SageMC: XML movie info

[Sweep]

Mlbdude, thanks a lot for your great stv.

I got a question though, probably for stranger89.

I'm trying to get movie info to show up using collection.xml and DVDPro2Sage.
I've placed a general collection.xml in the STVs\OriginalV2\SageMCE folder and tried placing individual .xml files per movie, but no luck.

The java debug console window says:
di 1/25 22:56:17.986 Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
di 1/25 22:56:17.988 at DVDPro2Sage.DVDPro2Sage.getTitle(DVDPro2Sage.java:220)
di 1/25 22:56:17.992 at DVDPro2Sage.DVDPro2Sage.findDVD(DVDPro2Sage.java:182)
di 1/25 22:56:17.996 ... 44 more
di 1/25 22:56:17.999 at DVDPro2Sage.DVDPro2Sage.getTitle(DVDPro2Sage.java:220)
di 1/25 22:56:18.003 at DVDPro2Sage.DVDPro2Sage.findDVD(DVDPro2Sage.java:182)
di 1/25 22:56:18.006 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
di 1/25 22:56:18.010 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
di 1/25 22:56:18.014 at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)


Does anyone know what's going on, or has any clue as on how to fix this ?

Thanks
Sweep

[stanger89]

Can you post the XML that's causing you trouble?

[Sweep]

Hello Stanger,

I've tried using the sample .xml from mlbdude http://forums.freytechnologies.com/forums/showthread.php?p=76488&postcount=636 and with something generated myself using DVDProfiler (attached).

Thanks
Sweep

[SidKnee]

I was going to wait until Watter was back off holiday to ask this question, but as we're talking xml...

I'm in a similar position to Sweep - I've been trying to create either a collection xml or individual xml files for my video collection (not ripped DVD's), but the information will not display. As these are videos and not ripped DVD's I'm not using DVD Profiler, hence the need to create the xml myself.

I've tried adapting the sample xml, and searched for other examples to use but each time the information just refuses to show up. Most of the information I've found deals with DVD Profiler so it isn't much help if you're not using this app. If anyone has a simple xml file that works I should be able to edit the titles to suit...

BTW
This is on the Sage server PC - I wanted to get it showing up there first before I tried anything on a client.

Cheers,
SidKnee

[briands]

SidKnee, You should look into DVDProfiler again. It has nothing to do with weather a DVD is ripped or not.

[SidKnee]

Thanks for the suggestion Briands - I'd just assumed from the name that this only dealt with DVD's and nothing else. Looking at the website it does look like you can enter data about films that it doesn't know about - this should cover the manual recordings that I have to document. :thumb:

Cheers,
SidKnee

[stanger89]

Re: not showing up

Are you sure the filename/foldername matches the title EXACTLY?

[JUC]

Just curious: what happens if the file name contains a colon ':'? Those are not permitted in folder names are they?
JUC

[Wheemer]

From my extensive testing in trying to get my server to show the xml data I can safely say there is definately a bug somewhere in the coding. With the exact same setup on my client the info showed up perfectly. With every possible setup configuration on my server the info is blank and the debug window doesn't give any errors.

[stanger89]

Just curious: what happens if the file name contains a colon ':'? Those are not permitted in folder names are they?
JUC

AFIAK, mlb is using my GetSafeTitle function for filename matching, in which case the ':' is simply removed. I posted a while back the regexp I use to remove certain characters.

[stanger89]

From my extensive testing in trying to get my server to show the xml data I can safely say there is definately a bug somewhere in the coding. With the exact same setup on my client the info showed up perfectly. With every possible setup configuration on my server the info is blank and the debug window doesn't give any errors.

I'm not 100% sure what mlb did, but...

Make sure that the path to the xml/library is EXACTLY the same on both machines, make sure the server has permission to access the filesystem (it better:)) and make sure, that if you're using a monolithic XML, you have it stored on the server in a location it can find.

[Sweep]

Are you sure the filename/foldername matches the title EXACTLY?

Hello Stanger,
yes, did some testing with an extremely easy title to prevent the slightest mistakes, types or translations.

Cheers
Sweep

[Sweep]

Hi SidKnee,

i was gonna try MovieTrack, a simple free prog, to generate the XML, but first it has to show up at all ;-)

cheers
Sweep

[stanger89]

Hello Stanger,
yes, did some testing with an extremely easy title to prevent the slightest mistakes, types or translations.

Cheers
Sweep

Question 2

Where is your XML and what is it called?

[Sweep]

Question 2
Where is your XML and what is it called?

I've place a 'collection' XML file named collection.xml in
C:\Program Files\Frey Technologies\SageTV\STVs\OriginalV2\SageMCE

and an individual file in the movie folder with the exact same name (without extension) as the movie.

btw are you parsing the XML yourself or using some lib ?
maybe it has to do with the installed msxml version ?

Cheers
Sweep

[stanger89]

I use a standard java lib to do the parsing.

Oh, did you enable caching of metadata? IIRC you need to enable that for SageMC to look for the local cached files.

[Sweep]

I use a standard java lib to do the parsing.

Oh, did you enable caching of metadata? IIRC you need to enable that for SageMC to look for the local cached files.

Yes, tried with and without local caching of the files.

[SidKnee]

I created a single entry using DVDProfiler to confirm that this cleared my problem - but unfortunately it didn't.

Just out of curiosity I enabled the Jave debugger console and by the look of it I have some problem or other when I try and access either the DVDPro2Sage class or within my Java install itself.

If I disable the metadata and go to the imported video that should display information I get no errors. If I enable the metadata and do the same thing I get a host of errors showing up in the console - but they don't appear to be complaining about not finding the XML file, or its format (sorry can't remember the exact errors at the moment).

From the install instructions the DVDPro2Sage folder is placed in the SageTV directory. Is this correct? Do I need to install any other java classes/files for this to work? Is this Java specific in any way?

I'll try and catch the errors I'm seeing and post them when I get home.

EDIT - added example console output.

Cheers,
SidKnee

[stanger89]

Unfortunately, that doesn't tell me anything. The console doesn't appear to have anything related to the import in it.

What do you get if you try this:
http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthread.php?p=80123&postcount=866

[SidKnee]

I managed to try the debugging version of the STV and here are the results along with the xml file (I renamed an entry for 'love actually' so ignore most of the content of the file).

As far as I can see it finds the xml OK, and the entry for the file (Phoenix Nights Series 1 Episode 1) but still doesn't display the data - am I missing something obvious here :blush:

Cheers,
SidKnee

[salsbst]

I don't know if it's related to the problem, but your collection.xml file has some extended ASCII characters (above 128) in the Overview element.

a) they look like they have nothing to do with the (english) overview;
b) there may be some code choking on extended ASCII characters?

Just a thought.

[Sweep]

I managed to try the debugging version of the STV and here are the results along with the xml file (I renamed an entry for 'love actually' so ignore most of the content of the file).


nice, how do you get this debug screen, I'd love to see what it shows with my xml. Which is, unfortunately, also not yet working :confused:

[stanger89]

Load the STV I linked above, and then use the options command when on the detailed info screen (where the XML info should be displayed).

[SidKnee]

Hi Stanger89 - any thoughts on why the information isn't showing up? As far as I can see it can find the XML file, but isn't displaying it.

I believe that Wheemer is looking into the import side of things as an update to the STV so if we can't get this resolved it may fall out of that.

Cheers,
SidKnee

[dgage]

I don't have a lot more to add but I setup individual XMLs at the end of December and it was showing information for each of the movies I had in that folder. The final betas or final release of SageMC stopped showing the video information. Note that nothing changed on my end and pictures of the movies still show up. So I think something changed during the final release cycle that broke the individual XML files with the same name as the video file. Again, these same video XML files were working and now they are not with the final release.

David

[Wheemer]

Hopefully Watter can eventually make some progress on this. I truely wish I had Studio at my disposal so that my passion for SageTV could be better expressed.

[Sweep]

Load the STV I linked above, and then use the options command when on the detailed info screen (where the XML info should be displayed).

I get the same results as Sidknee, it finds the collection.xml it finds the correct movie title within, but no information is displayed.
Renamed the movie to just 'abc' to prevent any misspellings, or characters being filtered out. Attached the console output and the stv debug screen.

I hope this or dgage's comment about it workin in previous version helps.

cheers
Sweep

[stanger89]

Do you have any DVDs you could try? Both the screenshots posted were for trouble with non-DVDs.

[Sweep]

Do you have any DVDs you could try? Both the screenshots posted were for trouble with non-DVDs.

Hello Stanger89,
I did try with DVD as well, same result. Do you want a screendump it's basically the same, onle difference is where it says no dvd.

[stanger89]

No that's OK.

:confused:

Have to look at that after I pull my PVR-PCI out of my dev machine.

[SidKnee]

Hi Stanger89 - did you get chance to look at this again? I've just read that the Wheemer/Watter SageMC STV work has unfortuntely been postponed/abandoned so I'm back to square one.

As part of my upgrade to v2.2.7 I've uninstalled & reinstalled both server and client, upgraded the JVM, and moved to the new SageMC 16x9 STV but I still run into the same problems with the library import.

I've used DVDProfiler to create the xml files, and the STV tells me that it can find the file entry in the collection (or in a standalone xml file) but it still refuses to display the information in the STV.

Any help you can provide on this would be fantastic as this is the only area of Sage that isn't working for me.

Cheers,
SidKnee

[Wheemer]

I have just given up on getting this to work. After more cosideration I figured that using dvd profiler does not fit my needs very well (besides the fact that I could never get it to work). I would much prefer an automatic lookup based on file name. Something like the IMDB lookup in the other STVs... But I'm not skilled enough to attempt that.

It just seemed like a pain to have to edit dvd profiler everytime you add a new imported video.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

[stanger89]

Yeah, I've been looking into some other (related :D) stuff the last few days. I'll try and take a look at it. Is the XML you posed earlier applicable?

[stanger89]

Well I just tried it and it seems to display for me. I renamed one of my DVDs and stuck in the VIDEO_TS folder (and renamed the XML to match).

[SidKnee]

Thanks guys.

Stanger89 - I'll need to try a DVD rip (as all my imports are MPG's - I use MVP's for viewing). Have you managed to confirm that it works for MPG's as well as DVD rips?
The XML I used earlier should still be OK, but just in case I'll attach the XML I've been testing with. I'll let you know how I get on with a DVD rip.

Cheers,
SidKnee

[stanger89]

I renamed an MPEG and it seems to work fine. Here's what I did:

Renamed MPEG to "Love Actually.mpg"
placed your XML in the same folder and named it "Love Actually.xml"

The info showed up for me. I didn't try using it as a monolithic XML (ie specified in the properties file).

[SidKnee]

Must be something my end - I tried a DVD rip and get the same results (see attachments). :bang:

Could I have messed something up on the install? Other than having the DVDPro2Sage class in a sub directory of Sage, and specifying the path to the XML, is there anything else I should have done? Does the import rely on any other files being installed?

Thanks for the help,
SidKnee

[SidKnee]

Mlbdude - Are there any dependancies in the STV that I could have messed up (during the various installs/upgrades)?

Sweep - did you get around the problem?

Cheers,
SidKnee.

[mlbdude]

I would recommend using local XML files to test to see if you have some kind of issue there. Also try without the service if you run with it.

Also, what version of DVDProfiler are you using - probably does not matter since Stanger89 had it work for him.

This one is too hard to troubleshoot since we can't duplicate it.

[stanger89]

His XMLs say 2.3.1. So it shouldn't be that.

SidKnee, I'd try this, from the first page, download the whole zip with all the folder structures, and then DL the newest version of the STV. Give that a shot. Also make sure everything is in the right spot:

STV in STVs\OriginalV2
Images in STVs\OriginalV2\SageMCE (Is there another folder under?)
DVDPro2Sage in DVDPro2Sage

[SidKnee]

Thanks for the help guys - I'll let you know how I get on :thumb:

Cheers,
SidKnee

[Sweep]

Hi guys, good news!
What worked for me was an upgrade from java 1.4.2 to 1.5.

Both local and generic collection.xml now work!

Cheers

[Sweep]

hmm, just ran into another problem.
It so happens the foldernames are not exactly the same as the <title> tags in the xml (generated from imdb). Therefor I cannot use the 'generic' collection.xml, but place local xml files in each folder (per movie). This is actually my prefered method as well.

But... The local xml file must have the same name as the movie file! Having it named as the folder doesn't work (while the folder name is used to look it up in the generic collection.xml and in the original sagemc thread it is said to work).

This poses problems with full dvd's (VIDEO_TS) and movies split into more parts.

Stanger is it possible to change this, so instead of just looking for a local xml file named as the movie file, it also looks for a local xml file named as the folder ?
Or even better a local xml named collection.xml ignoring the title ?

Thanks!

[stanger89]

As for searching for something differently, I'll leave that to mlbdude, since it's part of the STV, not the java class.

As for the names, a couple of tips, I believe (not 100% sure since I don't remember how old the java class mlbdude is using is) the class should strip out bad characters from both the title before looking, so the folder/filename doesn't need to match exactly, here's what I do:
I remove anything that's not one of these "a-zA-Z0-9$()#_'`~@{}%! &-". So if you take exactly whatever's in the XML, remove anything that's not in that list, and name it that it should find it.

FWIW, here's a little newer build that may work better for finding stuff (should be case insensitive and remove bad characters). It should also be a bit faster, since I changed the way it searches.

Make sure you backup your old files first, then just replace them with these (should go in the DVDPro2Sage folder in your SageTV directory). This is sort of my "personal" build, it works with nearly all my DVDs (except for the box sets which I haven't figured out a good way to do yet), but may not work with the STV (I don't think I changed anything important). :)

[Sweep]

actually the same sort of behaviour as with the icon's/images:
1. specific local <name>.xml (<name>.jpg) for specific files
2. a local collection.xml (folder.jpg) as a default for all files in the folder
3. check for title in the generic collection.xml

[stanger89]

Sweep, it should work fine for DVDs, that's all I have, it just looks for the DVD title matching the name of the folder containing the VIDEO_TS folder ie:
You've got:
National Treasure\VIDEO_TS
it will search for National Treasure. The only exception would be if it doesn't think that's a DVD file.

[stanger89]

I think we're coming close to mailbombing here :D

actually the same sort of behaviour as with the icon's/images:
1. specific local <name>.xml (<name>.jpg) for specific files
2. a local collection.xml (folder.jpg) as a default for all files in the folder
3. check for title in the generic collection.xml

I'm leaving this up to mlbdude, since it's part of his STV, all the class does is search for and retrieve info for whatever the STV wants. Shouldn't be too hard, just change it so when using a local XML, just skip the findDVD step and default to index 0, but there's not really any way to do that in the java class.

-edit

Well technically I could, I could probably base it off the filename of the XML, but that would start adding specific behavior to the class, that really should be present in whatever is using the class.

[Sweep]

Hi Stanger, thanks for the quick reply.
With DVD's, i just ment this is poses a problem with local xml files. With a generic xml file, my only problems remains with the titles not exactly matching.
I'll have a go with your 'personal build' and hopefully mlbdude can help.

cheers

[Sweep]

I think we're coming close to mailbombing here :D
hehe, another one, just before turning in ;-)


Well technically I could, I could probably base it off the filename of the XML, but that would start adding specific behavior to the class, that really should be present in whatever is using the class.

This can only work if the class decides what xml file to open, doesn't it ?
if so, then its not that wrong a place for the exception ;-)

[stanger89]

hehe, another one, just before turning in ;-)


This can only work if the class decides what xml file to open, doesn't it ?
if so, then its not that wrong a place for the exception ;-)

But it doesn't, it gets passed the filename of the XML to open. Theoretically, you could say "if collection.xml, search for name, else, not", but that's really not the kind of thing that should be done in a library, that should be done in the calling app, IMO :)

[Sweep]

But it doesn't, it gets passed the filename of the XML to open. Theoretically, you could say "if collection.xml, search for name, else, not", but that's really not the kind of thing that should be done in a library, that should be done in the calling app, IMO :)

Indeed, besides this behaviour is in the stv already when you name the xml <moviefilename>.xml

Maybe mlbdude can help, for now I'll be using the <moviefilename>.xml

[Sweep]

Attached a small app which will scans your movies folder (see .config) and tries to create an xml file per movie(folder).

It looks for IMDB links inside *.nfo or *.url files and optionaly (see .config), when not found, searches IMDB on the movie folder name.
When an IMDB link is found it searches for the first .avi or .mpg and creates a <moviefilename>.xml

[Sweep]

Hi guys, good news!
What worked for me was an upgrade from java 1.4.2 to 1.5.


argh, upgraded to java 1.5.02 and again... the nullpointer exception :(
(the same as in http://forums.freytechnologies.com/forums/showthread.php?p=84666&postcount=1)

Stanger any clues ? What java version are you using ?

for now reverting back to 1.5.01


cheers

[Sweep]

sorry, as it turns out it had nothing to do with the java version :bang:

With the installation of the new java version I also lost the included class xerces.jar (used with the XMLTV plugin) which apparently was causing a conflict, now movieInfo was working but my EPG was no longer updating.

Downloaded a new xerces.jar (Xerces-J-bin.2.6.2.zip from http://xml.apache.org/xerces2-j/download.cgi) and everything seems to be working again.

Hoping it stays that way, cheers
Sweep

[stanger89]

:thumb:

[oshapir]

Could you please post the xerces.jar file you use? I'm having problem getting it...

[stanger89]

FWIW, you don't need that for the XML movie info/DVD Profiler stuff. At least you shouldn't.

[Sweep]

This is the one I'm using now (for xmltv as Stanger mentioned):
http://www.apache.org/dist/xml/xerces-j/Xerces-J-bin.2.6.2.zip

(use the file: xercesImpl.jar)