Canada
Right but I had issue with epgbuddy interface, it would not grab correctly all the channels I've selected. I used the channel info from the web grab+ website, put them in the xml file and it worked right away. So I decided to go this way
Tools and other software EPG-Buddy a new EPG Tool with easy usage. (6 Viewers)
- Thread starter Lehmden
- Start date
- March 28, 2008
- 261
- 81
Hi! I think I have found a bug in EPG-Buddy_0.5.0.4. If I
Also, if I click "Save" and choose to restart, I get
Finally, it don't create a tvguide.xml file. When I in Schedule click "Start" under "Grab EPG now?" it every time says
and
- Click “EPG Source”
- Click "Global"
- Check “External XML”
- And paste in more than one EPG XML link, I get:
Code:
Line 17199 (File "C:\Program Files (x86)\EPG-Buddy\EPG-Buddy.exe"):
Error: Array variable has incorrect number of subscripts or subscript dimension range exceeded.Also, if I click "Save" and choose to restart, I get
Code:
C:\Program is not accessible.
Access is denied.Finally, it don't create a tvguide.xml file. When I in Schedule click "Start" under "Grab EPG now?" it every time says
Code:
Job started at 26/03/2019 17:32:37
input file C:\Program Files (x86)\EPG-Buddy\EPG-Grabber.URL.XML_0.xml not found ... created a new one ...
Group (0) :
update requested for - 0 - out of - 0 - channels for 14 day(s)
Job finished at 26/03/2019 17:32:37 done in 0s
Code:
EPG-Grabber v0.110.214 (2018-08-03), c 2018 by lightshock
Download file: C:\Program Files (x86)\EPG-Buddy\EPG-Grabber.URL.XML_0.xml
Retry download (1/3): C:\Program Files (x86)\EPG-Buddy\EPG-Grabber.URL.XML_0.xml
Create EPG-Grabber.URL.XML_0
Unhandled Exception: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at EPG_Grabber.cEPGXML.Create(XmlDocument xmlDoc)
at EPG_Grabber.mMain.Main()
Last edited:
- Thread starter
- #273
HI.
You're right. There is something wrong with multiple external XML files... But not what you encounter. You need to add one file only per line. Then the exceptions should not happen. At least I can't reproduce them here. But there is a bug that only stores the first line (file) so at the moment it is not possible to use more than one external XML file at once. We're working on a fix, but this may take a while...
You're right. There is something wrong with multiple external XML files... But not what you encounter. You need to add one file only per line. Then the exceptions should not happen. At least I can't reproduce them here. But there is a bug that only stores the first line (file) so at the moment it is not possible to use more than one external XML file at once. We're working on a fix, but this may take a while...
I have just come across this tool after struggling with WebGrab+ for quite some time... my first thoughts are that the UI isn't that intuitive, but it is still far simplier than WebGrab+ lol 
I am doing a test run now and it is taking some time to fetch information from TVDB. Is it possible to configure what is added to the XMLTV file? I am assuming that it will take ages the first time I run it, but then subsequent times it will fetch most of the information from its cache/database and only make calls to TVDB for new information?
Have there been any thoughts about fetching similar movie information from IMDB? I have been tried to enhance my XMLTV files using WebGrab+'s imdb enrichment, but have been struggling to get that working properly. It looks like what this program is doing from TVDB is exactly what I would like to get from IMDB as well
I am doing a test run now and it is taking some time to fetch information from TVDB. Is it possible to configure what is added to the XMLTV file? I am assuming that it will take ages the first time I run it, but then subsequent times it will fetch most of the information from its cache/database and only make calls to TVDB for new information?
Have there been any thoughts about fetching similar movie information from IMDB? I have been tried to enhance my XMLTV files using WebGrab+'s imdb enrichment, but have been struggling to get that working properly. It looks like what this program is doing from TVDB is exactly what I would like to get from IMDB as well
I added URLs one per line and had the same experience as @raffe. There is something odd going on with the URL folders it creates as it is processing. I will test further and report back
/Edit 1: @Lehmden I have managed to work out part of the issue... there may be " " missing around folder paths in your code somewhere. From what I have seen, I believe it is where the restart function is called because when I install the application to "C:\Program Files (x86)" it doesn't actually restart. I have just reinstalled it to "D:\TEST\" and the restart part worked fine, all because there are no spaces in the path. This is in line with the "C:\Program is not accessible." error @raffe mentioned before.
/Edit 2: I have a feeling that the reason for it falling over with multiple URLs could be down to the "path_xml" file not being read as an array and/or no checks taking place to see if there are more than two items present (ie non @CRLF or even extra @CRLF).
Last edited:
- Thread starter
- #276
Hi.
That's why I've installed the program for my own use to a different place. And I will change the default installation path in one of the next releases to circumvent this...
An issue with missing "" around the path is not really possible as this has worked earlier and stops working with one of the "legendary" Windows 10 updates (didn't exactly remember which one) and never came back to work again...
I think to add direct support for more EPG data sources would be much more useful than IMDB support. We're thinking about horizon.tv as next data source because this will have EPG data for most European countries. So the need for the slow and complicated WebGrab will decrease a lot. But I can't tell you when or even if we will do this...
This is a windows 10 issue that can't be worked around easily. It is not allowed for a "normal" program to directly start another program from inside "C:\Program Files". When the settings are stored that needs a restart to become active a small tool that only waits for a second, starts the main program and then exit itself. Way too often this helper- tool will be identified as a "Virus". And this tool is not started when it is called from inside the main program but only when the main program is installed in C:\Program Files (x86).
That's why I've installed the program for my own use to a different place. And I will change the default installation path in one of the next releases to circumvent this...
An issue with missing "" around the path is not really possible as this has worked earlier and stops working with one of the "legendary" Windows 10 updates (didn't exactly remember which one) and never came back to work again...
In some way. You can decide to grab data or not for every channel. E.G. on sports or news channel there is not much sense in grabbing series information as there most likely no series are aired on those channels... And you can overwrite the given description in EPG source with the one from TVDB or if those TVDB description only is used to fill "empty" descriptions. I prefer the later as on TVDB often a localized description is missing (I'm Geman and want to read descriptions in German language, if possible).
You're assuming right... The very first run of the grabber is lasting until eternity because you need to grab EPG data for the whole 14 days and you need to download TVDB info for 5000++ series (depending on how much different series are aired). On the second run most needed data is downloaded already that saves a ton of time.. Only new series and/or episodes info is downloaded if available. Similar is for EPG-Data. Depending on the source his also will save a lot of time as already downloaded data is used.
Yes we have thought about this. But as it did not make sense to anyone not speaking English because IMDB only has English descriptions available we never started to implement this. If we some day will do something like this we definitely won't use IMDB as data source. Aside this there is much less advantage compared to series. Movies normally will have a description in EPG data. Other fields like actors or similar is not used by most TV engines out there. And the possibility for errors is much higher on movies if you only have the name to identify the movie...
I think to add direct support for more EPG data sources would be much more useful than IMDB support. We're thinking about horizon.tv as next data source because this will have EPG data for most European countries. So the need for the slow and complicated WebGrab will decrease a lot. But I can't tell you when or even if we will do this...
Apologies, you are absolutely right. I have no idea why my mind immediately went to the possibility of missing " " when it obviously is down to Microsoft going a little over the top with so called "security".
I was more interested in the possibility of choosing the actual fields that are fetched and the XMLTV data enriched with. Other than the obvious title and description fields, there is a lot of other information available that I and probably others may want to include in the XMLTV.
This is also the reason I was interested in IMDB - not to update/replace existing fields, but to add whole new ones. I have also been exploring the possibility of including multiple references to programme icons and their corresponding sizes, so that the systems processing the feed have the necessary information in a central place. I would like to fetch more images from TVDB as well, which is one of the reasons I was asking if you can choose what data is fed back into the XMLTV file.
I had tried to re-run the grab and it was a lot faster the second time around. Where is this data stored though? I've noticed that the files in my installation directory aren't quite what I was expecting:
EPG-Grabber.URL.XML_1.xml - source feed
TVGuide_1.xml - output, but is identical to the one above (they both seem to get updated)
EPG-Grabber.Cache.xml - cache, but seems to be wiped at the start of each run
If you get the option to have multiple XML file references working, how will this then display on the EPG Data - External XML screen? Would both be combined into the the one channel list, or would each file be selectable and the list update accordingly?
- Thread starter
- #278
Hi.
This is the file you will use in your TV engine and you can name and place as you like...
This is one of the cache files used in EPG-Buddy. This file hold relationships between series names as in EPG- data and on TVDB. Those is not always the same, especially if your EPG data is non in English... This file can be used to manually "map" a series name from EPG to a series name on TVDB, if they are not identical and EPG-Buddy don't match the series by itself.
This file is read on every start and it is modified always as every day new series will appear in the EPG data. But it is not wiped out before it is read into the program so the data is used on every run... The main cache for TVDB data is the folder "EPG-Grabber.Cache". Here all data downloaded from TVDB is stored for later usage. My own cache folder contains data for 2700 series recently...
Aside this, EPG data is "temporal". After 14 days max they are gone and lost. There is no real sense in putting too much effort into those temporal data... In the beginning we were thinking about using the TVDB/TMDB routines from Media-Buddy for EPG-Buddy too. Those routines are very complex to get the best possible data with no user interaction. For .nfo files that stays with the video "forever" it makes sense to invest time and effort to get a perfect result. And this would have been lot easier to re-use instead of writing the routines from scratch. But in EPG-Buddy this would need way to much time. An average grabbing as it is now takes about 30 minutes here for 14 days and 60 channels where 40 channels are compared with TVDB. IF we use the Media-Buddy routines the same grabbing process will last about 6-8 hours... It would be similar to enriching 5.000 to 10.000 episodes at once in tMM or Media-Buddy... A bit too much time, if you ask me. Especially as this needs to be done every day...
The main use case is for recurring recordings of series where the (most often missing in original EPG data) season and episodes numbers are very important. Those numbers are used and added to the recording file name if EPG-Buddy could identify the series and episode. Very helpful if you want to cut, transcode and enrich the recordings with .nfo file and fanart for usage in the "real" media library...
Only the usage of two or more external XML files is not possible atm. due to the known bug in EPG-Buddy... Once this is fixed the data from both (all) external XML will be listed together at once inside the EPG-Buddy GUI...
No need to. Missing "" are a real possible cause for the observed behavior.
Those files are indeed identical and this for a good reason. The first one is named as the CLI grabber tool that runs and grab the data in background on a daily schedule, needs it to be named. The second one is how you configure the output so it can be recognized by your TV engine easily. The first file is copied to the new name and location instead of moved as if it would be moved no "old" EPG data is there to start with the next day...
This is the file you will use in your TV engine and you can name and place as you like...
This is one of the cache files used in EPG-Buddy. This file hold relationships between series names as in EPG- data and on TVDB. Those is not always the same, especially if your EPG data is non in English... This file can be used to manually "map" a series name from EPG to a series name on TVDB, if they are not identical and EPG-Buddy don't match the series by itself.
This file is read on every start and it is modified always as every day new series will appear in the EPG data. But it is not wiped out before it is read into the program so the data is used on every run... The main cache for TVDB data is the folder "EPG-Grabber.Cache". Here all data downloaded from TVDB is stored for later usage. My own cache folder contains data for 2700 series recently...
Maybe DVB-Viewer or TVHeadend are able to use extra fields (I don't know). But ArgusTV, NextPVR and MediaPortal are only make use of movie, series and episodes name, season and episodes number and description. Adding other fields only is a waste of resources and time as you can't use them. Theoretically you can append those fields to the description so you can see the actors, writers, year and country at the end of the description. Not too nice, if you ask me...
Aside this, EPG data is "temporal". After 14 days max they are gone and lost. There is no real sense in putting too much effort into those temporal data... In the beginning we were thinking about using the TVDB/TMDB routines from Media-Buddy for EPG-Buddy too. Those routines are very complex to get the best possible data with no user interaction. For .nfo files that stays with the video "forever" it makes sense to invest time and effort to get a perfect result. And this would have been lot easier to re-use instead of writing the routines from scratch. But in EPG-Buddy this would need way to much time. An average grabbing as it is now takes about 30 minutes here for 14 days and 60 channels where 40 channels are compared with TVDB. IF we use the Media-Buddy routines the same grabbing process will last about 6-8 hours... It would be similar to enriching 5.000 to 10.000 episodes at once in tMM or Media-Buddy... A bit too much time, if you ask me. Especially as this needs to be done every day...
The main use case is for recurring recordings of series where the (most often missing in original EPG data) season and episodes numbers are very important. Those numbers are used and added to the recording file name if EPG-Buddy could identify the series and episode. Very helpful if you want to cut, transcode and enrich the recordings with .nfo file and fanart for usage in the "real" media library...
Oh, it is possible to use more than one XML file already. You can e.g. use data from TVSpielfilm and WebGrab++ as I do it every day. 58 out of my 60 channels are grabbed from TVSpielfilm as it is very fast and easy. The 2 channels that are not available on TVSpielfilm I grab with the included WebGrab version. In my case the resulting files are named "TVGuide_1.xml" and "TVGuide_2.xml". As I'm using MediaPortal as TV solution I've also created the tvguide.lst file that directs the MP- XMLTV plugin to use both of my XML files. This way both files are treated as one inside the XMLTV plugin. Here I can't see any longer from which of both data sources the data for a specific channel is from...
Only the usage of two or more external XML files is not possible atm. due to the known bug in EPG-Buddy... Once this is fixed the data from both (all) external XML will be listed together at once inside the EPG-Buddy GUI...
Having not had much EPG since the demise of Sky's EPG service, I'm looking at EPG Buddy as the solution; however I'm struggling to get this to work.
I have configured EPG Buddy to what looks correct, but when I run it, I get the following error for every channel:
[ Info ] ( 1/53 ) FREESAT.CO.UK -- chan. (xmltv_id=BBC Two HD) -- mode Smart
[Error ] Unable to update channel BBC Two HD
[Critical] Generic syntax exception:
[Critical] message:
[Error ] no index page data received from BBC Two HD
[Error ] unable to update channel, try again later
[ Info ] Existing guide data restored!
Regards
Richard
I have configured EPG Buddy to what looks correct, but when I run it, I get the following error for every channel:
[ Info ] ( 1/53 ) FREESAT.CO.UK -- chan. (xmltv_id=BBC Two HD) -- mode Smart
[Error ] Unable to update channel BBC Two HD
[Critical] Generic syntax exception:
[Critical] message:
[Error ] no index page data received from BBC Two HD
[Error ] unable to update channel, try again later
[ Info ] Existing guide data restored!
Regards
Richard
- Thread starter
- #280
Hi.
This definitely is an issue with WebGrab, to be precise an issue with the .FREESAT.CO.UK siteini. There has been major changes to their website lately and there is no matching siteini available yet. So please try a different website for grabbing as this is nothing I can fix. We need to wait until the WebGrab developers or community provides an updated siteinin file for FREESAT.CO.UK Someone has started to do this but failed.
Aside this I can't test or develop it myself as freesat has geoblocking enabled on their sites so I can't access the data from outside the UK at all.
Here is the direct link to all available siteini files for UK.
http://www.webgrabplus.com/sites/default/files/download/ini/info/zip/UK.zip
Extract the content of this file into the WebGrab folder inside your EPG-Buddy installation folder. So you will have the most recent siteini files for Uk available...
This definitely is an issue with WebGrab, to be precise an issue with the .FREESAT.CO.UK siteini. There has been major changes to their website lately and there is no matching siteini available yet. So please try a different website for grabbing as this is nothing I can fix. We need to wait until the WebGrab developers or community provides an updated siteinin file for FREESAT.CO.UK Someone has started to do this but failed.
Aside this I can't test or develop it myself as freesat has geoblocking enabled on their sites so I can't access the data from outside the UK at all.
Here is the direct link to all available siteini files for UK.
http://www.webgrabplus.com/sites/default/files/download/ini/info/zip/UK.zip
Extract the content of this file into the WebGrab folder inside your EPG-Buddy installation folder. So you will have the most recent siteini files for Uk available...