Need Help getting Fanart to work for folder structure... BMT?

[pingmustard]

Ok, I'm no noob, but it doesn't seem like there's really a guide for dummy that's easy enough for the average Joe to get SageMC and fanart working. I've scoured the forum and failed. I guess my circumstance may not be common amongst Sage users, but let me explain...

I have a bunch of videos/movies that I've tried getting fanart working. Each video/movie is stored in a separate folder. I've been able to get thumbnail displays by creating folder.jpg using an external tool using an external app called Media Info Plus and placing inside each folder.

My main problems/questions are:

1. Does BMT support scrubbing of folder names (I only saw mention of folder names)? Using MediaInfo Plus (movieinfoplus.wiki.sourceforge.net), I'm able to somewhat grab the fanart, but it's ridiculously slow and not ideal/integrated into Sage.

I tried testing this in command line mode, but failed. It seems like BMT wants all video files in one folder. Unfortunately, a lot of my videos are named with abbreviated and would mostly not work like this.


2. I saw SageMC had support for local folder based backgrounds. However, I was unable to find ANY posts related to this other than that found in the faq:

phoenix/mediametadata/fanartSupportClass=sagex.phoenix.fanart.LocalFanartSupport

Can anyone elaborate on how it detects for background images?

I'm running Sage 6.5.9 w/ SageMC (release 3/30/2009)

Help greatly appreciated!

[MacDaddy]

I most definately am not an expert, but I found this post to be helpful. http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dff28jvm_13f4rf57f6

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by pingmustard

1. Does BMT support scrubbing of folder names (I only saw mention of folder names)?

It does not scrub foldernames as titles unless the contents of the folder is a dvd.

I tried testing this in command line mode, but failed. It seems like BMT wants all video files in one folder. Unfortunately, a lot of my videos are named with abbreviated and would mostly not work like this.

Did you pass the --recurse command line arg? BMT doesn't care if your vidoes are in 1 directory or a 1000, but it does expect that the filename contains the movie title. ie, /Movies/Terminator/Terminator.avi is fine... but /Movies/Terminator/1.avi is not.

If your movie filenames are not named in a way that bmt can process, then you have 2 options... the first is either rename your media so that the filename contains a title, or.... submit a patch to the bmt code that will scrape foldernames... whichever is easier.

2. I saw SageMC had support for local folder based backgrounds. However, I was unable to find ANY posts related to this other than that found in the faq:

phoenix/mediametadata/fanartSupportClass=sagex.phoenix.fanart.LocalFanartSupport

Can anyone elaborate on how it detects for background images?

if this is set as your FanartSupport implementation, then SageMC (via phoenix apis) will look for backgrounds that are named as....
move_background.jpg
ie,
/Movies/Terminator/Terminator.avi
/Movies/Terminator/Terminator.jpg (this is the poster)
/Movies/Terminator/Terminator_background.jpg (this is the background)
/Movies/Terminator/Terminator_banner.jpg (this is the banner)

In bmt, be sure that you user --fanartEnabled, but DO NOT specify a central fanart folder.

Personally, if you are using bmt (or mediaScraper) I would just use the central fanart folder model, which is what most (if not all) is using. But, that being said, phoenix does support 3 different types of fanart structures, so feel free to play around with them.

[pingmustard]

Stuckless, thanks for the response.

Unfortunately, my videos are all folder based, and the files are badly named (ie: term_1.avi, term_2.avi), so the LocalFanartSupport seems more feasible.


The other point of having central fan art folder.. I personally prefer to have my meta data and fan art tightly coupled with my video. Without knowing too much of the implementation of Sage, I could easily move/backup, and probably have more options as to retrieve the fan art... However, it's not a showstopper since fan art and related can always be fairly quickly re-downloaded.

Finally, I wouldn't mind getting my hand dirty creating/adding support for folder scrubbing. Can you provide any tip/pointer as to where to get started? If I recompile/add a new jar/class file, do I have to go through the full sage import process (I'm not an expert on installing new modules and such). My java is a bit rusty since most my development have been in .net.

Thanks!

[stuckless]

you can checkout the code from the bmt project page. I would personally look testing your development from the command line rather than from withing sagetv. If you test from within sagetv, you'll have to restart sage for each test.

Personally, if I were you, i'd keep your movies in your folders, but simply rename the video files from "term_1.avi" to "Terminator cd1.avi". It may take you a few hours to rename all files, but that will be a lot less than the amount of time you'll invest into learning java and bmt. BMT doesn't care about the folders but it does care about the file names. If you implement a folder name scraper, then you'll have to make it an option, since there there will to tell whether or not to do a search using the folder or a filename.

[pingmustard]

So I ended up spending a few hours to create an app to simply do some intelligent renaming of the avi files based on folder name. That's working jolly. However, when I try to integrate the BMT into sage, there's 2 odd balls:

1. I'm trying to install BMT 2.3.1 on SageTV 6.5.9 release (instead of the beta per instructions).

2. After follwwing the instructions here: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dff28jvm_13f4rf57f6

a. I noticed my SageMC didn't have anything under Extra folder. I'm hoping this is mainly because I'm running a non-beta version of SageTV.
b. I stopped sage, renamed an avi to trick sage to thinking it's a new video, and received and odd problem. Even though I'm trying to use centralized fan art, it still writes the content out into the local movies directory. The central fan art folder remains untouched...

Here's a piece from my sageclient.properties

phoenix/mediametadata/fanartCentralFolder=C\:\\Fanart
phoenix/mediametadata/fanartEnabled=true
phoenix/mediametadata/fanartSupportClass=sagex.phoenix.fanart.PhoenixFanartSupport
phoenix/mediametadata/mediaMetadataSupportClass=bmt.BMTMetadataSupport
phoenix/mediametadata/parseMediaFileForTVSeries=false

I don't really mind the centralized fanart, but now it doesn't seem to store correctly...

Any clues? Is BMT 2.3.1 expected to work for Sage 6.5.9 ? If not, can you refer me to a version that does? I'm not ready to upgrade my sage to a new beta...

Thanks

[superdodge]

I am experiencing the same problem with fanart installing locally rather than in my central file. I happen to be using the exact same location for my central fanrt..do you think that could have anything to do with the problem?

[stuckless]

bmt will run with the 6.5.9 release of sage, but don't expect fanart to work correctly, epecially for TV. The metadata for movies will work, but some fanart probably will not show up. There's a reason why bmt/phoenix and the latest sagemc relies on the sage beta.... the latest sage beta has new apis that are required for the fanart lookups to work correctly, especially for TV shows.

That being said, if you still want to forge ahead... then after you install bmt, then you need to import the bmt plugin into sagemc as well, using the SageMC load stv menu. Once that is done, you should see an new Metadata/Fanart menu in the Extras menu. If you are not, then make sure you are running the latest sagemc beta, since that's what's the stvi was based on. Also, to configure your central fanart folder, use sagemc fanart menus for setting the central fanart folder and not the bmt one added under metadata/fanart. The bmt one is broken from what I hear.

You mentioned, those are the properties from your sageclient.properties? bmt does not use the sageclient.properties, but rather it's own metadata.properties. Did you add those to the sageclient.properties?

@superdodge - bmt only writes the files locally if the central fanart folder is not set. If you running from the command line, then use --fanartFolder, if you are running in STV, then re-select your central fanart folder using SageMC menus.

[superdodge]

OK...

Well I have this working to some extent now...

I found a setting in the metadata.properties file that was autocreated for me that said SetTVAsRecordedShow=false

I changed this setting to true and now fanart from the central fanart folder is displayed on my shows; however, in some instances BMT still downloads and saves fanart locally although it also saves fanart in the central fanart directory.

Does anyone else have any experience with something like this?

[superdodge]

Originally Posted by stuckless

You mentioned, those are the properties from your sageclient.properties? bmt does not use the sageclient.properties, but rather it's own metadata.properties. Did you add those to the sageclient.properties?

I have the same lines in my sageclient.properties file and I did not add them manually or anything like that.

[pingmustard]

I didn't add the pheonix entries into the sageclient.properties. Those were auto-added by Sage(MC). I will try to import the plugin tonight and post back how things go.

I had 2 other quick questions that may be slightly off topic from here:

1. Under "My Videos", is there anyway to exclude or re-organize my recordings from my movies? Right now, I have 2 different folders for this, but my recordings have about 200 shows cluttering the screen. I set it to use "file system" display option. How is everyone generally using this?

2. Is there a specific setting to customize quality/size of thumbnail/background that gets used for fanart/posters? The default SageMC seems to download very low res thumbnails for display on my 52".

[pingmustard]

Ok, I decided to try the latest SageTV + MC + BMT per instructions here:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dff28jvm_13f4rf57f6

Things seem to be semi working now.

1. EPG - when clicking on a movie and then MetaData/Fanart, it is able to locate fanart sometimes, but most the time it fails. A look at mailcheck.log shows:

2009-05-10 21:01:27,309 ERROR [AWT-EventQueue-0] org.jdna.media.metadata.impl.composite.MetadataProviderContainer (MetadataProviderContainer.java:63) - Failed Search; Provider or ProviderInfo is not known; Query: SearchQuery; Type: TV; TITLE:Forgetting Sarah Marshall;
java.lang.NullPointerException
	at org.jdna.media.metadata.MediaMetadataFactory.canProviderAcceptQuery(MediaMetadataFactory.java:194)
	at org.jdna.media.metadata.impl.composite.MetadataProviderContainer.search(MetadataProviderContainer.java:46)
	at bmt.BMTMetadataSupport.getMetadataSearchResults(BMTMetadataSupport.java:173)
	at phoenix.MediaMetadataAPI.GetMetadataSearchResults(MediaMetadataAPI.java:152)
	at phoenix.MediaMetadataAPI.GetMetadataSearchResults(MediaMetadataAPI.java:168)
	at phoenix.api.GetMetadataSearchResults(api.java:210)
	at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
	at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
	at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
	at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
	at sage.e$d.a(Unknown Source)

2. My Videos - retrieving fan art from individual videos seems to download fanart fine. However, it is only able to display backgrounds correctly. It only displays thumbnails for videos that have corresponding jpg named after the original movie. At some point, it did display the thumbnail for posters from the central fan art folder, but I'm stumped at how that happened and can't get that working again :-/

Misc questions:

Is it possible to pre-download fanart with any new epg data? The idea would be that whenever a movie is selected, it would simply display available thumbnail/background immediately.


Just curious if these are known issues or why this is happening?

Thanks!

[stuckless]

@pingmustard - your error is related to the fact you have an invalidate provider id in your provider configuartion for your default metadata provider list. if you post your defaultProvider from your metadata.properties, I can probably tell you which one.

as for #2... i would check to see if you have any, local fanart images, ie, folder.jpg, or moviename.jpg, and if so, remove them. then restart sage (just for good measure)... then it should start using the central fanart folder.

As for your suggestion about the epg data.... i doubt bmt will ever do that automatically, but there's nothing stopping someone from writing a plugin that does do it.

[pingmustard]

Hi Stuckless --

1. I tried changing the provider so that themoviedb.org was first using the exra UI for BMT, but had the same results. It doesn't seem like it's even trying to submit a request since the fanart popup window appears but no option/movie titles are available to search with. The prompt only appears for 1 out of 10 movies in the EPG.

Here's my metadata.properties:

/metadata/backgroundImageWidth=-1
/metadata/bannerImageWidth=-1
/metadata/defaultProviderId=themoviedb.org,tvdb,imdb.xml,imdb
/metadata/enableDefaultSTVPosterCompatibility=false
/metadata/goodScoreThreshold=0.9
/metadata/importTVAsRecordedShows=false
/metadata/maxDownloadableImages=5
/metadata/persistenceClass=org.jdna.media.metadata.impl.sage.SageTVPropertiesWithCentralFanartPersistence
/metadata/posterImageWidth=200
/metadata/scoreAlternateTitles=true
/metadata/videoMetadataProviders=org.jdna.media.metadata.impl.tvdb.TVDBMetadataProvider,org.jdna.media.metadata.impl.imdb.IMDBMetaDataProvider,org.jdna.media.metadata.impl.nielm.NielmIMDBMetaDataProvider,,org.jdna.media.metadata.impl.dvdproflocal.LocalDVDProfMetaDataProvider,org.jdna.media.metadata.impl.themoviedb.TheMovieDBMetadataProvider,org.jdna.media.metadata.impl.mymovies.MyMoviesMetadataProvider
/metadata/wordsToClean=1080p,720p,480p,1080i,720i,480i,dvd,dvdrip,cam,ts,tc,scr,screener,dvdscr,xvid,divx,avi,vrs,repack,mallat,proper,dmt,dmd,stv,HDTV,x264

Here's the last few lines from mailcheck.log

2009-05-11 23:55:18,059 DEBUG [AWT-EventQueue-0] org.jdna.media.metadata.impl.xbmc.XbmcScraperProcessor (XbmcScraperProcessor.java:173) - Expression: .*/(.*)s([0-9]{1,2})[ex]([[0-9]]{1,2})
2009-05-11 23:55:18,059 DEBUG [AWT-EventQueue-0] org.jdna.media.metadata.impl.xbmc.XbmcScraperProcessor (XbmcScraperProcessor.java:259) - Processing output buffers for input buffer references.
2009-05-11 23:55:18,059 DEBUG [AWT-EventQueue-0] org.jdna.media.metadata.impl.xbmc.XbmcScraperProcessor (XbmcScraperProcessor.java:175) - Expression: .*/(.*)s([0-9]{1,2})[ex]([[0-9]]{1,2})
2009-05-11 23:55:18,059 DEBUG [AWT-EventQueue-0] org.jdna.media.metadata.impl.xbmc.XbmcScraperProcessor (XbmcScraperProcessor.java:176) -      Input: airing://4780280
2009-05-11 23:55:18,059 DEBUG [AWT-EventQueue-0] org.jdna.media.metadata.impl.xbmc.XbmcScraperProcessor (XbmcScraperProcessor.java:190) - No Match! Expression: .*/(.*)s([0-9]{1,2})[ex]([[0-9]]{1,2}); Text: airing://4780280;
2009-05-11 23:55:18,059 DEBUG [AWT-EventQueue-0] org.jdna.media.metadata.impl.xbmc.XbmcScraperProcessor (XbmcScraperProcessor.java:125) - ** END Function: GetShowName; Dest: 3; ClearBuffers: true
2009-05-11 23:55:18,059 DEBUG [AWT-EventQueue-0] org.jdna.media.metadata.impl.xbmc.XbmcScraperProcessor (XbmcScraperProcessor.java:298) - Get Int Buffer: 3; Text: 
2009-05-11 23:55:18,059 DEBUG [AWT-EventQueue-0] org.jdna.media.util.FileNameUtils (FileNameUtils.java:107) - Created Query: SearchQuery; Type: MOVIE; 
2009-05-11 23:55:18,059 DEBUG [AWT-EventQueue-0] bmt.BMTMetadataSupport (BMTMetadataSupport.java:171) - Metadata Search for: SearchQuery; Type: TV; TITLE:American Psycho II All American Girl;; media: A[4780280,4205182,"American Psycho II: All American Girl",20622@0511.23:35,90]
2009-05-11 23:55:18,059 DEBUG [AWT-EventQueue-0] org.jdna.media.metadata.MediaMetadataFactory (MediaMetadataFactory.java:153) - Multiple Provider Ids were passed; themoviedb.org,tvdb,imdb.xml,imdb; Creating a MetadataProviderContainer for them...
2009-05-11 23:55:18,059 DEBUG [AWT-EventQueue-0] org.jdna.media.metadata.impl.composite.MetadataProviderContainer (MetadataProviderContainer.java:59) - Provider: themoviedb.org cannot handle query: SearchQuery; Type: TV; TITLE:American Psycho II All American Girl;
2009-05-11 23:55:18,059 DEBUG [AWT-EventQueue-0] org.jdna.url.CachedUrl (CachedUrl.java:36) - Reloading existing cached url: C:\Program Files (x86)\SageTV\SageTV\cache\url\0bae111c3afecee89bbe27c814f8262e.properties
2009-05-11 23:55:18,059 DEBUG [AWT-EventQueue-0] org.jdna.media.metadata.impl.tvdb.TVDBSearchParser (TVDBSearchParser.java:52) - TVDB SearchQuery Url: CachedUrl: http://www.thetvdb.com/api/GetSeries.php?seriesname=American+Psycho+II+All+American+Girl; UrlId: 0bae111c3afecee89bbe27c814f8262e
2009-05-11 23:55:18,059 DEBUG [AWT-EventQueue-0] org.jdna.url.CachedUrl (CachedUrl.java:117) - Cached File exists: C:\Program Files (x86)\SageTV\SageTV\cache\url\0bae111c3afecee89bbe27c814f8262e.cache so we'll just use it.
2009-05-11 23:55:18,059  WARN [AWT-EventQueue-0] org.jdna.media.metadata.impl.tvdb.TVDBSearchParser (TVDBSearchParser.java:67) - Could not find any results for: CachedUrl: http://www.thetvdb.com/api/GetSeries.php?seriesname=American+Psycho+II+All+American+Girl; UrlId: 0bae111c3afecee89bbe27c814f8262e
2009-05-11 23:55:18,059 DEBUG [AWT-EventQueue-0] org.jdna.media.metadata.impl.composite.MetadataProviderContainer (MetadataProviderContainer.java:50) - Not a good search using provider: tvdb; Query: SearchQuery; Type: TV; TITLE:American Psycho II All American Girl;; will try another one.
2009-05-11 23:55:18,059 DEBUG [AWT-EventQueue-0] org.jdna.media.metadata.impl.composite.MetadataProviderContainer (MetadataProviderContainer.java:59) - Provider: imdb.xml cannot handle query: SearchQuery; Type: TV; TITLE:American Psycho II All American Girl;
2009-05-11 23:55:18,059 DEBUG [AWT-EventQueue-0] org.jdna.media.metadata.impl.composite.MetadataProviderContainer (MetadataProviderContainer.java:59) - Provider: imdb cannot handle query: SearchQuery; Type: TV; TITLE:American Psycho II All American Girl;
2009-05-11 23:55:18,059 DEBUG [AWT-EventQueue-0] bmt.BMTMetadataSupport (BMTMetadataSupport.java:175) - No matches for: SearchQuery; Type: TV; TITLE:American Psycho II All American Girl;

#2 -- I tried clearing out all jpg I could find recursively. Still same problem...the images from poster don't show. On another note, I've noticed if fanart background cycle is enabled, videos with only 1 background about to cycle will simply have the fanart background removed and just show the sageMC UI. Some videos that have multiple background actually cycle. Is this is sageMC issue or BMT (possibly in how data are stored)?

The questions keep on coming...

#3 -- This is probably the least of my tweaks I'd care for, but is it possible to resize background to fit the screen resolution when downloaded instead of display/resize dynamically? This would make load time quicker (and probably save space in the long run).

Thanks again for the help!

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by pingmustard

The prompt only appears for 1 out of 10 movies in the EPG.

Since it does appear one of 10 times for "movies" the I would think that this is related to the fact that tvdb can't lookup information for a movie. Because it's an epg item, then it will get passed to tvdb for a lookup, and my guess is that tvdb doesn't have anything that resembles the search, so it returns nothing. (perhaps i need a better message, like "no results found")

Here's the last few lines from mailcheck.log

That confirms my theory the tvdb didn't find anything for the search.

#2 -- I tried clearing out all jpg I could find recursively. Still same problem...the images from poster don't show. On another note, I've noticed if fanart background cycle is enabled, videos with only 1 background about to cycle will simply have the fanart background removed and just show the sageMC UI. Some videos that have multiple background actually cycle. Is this is sageMC issue or BMT (possibly in how data are stored)?

I can't speak for the fanart cycling... but I would think that if works in 1 case, then it should work in all cases, except where it can't find the fanart.

Perhaps you could use the --report=detailed from the commandline on a couple of media files that are not working. I think you can use the --report and pass one or more filenames as parameters. --report creates a report that is human readable and it shows how the fanart apis interpret your media files. It will also check your system for problems.

#3 -- This is probably the least of my tweaks I'd care for, but is it possible to resize background to fit the screen resolution when downloaded instead of display/resize dynamically? This would make load time quicker (and probably save space in the long run).

Finally.... something that I can conclusively answer ... use the

/metadata/backgroundImageWidth=780

property in the metadata.properties file. Set it to be the screen width, ie, 780, 1920, etc, the default is -1, which means don't scale.