Episode Information exported into Video Library

[Belgrath]

Hi all,

Not sure if there is a solution for this already; perhaps someone can point me in the correct direction if there is which a few steps on how to do so.

So basically now that I've been using Sage for a few months I have a bunch of recordings that I now want to be able to place into my Video Library. The main reason is that I've been able to remove the various commercials and have re-encoded them into DivX to save some considerable harddisk space. What I don't want to lose though is the episode information for each video however.

A few questions:
- How do you guys/gals approach this problem and your solution
- Are there plugins today that will allow me to export the episode information from the Current Recordings into an XML file that I could use in my Video Library Directory

Any other ideas would be kindly appreciated.

Regards,
Belgrath

[Belgrath]

Does everyone keep their recordings in the recording directory or do you move them all into the imported video directory?

Belgrath

[stanger89]

Well there are a couple things, and it depends at what state your recordings are at.

The easiest way to get recordings into the library is to just choose the Archive option in SageTV. It doesn't actually move them, but they will hence be shown in the Archived Videos section.

Beyond that, if you've still got them in the Recording directory, see this about recompressing them and retaining the info:
http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthr...+recompression

I believe you can move files from your recording directory to a video import directory and retain info, but I'm not sure where they show up. I know this has been discussed though.

Finally, Sage 6 supports native transcoding, so you might want to look at that.

[Belgrath]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Well there are a couple things, and it depends at what state your recordings are at.

The easiest way to get recordings into the library is to just choose the Archive option in SageTV. It doesn't actually move them, but they will hence be shown in the Archived Videos section.

Beyond that, if you've still got them in the Recording directory, see this about recompressing them and retaining the info:
http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthr...+recompression

I believe you can move files from your recording directory to a video import directory and retain info, but I'm not sure where they show up. I know this has been discussed though.

Finally, Sage 6 supports native transcoding, so you might want to look at that.

I'm basically in the stage of compressing all of these episodes. So I take the MPEG, remove the commercials, then re-encode into divX. If I can have Sage view the episodes back in the Archived/Sage Recordings that would be great. As well as retaining the showinfo. Else I'd settle for the imported video section, again with the showinfo.

Thanks for the reply, any further comments?

Belgrath

[AngelofDeth]

If you keep the same filename, but just change the extension, and "archive" them, Sage will keep all the show infomation. You can also just keep them as recordings, as long as you keep the same filename sage will keep show information.

[steingra]

Originally Posted by Belgrath

I'm basically in the stage of compressing all of these episodes. So I take the MPEG, remove the commercials, then re-encode into divX. If I can have Sage view the episodes back in the Archived/Sage Recordings that would be great. As well as retaining the showinfo. Else I'd settle for the imported video section, again with the showinfo.

Thanks for the reply, any further comments?

Belgrath

Let me know how this goes. I am thinking of doing this with some of my sagetv recordings.
Thanks

[Belgrath]

Originally Posted by AngelofDeth

If you keep the same filename, but just change the extension, and "archive" them, Sage will keep all the show infomation. You can also just keep them as recordings, as long as you keep the same filename sage will keep show information.

Yup this worked, but because my files are DivX I think its busted other things. For instance I'm unable to FF or RW thru the episode, and the timer length is appearing as a 450hr show But I still have my program information... heh

I think I'm going to move the various episodes into the Video Library instead.

Curious to see how others manage all of their episodes and TV shows after the recordings have been done. I read on one of the threads that someone had 1000+ shows taped. How do they manage all of those, especially if they've already removed the various commercials and done compression on the show.

Thanks ahead of time, keep the comments coming,
Belgrath

[Kirby]

Originally Posted by stanger89

I believe you can move files from your recording directory to a video import directory and retain info, but I'm not sure where they show up. I know this has been discussed though.

Yes this works. You shutdown all Sage instances (service too) and move the files from a recording directory to an Import directory. Then when you start Sage back up, it sees the files in the import directory, keeps the show data in tact, and will store the files in "Archived Recordings" in the default STV (not "Imported").

I dont do this anymore though. Now I use IMDB lookups for all my archived content, and I dont archive TV shows (only movies and concerts).

One last method to get show data to appear, although time consuming, is to use Neilm's webserver, and you can put any show data in you want, and generate a new EPGID for the file, which pushes the info into the Sage DB.

[lobosrul]

I'd love to be able to use Nielm's IMDB lookup system for episode info. I've got 100's of divx and mp4 files in my Sage imports folder, put into sub-folders for the TV show then into sub-folders per season, then the files are in a format like 2.01 Episode Name.

It's possible to do a manual search and tag each episode, but that would be very time consuming. I was playing around with Studio to see if it was possible to create a system where you could specify the TV Show name, then have every file in the folder automatically looked up in IMDB and tagged.

Its obvious I would need acces to Nielm's source code, or put together the Java code myself, which is probably beyond my capabilities (I've done a bit of php/MySQL coding and Javascript).

Then, probably a bit of a hack would be needed in the My Videos section (I use SageMC). I'd like the Genre system to list "Lost" under Drama, not all 50 or so episodes of Lost.

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by lobosrul

Its obvious I would need acces to Nielm's source code, or put together the Java code myself, which is probably beyond my capabilities (I've done a bit of php/MySQL coding and Javascript).

.

Well, Nielm usually has a link to his source code on his download pages, here is the link to the source code for the IMDB search, http://sageplugins.cvs.sourceforge.n...gins/sageimdb/

[Belgrath]

Originally Posted by lobosrul

I'd love to be able to use Nielm's IMDB lookup system for episode info. I've got 100's of divx and mp4 files in my Sage imports folder, put into sub-folders for the TV show then into sub-folders per season, then the files are in a format like 2.01 Episode Name.

It's possible to do a manual search and tag each episode, but that would be very time consuming. I was playing around with Studio to see if it was possible to create a system where you could specify the TV Show name, then have every file in the folder automatically looked up in IMDB and tagged.

Its obvious I would need acces to Nielm's source code, or put together the Java code myself, which is probably beyond my capabilities (I've done a bit of php/MySQL coding and Javascript).

Then, probably a bit of a hack would be needed in the My Videos section (I use SageMC). I'd like the Genre system to list "Lost" under Drama, not all 50 or so episodes of Lost.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
How about this collection.xml file; can someone point me to a link that describes how I can use this aggregate file (and where to place it) with an addon (if there is one) in order to populate my episode info in the video library folder.

Many thanks ahead of time,
Belgrath

[stanger89]

While that could (theoretically) be used for episode info, I don't think it would work. The "collection.xml" is an export from DVD Profiler, and DVD Profiler only supports DVDs (movies). I'm not aware of a tool that would build a properly formatted collection.xml with episode data, and trying to do it by hand would be quite difficult.

[Belgrath]

Originally Posted by stanger89

While that could (theoretically) be used for episode info, I don't think it would work. The "collection.xml" is an export from DVD Profiler, and DVD Profiler only supports DVDs (movies). I'm not aware of a tool that would build a properly formatted collection.xml with episode data, and trying to do it by hand would be quite difficult.

---------------------------------

Ug....

What about the XML export file that is created with the web interface tool.

Question1:
If I'm understanding what you're saying here and after reading several threads. If I want to move my episodes from the recording directory into the Video Library then I'll need to create a separate XML file per episode and place it in the same directory as the video.

Question 2:
I've tried importing this XML file into Excel so that I could easily do some updating. But for some reason most of the <tags> create new row onto itself; not sure why this is since each of the attributes are related to one another.

epgId title episode category
EP4465830071 Title Show Food
EP4465830071 Show #1
EP4465830071 Science fiction
EP4465830071

[GKusnick]

Why import into Excel? Just edit the XML directly using Notepad or whatever.

On the larger question: if you don't care where the episodes are physically stored, but just want them to display in the Video Library screen rather than the SageTV Recordings screen, then just leave them where they are and use the Archive/Unarchive commands to move them back and forth between display categories.

If you do care where they get stored, then it's still probably simpler to physically move the files from one recording directory to another, and keep the episode info in Wiz.bin, rather than moving them to import directories and having to mess with XML files.

The bottom line is that they don't have to be in an import directory to be classified as Video Library files by Sage. You can change the classification using the Archive command without moving the files at all.

[Necro]

I actually made a post about this Lobosrul. There is a great plugin for MediaPortal that does this now (grabs all of the information from a site setup just for this purpose), but I'd like to integrate everything into SageTV. Viewing via directories works, its just very 'basic'.

Here's the MediaPortal plugin: http://www.team-mediaportal.com/file...VSeriesplugin/)

There's also this one for XLobby, although its unfinished:
http://www.xlobby.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4852

If it would be possible to reference the same sites they do and pull down/populate the information in the database for the Imported Video section, I think it would become 100x better.

[Belgrath]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Why import into Excel? Just edit the XML directly using Notepad or whatever.

I think it'd be much easier to update in Excel since I'm probably going to add alot more descriptions into each of the show episodes than what is described for alot of them. Alot of times I'm see a 1 line entry which can be expanded upon

Originally Posted by GKusnick

On the larger question: if you don't care where the episodes are physically stored, but just want them to display in the Video Library screen rather than the SageTV Recordings screen, then just leave them where they are and use the Archive/Unarchive commands to move them back and forth between display categories.

Yes the archive and unarchive tags will allow me to view episodes in either the Sage Recordings, or the Media>Archive Recordings. I'm thinking it might be easier for me to move them all into the Media>Imported Video and then rename all shows with a season-episode and then place them into season folders.

Originally Posted by GKusnick

If you do care where they get stored, then it's still probably simpler to physically move the files from one recording directory to another, and keep the episode info in Wiz.bin, rather than moving them to import directories and having to mess with XML files.

Rememeber that I'm editing the original tapings to remove needless commercials and then re-encoding them as divX. I think that I'm only able to play these files as if they were imported videos.

Originally Posted by GKusnick

The bottom line is that they don't have to be in an import directory to be classified as Video Library files by Sage. You can change the classification using the Archive command without moving the files at all.

[Belgrath]

Originally Posted by stanger89

While that could (theoretically) be used for episode info, I don't think it would work. The "collection.xml" is an export from DVD Profiler, and DVD Profiler only supports DVDs (movies). I'm not aware of a tool that would build a properly formatted collection.xml with episode data, and trying to do it by hand would be quite difficult.

Can someone post up an example collection.xml file and what tags it would contain...... fun stuff

[haubrija]

Originally Posted by Necro

I actually made a post about this Lobosrul. There is a great plugin for MediaPortal that does this now (grabs all of the information from a site setup just for this purpose), but I'd like to integrate everything into SageTV. Viewing via directories works, its just very 'basic'.

Here's the MediaPortal plugin: http://www.team-mediaportal.com/file...VSeriesplugin/)

There's also this one for XLobby, although its unfinished:
http://www.xlobby.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4852

If it would be possible to reference the same sites they do and pull down/populate the information in the database for the Imported Video section, I think it would become 100x better.

Yeah this originated with Meedio and it was the best thing about it. It's come up here before, most recently here:

http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ad.php?t=20838

We just need a developer to give it a shot and we'd be good.

[Necro]

I think, honestly now, that this would be one way to get ahead of the curve in regards to media. With increasing numbers of people using iTunes, etc., to download tv shows this will become more and more of an issue. By having support for this - in some way - Sage would basically invite a whole host of other users that now wouldnt be using sage.

[dvd_maniac]

I'm surprised the .my file stvi created by JREkiwi Located Here hasn't been brought up here.
I have almost 6000 episodes now and I use this STVI to generate my files which capture the info of all recordings and can follow it to the import folder.
I cut out commercails and encode to H.264 and lose the episode number and place in the Import directory.One of the features that this has that is great is the ability to create .my files for an enitre TV series.
For instance I had recorded all of the Simpsons (18 seasons is a lot of episodes) and when this STVI came out I just created all available .my files for the Series. It looks at everything in the wiz.bin and future airings and creates the file. Then it took about 15 minutes to put the files in the proper folder. I have each tv show in their own folder and then each season and finally each episodes
ex:
\\TV\Animated\Simpsons\18\18x04 Treehouse of Horror XVI\18x04 Treehouse of Horror XVII.mp4
and the info file:
\\TV\Animated\Simpsons\18\18x04 Treehouse of Horror XVI\18x04 Treehouse of Horror XVII.my

Another example is I ripped the entire Star Trek Original and TNG series from DVD, encoded them and placed them in an Import directory. When I saw a marathon on for them I used this STVI to create my files for shows that were never recorded by Sage!!!