, but now by looking at a longer log (more intended for myself).
Pressing "F3" should bring up the AutoDetect log and there should be messages in there.

If F3 doesn't work, then try to open the "About" menu (if I recall correctly - it's a little different under macOS), there should be an option "Open AutoDetect Log Window".

Let me know if this shows what may be going wrong, or not.
Also: can you let me know what operating system you're running? (just in case I'd like to do some testing here)

Hi Hans

Thanks for your helpful reply. My operating system is Windows 10 (I did say that, actually); to be more exact it is Windows 10 Home 64-bit, version 1909.

F3 didn't do anything (I tried Shift+F3 and Ctrl+F3 too, but they didn't work either). Nor could I see the option you mentioned in the About window. However, hovering over the imported file did work (see attached screenshot).

The detection bug in this case is obvious – the AutoDetect algorithm is wrongly truncating the season and episode numbers to two digits, so it thinks the season is 16 rather than 2016, and it thinks the episode is 34 rather than 342.

I will experiment with programmes that have one- or two-digit series and episodes and see if they work correctly for me. I will also try the more realistic case where the filename just contains the programme name and episode name without any season or episode number information.

Phil / Thoatswold

You're right, I totally overlooked that (too many messages to answer on a day haha). My apologies! 

I forgot to mention that you'd have to press "Alt" once for the menu to become visible under Windows.
I guess nobody uses the menu under normal circumstances. 

But you did catch the issue indeed. The AutoDetect does a relatively simple search (regex) looking for 1 or 2 digit season numbers.
The issue with years is that this will start producing false positives when a show has a year in its name, if I'd include that in the detection.
As for the episode number; I can correct that bny allowing 3 digit episode numbers.
But as you can see, I have no good answer (yet) on the year (which determines season).

I do see S2016E342 at the end though - maybe I can tinker with that and maybe catch that one.

Note: filenames that only contain a show title and an episode title will fail ... guaranteed.
The main issue with that is that these names are very unreliable. Sometimes partially, typos, translated, etc.

On that note though: example filenames are very welcome, so if you could post a few here, then I can most certainly play with those.

OK, did some initial testing with the filename "BBC Documentaries - Series 2016 - 342. Prison, My Parents and Me S2016E342.mp4".

With a modified AutoDetect it now correctly picks up season (2016) and episode (342) - I'm now allowing season and episode each to be 1 to 4 digits, which is something I should have done to begin with.

Now comes the next problem with filenames like these.
AutoDetect assumes that the text before the season number is the show title ... but "BBB documentaries - series 2016 - 342. Prison, My Parents and Me" is NOT the show the title. See this is why poorly formed filenames cause so much trouble.

The file should have been called:

BBC Documentaries S2016E342 Prison, My Parents and Me.mp4 

BBC Documentaries - S2016E342 - Prison, My Parents and Me.mp4

BBC Documentaries 2016x342 Prison, My Parents and Me.mp4

BBC Documentaries - 2016x342 - Prison, My Parents and Me.mp4

(just a few examples, there are more variations)

Thanks for your replies! I wouldn't call my filename format "poorly formed" – it's what I've always used, and it works well with TVDB and Serviio. Also I am able to specify it in RMTV (%NY - Series %S - %E. %T S%SZE%EZ) so that it formats the renamed file to my liking. I use 'Series' rather than 'Season' because I'm British and that's the term we use.

Sorry - I didn't mean any offense with that ...

The reason why AutoDetect looks at the show title is that the AutoDetect was intended for users that "dump" just a pile of different episodes of different shows on it. It is one of the use cases most often discussed with the user I've talked with (which is of course not a guarantee that this is the most common use case).

So in that case, RMTV would not have a clue what the show name would be.

On that note: you do not have to select any show for AutoDetect to work (in the current setup).

You do bring up a very valid point though.
Select TV Show, get the episodes, and drop the files -> autodetect season/series and episode and match ...
If we'd ignore the title of the show, then the AutoDetect algorithm would work.

What may be a good work around;
IF a user has searched/selected a certain show, and this show is visible, then AutoDetect will take that show name if it cannot find anything matching.
Or I can allow the user to do a preference setting "Use selected show only, for AutoDetect", or in that particular scenario show a popup asking if the user would like to limit the search only to the selected show (I don't like popups, so I'd rather avoid those). So I could then basically ignore the show title.

I'll have to think about the implications though, and I'd rather not fill the screen with a ton of options or popups ...   

Maybe the best solution would be to add an option in Settings: "Limit AutoDetect to selected TV Show"?
Meaning: AutoDetect will ALWAYS assume the selected show to be used.

Woops, overlooked your last few lines ... apologies for that.

"It is unlikely that I would include S##E## or ####x## etc., because if I know all that information I probably don’t need to use RMTV at all. The only reason I used that kind of filename as a test is that I’d already tried the more realistic forms without success and I thought I’d try a filename that didn’t need altering, thinking (wrongly) that that would be bound to succeed."

This may make things trickier again ...

Let's say AutoDetect would only look for a given show, and we're lucky that the title has no number in it (eg. year, or some other kind of number, like in "The 100").
Then we'd still need to be lucky that an episode title doesn't have a number.
Just to mention a few by looking at "The 100" and  "Stargate SG-1": Part 1, Part 2, (1), (2), 2.0, 200.
And that is for just 2 randomly picked shows.

Do you have some examples of filenames on how you'd initially have them? I mean before you format them.

Thanks for the clarification. I like the preference setting “Use selected show only, for AutoDetect“ option, which if selected supports my use case and makes the search algorithm simpler in that case; if unselected it supports the use case of dumping lots of different files from different shows (which I didn't even realize was possible). It also avoids extra popups.

The only drawback I can see is that the user would have to be told about that preference, as it would affect how the program works substantially. Could there be some visual indication of which AutoDetect mode was in operation?

You're welcome! 

For your specific scenario, the only issue we have to resolve is the mixed bag of number, which AutoDetect may not be able to translate to a season (series) and episode.

Let me know if you have a few of the filenames you'd be working with, before renaming the files, so I can do some exploring. 

In the meanwhile, I'll think about how to implement the new option and a possible visual feedback.

Just an update: I've uploaded a new beta which now includes limiting AutoDetect to a selected TVShow (and some other cosmetics and little bug fixes).
I'm not sure if this will work for your example, but give it a try