[Plugin] MPSync - MediaPortal multi-seat Synchronization (2 Viewers)

[m3rcury]

Ok, just to be sure.
Ill want the followeing:

#1 Server:
Holds an MP installation and all changes will be made on this maschine and should be synced to others.
Ex.: Add Series and Movies in MPTVSeries or MP.
On the server there will never be an client opened!

#2 & #3 clients on which users watching.

I have setup MPSync on #2 & #3:
Sync Inervall: 60 secs
Pause on active: no
Sync watch status: yes
Direction: #1 -> #2 and #1 -> 3

Is this correct for what ill want?

Just checked if ill could resume an series on #3 which ill started on #2.
Also waited ~3min so its gets synced.
But resume doesnt work, #2 doesnt know anything from the started series on #3

thx
pOpY

PS: Ill like the idea to have all clients synced together!!!!!!

pOpY, at the moment, the plugin needs to be running on all clients including the server for it to synchronize. I am doing some changes so that the plugin can be executed outside MediaPortal, which in your case should do the trick. Hope to have a version out soon!!

 

[popy]

pOpY, at the moment, the plugin needs to be running on all clients including the server for it to synchronize. I am doing some changes so that the plugin can be executed outside MediaPortal, which in your case should do the trick. Hope to have a version out soon!!

Thanks for the info.
If this works I will buy you some beers ;-)

But I'll don't understand why on the server side the client must currently also running?

Client syncs watched state to server and other client syncs watched state from server, or do I miss something !?

 

[popy]

Another question, is the plugin open source? So other developers could jump in?
Working centralized databases is the only real feature i am missing in MP1.

cu
pOpY

 

[m3rcury]

Another question, is the plugin open source? So other developers could jump in?
Working centralized databases is the only real feature i am missing in MP1.

cu
pOpY

pOpY, I believe all contributions to MediaPortal are Open Source so anyone can improve what is already there. I would appreciate that if someone is going to modify something in my plugins, I am notified of enhancements being proposed before anyone just takes code and starts doing changes to see if anything is already being developed by myself and thus avoid unnecessary effort.

Unfortunately out there I see a number of "thefts" and no reference from where it was taken is mentioned...

 

[popy]

Good to know
Would be nice if other devs will help you on your great plugin.

Keep up the good work!!!

pOpY

 

[Chubler]

Configuration required in MovingPictures and TVSeries is only required to make the respective plugins function. There is no setup required in them for MPSync to work.

For TVSeries, disabling of scraping can be done by going into the "General" tab and un-check "Watch my Import folders for changes automatically". Switching off this setting means that you have to manually import the newly added series on your master PC, then MPSync will propagate to the other clients.

For MovingPictures, to disable scraping you need to do a database change. Open movingpictures.db3 and select table settings, search for key = "importer_gui_enabled" and once found, change value to False. Similar to TVSeries, you now need to import manually newly added movies on your master PC only.

Firstly I'd like to say thanks for putting your time in on this plugin, I've only been using it for a few days but it has so much potential.

I initially had scraping enabled and even with just 2 clients - 1 master client (lounge) and 1 standard client (bedroom) both syncing to/from a NAS shared db folder; there were thousands of records being updated on every sync pass. Following your suggestions above this has settled down and things seem to be working as intended now.

Is it true that the current goal is that (apart from watched flags/position) have database should be a exact copy of the others. I can see how this insulates you from any specifics about the data, your, in essence, just keeping all data in sync. However with some small data aware tweaks things could run more efficiently and GUI scraping could occur just on the master client.

Perhaps I'm missing something but if TVSeries.options "doFolderWatch" and MovingPictures.settings "importer_gui_enabled" were not replicated couldn't GUI scraping be just run on the Master client without issues?

I've also been looking at the logs and it seem a lot of data is synced just to keep some status flags updated eg: TVSeries.online_series.lastupdated TVSeries.local_episodes.isavailable and it could be worth ignoring changes of this type to.

 

[m3rcury]

Configuration required in MovingPictures and TVSeries is only required to make the respective plugins function. There is no setup required in them for MPSync to work.

For TVSeries, disabling of scraping can be done by going into the "General" tab and un-check "Watch my Import folders for changes automatically". Switching off this setting means that you have to manually import the newly added series on your master PC, then MPSync will propagate to the other clients.

For MovingPictures, to disable scraping you need to do a database change. Open movingpictures.db3 and select table settings, search for key = "importer_gui_enabled" and once found, change value to False. Similar to TVSeries, you now need to import manually newly added movies on your master PC only.

Firstly I'd like to say thanks for putting your time in on this plugin, I've only been using it for a few days but it has so much potential.

I initially had scraping enabled and even with just 2 clients - 1 master client (lounge) and 1 standard client (bedroom) both syncing to/from a NAS shared db folder; there were thousands of records being updated on every sync pass. Following your suggestions above this has settled down and things seem to be working as intended now.

Is it true that the current goal is that (apart from watched flags/position) have database should be a exact copy of the others. I can see how this insulates you from any specifics about the data, your, in essence, just keeping all data in sync. However with some small data aware tweaks things could run more efficiently and GUI scraping could occur just on the master client.

Perhaps I'm missing something but if TVSeries.options "doFolderWatch" and MovingPictures.settings "importer_gui_enabled" were not replicated couldn't GUI scraping be just run on the Master client without issues?

I've also been looking at the logs and it seem a lot of data is synced just to keep some status flags updated eg: TVSeries.online_series.lastupdated TVSeries.local_episodes.isavailable and it could be worth ignoring changes of this type to.

Chubler, thanks for your suggestions. Will raise an issue to keep track of these so that I can see where to fit them in the development of the plugin.

Once again thanks.

 

[King-S]

Hello,

firstly: Thanks for your work. This plugin is exactly, what a multiseat-installation needs

But anyway - MPSync doesn't work correctly in my setup. And I don't know why.

Problem: MPSync syncs from master to server, then from server to client-1. On client-1, the databases were retrieved, but incomplete. TV-Series - for example - has all custom settings, 1000+ episodes but no series. The same with MovingPictures-DB. After syncing the db-file is about 6MB, but no movie is in the list.

Setup: One master that syncs to a unc-path "\\SERVERNAME\MePo\Sync\". Server is a windows 2012 server, everyone has full permissions. Two clients sync from that path.

Hint: It seems, that on file-basis (filesystem) files were copied correctly. E.g. the thumbs-folder has been transferred correctly from master to server and to the clients. It also seems that the transfer from master to server is done correctly.

I've made several screenshots to show the settings of master and client, and also from the plugins after syncing with the server.

I hope someone can help me out. I'm also not the only one with this problem.

- Same behaviour with MePo 1.5 and MePo 1.6
- Same behaviour with Windows 7 (both master and client-1) and Windows 8 (client-2)

Hope that help. Hope that you can help me

Thanks in advance!

 

[doskabouter]

Just some quick questions:
- Is it possible to retain watched-status on sync? In the start post there are screens showing settings for watched status, but the current version (1.0.0.8) doesn't have that tab.
- Should Moving pictures automatically pickup the changes after a sync on the client? I've pushed some changes to the server, waited half an hour or so (sync time is on 15 mins) and checked if Moving pictures showed the latest changes. It did not show them, but after a restart of Mediaportal they were present.

Edit: just saw the watched status checkbox. They are both (on master pc and htpc) unchecked, but somehow I still lost the status. Watched a movie yesterday on htpc, and now (after a sync) it's unwatched

 

[barneh]

Just some quick questions:
- Is it possible to retain watched-status on sync? In the start post there are screens showing settings for watched status, but the current version (1.0.0.8) doesn't have that tab.
- Should Moving pictures automatically pickup the changes after a sync on the client? I've pushed some changes to the server, waited half an hour or so (sync time is on 15 mins) and checked if Moving pictures showed the latest changes. It did not show them, but after a restart of Mediaportal they were present.

Edit: just saw the watched status checkbox. They are both (on master pc and htpc) unchecked, but somehow I still lost the status. Watched a movie yesterday on htpc, and now (after a sync) it's unwatched

Hi, doskabouter,
Sound like you have setup you're sync wrong.
The Sync should sync both ways, but I know many experience that it only sync one way... So it all depence how you're setup is?!?!

Regarding you're second point, the Moving Picture sync... do you use Trakt?