Question for Developers: imported video title, episode, and relative import path

[Opus4]

We are considering another change and would like to get feedback from customization developers.

For imported videos currently: GetShowTitle() returns the video's title with the relative path from its import dir as its prefix, GetShowEpisode() returns the video's title, and GetMediaFileRelativePath() returns the relative path. That's how the SageTV core imports videos, anyway; the title & episode fields are already set by some customizations to be the actual title & episode.

In order to work as expected and fit better with metadata customizations, how would these planned changes affect customization developers:

1. The Show title field for imported video files would no longer contain the relative path, the API call GetMediaFileRelativePath() would need to be used instead to get that.
2. The Show title field for imported videos would now contain the actual title; the Show episode field would then be blank unless there was metadata specified for it. Currently the Show episode field holds the actual 'title' for an imported video file. Update: the episode filed would also contain the title. If the title is the same as the episode, just display the title; if they are different, both can be displayed.

The default STV would probably need to change how it gets the title from the episode field, but it already uses GetMediaFileRelativePath(). I'm guessing most metadata related customizations are already doing this and would like this core change, but we don't know that for sure.

Thanks.

- Andy

[Fonceur]

That sounds great to me!

Currently, it is a big mess trying to extract a proper Title for imported videos, when metadata have not been imported through a third party plugin. The various ways to rip dvd's tend to be the main issue.

[GKusnick]

This doesn't affect me much since I am neither a developer nor a consumer of metadata plugins. However I am curious whether you plan to retrofit the necessary STV changes to the legacy SageTV3 UI that's still included in the install.

[tmiranda]

I like the idea of making it easier to get the show title, but I don't want it to break existing customizations. I'd prefer keeping the existing method as is but add a new method such as GetImportedShowTitle().

[GKusnick]

Tom, I don't see how adding a new method helps. There's already a way to get just the title of an imported video: GetShowEpisode(). The problem is that having different methods for imported videos v. recordings is arbitrary and unintuitive. GetShowTitle() ought to work consistently in all cases, and the proposal is to change it so it does. I think it's a good idea.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

This doesn't affect me much since I am neither a developer nor a consumer of metadata plugins. However I am curious whether you plan to retrofit the necessary STV changes to the legacy SageTV3 UI that's still included in the install.

If we do this, we would need to update all STVs provided by SageTV.

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I like the idea of making it easier to get the show title, but I don't want it to break existing customizations. I'd prefer keeping the existing method as is but add a new method such as GetImportedShowTitle().

Adding yet another field would just cause more confusion & complexity, I think, especially since the episode field now contains the title & would be changed.

- Andy

[stuckless]

It has very little affect on me... since I set the titles as per your new approach anyways. I like the new approach, since I find it more intuitive, and eventually I'll be able to do away with a bunch of code that current checks a bunch of places for titles.

Andy... will you be addressing TV video files at all. ie, many video files are simply TV files that are not recordings (ie, ripped tv shows), and as such sage thinks they are "Videos". Will yo be adding any checks to the default stv for TV video files that are not TV recordings, and showing the EpisodeName for those files, if set?

[Opus4]

I don't think it would matter whether they were TV shows or not; I was already planning to also display the episode if one exists.

- Andy

[razrsharpe]

Sounds great to me It will definitely ease the confusion when the api calls return the same information for both imported and recorded videos

[Tiki]

Would it make sense to scrape the file names on imported video files when they follow a pre-defined format (to parse out some additional metadata, such as the Episode name and/or Season/Episode Numbers)?

Or is this more work than Sage wants to take on?

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by Tiki

Would it make sense to scrape the file names on imported video files when they follow a pre-defined format (to parse out some additional metadata, such as the Episode name and/or Season/Episode Numbers)?

That sounds good too! The various third party developers already doing that to grab metadata might be able to give a head start.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Opus4

I don't think it would matter whether they were TV shows or not; I was already planning to also display the episode if one exists.

- Andy

I think that would be great... but, I'd suppress he episode name if it's the same as the title.. since that's probably a case where both fields have been set to the title.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by Tiki

Would it make sense to scrape the file names on imported video files when they follow a pre-defined format (to parse out some additional metadata, such as the Episode name and/or Season/Episode Numbers)?

Or is this more work than Sage wants to take on?

I don't think SageTV will be scraping the filenames for any metadata.

- Andy

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Opus4

I don't think SageTV will be scraping the filenames for any metadata.

- Andy

Comon Andy, you know you want to... it's so much fun... all the kool kids are doing it

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Comon Andy, you know you want to... it's so much fun... all the kool kids are doing it

That argument won't work -- I was never part of the 'kool' crowd & I tend to not do anything just because "everyone else is doing it".

- Andy

[GKusnick]

Anyway the last thing the "kool kids" want is for grownups to start doing their stuff, 'cause then it's not cool anymore.

[Opus4]

So... uh... yeah... all you kids out there just remember that Jeff & I are grownups now. I think.

- Andy <shuffling off to take some vitamins>

I almost said Geritol instead of vitamins, but I wasn't sure if the rest of you would get that reference...

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Adding yet another field would just cause more confusion & complexity, I think, especially since the episode field now contains the title & would be changed.

My concern was that changing the behavior of the existing method would break existing plugins. I did a quick scan of my plugins and think the change will not cause any harm.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

My concern was that changing the behavior of the existing method would break existing plugins. I did a quick scan of my plugins and think the change will not cause any harm.

I think it's a valid concern, but I think in this case, a few broken plugins is acceptable if we can clean up and create a consistent set of apis for titles.

In reality I'm betting this change will go unnoticed by most plugins, since any plugins that displays a title already goes though the process if checking the various title fields, checking if recording/movie/dvd, etc, to pull the right title... and in some cases using code to strip off every past the last path separator to get a clean title... so I'm betting there will be very few plugins affected... unless those plugins depended on the path being part of the title (as sagemc once did, but it no longer does that).

As a developer, I might not like that fact that a change in core has an impact on my plugins... but I can choose either to fix it or not... I've had a couple changes in core that has negatively impacted my plugins... but I just fix and move on... I think that from time to time api clean ups are needed

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

My concern was that changing the behavior of the existing method would break existing plugins. I did a quick scan of my plugins and think the change will not cause any harm.

Adding a new API call to get the title wouldn't help that much.

But, there is a major downside to existing STVs & plugins & that would be the episode field being blank -- instead of a title, older code would show nothing. So, we would store the title in both the title & episode fields. Older code would then still have something to display; newer code can display only the title, or title + episode if they are different.

The main change would still be using GetMediaFileRelativePath() instead of GetShowTitle() to get the relative path.

- Andy