Personal Video Database

I have understood the issue. I believe the problem is that only one table can be updated at a time.

I think it was a valid try if certain fields in the tables could be selected and then data could be imported for those fields. Unfortunately for that to work the rest of fields are filled with NULL values.

There are too many fields constraints for that to work so data cannot be imported in large amounts directly through Maestro.

Will just have to wait until you develop a script for importing episodes from a text file.

I wasn't sure how to do that so I used a normal server to get it to work.

However when I try to import data using a defined view, I get

"The object of the insert, delete or update statement is a view for which the requested operation is not permitted."

"01/06/2010 16:34 - Engine Error (code = 335544362):
cannot update read-only view VIEW03."

Any idea how to give it permissions to insert data?

If (1), I would manually create the 126 episode records using New Episode (tedious, but it would only take a few minutes). I would change the filenames to include Episode title and Year, if they didn't already, and then run the file scanner to attach the files and add this information.

This would be easier if there was a counter in the 'add episode' option that would automatically increment when I pressed the icon rather manually numbering each episode. Or an option to create x amounts of episode etc. Then if there was an option of taking the title of the episode from the filename when I press 'organise files', the filename could fill the title of the episode field.

As most file names of episodes correspond to their titles anyway would solve a part of the problem. There are plenty of tag/rename utilities out there to prepare the filenames before importing.

If (2), I would abandon the idea of recording these episodes as a series, and import them as movie records instead. Doing so allows any  available information to be imported using the CSV or Excel import plugins. See this post for more about how to do this.

I did that and it is ugly! Basically the 'plain view' of the database fills and looks very muddled. There are always too many episodes of series.

The other way is using the text plugin as suggested. Obviously the program imports episodes from the imdb site. And if thats the same for importing from the text file, I would appreciate a text file with filled dummy fields so that I could see how this being done.

Its then 5 minutes in excel with cut/paste/replace to make my episode list resemble an IMDB download.

Yep. I tried that suggestion before and couldn't get it to work!

I think because of the issue that new episodes cannot be created without an existing epid record. So I would have to manually create episodes and then 'organise files' to those episodes. Too much hard work for 126 episodes!


The only way I thought I could get some automation into the import process was using the 'get movie information from text file' plugin. But I believe that plugin doesn't quite work or I don't have enough information on how it works to get it to work!

For example with the plugin I have deselected all options apart from: Title, Path, Episodes. If I could get this information imported I assume the records episodes/seasons would be created, and I would only then need to use 'organise files' to assign paths to the episodes.

Now I don't know how to format the text file with my movie/episode information. I would appreciate if anyone could give me a text example that I could import so the correct fields are filled and epid records created!

eg Apprentice, c:\tmp, 1, Episode 1, Sales (title of episode)
    Apprentice, c:\tmp, 1, Episode 2, Creativity

I want that to be Title, Path, Season Number, episode Number, Title of episode. How do I do this using the text file import plugin?