Moving Pictures Public Beta 0.5.5c (1 Viewer)

[disaster123]

Yeah i mean multi-seat support. Mhm but what is about the covers and background files? Only a centralized DB is not enough. Shouldn't it be easy to use the SQL Server of the TV-Server? What is if only one client is managing the DB and the other clients should only read from it? At what time does movingpictures open the sqlite file (at MP start?, or when i go to movingpictures)?

My Idea i'll copy the sqlite file on each start from the server to the client and will modify the filepath of the file. The management is done by the server so the client only need the informations.

I often record movies from TV - then i move these files from recordedtvfolder to moviesfolder - but the recordedtv database is not cleaned automatically - any idea?

And - thanks for this really great plugin!!

 

[SwissBuster]

Well as Blue3 is only full screen right now, the default skin files will probably not work correctly with it, as they are intended for a 16x9 display. In the next release we should have a 4x3 default skin as well, but hopefully Blue3 will officially support the plug-in before long.

I installed blue3 with RC3, and it displays oddly on my machine (16.9) - it looks like I'm seeing about 1/4 of image. The title is off to the right (truncated) and I can just see the edge of the DVD coverart on the bottom right. Is this what you'd expect to see? If not, am I doing something wrong?

PS I expect we'll get blue3 wide before long.

 

[fforde]

Yeah i mean multi-seat support. Mhm but what is about the covers and background files? Only a centralized DB is not enough. Shouldn't it be easy to use the SQL Server of the TV-Server? What is if only one client is managing the DB and the other clients should only read from it? At what time does movingpictures open the sqlite file (at MP start?, or when i go to movingpictures)?

My Idea i'll copy the sqlite file on each start from the server to the client and will modify the filepath of the file. The management is done by the server so the client only need the informations.

I often record movies from TV - then i move these files from recordedtvfolder to moviesfolder - but the recordedtv database is not cleaned automatically - any idea?

And - thanks for this really great plugin!!

The guide I linked will handle cover art and backdrops fine, both are stored in the thumbs folder, which the guide walks you through centralizing.

As far as when Moving Pictures interacts with the database, it does initial reads on launch and caches a lot of data but there is no guarantee it will not need the database until the application is shut down. The caching system is good, but it will read from the database when it needs to. The biggest problem you will face is each instance of the plug-in's desire to add or remove movies from the database when it detects a file system change. This means that if you have three instances of the plug-in running, and you drop a movie in a watch folder, it will most likely get added three times to the database. So you will need to add movies in a very controlled manner, with only one instance open (or none, then load the config screen on one and manage the additions from there). As for setting some instances of the plug-in to read only, that's not currently supported, but I imagine you could maybe enforce this with file system permissions. I am not sure how the plug-in would behave though if the file system refused editing permissions of the database. It would probably error out and fail to fully load. This is why this is an unsupported tweak, there are just a lot of problems to deal with. The plug-in was just not designed with this sort of setup in mind.

As far as using a centralized database like SQL Server, no this is not and will never be supported. This is really a terrible solution, it adds a large amount of complexity to the product, it creates a huge amount of system resources overhead on the user's system, and the only problem that it solves is database locking. Really in my opinion the most minor problem when allowing "free-for-all" access to a centralized database by multiple clients. Using something like SQL Server solves one minor problem and brings several new and non-trivial problems to the table (including but not limited to some of the issues I described above).

These are all implementation details though and to the end user it should not really matter. The goal is not to use a SQL Server database, the goal is to support multiple systems running with the same data-set. This can be (fairly) easily implemented via a client server system, which is most likely the approach Moving Pictures will eventually take. To do it right though will take time, and this functionality is a bit further down on the priorities list right now.

 

[fforde]

Well as Blue3 is only full screen right now, the default skin files will probably not work correctly with it, as they are intended for a 16x9 display. In the next release we should have a 4x3 default skin as well, but hopefully Blue3 will officially support the plug-in before long.

I installed blue3 with RC3, and it displays oddly on my machine (16.9) - it looks like I'm seeing about 1/4 of image. The title is off to the right (truncated) and I can just see the edge of the DVD coverart on the bottom right. Is this what you'd expect to see? If not, am I doing something wrong?

PS I expect we'll get blue3 wide before long.

The basic skin file is intended to be embedded in a 16x9 skin like XFace or Aeon Wide. I would not expect it to display correctly with any 4x3 skins. It has not been tested for that purpose at least. There are several good generic 4x3 skins for Moving Pictures though, check out a few other threads around here, I see two skin related threads in the first five topics of this forum right now.

 

[disaster123]

fforde
thank you for all your information

What would you do in my situation?

 

[fforde]

@fforde
thank you for all your information

What would you do in my situation?

I would try to follow the guide listed above, and be careful about adding or removing movies from your watch folders. I would follow the guide to centralize my databases, artwork, config, etc, then setup the first system with Moving Pictures. I would get all my movies loaded to my satisfaction. At this point on all of your other systems, you should just be able to drop the movingpictures.dll file into your plugins folder and they should automatically connect to your centralized SQLite database, and you should be good to go.

When you want to add or remove movies to or from your collection though, I would shut down all but one instance of Media Portal, otherwise you might get multiple additions or removals, causing problems. Once you have made changes to your watch folder, start up the first instance of Media Portal (or restart, either way is fine), give it a couple of minutes to make sure any import tasks are complete, then power up each of your other systems.

I guess the important point is make sure that, whenever you are making changes to your settings, you have only one system online. Let me know how things go. And Good luck!

 

[SwissBuster]

The basic skin file is intended to be embedded in a 16x9 skin like XFace or Aeon Wide. I would not expect it to display correctly with any 4x3 skins. It has not been tested for that purpose at least. There are several good generic 4x3 skins for Moving Pictures though, check out a few other threads around here, I see two skin related threads in the first five topics of this forum right now.

Yeah, I guess I should have searched a bit before posting. This thread has exactly the strange view I was describing, and the poster's solution was to switch skin to blue two wide in 16:9. The view is odd, though - I would have imagined that forcing a 16:9 layout into 4:3 would have only slightly stretched the image.

 

[riadmelb]

I would try to follow the guide listed above, and be careful about adding or removing movies from your watch folders. I would follow the guide to centralize my databases, artwork, config, etc, then setup the first system with Moving Pictures. I would get all my movies loaded to my satisfaction. At this point on all of your other systems, you should just be able to drop the movingpictures.dll file into your plugins folder and they should automatically connect to your centralized SQLite database, and you should be good to go.

When you want to add or remove movies to or from your collection though, I would shut down all but one instance of Media Portal, otherwise you might get multiple additions or removals, causing problems. Once you have made changes to your watch folder, start up the first instance of Media Portal (or restart, either way is fine), give it a couple of minutes to make sure any import tasks are complete, then power up each of your other systems.

I guess the important point is make sure that, whenever you are making changes to your settings, you have only one system online. Let me know how things go. And Good luck!

Hi, this is a great plugin, especially how it's only one dll file!

I hope it's ok to jump in this post as I'm trying to do a multi-seat setup as well: I have followed your instructions, but when I launch the second client all movies get deleted and I have to scan again. Any ideas?

Thanks again for this great plugin.

 

[disaster123]

I've not set up my multi environment yet - so i'm not shure but i think the movies files have to be under the same location on BOTH clients. But i don't know how todo this cause you cannot mount shares into directories under windows - or is this possible?

 

[piranha]

You can map them as a drive.
It is best to mark them as a "removable" though, that way your movies will never get deleted if occassional network glitch kicks in.