TVDB ERROR: Run: Unable to parse web site

I’d like to make this post useful for others who see this error in their log files.

It was, as bimllham generically answered, a naming problem. Kodi seems to be very tolerant of file naming, but not so much on directories, especially on TV shows. I didn’t have any of these problems with movies.

So my solution is Filebot, at https://www.filebot.net/

On an Rpi, the generic package works great:
wget -O filebot.tar.xz ‘https://app.filebot.net/download.php?type=portable&version=4.7.5

Make sure you have Java:
sudo apt-get install default-jre

And the extras that it likes to have on hand:
sudo apt-get -y install openjfx mediainfo libchromaprint-tools

You may need to install xz utils
sudo apt-get install xz-utils

Then:
unxz filebot.tar.xz

Then:
tar -xvf filebot.tar

I figured out that you are better off to create a new filespace for the cleaned up files, as Filebot leaves the old directories there, and they can have text files and other garbage Kodi doesn’t need, and that prevent the -script fn:cleaner script from deleting them.

I use absolute paths because of seasons and they way they can be structured in the original directory tree. If you put a hard path, with …/…/ kind of thing, whatever it finds will put in into a tidy directory structure.

./filebot.sh -rename --db TheTVDB -non-strict -no-xattr -r --format “/media/myCloudDrive/ncdata/ncp/files/TV-CLN/{n}/Season-{s}/{n.space(‘.’)}.{‘s’
+s.pad(2)}e{e.pad(2)}.{t.space(‘.’)}.{vf}.{vc}.{ac}” /media/myCloudDrive/ncdata/ncp/files/TV/*

I made the directory TV-CLN first and set it to chmod 777. Note that my directory structure is from NextCloudPi in case you were curious.

After Filebot runs, you have the new filespace with your actual media files, renamed to work with Kodi, and the old filespace with a bunch of mostly empty directories that can just be deleted.

There is a built in cleaner script that will delete the garbage files and even remove the directories.

./filebot.sh -script fn:cleaner --def root=y -r /media/myCloudDrive/ncdata/ncp/files/TV-Shows/*

So your upload directory really becomes a temp directory. If you run the cleaner and still see directories in there, you know that there were troubles processiong those files. I have found everything from mystery permissions to unknown characters in files, but all easily identified with this methodology, and fixed.

You don’t have to use my syntax at all. The full reference is here:
https://www.filebot.net/naming.html

and this doesn’t have to be done from the command line. There is a Windows and Mac client.

mediaserver@nextcloudpi:/media/myCloudDrive/ncdata/ncp/files/TV-Shows-CLN/Star Blazers$ ls
Season-1 Season-2 Season-3

I copied that format code mostly from a post I found, and I have not had consistent success with getting all those attributes into the filenames, so if a bunch of periods bothers you, just leave them out:

Star.Blazers.e01.The.Battle.at.Pluto…avi
Star.Blazers.e02.Carrier.Attacks.the.Sleeping.Yamato…avi

This is a different server than I was working on for the op, and I’ve had a lot of dpkg errors trying to install the optional packages. It still works though, and this gives Kodi all the help it needs to find the shows on thetvdb.