Phoenix API

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by ace007

I want to ru nthe latest pre-release of SageMC (http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...237#post353237) which says it requires the latest build of Phoenix API which I downloaded. I see I have some references to Phoenix already in my Sage directory structure but I want to check with those of you more knowledable than me where I should put all of these new Phoenix API files.

Thanks

Place the new Pheonix api's in C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV\JARs overwriting the existing ones when prompted to do so.

[MeInMaui]

Just unzip the file into your SageTV directory. The main thing is that the new jar files end up in the JARs directory. You might need to exit sage first in order to overwrite any existing files. Either way, sage has to be restarted after the install to pickup the new files.

Aloha,
Mike

[PLUCKYHD]

Guys sorry If I am beating a dead horse but where are we at on the caching issue of fanart not refreshing changes until sage is shut down and restarted?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

Guys sorry If I am beating a dead horse but where are we at on the caching issue of fanart not refreshing changes until sage is shut down and restarted?

Unfortunately nowhere. It's not a huge priority, and I have a bunch of other things on my plate at the moment. Sorry.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Unfortunately nowhere. It's not a huge priority, and I have a bunch of other things on my plate at the moment. Sorry.

No need to apologize I appreciate all your work. Just wanted to ask I have tried about everything I can to clear the cache to no avail so I figured I would ask.

[cslatt]

Not sure the best place to post this so everyone responsible will see it, but I'm thinking probably here:

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

Just got all of this fan art stuff up and running yesterday and it looks great! Got BMT auto-downloading the metadata and fan art, SageMC and AMIS displaying it, and the Phoenix API in the background making it all possible.

Thank you to everyone involved for all of your hard work - programming, beta testing, writing documentation - this stuff looks fantastic!

[PLUCKYHD]

Excuse the newb question but is there a difference in

phoenix_api_GetMetadataDescription(String key)

and

GetShowDescription

I am currently using getshowdescription but notice I have to do a imdb search after a fanart search to get any description should I be using the phoenix call?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

Excuse the newb question but is there a difference in

phoenix_api_GetMetadataDescription(String key)

and

GetShowDescription

I am currently using getshowdescription but notice I have to do a imdb search after a fanart search to get any description should I be using the phoenix call?

GetMetadataDescription(key) returns a configured description for a given metadata key, and has nothing to do with metadata of a mediafile.

ie, GetMetadataDescription("UserRating") may return something like, "User Rating is the average user rating for a movie out of 10", provided that a metadata label file has been created.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by stuckless

GetMetadataDescription(key) returns a configured description for a given metadata key, and has nothing to do with metadata of a mediafile.

ie, GetMetadataDescription("UserRating") may return something like, "User Rating is the average user rating for a movie out of 10", provided that a metadata label file has been created.

Okay that makes sense where does one find the list of keys available?

[stuckless]

The list of keys are the known sage keys, which are documented in a sticky in the customizations forum and the custom_metadata_fields. (i'll let you search for those )

Or, you can edit .properties file for a media item, and it will be the keys listed in there. Don't use the "x-Key" ones, since they are "extended" keys and are not supported by sage, but rather used by other applications like bmt.

[PLUCKYHD]

I am still having some issues trying out the new scaling feature

I am not understanding the difference in getscale and and createscaled

In codeing it seems like you would want to call getscale but I notice Maui calls createscaled in the layoutstarted hook.

My app was working good but these scaling calls haved started to kill it on the extenders on the pc it runs fine.

[stuckless]

I assume you mean the difference between the native SageTV GetScaledImage and the Phoenix CreateScaledImage.

CreateScaledImage will scale an image and then cache it on the filesystem. Repeat calls to CreateScaledImage will simply return the cached version of that image. So you would use it when your source source image is potentially very large, and you want to create a scaled copy of the that image that will consume less physical memory. The first time you make a call to CreateScaledImage, you will take a performance hit, since it will have to load the original image, and then created a scaled version and save it on the fly.

A standard image scaling function would take a source image and scale it every time. GetScaledImage attempts to only scale an image once.

It might be best, if CreateScaledImage is causing you problems, to just drop its use for now. That part of the api is still under construction.

[PLUCKYHD]

No I don't think it is casuing me problems now that I increased my java heap (only needed for extender)

Will the createscaled image work with any image or only a phoenix call after it?

I am trying to figure a way to cache my reflected images

[stuckless]

CreateScaledImage will work for any image filename. ie, if you passin "images/YouImage.png", then it will create a scaled imae for that filename.

FYI.... Although CreateScaledImage will also work with a Sage MetaImage object (ie, image created from LoadImage), i don't recommend calling CreateScaledImage with a Sage image, since it cannot create a cached image for it, and as a result, it will perform the scaling every time.

[PLUCKYHD]

THANK YOU!!! THANK YOU!!!


This scaling is absolutely fabalous now that I finally figured it out. Being able scale the images to different sizes for different screens/views is awesome and totally great!!!!

Can't thank you enough.

[PLUCKYHD]

Stuckless I see the new reflection API calls Is there a way to cache these reflections with your api versus having to rotate and reflect them every time?

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...797#post356797

[stuckless]

All of the phoenix_api_CreateXXXXX image functions will apply the transformation and cache to the filesystem. For caching to work, the input must be a filename. They will work if you pass in a buffered image or a sage metaimage, but they will not cache. Does that answer your question?

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by stuckless

All of the phoenix_api_CreateXXXXX image functions will apply the transformation and cache to the filesystem. For caching to work, the input must be a filename. They will work if you pass in a buffered image or a sage metaimage, but they will not cache. Does that answer your question?

Kind of So it will not cache the image already transformed you must perform the transformation everytime even if you set the transformation to an attribute and then pass that attribute to the creatscaledimage ?

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

Kind of So it will not cache the image already transformed you must perform the transformation everytime even if you set the transformation to an attribute and then pass that attribute to the creatscaledimage ?

Okay I am not getting this calls to work do I need to create a buffered image before transforming

phoenix_api_CreateReflection(image)

am I missing something?

[stuckless]

the Create apis take a filepath as the first parameter... ie phoenix_api_CreateReflection("images/myimage.png") and the output is a sage metaimage which is consumed by the sage Image node in the stv.
The sage Image component will use an image loaded in the previous call to the image node, if you leave the image name blank for the image control. (See the tutorials if that doesn't make sense )

---- Action: phoenix_api_CreateReflection("myimage.png")
------- Image: (no properties set)