I am trying to add some specials and edit the xml. I seem to not be getting this correctly.

First the series is True Blood, TVDB shows many but not all the special contect that the series has produced and they won't allow this content (I have asked).
The content I recorded are the original comercials (ads) that were broadcast prior to the series launch. these consist of beverage ads, community service messages and business ads.

I am trying to add them to my collection manually.

how do I accomplish this?

I'd copy an existing .xml for another episode and rename/edit it as appropriate.

These are in a hidden metadata folder off each season.

Yes, I got it to work by doing just that earlier. I just locked that particular series to not allow the possibility of overwriting the data. Thanks for all the help

Once you have an .xml for an episode, it won't try to fetch for it again. It only may attempt to if you rename the video file or delete the .xml.

Thx for that info. BTW this is an amazing program, great work.