Frequently Asked Questions
Mezzmo and Kodi together offer a powerful combination of capabilities to maximize your media viewing experience. This FAQ page is focused on answering questions related to the Mezzmo Trailer Checker which is designed to help you manage your You Tube and local movie trailers more easily and automatically. For specific questions related to the Mezzmo Kodi addon, please see the wiki.
This page is still under development with additional questions being added daily. Please check back often.
Last updated August 18, 2023
Q. There is a lot of mention around the Mezzmo Kodi addon. Is it required to run the Mezzmo Trailer Checker ?
A. No. They are separate pieces of software but they are designed to work together with the Mezzmo Kodi addon taking full advantage of the Mezzmo Trailer checker's features and capabilities. If you are running Kodi, it highly suggest that you look at running the Mezzmo Kodi addon to maximize your Kodi / Mezzmo experience.
Q. The Getting Started page says that Python3 and Microsoft windows are required. Since this runs on Python can I run it on Linux instead ?
A. Conceptually the Mezzmo Trailer Checker could be run on Linux but the enclosed binaries are just for Microsoft Windows and some of the Python code is specific to a Windows environment. While it is technically possible, running on Linux isn't supported.
Q. I want to store my trailers on my NAS. is that possible ?
A. Yes, it is possible as long as you have assigned drive letters to your NAS trailer location in Microsoft Windows on both the machine running the Mezzmo Trailer Checker and Mezzmo have been assigned. Raw share names like: \\MyNAS\Trailers isn't supported.
Q. Can I host local trailers on a web server instead of a file share ?
A. Technically, yes. Mezzmo will support local trailers on a local web server. However, the Mezzmo Trailer Checker is currently written for hosting trailers on a file share with a drive letter. If there is enough interest in hosting trailers on a local web server, I can look into the coding required and what functionality might be lost with this method.
Q. I am already running Kodi with a movie trailer tool. Why do I need the Mezzmo Trailer Checker ?
A. I believe the Mezzmo Trailer Checker is far superior to other solutions with its level of integration with Mezzmo and Kodi, the features it provides (including downloading trailers, options for automatic reordering, automatic trailer availability validation, setting trailer limits etc..), automation \ ease of support and performance with using local trailers vs. Internet real time playback.
Q. Why would I use the Mezzmo Trailer Checker vs. the Kodi IMDB Trailers addon ?
A. Ultimately you need to answer that question and per the question above, you should be able to run both at the same time. The Mezzmo Trailer checker tool is designed to download both You Tube and IMDB high quality trailers (if you get an IMDB API Key) for movies in your Mezzmo library, host them locally and make them available to all Kodi clients for playback via your Mezzmo server. The IMDB Trailers addon is a Kodi client by client based addon solution which is focused on IMDB only and provides more features for upcoming movies and similar. I believe the The IMDB Trailers addon retrieves the trailers in real time vs. downloading in advance and it does have a few other addon dependencies in order to function. The Mezzmo Trailer Checker requires Mezzmo and the Mezzmo Kodi addon to operate properly.
Q. Can I run the Mezzmo Trailer Checker with my existing Kodi trailer tool ?
A. Yes, you should be able to with no problems. The Mezzmo Trailer Checker does not integrate with Kodi directly. That is handled by the Mezzmo Kodi addon. See here for more information on how the pieces fit together.
Q. How much storage space do I need in my trailer folder to store local trailers ?
A. There's no exact answer for this since it is a function of the maximum resolution, maximum trailer duration, number of trailers per movie and the number of movies in your Mezzmo database. The stats command output will allow you to track the total amount of storage consumed and the average size of each trailer. On my setup I average 25MB per trailer and just over 2 trailers per movie. So if we assume 60MB per movie then 1,000 movies would consume about 60GB.
Q. I have limited storage on my Kodi instances. How much storage is needed for local trailers ?
A. Almost none. The only thing which gets written to Kodi for local trailers are a few bytes of data with the trailer URLs on Mezzmo. Some trailer information is stored in the Kodi video database and the Mezzmo Kodi addon stores some additional information but the trailer files themselves stay on the Mezzmo server. This is another advantage of the Mezzmo / Kodi solution. Mezzmo hosts artwork, trailers, movies and metadata all centrally. The Mezzmo Kodi addon only writes what is absolutely necessary to the Kodi clients keeping them lean, fast and easier to maintain than other Kodi setups.
Q. When the Mezzmo Trailer checker updates the Mezzmo database, how fast do the clients see the changes ?
A. For clients which access Mezzmo directly, they see the changes immediately. This includes Kodi clients running in GUI mode. For Kodi clients running in native mode, this will be dependent upon the background sync process since that is used to replicate Mezzmo database information with the Kodi database. With Kodi you always have the option of doing an immediate sync, after making major changes to Mezzmo. The process does a complete sync between Mezzmo and Kodi and is quick.
Q. Will the Mezzmo Trailer Checker be impacted by Kodi upgrades ? Or will it impact my Kodi upgrades ?
A. No, to both. Since the Mezzmo Trailer checker only reads / writes from Mezzmo and does not interface directly with Kodi. The Mezzmo Kodi addon runs on Kodi and it has a seamless upgrade process across all Kodi versions. See here for more details.
Q. Do I need the Kodi You Tube addon or anything else to play You Tube or local trailers ?
A. No. In keeping with the design goal for Mezzmo and the Mezzmo Kodi addon, nothing external is needed. The downloading of You Tube trailers is handled by either Mezzmo or the Mezzmo Trailer Checker. Mezzmo then hosts the URL, which Kodi (and other clients) see as a normal Mezzmo URL to a video file or You Tube trailer URL.
Q. Can the Mezzmo Trailer checker find movie trailers on You Tube and add them to Mezzmo ?
A. Currently, No. The Mezzmo Trailer checker is designed to validate the Mezzmo trailer URLs and download local copies. The ability to find them on You Tube might be a future feature for the Mezzmo Trailer checker.
Q. Why are so many of my You Tube trailers showing up marked 'Bad" ?
A. That is one of the primary reasons and benefits for the Mezzmo Trailer Checker. Trailers are hosted on You Tube and You Tub videos are always changing. You may have added a video to Mezzmo years ago and at that time the You Tube videos may have been good but now they are gone. Also Mezzmo doesn't actually check the video to see if it is accessible when it adds the trailer to the Mezzmo library. So you end up finding it at playback time, which is less than ideal. The Mezzmo Trailer Checker solves both problems. It ensures the trailer is good and makes a local copy for you, which will always be available. Not to mention the trailers may be of higher quality and should play faster and much more reliably.
Q. When I run the Mezzmo Trailer Checker with the trailer command, how do I stop it from hanging after downloading the trailers for a movie ?
A. The most likely cause is that the Mezzmo GUI and/or Mezzmo server service are still running. The Mezzmo database is limited to one application writing at a time. Shut down the Mezzmo sever service and Mezzmo GUI and try again.
Q. I didn't backup my Mezzmo Trailer checker database and have lost it. what do i do now ?
A. While this situation isn't preferred, just run the Mezzmo Trailer Checker as normal and the database will be rebuilt from Mezzmo. You will lose the download history and trailer check statuses but they will be rebuilt as you continue to run the Mezzmo Trailer Checker. Losing the Mezzmo Trailer Checker database will not impact any of your trailer files or trailer information in Mezzmo
Q. I don't like the order of the local trailers in Mezzmo. Can I manually change them or must the Mezzmo Trailer Checker do this ?
A. Yes, you can manually update the trailer order in the Mezzmo properties window. Once you have done that then run the trailer checker with the clean name or clean number command for the movie in which you reordered the trailers so that the Mezzmo Trailer Checker will have an updated listing of your changes. See this wiki pagefor help.
Q. I ran the Mezzmo Trailer Checker and it marked a trailers as Bad. What does the mean and what do I do ?
A. Trailers are marked bad when they cannot be downloaded. Typically this means they are no longer available or the user account they were posted to in You Tube has been closed. As for what to do there are two options. If you are satisfied with the remaining trailers for the movie then you simply run the "clean name" or "clean number" command and the bad entry will be removed from the Mezzmo Trailer checker database. If there are no other entries in the Mezzmo properties for the movie or you don't like the ones which are there (this can easily happen if you added a movie a long time ago to your Mezzmo database and trailers have changed) then you will want to do a Get Online Video Metadata within the Mezzmo properties and then follow the instructions here on how to properly sync with the Mezzmo Trailer Checker.
Q. I ran the Mezzmo Trailer Checker and it marked a trailers as Long. What does the mean and what do I do ?
A. This is very similar to the bad question except Long means that the trailer was longer than the maximum duration setting in your config file. This keeps from bloated long trailers and saves on trailer storage space. The answer for what to do is the same as the bad question. Either just clean the movie which has the long trailer or have Mezzmo pull down new trailers, like above
Q. I ran the "CSV notrail" command to see which movies in my Mezzmo database don't have trailers. I am seeing TV Shows in the CSV file. Why are they showing up with no trailers ?
A. Most likely this is a category problem for the TV Shows in question within the Mezzmo database. The database queries only look for Mezzmo database library items which have the category "Movie". Check the items in question to ensure they don't have both TV Shows and Movie in the category. When I first ran this report I found about 150 TV Show items out of 13,000 where I had to fix this in Mezzmo. Fortunately Mezzmo provides the multi-select feature which allowed me to fix this in a couple of minutes.
Q. I am trying to manually edit the trailers for a movie with Mezzmo Properties but when I run the "clean" and then the "trailer" commands I get a message "Skipping movie, local trailers found". What am I doing wrong ?
A. This message means that the Mezzmo Trailer Checker has found local trailers in your Mezzmo Properties so it will not attempt to download new ones. To download new trailers the Mezzmo Trailer Checker need to only find You Tube trailers in the Mezzmo database for a given movie. You can remove the local trailer entries from the movie (i.e. save them out to Notepad or similar), run the "trailer" command then look in Mezzmo Properties to ensure the local trailers you saved have been downloaded again. If not, you can paste them back in from Notepad.