[UPDATED] Import Issues, Fanart Issues and the Next Release (1 Viewer)

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fforde

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Update
While backdrop issues for the time being have been smoothed over with meligrove.com, it looks like movie-xml.com has gone down and will stay down at least for a few days. zag2me (the site operator) has basically ran into hosting issues. The site was using too much bandwidth and/or CPU time, so they shut him down. If you are feeling charitable and have a hosting setup you think might work for movie-xml.com's needs, please contact zag2me.

The real problem for our users here of course is that movie-xml.com is the primary data source for the plug-in, so this means that, while movie-xml.com is down, the plug-in will not be able to import your movies. Please be patient, a fix is incoming to add support for both IMDb and OFDb. This release it targeted for this weekend (around the 14th). It's possible it will slip a few days, and if it does I am sorry. Please be patient.

The Issues
A lot of you are probably already aware, but there have been some issues over the last few days with the three web services this plug-in makes use of. To make a long story short, the sites are just getting hammered. Not only by us but by many applications and plug-ins. Just to give you an idea, there are about 500 (give or take) users of Moving Pictures, and it's in very very early stages of development. Add to that the thousands people using other applications and plug-ins, and throw in Labor Day weekend. Well things go down. There are a few additional issues in some cases, but the long and short of it is there is not a lot that can be done at this very moment.

When these sites go back up the plug-in should be working correctly and pulling data for you. Please keep in mind though that it costs money to run these servers, and the people running them are doing it because they choose to give back to the community. So please be patient with them.


Moving Pictures 0.5.5
All that being said, due to the number of recent issues with these data providers I've decided to make the availability of additional data providers a higher priority. The next release 0.5.5 will be targeted at providing alternative data sources for movie data and cover-art, and generally making the plug-in more useful when you are not able to retrieve data for the movie you are trying to scan. A current issue list of the things we are targeting for 0.5.5 can be found here. If you see any issues on the full list that you feel meet the goals stated here for 0.5.5, please comment in the issues thread on the Google Code site.

Thanks for your patience guys, and sorry for the recent issues.
 

dA.oOZe

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February 8, 2007
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Just an idea: Would it be possible to create some sort of P2P backend for backdrops and such? Some sort of central service acting as a tracker (bittorrent-style) and the clients serving the data?

Sadly I have absolutely no clue of how this P2P stuff works, nor do I know how to implement it. But by using such a backend, every user could contribute to the community...

Regards
 

zag2me

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April 11, 2006
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Yep movie-xml is getting absolutely hammered in the last few days.

I don't really get why so much cpu and bandwidth are being used. We are currently averaging around 0.7mb/s to 1mb/s on our host consistently which is simply not sustainable for a free site with (so far) no donations.

At this rate I will reach the bandwidth quota in around 10 days and the site will get suspended :(

Thanks for all the people adding movie information though :) It really goes to show that with enough people helping keep the things up-to-date the site works.

If you need any help, there are open source plugins for IMPAwards, Nicecovers, amazon and Google images over at MeediOS.com. Also there are plugins for Allmovie and IMDB data retrieval.
 

Darre

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Maybe its the big bad movie companies? They made scrapers and try to drag you all down:mad:

No but seriously, there are apps that block millions of IP's from commercial companies.. Peerguardian2 beeing one. Don't know how complicated it would be to apply the lists of IP's they block to the site?
 

DarkWader

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October 3, 2006
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The importer should check for folder.jpg in directories before it tryes to download it.
That will save lots of BW, and you can keep the ones you spent hours to get.. ;)
 

emphatic

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  • August 25, 2006
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    Darkwader: If the plugin looks for "folder.jpg" first, people who actually have time to find covers wont know the movie-xml is in need of their skills. :p

    Edit: Something I've noticed when I've searched the Movie-XML site manually (using the search field) is that if you do a search, realize you typed the wrong title/mis-spelled, correct that and press enter before the results has come up, the search engine ignores the correction unless you hit the browsers "stop" button. Could this be related to the server load somehow?

    Emph
     

    Darre

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    @DW

    FForde has stated that this is coming, both for backdrops and for covers. I love this plugin :)
     

    fforde

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    For backdrops it's already here. You have to place the backdrop in the backdrops folder with the name <imdbID>.jpg, png or bmp. And it will pick it up next restart or full scan. The folder is something like this, but varies from operating system to operating system.

    Application Data\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\thumbs\MovingPictures\Fan Art\
     

    Darre

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    Thx, I have a few cool backdrops I would like to add :)

    While I have your attention: could you check out this.?
     

    fforde

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    I think I found it on my own at the same time you posted that. I responded, if you have any trouble still let me know.
     
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