Import recordings from BTV

[Webbo]

I am curerntly performing a parallel run of Sage after running BTV for around 3 years.

Due to this amount of time, I have over 1000+ recordings in BTV that I would like to import into the main Sage TV recorded shows section rather than as separate video files.

Is there any way of importing such shows? BTV stores the show information (Title, Episode, Decription, dates) within the MPG / AVI file directly so unless someone has coded up a suitable tool, I cannot see any way of easily doing this!

Any help much appreciated.

[jdamore]

Hi! and welcome!

For that amount of recordings its tough because there is no way to import them except one at a time. I'm (kinda) sure you can import using Neilm's web server. Maybe one with more experience in this topic will follow me on how to do that.

This question has been around for a while. Maybe someone will come up with a script for a mass import from btv or myth someday.

Good Luck!

[Patilan]

Built-in feature for easy import of shows from BTV? That's a really cool idea, if the Sage people are listening. A whole bunch of people will be more likely to dump BTV for Sage if there's an easy way to do just that.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by jdamore

Maybe someone will come up with a script for a mass import from btv or myth someday.

If someone wants to create such a plugin, contact SageTV for information about the the Media File Metadata Importer, which can be used to create a plugin to support extraction of metadata from imported media files.

- Andy

[mistergq]

just for clarification, this plugin has not been developed has it?

[Khristopher]

Originally Posted by mistergq

just for clarification, this plugin has not been developed has it?

No, it has not.

But anyone with programming skills and some spare time on their hands, could help make the transition from BTV to Sage a lot easier.

When I switched, I just dumped all my recordings into an Imported Video folder....would have been nice to import all the episode info as well, but I wasn't going to enter in the info for each show.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by mistergq

just for clarification, this plugin has not been developed has it?

Originally Posted by Khristopher

No, it has not.

But anyone with programming skills and some spare time on their hands, could help make the transition from BTV to Sage a lot easier.

When I switched, I just dumped all my recordings into an Imported Video folder....would have been nice to import all the episode info as well, but I wasn't going to enter in the info for each show.

I wonder if Craig (cncb) would be able to help with this??? It would be a killer plugin for me too.

[gveres]

If I remember correctly there is a way to get .my files out of BTV (BTV has a nice API to get at the meta data). I think I have seen a plugin mentioned around here that imports .my files.

I haven't had the time to investigate but I will be facing importing of 400 - 500 recordings as well.

Greg

[cncb]

Originally Posted by Brent

I wonder if Craig (cncb) would be able to help with this??? It would be a killer plugin for me too.

Sorry, I reinstalled the OS for Sage so I never reinstalled Beyond TV after this. I don't archive anything so I just used the import video approach. It was a little painful until I got through/watched all the shows recorded in BTV but I didn't have that many so it wasn't too bad.

[Brent]

There are two BTV developers that might be able to help out with this. Not sure how interested they would be in helping unless they were switching to SageTV as well:

Fonceur - maker of many excellent BTV plugins. His BTV Negociator parses show information so he has the know-how and ability to do it.

jmaver - developed the excellent BTVShowInfo plugin. This plugin connects to the BTV server and accesses all show detail information. Using this plugin you can edit one or many shows metadata from the interface.

Another person who might be able to help out is Stephane. He uses SageTV, but has used BTV in the past and is a good developer.

Don't know how much interest we could get from a developer without some sort of incentive though as its a plugin that would be used once. One thing that would make the plugin appeal more to the masses is if you could make it also work with other files such as MCE, Media Portal etc. to import them into the SageTV Shows.

[Brent]

So since a plugin in the next week or so is extremely unlikely, how do you use the webserver plugin to import BTV shows and have them show up in the recorded shows section of SageTV?

[jdamore]

Originally Posted by Brent

So since a plugin in the next week or so is extremely unlikely, how do you use the webserver plugin to import BTV shows and have them show up in the recorded shows section of SageTV?

Brent- Sorry, I was incorrect when I said it could be imported to the recordings via webserver. Sorry to misslead you

Edit:I was wrong.. See next reply

[tmiranda]

You can use the webserver to import the shows.

- Click in Media Library in upper right hand corner.
- Choose Search Imported Videos.
- Leave all the defaults and go to the bottom and click search. This gives you a list of all imported videos.
- For each video click on the show name and then click on [Edit Show Info] towards the bottom of the page.
- Make the changes you need and click save.

Works like a champ even though there is a warning that the function is experimental.

[nielm]

By the way, if anyone with BTV can find a way of extracting the BTV show information into a text file (XML or other), i will see how easy it is to get the webserver to parse it directly, or to make a quck'n'dirty conveter to my Sage XML show info format that can then be imported (without the need for manual edits)...

[Brent]

Originally Posted by nielm

By the way, if anyone with BTV can find a way of extracting the BTV show information into a text file (XML or other), i will see how easy it is to get the webserver to parse it directly, or to make a quck'n'dirty conveter to my Sage XML show info format that can then be imported (without the need for manual edits)...

Nielm,
Thanks for the response. This would be great if you could help out here.

I'm checking on other ways to do this, but I do know of one possibility.

There is a add-on to BeyondTV called BTVShowInfo (download and details here) that I use to edit the metadata stored in BTV recordings. It basically logs into the BTV server and extracts the data for each show and allows you to edit all fields, copy and paste fields etc. It's very nice and something I miss when I'm using SageTV.

Anyway its possible to create plugins to this add-on according to the author. Here's what he says about that:

How to write your own plugin
BTVShowInfo is designed to allow easy plugin manipulation of data. It provides the mechanism for communicating with BTV and selecting data to manipulate, while letting plugins focus on the actual manipulation.

1. In VisualStudio 2003, create a new .net assembly project for your plugin. The plugin must be named PluginXXXX , where XXXX is what your plugin does.
2. Add a reference to BTVShowInfoPluginInterface
3. Create a class that implements IShowInfoEditor
4. In the Initialize member, use the passed in IPluginHost to call AddMenuItem with the text of your plugin menu item
5. In the EditShowInfo member, you are passed the data for the selected shows. Act on those as appropriate, and return true if you modified them.
6. Compile and put your plugin into the BTVShowInfo\Plugins directory.
7. Run BTVShowInfo, select a row and choose your plugin from the menu.
See the sample plugin code in the plugins directory for an example.

I have no experience with VisualStudio (or any programming for that matter), but it looks like its possible anyway. I'll follow up if/when I get more information on other possible solutions.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by nielm

By the way, if anyone with BTV can find a way of extracting the BTV show information into a text file (XML or other), i will see how easy it is to get the webserver to parse it directly, or to make a quck'n'dirty conveter to my Sage XML show info format that can then be imported (without the need for manual edits)...

Nielm,
If we could get an xml file in the following format would that work?

All metadata-info each recorded show into xml files (one xml file for each recorded show selected) with at least these fields:

• Channel Number
• Channel Name
• Recorded Date
• Series Name
• Episode Name
• Episode Description

The resulting name of the xml file would match the filename of the mpg file it extracted the data from.


It's not something that is there today, but I'm seeing if I can get some help on it from a few of the BTV plugin writers. Don't know how it will turn out but it's worth trying.

[nielm]

The ShowID (from ZaptoIT's data) would also be nice -- it would prevent Sage from re-recording shows that BTV already recorded...

[gveres]

The show ID is not something that BTVShowInfo exports. But just getting the data into Sage is worlds ahead.

If I had more time, I would whip up using BTVShowInfo to produce .my files. But alas, work gets in the way.

[jdamore]

Originally Posted by nielm

By the way, if anyone with BTV can find a way of extracting the BTV show information into a text file (XML or other), i will see how easy it is to get the webserver to parse it directly, or to make a quck'n'dirty conveter to my Sage XML show info format that can then be imported (without the need for manual edits)...

Your a man of your word! BTV XML to Sage XML converter...

http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=29311

Super cool!

[nielm]

This was based on the sample XML Brent sent me... I have tried to make it as error-proof as I can (hence the big logging window!)