# Metagenerator - Please Help



## ozboy (Nov 11, 2006)

Hi All
Thank you all for your great help here!! I have just install pytivo and all is working well. However I was also reading about Metagenerator....looks like it would be useful but I cant for the life of me understand how it works??? 

I have it installed and running, I set the folder option to my tivo video, i click search and it appears to search but then nothing comes up....

Can anyone point me in the director of some good newbie instructions?

Cheers


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## Rdian06 (Apr 12, 2008)

In the search box, type a TV or Movie name (depending on which mode you're using) and then hit the search button.

It will bring up a list of hits and then you can choose the show or movie you're trying to generate data for. It then brings up another window with data and lets you edit it. Finally you Save and pick a video file to associate the metadata with (it saves it with the same file name as the movie, but with a .txt tacked onto the end which pyTivo requires.)


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## steve101 (Jan 4, 2005)

Rdian06 said:


> In the search box, type a TV or Movie name (depending on which mode you're using) and then hit the search button.
> 
> It will bring up a list of hits and then you can choose the show or movie you're trying to generate data for. It then brings up another window with data and lets you edit it. Finally you Save and pick a video file to associate the metadata with (it saves it with the same file name as the movie, but with a .txt tacked onto the end which pyTivo requires.)


I have never got the movie tab to work - no matter what I put into the
search box. 
The wiki says that it uses Movie-xml.com for this, when I try to access
that site with a web browser it says that name has been registered
with easyspace. Seems that site is no longer served.


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## Iluvatar (Jul 22, 2006)

steve101 said:


> I have never got the movie tab to work - no matter what I put into the
> search box.
> The wiki says that it uses Movie-xml.com for this, when I try to access
> that site with a web browser it says that name has been registered
> with easyspace. Seems that site is no longer served.


Correct. The Movie tab is non-functional at the moment. The author has made statements that an update is due in the near future that will return this feature.


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## ozboy (Nov 11, 2006)

WOW!! Awesome! Thanks for the help....
Can't wait for movie feature to work


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## Test (Dec 8, 2004)

I need some help with MetaGenrator, so I figure I can resurrect this thread. I had it working great, but then I formatted my pc and reinstalled XP, now I can't get any information from Netflix. It just says no results found, when before it worked perfectly. My question is does this app need something else running/installed to work with netflix? Did I just happen to have something that made MetaGenerator work right and now I don't?

I do get info from TheMovieDB, but most of the time I find the Netflix data much better.


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

You need .NET Framework 2.0 installed but I doubt if that is your problem because I don't believe the program would even start up in that case.

Are you using Version 2.0.6.1 (the latest?). It's working fine for me on XP, (using NetFlix).


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## Test (Dec 8, 2004)

dlfl said:


> You need .NET Framework 2.0 installed but I doubt if that is your problem because I don't believe the program would even start up in that case.
> 
> Are you using Version 2.0.6.1 (the latest?). It's working fine for me on XP, (using NetFlix).


Yea, I tried the latest and the previous version, same situation. Checking what I have installed and it shows that I have .NET Framework 1.1, 1.1 Hotfix, 2.0 SP2, 3.0 SP2 and 3.5 SP1. hmmmmm


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

Another long shot but if you have Windows Firewall running, try turning it off (just long enough to test).


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## windracer (Jan 3, 2003)

No problems here either using the movie search tab with v2.0.6.1.


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## Test (Dec 8, 2004)

dlfl said:


> Another long shot but if you have Windows Firewall running, try turning it off (just long enough to test).





windracer said:


> No problems here either using the movie search tab with v2.0.6.1.


Shutdown the firewall and still no go. Man this is annoying, but at least I have a workaround (TheMovieDB). I just use that for the form and then go to netflix.com and get all the information that's missing. It would be nice to get this working.


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

Test said:


> Shutdown the firewall and still no go. Man this is annoying, but at least I have a workaround (TheMovieDB). I just use that for the form and then go to netflix.com and get all the information that's missing. It would be nice to get this working.


Let's try a network connectivity experiment. In a command (console) window, type:

ping api.netflix.com

You should see something like this:



> Pinging apius.mashery.com [208.111.157.210] with 32 bytes of data:
> 
> Reply from 208.111.157.210: bytes=32 time=32ms TTL=57
> Reply from 208.111.157.210: bytes=32 time=32ms TTL=57
> ...


If you can't ping this site, that would be the problem.

Try

nslookup api.netflix.com

You should get a response giving an IP for the site. This doesn't always come up with the same IP on my computer. Sometimes it is the 208.111.157.210 that came up in the ping response. Another response I get is:



> Server: dns-cac-lb-04.ohiordc.rr.com
> Address: 65.24.7.11
> 
> Non-authoritative answer:
> ...


I assume Netflix has multiple servers/addresses for this API.

Another diagnostic tool is tracert:

tracert api.netflix.com

It should list all the nodes it goes through to reach api.netflix.com.


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## Test (Dec 8, 2004)

Thanks for the help. I can't explain it, but it just started working today. After weeks of just NOTHING. I don't know if this matters, but I did install whatever netflix installs to watch instantly on my computer. Does MetaGenerator use something they install??


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## fred2 (Jan 20, 2006)

And bringing back an old thread once again....

My desktop took a dive. I am trying to run MetaGenerator on a small netbook. The version is 2.xxx.61 or something like that.

My real problem is the screen resolution of this little netbook. The bottom of what I will call the data screen, the screen where you CLICK SAVE is off the bottom of the screen and I cannot get to the SAVE button. I cannot move the metagenerator window UP to get to that area. While I did manage to change the screen orientation to Portrait, it really is not very easy to mouse in that orientation and then follow the next screen.

Any ideas on how to get to the lower reaches of the window so I can click SAVE?

Thanks in advance (I could not find metagenerator threads anymore - no longer supported?)


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

The primary MetaGenerator thread is here:
http://pytivo.sourceforge.net/forum/metagenerator-version-2-beta-t555.html
However the program author hasn't posted for over a year.

What graphics resolution are you using? The largest window put up by MG (TV Episode info) appears to be about 600 wide by 700 high. I'm surprised that's too large. You can't mouse-drag the window up with the top title bar?


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## windracer (Jan 3, 2003)

fred2 said:


> Any ideas on how to get to the lower reaches of the window so I can click SAVE?


When I had my Eee PCs I was able to hold down the Fn key while dragging a window which allowed me to move the window beyond the limits of the screen. You should be able to do something similar on yours to move the Metagenerator windows. This is a typical problem on smaller netbooks.


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## fred2 (Jan 20, 2006)

The Fn did not work on this Toshiba but I will search and see if there's something similar.

In the meantime, I had recalled reading about fudging the screen resolution on netbooks and a bit of googling found it. A one byte registry tweak and reboot (slow as, well, something, on this netbook) allowed two more resolutions over 600 (up/down resolution) and that allowed me to see the full window.

I had run into problems with one or two graphic programs that said they could not be run in the highest resolution 1024x600 on this machine. Now with this tweak/fudge I may be able to run those, also.

That Fn does sound very handy on this limited netbook.

And too bad that metagenerator is no longer supported. Very handy although I rarely got files to go into existing tivo folders. But at least I get info on the episode.

THANKS for the replies.

PS: The hack for screen resolution for anybody who might need it:

http://liliputing.com/2010/03/hack-to-increase-the-screen-resolution-on-windows-7-netbooks.html


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