New Install Failed (1 Viewer)

[Guzzi]

@Guzzi ,

I am the one in the German forum who reported the issues.

Welcome to the "other side"

Your new version is working, since I was installing only MyFilm - without any additional plugin - your software probably was missing some files, which you now create from scratch.

It was simply a regression, when we introduced setup of clients/central configs into the setup wizard - MF should not need anything else installed, but no testers noticed the issue, as we didn't try the fully clean install (the missing directories had been there from the past there already).

Very powerful tool, maybe even a little bit too complicated.

For sure it is not meant for ppl who simply want a "movie starter" - but there is a lot of simpler alternatives e.g. MovingPictures, that address this.
On the other hand: Once you've done a proper setup with everything you like, you probably don't want to miss many of the features after that. Even for me it is sometimes interesting to read the wiki to remember some stuff in there - lol

Menus are very busy and you may want to consider showing a simplified GUI vs. an expert view.

GUI appearance also depends a lot by the skin of course (if or if not a feature is visible in the GUI).
Re menus: Already tried to make it easier by introducing "levels"/submenus - and there is a tracker entry for some improvements here - so if there are good ideas, you could simply comment them there.

First thing I noticed was the very long time needed to import my 78 movies. I don't know exactly how long this took but eventually I let the computer run on its own, hence definitely more than one hour. Any idea what elements of your search process would take that long? Movie file names are all coded with year and tt-number.

It very much depends on the grabber script used. If you use IMDB-OFDB grabber script (which is the most complete for german users) - that one is indeed horribly slow, as it does a lot of lookups to sub pages and alternative sites. IMDB-Full is similar. If you want a quicker import, you could use e.g. the simple IMDB-script - which makes sure, you get the IMDB id into the DB - and then at a later time update the catalog with e.g. IMDB-OFDB grabber over night.
as you have IMDB-IDs within the movie name, you'll always get perfect matches, which makes import easy from that perspective.
Beside that, the importer does not support threading, which would speed up the import of course. I usually don't do the imports on the htpc anyway - I do them on my desktop with the AMCupdater standalone version, so it does not affect the use of the HTPC.
If things should import really fast: Disable internet lookup - and/or even mediainfo - in this case, it should only import the movies with IMDB-ID and the local search name, which is very fast - but I think noone want's that, as you'd miss all movie and media info - which makes usage of the plugin useless until you updated all that data...

 

[HTPCSourcer]

On the other hand: Once you've done a proper setup with everything you like, you probably don't want to miss many of the features after that

Absolutely. What I've seen so far is really appealing.

GUI appearance also depends a lot by the skin of course (if or if not a feature is visible in the GUI).

I was actually referring to the configuration screen.

It very much depends on the grabber script used. If you use IMDB-OFDB grabber script (which is the most complete for german users) - that one is indeed horribly slow, as it does a lot of lookups to sub pages and alternative sites.

OK, that explains it. As I said, you don't import your movies every day, hence not really an issue.

One question in this respect: two movies were incorrectly recognized. I updated those by entering the correct IMDB number in the config screen - but now the summary is in English. I will probably need to RTFM - but in case there is a simple way to define the language for manual updates...

Once I've figured everything out I want to move the database to the central setup. However, Titan skin support of MyFilms appears comparably limited. Many views cannot be selected. Are you planning to provide additional skin information or is this something that will need to come from the Titan team?

Regards,
HTPC_Sourcer

 

[Guzzi]

GUI appearance also depends a lot by the skin of course (if or if not a feature is visible in the GUI).

I was actually referring to the configuration screen.

ah, ok - yeah, the old game - settings/flexibility vs. complexity ... actually, what we tried is to offer users a simple setup with the wizard, that presets almost everything to defaults to get to a working config. However, if you want to tweak things, you'll have to go into the details - we also had discussions about reworking the setup completely and move all those options to menus or something like that - but it is a lot of work and in the end, you only use it once to setup what you need... so the wish is there, but the priority is ... low ;-)

It very much depends on the grabber script used. If you use IMDB-OFDB grabber script (which is the most complete for german users) - that one is indeed horribly slow, as it does a lot of lookups to sub pages and alternative sites.

OK, that explains it. As I said, you don't import your movies every day, hence not really an issue.

One question in this respect: two movies were incorrectly recognized. I updated those by entering the correct IMDB number in the config screen - but now the summary is in English. I will probably need to RTFM - but in case there is a simple way to define the language for manual updates...

You probably already had set german in the initial setup - so this IS the preferred language. Beside that, it again depends on the script you use; assuming, you use the IMDB-OFDB script, it always tries to get german description, title and categories from OFDB - but falls back to IMDB, if OFDB data is not available. Unfortunately, the OFDB gateway is not very reliable and often does not return data (beside the fact, that not all IMDB movies are available at OFDB). From memory, I am not sure, if that script also tries to get description from TMDB (it does lookup TMDB too).
So there is nothing else you can do with that script unfortunately, if it returns english data.
What you CAN do is try to update the data with a different script - e.g. TMDB-de or directly with OFDB - then you get a german result or none.
Can be done in GUI too via remote - see here - even only single fields and you have a limited preview on what you get from the chosen script there too.

Once I've figured everything out I want to move the database to the central setup. However, Titan skin support of MyFilms appears comparably limited. Many views cannot be selected. Are you planning to provide additional skin information or is this something that will need to come from the Titan team?

Actually, MyFilms provides APIs for both menu editors and property based menu options for skins - so it is up to the skinners what they use in their skin.
If the skin does not include the APIs in their skin editor, but support setting start parameters, you could get those here.
Same applies to some of the optional features, which are only available, if the skin supports them. See here.

 

[HTPCSourcer]

Hi @Guzzi ,

I spend some time in this Plugin and it's really great .

I also moved to central data management. However it is NOT enough to just activate Central data and define the server path. In this case only the main XML will be saved and loaded, while the individual picture (and all other) paths remain unchanged and need to be adjusted manually.

I did not investigate this in depth but would assume that upon activating central data ALL paths are supposed to change.

Cheers, HTPC_Sourcer

 

[Guzzi]

Hi @Guzzi ,

I spend some time in this Plugin and it's really great .

I also moved to central data management. However it is NOT enough to just activate Central data and define the server path. In this case only the main XML will be saved and loaded, while the individual picture (and all other) paths remain unchanged and need to be adjusted manually.

I did not investigate this in depth but would assume that upon activating central data ALL paths are supposed to change.

Cheers, HTPC_Sourcer

Hi, no, the pathes of a config will not be changed automatically to a central location after you use a local config as master for the central location - if you want to have all data (catalog, covers, fanart, etc.) at a central place, you have to define that in the corresponding config - see also here.
Or are you talking about the setup wizard, when using the option "Central Setup Master"?