Plugin: SageSync

[Slugger]

SageSync provides a live hierarchy of playlist files representing all of your current SageTV recordings. The hierarchy is presented in such a way that it is easy to browse and find content of interest regardless of where it is being stored by SageTV.

The main purpose of this plugin is to allow easy access to your recorded content via third party media streamers such as Boxee Box, Boxee (PC), XBMC, etc.

More details and background on this plugin can be found here (originally this project was code named "Oxygen"). A user's guide and other details are available here. Note that the user's guide is still being worked on but there should be enough content to get users started.

I think it's very important to realize what this plugin is not. This plugin is not a replacement for extenders nor is it trying to replicate any management functions of extenders/clients. This project's lone goal is to provide some kind of standards based access to recorded content such that it can be played back with relative ease in third party media streamers with little or no modifications. When my extenders inevitably die, I plan on using this solution to be able to watch my recordings at my tvs without having to introduce PC clients. In the best case scenario, my extenders never die and I never have to actually deploy third party streamers at my tvs. See the docs and the Oxygen thread for more details.

Note: This plugin will not start up after installation, you will get a system message saying you must configure it. After you configure it you must either disable/enable the plugin or restart the SageTV server before the initial dump of playlist files occurs. A future update will eliminate this step.

[WellThen]

Nice job. It created the playlists, and I've played back a couple of programs in VLC.

Then, I went to download Boxee for Windows, only to find it's been pulled from the Boxee site! Apparently, they've dropped support (and won't even allow download!) of the versions for Linux, Mac and PC.

I guess I'll be continuing with my Plex experimentation. Hope Plex can play m3u8 playlists...

[WellThen]

Or, I could read your list of "devices" in the Wiki, and notice that Plex isn't on it, but XBMC is.

[LehighBri]

Originally Posted by WellThen

Nice job. It created the playlists, and I've played back a couple of programs in VLC.

Then, I went to download Boxee for Windows, only to find it's been pulled from the Boxee site! Apparently, they've dropped support (and won't even allow download!) of the versions for Linux, Mac and PC.

I guess I'll be continuing with my Plex experimentation. Hope Plex can play m3u8 playlists...

We built a custom Plex agent that can pull in SageTV shows... see here:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=57842

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by WellThen

Or, I could read your list of "devices" in the Wiki, and notice that Plex isn't on it, but XBMC is.

This only means I (nor anyone else) has tried Plex. It may or may not work.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by Slugger

This only means I (nor anyone else) has tried Plex. It may or may not work.

I'll have to give plex a try when I get a chance. I've got it all set up and running, but haven't used any of the sage goodness that has been produced. I'll find out if plex likes your playlists or not. Since it is basically XBMC I don't see why it wouldn't.

[WellThen]

So, what's the secret to getting XBMC on a client PC to look at my nice playlist folder, which is on my server? I've been looking around in the XBMC online docs, and the XBMC interface, and the best I've found so far is a comment from a user on the Playlists documentation page saying "we really ought to tell users how to access playlists. I had a hard time finding it in the default skin"

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by WellThen

So, what's the secret to getting XBMC on a client PC to look at my nice playlist folder, which is on my server? I've been looking around in the XBMC online docs, and the XBMC interface, and the best I've found so far is a comment from a user on the Playlists documentation page saying "we really ought to tell users how to access playlists. I had a hard time finding it in the default skin"

All I did was go to Videos > Add Source then add the root folder of playlists as a video source. Then pick a playlist and then it loads it up.

However, it seems my last minute change of renaming the playlist files from *.m3u to *.m3u8 has made XBMC (10.1, Win7 32bit) not recognize the playlist files. Boxee (box and PC) both like *.m3u8 and apparently XBMC doesn't like *.m3u8. Copy the file to a *.m3u extension allows XBMC to recognize the playlist and it does play it back.

I'll have to do some testing to see if I can use plain old m3u on the Boxee box as well, if so I'll make that change. If not, then I may have to ask the user to select their target device and dump the playlists based on device selection.

For now, on XMBC, copy your *.m3u8 files to *.m3u files if you want XBMC to recognize them. Do not simply rename them! Renaming them will cause the plugin to get a delete notification on each playlist file and perform whichever sync actions you've enabled for every Sage recording!

[LehighBri]

Originally Posted by Slugger

I'll have to do some testing to see if I can use plain old m3u on the Boxee box as well, if so I'll make that change. If not, then I may have to ask the user to select their target device and dump the playlists based on device selection.

I just tested playing back a .m3u file that I simply renamed from .m3u8 on my Boxee box and clicking on the .m3u file does not do anything... it does not prompt to play or anything. Whereas if i do the same thing with the same file but rename back to .m3u8, it plays back great on my Boxee box.

Thus it sounds like for Boxee we need .m3u8 and for XBMC we need .m3u.

[WellThen]

So, I did a mass copy and rename, and it works well. For anyone else who wants to play around with this in XBMC, you can (this worked in Windows 7):

1. Copy the entire playlist structure (so as not to affect the plugin monitoring of the current playlist files, as Slugger has warned us)
2. Open a command prompt at the top directory of the *new* copy of the playlist structure
3. Enter the command: FOR /R %x IN (*.m3u8) DO ren "%x" *.m3u

[darcilicious]

Originally Posted by WellThen

Then, I went to download Boxee for Windows, only to find it's been pulled from the Boxee site! Apparently, they've dropped support (and won't even allow download!) of the versions for Linux, Mac and PC.

You can download v0.9 from here http://code.google.com/p/boxee-beta-...downloads/list (for Windows / OS X) and v1.5 from here: http://code.google.com/p/boxee-for-c...downloads/list

[darcilicious]

Or, I could read your list of "devices" in the Wiki, and notice that Plex isn't on it, but XBMC is.

Originally Posted by Slugger

This only means I (nor anyone else) has tried Plex. It may or may not work.

Plex won't scan .m3u8 files, it skips right over identifying them as TV Shows.

Also, bad news regarding getting Boxee Box to identify .m3u8 files as video files during the scanning process -- I just can't get it to work after trying several things

I think the fact that they can be manually scanned in is just dumb luck and that technically it's a bug

[WellThen]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

You can download v0.9 from here http://code.google.com/p/boxee-beta-...downloads/list (for Windows / OS X) and v1.5 from here: http://code.google.com/p/boxee-for-c...downloads/list

Thanks for the links, Darci.

[kricker]

Sweet. I just came back to the forums for a quick browse and ran across this. XBMC integration is something I've been toying with for years. This could be great.

Any chance of getting that target device option? As a XBMC team member you won't find me using Plex and with a home built HTPC I also will not be running a Boxee Box.

I know 2 other users I support that could make use of this with XBMC as well.

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by kricker

Sweet. I just came back to the forums for a quick browse and ran across this. XBMC integration is something I've been toying with for years. This could be great.

Any chance of getting that target device option? As a XBMC team member you won't find me using Plex and with a home built HTPC I also will not be running a Boxee Box.

I know 2 other users I support that could make use of this with XBMC as well.

I have the build done and installed on my system, just need to test it a bit before I put it in the repository. Been kind of busy the last few days, hope to find an hour or two tomorrow after work to give it the final go over. Expect a new build by Saturday, perhaps sooner, but not sure.

[kricker]

I just found a thread stating that .m3u8 are indeed supported. I'm digging around more now.

EDIT:
It appears the TV scraper does not support .m3u8

[Slugger]

I'm actually not going to have much time thru the end of this weekend so I've uploaded the latest build (1782):

* Add device support for Boxee, XBMC and generic playlist devices (M3U, M3U8, PLS); upgraders may need to go select their device if it's not Boxee (the default)

* Add support for new playlist format: PLS

* Fix issue where recreate would destroy the root directory and recreate it; not just destroy contents of root and recreate the contents instead (addresses issue where permissions of configured root dir are lost on a recreate)

The key code changes have been tested and so this is the recommended version to be running.

[darcilicious]

Originally Posted by kricker

EDIT:
It appears the TV scraper does not support .m3u8

Argh

[kricker]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

Argh

I'll see what I can do about that.

There is a problem with scraping though. If something isn't found then you don't see it at all. XBMC doesn't add items to the library if it can't find any metadata for it. This is a big problem for most of my Sage recordings. They are not all perfectly named with season and episode info to allow proper scraping. I wish we could just get Sage's data into XBMC's library. XBMC has API's for library access. I believe it is using JSON.

[kricker]

Originally Posted by Slugger

* Fix issue where recreate would destroy the root directory and recreate it; not just destroy contents of root and recreate the contents instead (addresses issue where permissions of configured root dir are lost on a recreate).

Sweet. I was just about to report this issue. I've had my folder deleted numerous times in my short testing