(original thread) MP-TVSeries (5 Viewers)

[mcbelly]

I have a, rather annoying, problem.

My series files are on NAS, which needs about one - two minutes after system start (htpc system), to be available. By this time, the plugin has already decided that the drive is not available and the plugin is "empty" (well, not really empty, but the files are not displayed), so I have to make a local scan. Everytime. Takes about 10 minutes.

This was first introduced in 0.6 (I guess....). Maybe there is a possibility to make a short delay before scanning for files - maybe even configurable ? Otherwise this is really nasty... ;-)

mcbelly

I haven't yet started using this plugin but I ran into the same problem with MediaPortal in general. I decided that I needed to delay MediaPortal from starting until I had a chance to map the network drive on each boot (this solves the problem of MediaPortal not seeing the files on the server). I also needed to delay the mapping of the network drive until my computer finished establishing a wireless connection to my network. My solution is the following.

1. Disconnect network drive (so Windows will not auto connect the drive on every boot.)

2. Create a batch file named Startup.bat. I saved my file in "My Documents" and then created a shortcut to it in the Startup folder located in the Start Menu. You could also just save the file in the Startup folder in the Start Menu.

3. Tell MediaPortal to not start automatically on Windows bootup.

4. Populate the batch file with the following:

@ECHO OFF
cls
Echo PLEASE WAIT....STARTING MEDIAPORTAL
rem The following line causes an approx 60 second delay
ping 127.0.0.1 -n 60 >NUL
net use <driveletter>: \\<servername>\<sharename> /PERSISTENT:NO
start "" "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\MediaPortal\MediaPortal.lnk"​

5. The last line (beginning with "start") contains the full path the the MediaPortal shortcut located in the Start Menu. If your shortcut is located somewhere else, the edit the line to point to your shortcut file.​

Hopefully this helps.

Thanks a lot, that really solved it - I really could have gotten that solution myself....

 

[Bobb25]

Due to popular demand I will look into it. Probably though it will only consist of a dvd icon (similar to the hd one) and an info menu telling you to input the correct media when you try to play. Should be relatively simple to do.

DVD chapters/episode selection of ACTUAL video dvds are not included for sure, nor will you be able to start such a dvd from the plugin. However on input the dvd should autostart in media portal anyways.

Oh....very little time these days.....so don't shoot me if it takes a week.

Inker,

I'd like to second the "offline media" addition to MPTV...as a new user, this plugin was the one that made me finally make the switch over from Meedio. If offline support is added, MP will do everything my meedio install had

To clarify, though, i just want to make sure we're talking about the same thing: On my old meedio install, i had it set up so that, as a separate import from the normal shared directory that contained my "online" tv eps, the importer would scan the DVD drive for my file-based dvds containing my "offline" eps. It would then pull the series name from the DVD volume name, and add it to the library. When i selected an "offline" episode from the list, it would then prompt me to insert the disc, at which point it would play the episode. Is this possible with the current setup? If not, is this what you are talking about implementing?

Thanks for your help, sorry if this has been asked to death, but, as you can see from my post count, i'm kindof a MP newbie

The plan is that you simply add your dvd drive(s) as import paths. All episodes imported from those drive(s) will then be marked as offline, you will see a dvd image (or whatever) and if you try to play it and the cd/dvd is not found it will show a pop-up to insert that drive. Once done, or if the cd was already in, it will play the episode. Also references will not be deleted (even if the option is enabled) for episodes marked as offline when the cd is not in.

I want to avoid taking into account the volume name of the media as it would require some big changes also to the import functionality. I'm hoping most people have hteir files/folders named on dvds in a way that will be recognizable by the plugin as is. I'm aiming to have it done by beginning of next week.

Regarding that anime thingy (split between two "libraries"), it will be possible once we have views (see my previous post). Provided of course you have some way of differenciating between them (could be folder stored in, genre, whatever...worst case you'll have to add all series you want in a view by their id/name if there really is nothing that they have in common, but I think that's very unlikely).

I'm also looking for some suggestions of default views that we could include. So far I think:

Collection (same as now...everything)
Genres (grouped by genre...series...seasons...episodes)
Recently aired (50 last episodes of all series sorted by their airdate)
Unwatched (all)(all episodes that have not been viewed yet....sorted by their seriesname)
Unwatched (series) (all series that have at least one unwatched episode)
Channel (grouped by channel, series)
Airday (grouped by day it airs...series)

You could enabled each one. I am open to suggestions.

Inker

Could u give us the option to manually mark an episode as backed up to DVD in the database? That way if we want to, we can just go in and mark that it is backed up and the little DVD icon or whatever will show in MP MyTvseries interface when browsing through the lists? Reason being, some of my TV eps that are backed up on my 200 odd dvds have not so great naming structures! I therecreate a fake AVI on the hdd with the correct naming structure so this awesome plugin can recognise the file and if i could mark these as backed up manually, that would rock!

This is a fantastic addition to this plugin and we are ever so gratefull for the effort you guys put into this development!

 

[infinite.loop]

I haven't yet started using this plugin but I ran into the same problem with MediaPortal in general. I decided that I needed to delay MediaPortal from starting until I had a chance to map the network drive on each boot (this solves the problem of MediaPortal not seeing the files on the server). I also needed to delay the mapping of the network drive until my computer finished establishing a wireless connection to my network. My solution is the following.

1. Disconnect network drive (so Windows will not auto connect the drive on every boot.)

2. Create a batch file named Startup.bat. I saved my file in "My Documents" and then created a shortcut to it in the Startup folder located in the Start Menu. You could also just save the file in the Startup folder in the Start Menu.

3. Tell MediaPortal to not start automatically on Windows bootup.

4. Populate the batch file with the following:

@ECHO OFF
cls
Echo PLEASE WAIT....STARTING MEDIAPORTAL
rem The following line causes an approx 60 second delay
ping 127.0.0.1 -n 60 >NUL
net use <driveletter>: \\<servername>\<sharename> /PERSISTENT:NO
start "" "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\MediaPortal\MediaPortal.lnk"​

5. The last line (beginning with "start") contains the full path the the MediaPortal shortcut located in the Start Menu. If your shortcut is located somewhere else, the edit the line to point to your shortcut file.​

would be great if you could add that as a userguide to the ::wiki::

 

[tomfrogger]

Following update to latest svn. When i try to watch any of my divx .avi files by selecting them using the TV-series plugin, fullscreen view is totally black. If you exit fullscreen you can see the video running in the preview window. I can hear sound at all times.

Using My Videos divx shows play perfectly in fullscreen.

Has anyone else had this problem?

 

[zeflash]

Sorry for not being there for anything, but I'm just too darn busy with everything these days, so I don't have time at all for this. I hope I will later on... who knows.

Quick thoughts:
- Torrents
uTorrent *sucks*. I thought I could cope with it being lightweight and all, but it's just not good, it kills my router all the time whenever DHT is enabled, the RSS scanner sucks too, I miss 90% of the shows so in the end I have to download things manually, they don't release updates that often, and they got bought up so no one knows what will happen with it.
Bottomline is, I can't use that, so I'm probably going to try azureus back again. That implies that I'll probably do what some talked about earlier, ie download to a general folder, somehow know what the status of a torrent is, copy / unrar / whatever the file to a destination folder when the download part is over, and wait for seeding completion to delete the file(s) in the download folder.
I just need to figure out a way to retrieve info from azureus, which should be possible given it's opensource too and there are apps which do that already.

- Upgraded import to handle DVDs
Everyone want a different solution, which makes it difficult to figure out what exactly should be done. IMO the easiest way is to have a special import stage for cd/dvd drives. If you have that in your import paths, it will ask you to insert a new DVD, scan the contents as usual and mark the scanned episodes as part of this DVD (defaulting a label to the label of the DVD, but you could overwrite this to whatever you want), then ask you to insert a new DVD, etc.
I believe it's necessary to have a label associated to each episode, otherwise I fail to see how one would know which DVD should be inserted. And it's not that difficult to do.

- View Customization
That's very possible to do, but like everyone said it should stay simple. I don't think having to write up sql statements is a good way to do it, even if people knowing SQL disagree

So those are the 3 areas that will be worked on in the future. The only unknown is the timeframe

 

[moiristo]

Hi zeflash,

As I am on a network, I don't always know what series are being shared. When the plugin doesn't find a serie in MP, it shows a menu dialog with alternatives. However, it doesn't show what it actually found. Could you please add the found series title to the menu? (like, in the first place, followed by a separator and the alternatives)

TIA

 

[Chreekar]

I have only one HD file, and it is in the mkv file format. When I did a force scan, the report said that it could not read video size from it. I thought I could just input the size myself in the configuration, but it didn't work. I tried to use sqlite browser to edit the entry and then save, but after I load the database again, it has reset the values to 0. I can change other values, like the hidden flag, with no problems so why can't I change the width and height entries in the db? Are there some constraints I don't know about?

 

[Sh4nn0w]

Following update to latest svn. When i try to watch any of my divx .avi files by selecting them using the TV-series plugin, fullscreen view is totally black. If you exit fullscreen you can see the video running in the preview window. I can hear sound at all times.

Using My Videos divx shows play perfectly in fullscreen.

Has anyone else had this problem?

Hmm, thought maybe it was just me.

1. Avi's seem to be ok playing files via My Videos. (haven't checked the offending tv-series files yet)
2. I found its not all my files that do this, only some of them. Checked encoding and some of the ones that don't play in fullscreen, (but do in the preview window) are exactly the same as others in series. (Xvid for me)
3. One of the them that now is black at fullscreen, played fine a few weeks ago when I watched it.

Unfortunately I'm not entirely sure which SVN I started having the problem with. I'll do some testing tonight.

 

[Rick164]

Having the same problem on two different systems(all with ffdshow) with MP 0.2.2 stable and MP tvseries 0.9.
When i press the ok button to play and episode there is a 5-10 second delay with full screen video.

 

[infinite.loop]

I have just done a svn-checkout, compiled the sources and tested this wonderful plugin.

to be honest, i was surprised about the stability and usabilty.

GREAT WORK!