Having Problems with DVD directories in 4.2.6 (1 Viewer)

[cyberquixote]

Hi,
I think I am missing something about getting movies to play within the plugin (4.2.6 and latest svn). The symptom I have is that when I click "play" on the movie, it pauses a LONG time (I assume searching my path), then pops up "please insert disk XX" (where XX is a number) or some such.

I have tried to simplify things as much as possible (picking a 1 world title movie and reducing my search path) and am still having the problem:
Looking for the movie "Tombstone":
1) It is stored in a dvd directory (i.e. the main point is V:\vids\western\tombstone\VIDEO_TS\VIDEO_TS.IFO)
2) I am using dvdprofiler 3.0.3
3) In the mesfilms setup I have:
Ant item for storage file info= source
Search by movie's name checked and set to "FormattedTitle"
Paths for Movies File Search set to the parent directory (v:\vids\western)
Ant Identification items are both default (blank)
In the DVDProfiler tab Use Sort title in formatted title field is checked.

After setting up the plugin, the entry in Collection_tmp.xml starts out:
Movie Number="104" OriginalTitle="Tombstone" TranslatedTitle="Tombstone" FormattedTitle="Tombstone"

When I run the plugin, I see all my movie thumbnails etc. I then select tombstone, and it brings up the details for the movie. I then hit "play" and it says "Please insert disc" 'disk n = 104".

Any idea what I am missing?

Also, as a suggestion, it might be nice to cache the paths to the movies when running setup (maybe as an option). In my case, for the real setup, I have 5 directories on networked drives containing roughly 200 dvd content directories. From what I have seen, it might be painfully slow to launch if it has to find it on the fly - I would rather wait a very long time the few times I add new movies than wait every time I play one. Also, it would allow for some feed back if it could not find some of the movies (i.e. typos in directory names)

Thanks much!

 

[zebons]

Hi,
I think I am missing something about getting movies to play within the plugin (4.2.6 and latest svn). The symptom I have is that when I click "play" on the movie, it pauses a LONG time (I assume searching my path), then pops up "please insert disk XX" (where XX is a number) or some such.

I have tried to simplify things as much as possible (picking a 1 world title movie and reducing my search path) and am still having the problem:
Looking for the movie "Tombstone":
1) It is stored in a dvd directory (i.e. the main point is V:\vids\western\tombstone\VIDEO_TS\VIDEO_TS.IFO)
2) I am using dvdprofiler 3.0.3
3) In the mesfilms setup I have:
Ant item for storage file info= source
Search by movie's name checked and set to "FormattedTitle"
Paths for Movies File Search set to the parent directory (v:\vids\western)
Ant Identification items are both default (blank)
In the DVDProfiler tab Use Sort title in formatted title field is checked.

After setting up the plugin, the entry in Collection_tmp.xml starts out:
Movie Number="104" OriginalTitle="Tombstone" TranslatedTitle="Tombstone" FormattedTitle="Tombstone"

When I run the plugin, I see all my movie thumbnails etc. I then select tombstone, and it brings up the details for the movie. I then hit "play" and it says "Please insert disc" 'disk n = 104".

Any idea what I am missing?

Also, as a suggestion, it might be nice to cache the paths to the movies when running setup (maybe as an option). In my case, for the real setup, I have 5 directories on networked drives containing roughly 200 dvd content directories. From what I have seen, it might be painfully slow to launch if it has to find it on the fly - I would rather wait a very long time the few times I add new movies than wait every time I play one. Also, it would allow for some feed back if it could not find some of the movies (i.e. typos in directory names)

Thanks much!

Maybe I find the problem....
Try to put 'Paths for Movies File Search' to : v:\vids\western\

and tell me if it works

[EDIT] get new files below

 

[cyberquixote]

Ahh, indeed! That was it, thanks!

Adding a \ to the end of the path solved it (though if you pick directories with the "..." button it does not add them...).

However, I next tried setting the path to the grandparent directory (V:\vids\ or V:\vids) and am back to "insert disk"... is that suposed to work? or should I flatten my tree a bit?

Thanks again!

 

[zebons]

Ahh, indeed! That was it, thanks!

Adding a \ to the end of the path solved it (though if you pick directories with the "..." button it does not add them...).

However, I next tried setting the path to the grandparent directory (V:\vids\ or V:\vids) and am back to "insert disk"... is that suposed to work? or should I flatten my tree a bit?

Thanks again!

It should work but it's the same problem (missing an "\" at the end of the searching path when scrolling recursive paths). I have corrected. Can you try with that dll (use the dll corresponding to your MP's version) ?
Tell me if it's good or not.

 

[cyberquixote]

Almost...
It seems that in the cases where it had to add a "\", the movie won't actually play - it just goes to a black screen of a zero length movie.

I used the SVN version you just provided, and by pointing path to v:\vids it was able to hit "play" and NOT get the "insert disk" message to find Tombstone in V:\vids\western\tombstone\VIDEO_TS\VIDEO_TS.IFO and "Total Recall" in V:\vids\scifi\Total_Recall\VIDEO_TS\VIDEO_TS.IFO.

However, the movie does not actually play. I just goes to a black screen of a 0 length movie.

If I change the path back to "v:\vids\western\", tombstone plays, "v:\vids\western" does not play.

Also, do you think the finding locations at configuration time thing is likely to make it in? On my real 5 network directory thing, it takes 90 seconds to find the movie. If all movies were found, then matched with all entries in the database, and cached it would clearly be much faster, and may not take THAT long to generate... and it would be nice to know if movies in the database could not be found on disk or if I had movies on disk had not been added to the database. Amusingly enough, I now noticed I had ripped tombstone twice

Ahh, for what its worth, when it found two tombstones, it looks like it might be putting a extra " " (whitespace character) in the path with the "\" (i.e. it asked if I wanted to play v:\vids\western \tombstone\VIDEO_TS\VIDEO_TS.IFO or t:\vids\action \tombstone\VIDEO_TS\VIDEO_TS.IFO). That might be the problem with playing them...

Thanks yet again!

 

[zebons]

Ahh, for what its worth, when it found two tombstones, it looks like it might be putting a extra " " (whitespace character) in the path with the "\" (i.e. it asked if I wanted to play v:\vids\western \tombstone\VIDEO_TS\VIDEO_TS.IFO or t:\vids\action \tombstone\VIDEO_TS\VIDEO_TS.IFO). That might be the problem with playing them...

Thanks yet again!

Sorry there were a mistake (an extra blank as you notice...) in the code...
Try this.

CAUTION : as the filename in the tmp database is incorrect (extra blank) your have to delete it (Collection_tmp.xml in your case). The plugin'll regenerate a new one.

For the time to process first I notice that it may be too long if you have a lot of movies or directories... I'll try to improve it for next version. In another hand, the extra time is reduced after the first and found launch as the filename is stored in the xml database, so the second launch is made more quickly.
However as with DVDProfiler, the tmp xml database is regenerated each time you make modifications on your exported DVDP DB, all those informations are lost and it's often the first launch for the plugin even if you have seen that movie many times. It's not the case with an ANT database because there is no generation of a temporary DB...

 

[cyberquixote]

That one does the trick!

It correctly finds movies from my many networked drives/directories! It seems to take between 1 and 2 min per movie the first time, then very quick the 2nd time.

Yet another question though... it seems that all films are added to the "My Videos" database as they are played. Is there any way to avoid that? It would be nice to keep that for "non films"... but not a huge deal...is that required to let media portal play it?

Thanks for a great plugin, and quick responses!

 

[zebons]

That one does the trick!

GREAT !

It correctly finds movies from my many networked drives/directories! It seems to take between 1 and 2 min per movie the first time, then very quick the 2nd time.

Yet another question though... it seems that all films are added to the "My Videos" database as they are played. Is there any way to avoid that? It would be nice to keep that for "non films"... but not a huge deal...is that required to let media portal play it?

Actually not, that was a request from users to have ANT database informations on OSD during playing movies...

Thanks for a great plugin, and quick responses!

Thanks

 

[cyberquixote]

Ahh, if it is required for OSD then I agree, it is worthwhile putting them in the main DB.

Thanks again

 

[ORPhD]

Having a very similar problem

First off, while not new to MP, I am brand new to this plugin, and I am VERY impressed. It's SO close to having me back to DVD storage heaven. Great work.

Like cyberquixote, I too have all my DVDs stored on the hard drive and want MP to open the file

X:\Movie Name\VIDEO_TS\VIDEO_TS.IFO

I really want to avoid having to type in long file paths for all 200 of my DVDs, and from reading this thread and the 4.0 release thread, it seems like I can avoid doing so. However, I'm not understanding exactly what settings I need to implement for MyFilms to automatically search for my movies. I have gotten it to stop prompting me for the DVD, but nothing happens. I suppose I maybe am not waiting long enough, but there was no hard drive activity after I made the selection. Are the settings listed in the first post pretty much what is necessary for this to work?

Any help is greatly appreciated.