Why does subsonic ignore TV episode #'s in file names?

[Orbitrix]

Using Version 4.7 (build 3106) – September 12, 2012

I understand the developer is moving over to using Meta data to do sorting and organization, instead of using file names and the file system.

But subsonic is supposed to support video too right? Not all video formats support meta data, and the ones that do... subsonic does not appear to read them? (Like .MKV files for example... subsonic will ignore the episode/track # meta data field when sorting)


I have my TV sorted like this on the file system:

C:\TV\ShowName\Season 01\01 - Episode Name.mkv
C:\TV\ShowName\Season 01\02 - Another Episode Name.mkv

But subsonic ignores the "01 - " and "02 - " of these files (even though they're not music files and should not be treated as such) and somehow manages to sort them alphabetically, putting "Another Episode Name" above "Episode Name". So basicly subsonic is saying "hmmm.. i cant find meta data in this file format, i'm going to take the file name, chop off any numbers from it, then sort alphabetically...." Wtf kind of magical nonsensical logic is that? Who listens to, or watches, anything (music, television, movie, or otherwise) in alphabetical order?

I can understand using meta data to sort for music, but why in the world would you make this work the same way on video files, and actually release it as a major version release of SubSonic?

Am I the only one who uses subsonic for more than Music?

What i fundamentally dont understand is that these files do not have any meta data.... so how does it even manage to sort alphabetically? If the issue is just that "Subsonic sorts by meta data now", i dont understand how we're getting this magical behavior of subsonic removing numbers from the file names before sorting alphabetically? This is extremely un-intuitive behavior. I dont understand why you would do this to music files either. Why would u chop off the #'s from the file names, even if it it was music with metadata?

I appreciate the move over to using Metadata, but 4.7 deserved to be Beta for A LOT longer than it was. This entirely breaks the way I use subsonic.

I realize I have a somewhat non-traditional file system layout for my television collection, but its not like its that crazy. Infact its pretty logical and minimal, its very close to how most people organize their music. Why does subsonic treat file names that start with numbers special?! no need for it.

[daneren2005]

While I agree that this is an issue, I can't but disagree with the common complaint of "it should have been in beta for longer". It started being in beta with the tag changes back in MAY. The problem wasn't an insufficiently long beta, but a insufficiently large group of beta testers to find issues like this.

[hakko]

Nah, a lot of people tried it while in beta (see viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9686). People jumped from 4.6 to 4.7beta1 without making backups, this notification of new versions seems to push people. All the issues that are now reported daily in the Help forum were reported extensively during the beta phase (crashing databases, weird sorting, files not found while scanning, the album artist change that was introduced and hated on etc).

I think 4.7 is still 5.0 beta rather than 4.7 stable. The media file handling has always been the weakest point to me in Subsonic (that search index of "lines" that was kept in memory in 4.6 counts too). I'm glad I took the time to re-write it from scratch, and I still think Subsonic could benefit from looking at the library scanner I wrote instead of the one present in 4.7. It's all open source... just grab it, that's the beauty of GPL which allowed me to do those changes in the first place.

[GJ51]

Yeah, so Subsonic is a little quircky. All part of the fun. I agree - all software is beta, just look at Windows

Files, tags folders - sort by this, sort by that. All this stuff has been debated to death. You like Tomaytoe, I like Tomahto. So what?

The bottom line as I've been saying for two years: If you organize your library by \Music\Artist\Album\Track and you match your tags to read the same as your folder and filenames. it all just works dandy.

I never noticed anything different from 4.0 - 4.7 when looking for stuff, it just didn't matter.

Same with this DB, that DB. Sure some are better than others, but a clean Java and Subsonic install on Windows is a snap. I don't think I've had that go wrong for over a year. I think the upgrade from 4.6 to 4.7beta was a bit hincky and the first round of incompatibility with Java 7. other than that it has worked every time for the last 2 years.

Sure, the learning curve is a bit for the average user if they don't know much about networks and firewalls and port forwarding, but that too is part of the fun - what better way to learn those skills?

The product evolves, has mod branches that work and a user community that will help on most any problem, Where else do you find that?

$20 Software that you can reinstall over and over multiple times and is a ton of fun, fosters learning and has a great user community.

If you don't like 4.7 you can always drop back to 4.6 or 4.5 or try one of the mods.

I think 4.5 may still actually be the best version if all you want is a music server.

For me the strength of Subsonic is privacy. It's your private cloud. Most people don't seem to care anymore about privacy, but they will once someone abuses it. I don't want anyone mpnitoring what I'm listening to, it's nobody's business but mine.

I remember when I was a youngin' and you heard someone say, "mind your own business" or "tend to your own knitting" all the time. Those were better days. Now everyone has two cents to tell you what to do, how to do, when to do, yada, yada and everyone thinks that's normal.

At least with Subsonic I can use it how I want, when i want, and not worry about who's tracking what I'm doing unless I want them to.

So don't worry - be happy - it's all good and getting better all the time.

[BKKKPewsey]

Not to sure what the problem is with sorting
On windows my tv shows sort np BUT I do use SxxEyy in the filename which means SS will not ignore the number (thinking its a track #)



Any excuse to show a pic of Nikita

[Orbitrix]

Not to sure what the problem is with sorting
On windows my tv shows sort np BUT I do use SxxEyy in the filename which means SS will not ignore the number (thinking its a track #)

...image here...

Any excuse to show a pic of Nikita

This is because your file names do not start with Numbers. I've determined that the problem is subsonic treats file names that begin with numbers specially.

So if you have "Nikita S1E04 - Pilot" its fine. But in my setup, all these files would already be in a folder called "Nikita" as well as already being in a folder called "Season 1"

So no need for "Nikita S1" in my file names, its redundant. I would have my episode file names as "01 - Pilot" not "Nikita S1E01 - Pilot".

But subsonic does not support this And I really cant think of any good reason it should work this way... Subsonic chops off the "01 - " and proceeds to sort alphabetically. Music, Movies, Television shows or otherwise, I seriously cant think of why you'd ever want it to work like this.

I agree that you sometimes cant please everyone in these situations, BUT, this is MAGICAL UNDOCUMENTED BEHAVIOR WITH NO SETTING (and it worked fine before...)... Thats NEVER good software design... EVER. Period. When you change something as huge as this, you make it optional. I'm losing confidence in the professionalism of the developers on this project.

Its fine to fool around with this stuff if you're some free open source project, but when you are a legitimate commercial software project, I do not agree that this is acceptable development practices... I paid good money for both the server, and the android client. I expect the software not to break the way I use it without warning or option, unless its in beta. Its called "Progressive Enhancement" and any developer worth their weight in gold knows how to develop that way. You never break old functionality. And if you must, you make it an option. Or you AT LEAST document magical behavior.

I think subsonic needs to be free'd from its cage, and made fully open-source and 100% free from top to bottom (so people like myself can contribute more easily). Or the developer needs to hire more help with all the money I've given him. I'm sort of just giving the developer a hard time, and kidding... but, I am genuinely a little bit perturbed. If he is his own boss, he needs people like me to yell at him every once in a while, since he probably doesn't do it to himself, even though he does make mistakes.

IMO subsonic really needs to stop half-assing its video support. Its decent, but still obviously an afterthought compared to how Music is handled. I want video playlists, etc. All the same goodies music has but for videos. But now I'm just getting off topic. Here's hoping 4.8 resolves this issue.

[hakko]

Well, the good news is that there are forks of the project and you're free to create your own, too.

http://svn.code.sf.net/p/subsonic/code/ ... arser.java
http://svn.code.sf.net/p/subsonic/code/ ... rvice.java

It's actually full of undocumented behavior. If you put your files in a folder called "audio book" they're treated differently? wtf?

[Orbitrix]

Well, the good news is that there are forks of the project and you're free to create your own, too.

http://svn.code.sf.net/p/subsonic/code/ ... arser.java
http://svn.code.sf.net/p/subsonic/code/ ... rvice.java

It's actually full of undocumented behavior. If you put your files in a folder called "audio book" they're treated differently? wtf?

Thanks for the information, I wasnt aware of this particular fork actually... I knew about SuperSonic but not this. This will be perfect for me, cause usually when stuff like this annoys me I just fix it myself. Perhaps I shall. Still. I hope the dev reads this thread, for all my non programming friends out there, who have simmilar folder layouts as mine.

Edit:

So I think I finally wrapped my head around why this happens. Subsonic basically assumes any file beginning with a # is an AUDIO FILE, and that it can pull the track info out of the Meta data for sorting. So what needs to happen is subsonic needs to stop being programmed around the assumption that everythings an audiofile, or that every file has meta data. It would seem that this is a growing pain since the initial conception of SubSonic did not include video support.

This codebase needs a good refactoring before new features are tacked on IMO.