IMDb+ Plugin 2.0.0.281 with IMDb+ Scraper v4.9.41 (4 Viewers)

[RoChess]

@TheBatfink and @MonkeyJug, sorry about all the troubles.

That IMDb+ hidden menu 'settings' only shows when you have the MPEI Extensions plugin installed as well. And indeed the skin has to support it, so if it does not that is something for that skin developer to address. Default skins will always support everything as I'm in control on those.

The scraper-script itself is always available at the Google Code website, however it gets dynamically modified by the IMDb+ plugin depending on your setup. This is why I do not link to the scraper-script itself, but you are more then welcome to browse the repository. The fact it does not update on startup by default is because then I was afraid it would pound the hosting server too much with thousands of requests per day/hour. Was something in the Google code EULA that made me go this route, though I should not have been afraid that Google code servers can not handle the load. Just didn't wanted to risk getting the project shut down for violation of terms.

The reason there is no MediaPortal configuration option to adjust the IMDb+ plugin settings simply goes back to lack of knowledge on how to do that and prefer to strive for an ideal full-couch control setup instead. I'll be happy to add developers to the Google code project if they can assist on that, because I rather put any free time towards the full scraper-script rewrite then learning how to add MePo config screen.

I will however look at adding like a "Force scraper-script update" option otherwise that can be used manually. See almost all scraper-script updates before have been caught well before users noticed it. But that was at a time I was much more ontop of it and could re-act to issues before they would even be noticed. Now I'm so busy with work that all I can do is re-act when IMDb+ users notify me that there is an issue (Thanks @HomeY for alerting me via PM).

 

[emphatic]

Is there any chance that IMDb+ will ever work with My Videos?

Emph

 

[RoChess]

Is there any chance that IMDb+ will ever work with My Videos?

Short answer: No

The MediaPortal v1.x scraper system used for MyVideos is C# based, versus the XML based system Moving-Pictures uses. Now from what I understand MediaPortal v2.x also uses an XML based scraper-script system, so I could have a look at that and integrate into that one if it is as flexible as Moving-Pictures system.

For right now there is an ugly workaround: Import into Moving-Pictures, use the MovPicNFO tool that can be found on forum to create XBMC NFO files and then move the mediafile+NFO into the MyVideos import location.

 

[MonkeyJug]

@TheBatfink and @MonkeyJug, sorry about all the troubles.

That IMDb+ hidden menu 'settings' only shows when you have the MPEI Extensions plugin installed as well...

Perfect! Thanks for the reply. All working now...

 

[ltfearme]

If you dont have the Extensions plugin installed, then you can't see the Extra Settings.

 

[emphatic]

For right now there is an ugly workaround: Import into Moving-Pictures, use the MovPicNFO tool that can be found on forum to create XBMC NFO files and then move the mediafile+NFO into the MyVideos import location.

Yeah, I've done this and it doesn't work so good. Genres in MovingPictures are divided by "|" and in My Videos by "/" so if I import from .nfo created by MovPicNFO, the genres become plastered on each others when a movie has more than one like this: "|Comedy|Action|". I've made a feature request in the MovPicNFO thread to use something better, but I don't know if it'll happen.

Cheers
Emph

 

[RoChess]

@emphatic, I saw your request. One dirty workaround is easy though and that is simple file manipulation with a tool such as sfk.exe that I use myself to manipulate file contents based on easy string-to-string as well as complex Regular Expression methods. Of course it is much easier if the MovPicNFO developers fix it as you can then skip an additional step, but if not you have a way out there if you want.

Replaceing

<genre>foo|bar</genre>​

with

<genre>foo</genre><genre>bar</genre>​

is actually not that difficult to do with the SFK command-line tool.

Let me know if you want to go that route, or prefer to wait a bit longer on MovPicNFO developers to get back to you on your request.

 

[emphatic]

I'd normally use DreamWeaver to add/replace stuff in multiple files (basically, you just add a folder where the files are, not sure if I can set it to search .nfo files though, but I'd rather not use such a tool as doing a new scan is fast work if the MovPicNFO app gets an update with a better .nfo structure.

Emph

 

[TheBatfink]

Ahh I only have the absolute minimum plugins enabled and yes extensions isn't one, don't even know what it does!
Its not really a big deal, life has been so much easier since imdb+ its just a shock to the system when it stops working a manual update would be nice but is it not possible to replace the actual files by hand if the worst came to the worst? and put them on the googlecode page?

But thanks for maintaining the scraper and the auto renamer database, its so good!

 

[RoChess]

Ahh I only have the absolute minimum plugins enabled and yes extensions isn't one, don't even know what it does!
Its not really a big deal, life has been so much easier since imdb+ its just a shock to the system when it stops working a manual update would be nice but is it not possible to replace the actual files by hand if the worst came to the worst? and put them on the googlecode page?

But thanks for maintaining the scraper and the auto renamer database, its so good!

Extensions if the MePo GUI interface to MPEI, so you do not have to close MediaPortal to update plugins (of course once you actually do go through the update process it will shut down MePo to do the actual installing and then relaunch it). It just has a whole API system build in to allow other plugins to control their own settings, so instead of re-inventing the wheel it was much easier to use that (big thanks to ltfearme on that as he did most of the code). The extension plugin then also allows the IMDb+ plugin to alert you when an MPEI update exists for it. If you love the whole MPEI system, then Extension plugin is part of those minimum plugins you want to install and you can add it easy via MPEI shortcut on desktop.

And to repeat, the 'latest' scraper version is always available for manual situations at: http://imdbplus.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Scraper/IMDb+.Scraper.SVN.xml (it just will not work with custom options or rename system without path manipulation inside the script to point to the location those XML files are stored, do a CTRL+F on "file=")

This is where I commit it to with Tortoise SVN whenever I make an update. That is also the location the IMDb+ plugin constantly downloads it from to compare it with the existing one. It is currently almost an 80kB script and we are over 26,000 users of IMDb+, so that is already over 2GB of transfers per day when each user has their system on and checks once every 24hours. Peanuts for Google I'm sure, but if all the users would have it set to do it on startup and they stop/start MediaPortal multiple times a day then the transfers would tally up quick. That is why default setting is to not check on startup (unless it is 24 hour since last time you started system) and only poll the Google site once a day.

But for the pro-user the IMDb+ settings have been made adjustable, so you can tell the plugin to force a check on startup and also to check every 3 hours even if you want, or if you are on a limited dataplan to check say once a week.

And thank you , like most projects it started out because I wanted things a certain way. My collection has a lot of foreign movies in it as well as movie series and I was impatient to wait for support inside MovPic. The C# code of Moving-Pictures was too complex for me to add the functionality I wanted, but I was pretty handy in adjusting the scraper-scripts by then. At first it was just to include the RottenTomatoes rating system and then things got out of hand