DOWNLOAD: Moving Pictures Public Beta 0.6.6 (4 Viewers)

[jojo1411]

Really nice Plugin!

But one Problem: MovingPicture automatic updates the database (it looks for new/removed files) when I start Mediaportal. I have all my movies on a network server and the server has to wake up every time when Mediaportal starts and MovingPicture Plugin is enabled.
Is it possible to update the database manually or only if I enter in MovingPictures inside Mediaportal?

In TVSeries Plugin, i can adjust this with a simple click! It would be very nice to have the same option in Moving Pictures. Please, could you improve this?!

Sure we can add the ability to turn off the importer in the GUI. Both the option to auto start it or not and the option to turn it on and off from the GUI. Issue for the enhancement here. Sorry for the trouble with the connection being kept alive (so your media PC can't shut down). Moving Pictures right now monitors for file system changes in the background. It just plugs into the OS, so it should really not affect system resources, but I am not surprised it keeps a network connection open with a periodic ping like that.

Thank's fforde for your fast reply and for adding the issue. I hope it won't take too much time and extra work for you to implement it.

My Movies are stored on a second PC (NetworkServer) which starts when an other PC pings it. The NetworkServer gets in sleep when there is no network traffic within 15 minutes. [...] I think other people have a similar problem, when they use a network storage! It causes unnecessarily energy cost, because the server has to run and the HDDs spins the whole time without use

Hi jojo1411, sorry for being offtopic, but can you guide me to more detailed information how you realized this? I use also separate machine but only spin down HDs for energy saving - this way shares are always accessible on demand. Don't you have timeouts when accessing the network shares while the server is sleeping (and takes 2 minutes to come up)? tnx in advance

Hi Guzzi. I build up a low power pc with 4 hdds that work in a RAID5 array. The operating system is Ubuntu Linux. I wrote a simple batch script that monitors the network connection, so i can easily set up the time when the pc will automatically go in S3 standby mode if there is no network traffic between the storage server and other clients. In S3 mode the server needs only 1Watt Power! The pc wakes up by pinging it from another mashine (wake up on lan). It needs approximately 3-4 seconds till i have access to the server over lan So there are no timeouts!
I don't know if it's the best solution but if you are interested in I can send you my batch script and give you support by some questions.
A better solution could be to wake up the server by magic packet. It's more relyable. But I don't know how teach Mediaportal to automatically send a magic packet before connecting to a network share.
If there is a better solution, feel free to tell me!

 

[azimek]

First of all -- Thanx for this great PlugIn!

I really like the functions and everything around this tool.

But I have a question.
All my movies are stores on a central server. How can I share the database with other clients? Paths are all the same around the network.
So d:\movies\somename.mkv is alway the right path to the movie.

I want to install the plugin on the clients - and the clients should find the path to the database, thumbs and artwork.
Is is possible?

Thanx for the great work.

André

--- thats a second post ----- about remoting a mp server in network ----------


Thats a real problem (connecting / sending magic packet on demand).

I am using pstools - psexec to shotdown the server and clients connected.
Up- and Downtime ist about 1 Minute to start client and server.
If the client wakes up first and the server connection is not there yet, MP seems too hang for quite a time.
It would be great if you could configure a MP Server in MP configuration so the server will wake up automatically when MP id trying to connect to a share or TV Server.

I had the solution with the server waking up on every ping. That was not very good, because any PC in the network had the ability to wake up the server even if was not using any MP features. --> See Vista nework setting to change this

I wrote my own plugin to control server and client with pstools. A standard integration in MP would be great!!

CU ANdré

 

[fforde]

Hi André. Multi-seat support is kind of tricky. The problem is that currently the importer is always monitoring for file changes in the background. If you try to setup a multi-seat system, you need to make sure that if you are going to add any new files, you add them when only one system is online. You should probably look at this guide though, it explains how you need to configure MediaPortal to share settings between system. Beyond this it is not currently possible to implement multi-seat support with MovingPictures.

If you do go this route, you should consider backing up your database pretty frequently, as it's pretty easy to corrupt your database with multiple clients accessing it at once. But for what it's worth we are planning on officially supporting this sort of functionality eventually, however it is a bit lower on the priority list.

And thanks for your kind words.

 

[emphatic]

I just HAVE to ask. Would it be possible for Moving Pictures (in a future version) to batch convert posters/thumbs to .png files with rounded corners and transparency to get this look:

Emph

 

[Raytestrak]

I just HAVE to ask. Would it be possible for Moving Pictures (in a future version) to batch convert posters/thumbs to .png files with rounded corners and transparency to get this look:

Emph

Looks nice, but shouldn't that be skin dependant?

 

[emphatic]

It's not possible to do get this in MediaPortal afaik, so "fixing" the thumbs is the only current way I can think of. + It would look good in ALL skins.

Emph

 

[2BitSculptor]

I've wondered why one couldn't apply an image as an alpha in the 'colordiffuse' definition, besides just an alpha/color number. Then you could create al kinds of special effects borders and vignettes. That would be cool.

Chuck

 

[rasmuskarlsen]

I just HAVE to ask. Would it be possible for Moving Pictures (in a future version) to batch convert posters/thumbs to .png files with rounded corners and transparency to get this look:

Emph

What is that program you are running? It looks nice Great overview

 

[fforde]

Yeah, the right way to do this is to allow the skin to use masking images. Preferably with a full range of alpha blends. After 1.0 is released though and new features start to get added to MediaPortal again, I may take a look at tackling this though and submitting a patch to the core MP team.

 

[Pretoriano]

Hi fforde,i've just finished installing Moving Pictures 0.61 on another PC and guess what,after installing the plugin on a clean MP RC4 install the TV part no longer work.When i enter MyTV section MP give me the "unable to connect to the server" error so it seem the TV plugin part get messed up after i'm using Moving Picture.
After that i've changed the stream ip inside the TvServer setup and this way i managed to make TVPlugin find the server and tha database again but even so the timeshift is started on the TVServer but not rendered inside MP.

Tested right now on XP SP3 with clean RC4 installation and there's no issue here,so only on Vista SP1 systems.These are the things Vista OS i've tested have in common:

-same OS
-same Microsoft SQL Server (2005)
-both using a hybrid tv tuner
-same codecs installed
-all microsoft updates
-and both tested on clean install with no other plugin

Looking at the logs it seems that on Vista the TV plugin is not able to find the thimeshift file generated by the TV server or maybe where the file is located.Hope i'm not botter you to much with this issue but i'n using Vista most of the time and for me Moving Picture it's a "must have" plugin.Here are the logs from the working XP system so you can take a look (please look at the lines after "succeededucceeded TvControl.VirtualCard " inside the MediaPortal.txt ) if you want,and sorry for my bad english too.