I learnt to replace the colon with ratio right here on your forums. From other users. So i guess i'm not the only one.
viewtopic.php?p=55655 - Replace : colon with ∶ ratio
viewtopic.php?t=13680 - [SNIPPET] Replace Characters, Words or Patterns
Perhaps i'm the only one that's made the connection between the ratio character and emby/TheMovieDB not iding the movies. Most users don't even visit these forums, let alone post.
I have my naming convention that leaves all my media human readable, and they have simple filenames. When replacing the illegal characters that Windows doesn't like, of all of them, the ratio character is the one that is the least noticeable, the most perfect swap! (? and * look spaced out maaaan!). Emby, does now recognise most of the media straight off, so it's working fine. And once it's in, it's all good. So, nah, emby has to put up with what i've given it, it's not changing.
Emby, FileBot, etc. are pieces of software, that can, and should try to just magically accept any filename that's thrown at them. Again, if you do some smart coding once, it's fixed for everyone, forever. It just works. Which we'd guess is your goal?
But your : ratio : colon replacement does not exist in the wild, so I'm somewhat reluctant to add custom code for everyone what only benefits users that generate badly named files on purpose.
These filenames aren't so much 'badly' named, more that they're working around the limitations of Microsoft Windows' illegal characters. Again, learnt here on your forums. See above.
Code: Select all
Halloween꞉ Resurrection (2002) (720p)
Highlander꞉ Endgame (2000) (720p)
Hellraiser꞉ Revelations (2011) (720p)
Hellraiser꞉ Hellworld (2005) (720p)
Highlander꞉ The Source (2007) (720p)
How to Train Your Dragon꞉ Homecoming (2019) (720p)
I'd say that they look to be the best, almost the simplest form... The movie name, the movie year, the movie's resolution. Everyone would look at these and know exactly what they're looking at. They don't look badly generated to us. They look Indistinguishable from the original movie name.
FileBot does strip certain patterns. Assuming that there's no movie that actually uses : ratio as part of the movie name, we could strip : ratio as well. But your : ratio : colon replacement does not exist in the wild, so I'm somewhat reluctant to add custom code for everyone what only benefits users that generate badly named files on purpose. That said, if the issue comes up more often from a variety of users over time, that would change the calculus.
Correct, no movie actually uses : ratio as part of the movie name... This isn't the issue... It's that they do use the colon : character, which is illegal on Windows. And us FileBot users commonly use your code to replace it. FileBot/TheMovieDB/et al. are mostly searching using filename versions of movie names, not the strict, verbatim original movie name.
I've been using the ratio character for a few years, and only a few days ago did i twig that it's the thing that causes FileBot/TheMovieDB to not id a few movies. So again, you're probably not going to get a flood of users +1ing this forum thread, as it is just a niche, edge-case, but one that does exist, is easy to reproduce, and i was guessing is easy to fix. I thought stripping punctuation from a search string would be common.
Software exists to do clever, complex, repetitive things for us. And we write it to be as flexible as possible, to make the experience as smooth and as perfect as possible. Whatever we throw at it. It just works.
search.php?keywords=illegal+character&t ... mit=Search - FileBot forums Search: 'illegal character'
search.php?keywords=replace+character&t ... mit=Search - FileBot forums Search: 'replace character'
So, if it does strip certain patterns, have it strip one more character? And FileBot get even more polished!
Since you presumably have sample file paths at hand, can I ask you to 
If you're using the CLI, then the 
I'd use 
TMDB website search with ∶ Ratio works: 
TMDB API search with ꞉ Modifier Letter Colon does not work:
