Plugin :: PlayOn for SageTV v1.5

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by terrencegf

Ever since I upgraded to v.1.5.x (currently on v.1.5.5), I can no longer get my full Instant Watch Queue.

Originally Posted by DMT

Still can't figure out why I am missing some netflix titles. As a test, sage 7.0.23 using the default ui and playonstvi version 1.4 -- no problem. Soon as I upgrade for example I can't see PlayON\Netflix\Period Pieces\20th Century Period Pieces\A-B\Australia -- not all the titles are listed.

I'll need to see logs from both of you. Use the plugin to navigate to a folder that you know is missing videos and post a log using the instructions in my signature along with the names of the videos that are missing.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by sacrament055

Hey EP, I noticed the kids section only the bottom option seemed to work. I tried Nick, Nick toons, PBS kids, all show empty but if I browse through Playon they show to be working. Thanks for the outstanding work here.

Just checked them on my machine and they're working for me. Can you try selecting one of those and then post the log? FYI, make sure you're version of PlayOn is fully updated since they sometimes change the names of paths.

Originally Posted by sacrament055

One more item I'm curious about. In an effort to support multiple extenders via playon I purchased 2 licenses and have it running on two different servers. If I use the UPNP browser I can see both playon servers but when I attempt to browse/connect to my secondary (non colocated server) it says there was an error. If I use the Playon android app it works fine for either one so I know its working but the sage plugin only works with the local.

I haven't tried that but it should work if you're just browsing UPnP servers, I can check that one out. As far as setting up the plugin to use a specific PlayOn server for a specific extender, I haven't done any work on it yet, but I believe it would be pretty simple but I won't be able to look into it for a while.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by pingmustard

it will buffer, show the "Loading" image (or probably whatever image the Playon server renders back) and, and then just sits in "pause mode". It seems like data is being streamed to STV, but it's not able to play it?

This plugin just handles navigating PlayOn, any playback issues are strictly between PlayOn and SageTV. That being said, this sounds like a SageTV issue and one thing you can do to take my plugin out of the equation is so you can submit a support request to Sage is...

1. Start playing back a video.
2. Open up your %TEMP% directory and find the video that's streaming (it'll be an .flv). You'll be able to recognize it pretty easily since it'll be continuously growing in size.
3. Kill the SageTV Process so that it won't delete the .flv
4. Copy the .flv into a SageTV import directory (name it something recognizable)
5. Try playing back that video in Sage.

Originally Posted by pingmustard

The Playon Importer option to change video path via GUI just didn't really give me the option to do so.

When you click that button it should bring you up a list of all your Media Import Directories. If you'd like to use a different path you'll first need to add it in

Setup->Detailed Setup->General->Media Center Import Directories

I thought I fixed the issue with 64-bit Windows, i'll have to take a look and see how it broke again.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by sbeaulieu

I like direct access to the major channels, but I didn't see YouTube there? I use it to create a playlist of my favorite music videos. Is there a Play All option so that I can sequentially play all videos in a folder?

Nope, there's currently no way to make a playlist of PlayOn videos. And I didn't include Youtube because SageTV already supports Youtube pretty well in the core.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by touchstone

Is there any chance of a linux version of this plugin in the foreseeable future?

It's a great plugin -- hate to see it go permanently Windows-only.

The problem is when I go to create the executables for Linux they seem to only work with specific versions of Perl installed. I don't know why this is since the binaries shouldn't have any external dependencies so its a bit of an annoying mystery. Regardless, I'm not willing to put in the time it would take to investigate and fix this problem so that leaves me with only two paths to supporting Linux...

1. Go all Java - Theres a nice UPnP library for Java i've been investigating and if I were to use it I could be fully multiplatform. The problem here is that the library is very complicated and I don't know Java that well so i'm not making much progress.
2. Spend some $$$ - Active State has a neat tool that can generate Perl Binaries for all platforms straight from Windows. Problem here is that it costs $300 and that's a pretty hefty investment.

So to answer your question

Originally Posted by touchstone

Is there any chance of a linux version of this plugin in the foreseeable future?

No

[wayner]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

1. Start playing back a video.
2. Open up your %TEMP% directory and find the video that's streaming (it'll be an .flv). You'll be able to recognize it pretty easily since it'll be continuously growing in size.
3. Kill the SageTV Process so that it won't delete the .flv
4. Copy the .flv into a SageTV import directory (name it something recognizable)
5. Try playing back that video in Sage.

Does this mean you could just keep the .flv files around and essentially download content from Netflix, et al, rather than just stream it?

[DMT]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

I'll need to see logs from both of you. Use the plugin to navigate to a folder that you know is missing videos and post a log using the instructions in my signature along with the names of the videos that are missing.

Attached are 3 logs. I have marked 'MISSING' in the log(s) for the titles I can't see in sage. Also a log for reference with no missing titles. Many thanks for all your help.

[thelinuxman]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

The problem is when I go to create the executables for Linux they seem to only work with specific versions of Perl installed. I don't know why this is since the binaries shouldn't have any external dependencies so its a bit of an annoying mystery. Regardless, I'm not willing to put in the time it would take to investigate and fix this problem so that leaves me with only two paths to supporting Linux...

1. Go all Java - Theres a nice UPnP library for Java i've been investigating and if I were to use it I could be fully multiplatform. The problem here is that the library is very complicated and I don't know Java that well so i'm not making much progress.
2. Spend some $$$ - Active State has a neat tool that can generate Perl Binaries for all platforms straight from Windows. Problem here is that it costs $300 and that's a pretty hefty investment.

So to answer your question No

Is there a way you can make the previous version available for Linux users?

[terrencegf]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

I'll need to see logs from both of you. Use the plugin to navigate to a folder that you know is missing videos and post a log using the instructions in my signature along with the names of the videos that are missing.

Looking at the logs, I actually figured out the problem on my own. I still don't know WHY the problem exists, but I was able to "fix" it.

The logs showed no errors at all, but it turns out that in both cases ("Queue Top 50" and "Alphabetical"), the last displayed video in the list was just before a movie called "Love is the Devil". When I removed that movie from my Netflix Instant Queue, all the rest of my Instant Queue reappeared, in both Alphabetical and Queue Top 50 configurations. So there is something weird with that one movie that causes the plugin to stop outputting the rest of the movies.

I'd be curious to see if anyone else can add this movie to the middle of their instant queue and get the same behavior.

[pingmustard]

I fixed the problem! It turned out to be the default video codecs (provided by Sage if I recall correct) I was using just didn't work. I had to switch to EVR, change the video/audio decoder/renders, and that did the job. Didn't suspect this since normal video playback of my recording/videos worked fine.

Thanks for the prompt reply though. It'll be useful if I need to troubleshoot in the future Keep up the awesome work!

Now to setup my android tablet/phones to connect into sage...

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

This plugin just handles navigating PlayOn, any playback issues are strictly between PlayOn and SageTV. That being said, this sounds like a SageTV issue and one thing you can do to take my plugin out of the equation is so you can submit a support request to Sage is...

1. Start playing back a video.
2. Open up your %TEMP% directory and find the video that's streaming (it'll be an .flv). You'll be able to recognize it pretty easily since it'll be continuously growing in size.
3. Kill the SageTV Process so that it won't delete the .flv
4. Copy the .flv into a SageTV import directory (name it something recognizable)
5. Try playing back that video in Sage.

When you click that button it should bring you up a list of all your Media Import Directories. If you'd like to use a different path you'll first need to add it in

Setup->Detailed Setup->General->Media Center Import Directories

I thought I fixed the issue with 64-bit Windows, i'll have to take a look and see how it broke again.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by thelinuxman

Is there a way you can make the previous version available for Linux users?

The previous version did not work on Linux either.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

The problem is when I go to create the executables for Linux they seem to only work with specific versions of Perl installed. I don't know why this is since the binaries shouldn't have any external dependencies so its a bit of an annoying mystery. Regardless, I'm not willing to put in the time it would take to investigate and fix this problem so that leaves me with only two paths to supporting Linux...

1. Go all Java - Theres a nice UPnP library for Java i've been investigating and if I were to use it I could be fully multiplatform. The problem here is that the library is very complicated and I don't know Java that well so i'm not making much progress.
2. Spend some $$$ - Active State has a neat tool that can generate Perl Binaries for all platforms straight from Windows. Problem here is that it costs $300 and that's a pretty hefty investment.

So to answer your question No

Very disappointing. Can you recruit a Linux Perl guru to take a look at it, maybe there is something you have overlooked?

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by wayner

Does this mean you could just keep the .flv files around and essentially download content from Netflix, et al, rather than just stream it?

PodcastRecorder does this, but it will not work for PlayOn. Maybe in the future.....

[thelinuxman]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

The previous version did not work on Linux either.

Yes, it did. I was using v1.4 on Linux. Just moved to a new i7 machine, and now I am without Playon

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by thelinuxman

Yes, it did. I was using v1.4 on Linux. Just moved to a new i7 machine, and now I am without Playon

It must be dependent on distros. I could never get it to work.

[thelinuxman]

v1.4 worked great on OpenSuse 11.3. I just installed it on OpenSuse 11.4 and works as well.

[sacrament055]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Just checked them on my machine and they're working for me. Can you try selecting one of those and then post the log? FYI, make sure you're version of PlayOn is fully updated since they sometimes change the names of paths.

I haven't tried that but it should work if you're just browsing UPnP servers, I can check that one out. As far as setting up the plugin to use a specific PlayOn server for a specific extender, I haven't done any work on it yet, but I believe it would be pretty simple but I won't be able to look into it for a while.

Ok, Here is the log showing PBS/Kids,Nick,Nicktoons failing

I didn't include it but others work, Cartoon network ESPN, Hulu, etc.

Thanks

[evilpenguin]

K, I see the problem, its your Nick Jr. Lua script

      + /Nick Jr (nick_jr.lua)

Now that Nick Jr. is officially supported can you remove it?

[sungod]

Originally Posted by ptzink

The videos seem to take a long time to buffer initially and when they do start, they are choppy and usually have to buffer again within the next several seconds. I am not sure what I am doing wrong or what I could do to improve streaming performance. If I pull up the very same content in a web browser, it streams fine as I have a snappy internet connection. Both my server and client are hardwired (vs. wireless). On the server (and client), I am running Windows Firewall. In PlayOn, I have unchecked the "Resuming Playback" feature. I have video performance set to "Auto" and pretty much all other options are default. Does anyone have any tips or hints for achieving better streaming? Settings to check or try? My WAF of Playon is going down fast (as is my confidence it will be a viable solution). Can anyone help save the day?

What are your computer stats.... and, what does playon say about your computer and download speeds?

My playback was choppy with my old computer, it was a 2.2Mhz PC. Now I have a quad core with more than 2GB of memory and the choppiness went away. I gotta say, I blame my pc, not playon.

[sacrament055]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

K, I see the problem, its your Nick Jr. Lua script

      + /Nick Jr (nick_jr.lua)

Now that Nick Jr. is officially supported can you remove it?

ahhh. yes... I'll remove it and check that out. Thanks!