Personal Video Database

English => Support => Topic started by: gear on October 08, 2015, 12:25:03 am

Title: Refreshing of Movie Error
Post by: gear on October 08, 2015, 12:25:03 am
On some films, already on my PVD, I get the enclosed photo error.

As I don't understand the meaning, could somebody explain to me what it means and why it appears?

Thanks in advance.
Gear

PVD v.1.0.2.7 on Windows 8.1, i7, 16GB Ram.
Title: Re: Refreshing of Movie Error
Post by: mgpw4me on October 08, 2015, 07:04:53 pm
The exact meaning of the error depends on what PVD was doing when you got the message (ie. reading the description, the actors list, etc.).  The short answer is that PVD expected something different from what it got (either from a plugin or from the database).  For example, PVD may have been expecting a numeric value and got a NULL (similar to '0') instead.  If the value came from the database, it's corrupt and needs to be repaired.  If not, then there's likely a bug in the plugin you are using.

When you say "refresh" are you talking the movie list, the skin or are you re-importing data?  Do you get the error if you go into EDIT mode and SAVE?

It could also mean that your hard-drive has a bad block or two (running a disk scan for errors would probably fix this).

Since you have multiple films with the same problem, it might be an index that's corrupt...a keyword or actor that is common to all the movies for example.  The fix would be simply to delete the bad record and re-import the film(s) to re-create the data (and hoping the problem doesn't come back).

I've only seen this problem with my database when an image gets corrupted in transmission from IMDB.  Hmmm, actually, I also got this error when I tried to update Game Of Thrones with the IMDB plugin...using Ivek's IMDB script(s) was the solution (series, episode, cast).  If you import from IMDB and aren't using Ivek's scripts, try them before doing anything else.  The IMDB plugin is unstable.

The catch-all would be to do a database repair.  The only problem with that is the error might keep coming back and you'd never know why.

If you post more information (a short list of the films, with Urls) and what you do just before you get the error it would narrow the search for an exact cause...with luck it could be re-created on other systems and maybe fixed by a script update.
Title: Re: Refreshing of Movie Error
Post by: gear on October 09, 2015, 10:22:50 am
Hi mgpw4me, thanks for replying.

The error occurred only in two movies (out of about 2.500). The first one which I noted is "The Artist" (2011) at http://imdb.com/title/tt1655442 after hitting the button "Importing movie info with IMDB [EN] plugin v.0.9.8xx (something), and when downloading the Technical specs.

The film is already in my Database (without Technical specs Tab) and tried to re-download it (as explained above), that is why I called it "refresh". In all other films it works, except this one. (I don't remember the second case it happened). As it is only happening on two films, it is not serious and all other points you mention, like HDD and database corruption, are all "go". Probably it is imdb's fault.

Thank you again,
Gear
Title: Re: Refreshing of Movie Error
Post by: mgpw4me on October 09, 2015, 04:51:01 pm
When I did my testing, I didn't have the technical specs custom field set up right.  I'm now getting the same error you are on that film.

2 Days In The Valley http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115438/ (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115438/) has all the same tech spec fields, and it gets parsed correctly by the plug-in.

It's weird, and because the error is coming from a dll, there isn't anything to be done about it.

As to the original question...what is it and why does it happen...

"Probably" what is happening is that the plug-in in parsing the HTML code from IMDB using logic like:

- Find where the start of data is
- Find where the end of data is
- The data is everything between the start and the end

The problem occurs when the 'end' isn't found.  The probable culprit is the POS function.  If you're parsing a web page, and POS can't find the characters you define as an 'end' position, it returns "-1".  If you have data like "this is data" and you get a start position of '0' ('t'...the first character), then you search for something like 'z' as an end position, you end up saying give me all the characters from the first position to the previous (-1)...obviously that can't work.
Title: Re: Refreshing of Movie Error
Post by: gear on October 13, 2015, 12:38:19 am
Thanks mgpw4me for clarifying all this to me but, it's all Greek to me.... My PC programming knowledge is zero!

It looks to me that unless PVD has a programming "refresh" soon, it will start collapsing, as more and more problems arise.

I will be back with the newest error.