Plugin: SageSync

[darcilicious]

Originally Posted by kricker

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.

Yeah, the Plex scanner for SageTV is coming along nicely, working very well for most folks using it, I believe

I take it you've looked at the XBMC script thingie that does symbolic links in the right filename format for SageTV recordings?

[kricker]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

Yeah, the Plex scanner for SageTV is coming along nicely, working very well for most folks using it, I believe

I take it you've looked at the XBMC script thingie that does symbolic links in the right filename format for SageTV recordings?

Yeah I have. I played with it early on. I prefer here how Slugger has it integrated into Sage instead of a separate app running.

[kricker]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

Yeah, the Plex scanner for SageTV is coming along nicely, working very well for most folks using it, I believe

I found it interesting that all the development work goes into Boxee, then Plex, yet the mother/father of all those, XBMC, goes somewhat ignored.

[darcilicious]

I think that in the context of SageTV users it has to do with the fact that Boxee and Plex run on hardware platforms (Box and Roku, respectively in this case) which folks are interested in using as "extenders" (and I use the term loosely!)

[kricker]

I figured as much. But XBMC can easily be setup on such a hardware platform like an AppleTV.

Anyhow I better get back to the topic. Here are some things of note for use with XBMC:

1. New version worked perfectly for selecting the device and creating the proper filetype. Thanks for that.

2. Export of files includes partial recordings. Can these be ignored?

3. Scraping content into XBMC has the defect of what I mentioned earlier. If a file can not be scraped, you will not see it in the library. You'll have to play it back in file mode.

4. In file mode you have to select an item twice to play it. Once chooses the playlist. Then you see the contents of the playlist including the commented out first line. See images below.



This has more to do with XBMC, but I figured I'd note it here for others to be aware of.

[darcilicious]

I figured as much. But XBMC can easily be setup on such a hardware platform like an AppleTV.

Unfortunately, that's a somewhat underpowered device, an issue for mpeg2 recorded files l think? (my last off-topic post, i promise!)

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by kricker

2. Export of files includes partial recordings. Can these be ignored?

Partial as in active recordings? It's not suppose to create the playlists for active recordings, if it does then that's a bug. A completed recording, but partial will still have its playlist created.

[kricker]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

Unfortunately, that's a somewhat underpowered device, an issue for mpeg2 recorded files l think? (my last off-topic post, i promise!)

For HD recordings maybe so. I've never used one.

Back on Topic.

I have some ideas on better meta-data integration. XBMC has good support of metadata files similar to .nfo files. Would it be possible to integrate something like that into this plugin? I could figure out the mapping from Sage's data to XBMC's format for you (ie. what the structure is for XBMC and what data goes where).

Seeing my recordings (ones that were scraped) showing up in XBMC so easily was really exciting.

[kricker]

Originally Posted by Slugger

Partial as in active recordings? It's not suppose to create the playlists for active recordings, if it does then that's a bug. A completed recording, but partial will still have its playlist created.

Yeah, it was not an active recording. Just some partial recordings left over from channel surfing and whatnot.

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by kricker

For HD recordings maybe so. I've never used one.

Back on Topic.

I have some ideas on better meta-data integration. XBMC has good support of metadata files similar to .nfo files. Would it be possible to integrate something like that into this plugin? I could figure out the mapping from Sage's data to XBMC's format for you (ie. what the structure is for XBMC and what data goes where).

You'd need to figure out where the nfo file has to go (i.e. along side the playlist file or along side the actual recording) and then provide the mapping details. With that info, I can probably do it, but no promises. I will say that without someone researching there's a near zero chance I'll do it (because I really don't care about the metadata all that much).

[kricker]

Originally Posted by Slugger

You'd need to figure out where the nfo file has to go (i.e. along side the playlist file or along side the actual recording) and then provide the mapping details. With that info, I can probably do it, but no promises. I will say that without someone researching there's a near zero chance I'll do it (because I really don't care about the metadata all that much).

No problem. I'll gather all the relevant info for you. I'm about to do some testing now. I know it works with the actual recordings (then no need for the playlist files really), but I do not know about the playlist files. I'll do all the legwork for you. Since I can't code, it is the least I can do.

EDIT:
Here is the XBMC wiki page explaining XBMC and .nfo files. I'm going to do some testing now by creating some by hand.

[kricker]

I did some extensive testing today. For XBMC, it may be best to use .strm files instead of .m3u files. The .strm file is generally seen as a single item list, whereas .m3u files are primarily viewed as multi item playlists. All I did was change the files extension from .m3u to .strm. Then, after a minor XBMC code change, I was able to import the .strm file into XBMC using my custom .nfo file.

The organized structure your plugin generates is quite helpful. All that it needs is a tvshow.nfo file in the root of each shows directory and a episodename.nfo file for each coresponding .strm file.

The downside to .m3u and .strm files; XBMC doesn't resume playback or seem to recognize watched status. Symbolic links work better for this.

[mzup]

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)

I found out this weekend that this was still not working and everything got deleted. Not big deal to me as I watch and delete my shows or I just watch it online. The wife thought lost 1 years worth of her soap operas that are now off the air. I haven't told her yet since obviously she doesn't watch them too often. LOL

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by mzup

I found out this weekend that this was still not working and everything got deleted. Not big deal to me as I watch and delete my shows or I just watch it online. The wife thought lost 1 years worth of her soap operas that are now off the air. I haven't told her yet since obviously she doesn't watch them too often. LOL

This was just fixed last night, have you upgraded to build 1782?

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by kricker

I did some extensive testing today. For XBMC, it may be best to use .strm files instead of .m3u files. The .strm file is generally seen as a single item list, whereas .m3u files are primarily viewed as multi item playlists. All I did was change the files extension from .m3u to .strm. Then, after a minor XBMC code change, I was able to import the .strm file into XBMC using my custom .nfo file.

The organized structure your plugin generates is quite helpful. All that it needs is a tvshow.nfo file in the root of each shows directory and a episodename.nfo file for each coresponding .strm file.

The downside to .m3u and .strm files; XBMC doesn't resume playback or seem to recognize watched status. Symbolic links work better for this.

strm files are ok, except they can't handle multi-segment recordings. If a recording has more than one segment then it would be stored in two separate strm files (unless strm files can contain more than one link??).

Wouldn't it be nice if XBMC were able to resume playback for items in playlists? <nudge, nudge>

The nfo files are doable, but I need rather specific details on what goes in them and what the format is, etc. If you're going to write that up, do it in a ticket on my project site, please.

Symlinks is also on my radar, but it also suffers from definitely not being able to handle multi-segment recordings nicely. Also, it only works reliably on Linux. Even though Windows Vista+ supports symlinks, the support is not exactly perfect (i.e. it doesn't quite work like Linux/Unix does). Given the lack of people running Linux, I doubt enough people would use it to bother implementing it.

[kricker]

I am not sure if .strm files can do that, but considering they are only text files I am not sure why they wouldn't. I'll test that.

I'll have to ask about resuming playback of playlist items.

I'll writeup that info for you no problem. I'll try to get this other stuff figured out first.

I was using Symlinks on my Windows 7 systems and it worked perfectly. I got the idea from Bravido88's tool he created to do something similar. He has since abandoned the tool, hence my preferring this method. I think the only major Windows hitch here is that it needs to be Vista or better. Considering XP is a dead product, maybe that isn't such a big deal. If the items are named properly with proper .nfo files XBMC should be able to handle multi-segment recordings just fine. Something else I can test to verify.

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by kricker

I was using Symlinks on my Windows 7 systems and it worked perfectly. I got the idea from Bravido88's tool he created to do something similar. He has since abandoned the tool, hence my preferring this method. I think the only major Windows hitch here is that it needs to be Vista or better. Considering XP is a dead product, maybe that isn't such a big deal. If the items are named properly with proper .nfo files XBMC should be able to handle multi-segment recordings just fine. Something else I can test to verify.

My production server runs on XP. I actually have implemented this using symlinks, but since my server runs XP, I had to create the symlinks on my laptop (Win7), pointing to UNC paths on my Sage server. That didn't work well at all. I'm guessing if the symlinks pointed to local files then all would probably be good, but I have no way to test that in my env. I still have the code sitting around somewhere, I think for the symlink creation. I'll see how much trouble it is to merge into the SageSync source - but not in the immediate future. If I tackle any new features next, it's probably the metadata stuff, I figure more users will prefer that effort over symlink support - especially because symlinks don't lend themselves nicely to multi-segment recordings, although I actually have zero of them on my server, I know other users do have them and when you do, playlists are the best way to play those back.

[kricker]

I totally agree. I'll get the meta data stuff written up for you first. I can tinker with Symlinks after that. Currently I am working on getting XBMC patched so it can import the metadata from the .nfo file for .strm files. It can already scrape them from theTVDB if the file names have the necessary information. This works great when the proper season and episode information is in the name. Not so much when there are shows that are not in theTVDB or when the season and episode information doesn't match up.

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by kricker

I totally agree. I'll get the meta data stuff written up for you first. I can tinker with Symlinks after that. Currently I am working on getting XBMC patched so it can import the metadata from the .nfo file for .strm files. It can already scrape them from theTVDB if the file names have the necessary information. This works great when the proper season and episode information is in the name. Not so much when there are shows that are not in theTVDB or when the season and episode information doesn't match up.

being that plex is an offshoot of xbmc, i don't see why you wouldn't be able to reuse a lot of the code for the BMTAgent. in order to obtain season and episode info for the xbmc scanned files..

I haven't looked into this, but conceptually it seems like it should work.

just a thought.

[kricker]

True. But the main issue is for items that are not available on theTVDB or where the season episode info provided by Sage doesn't match what is on theTVDB. For that I'd rather just have what info Sage has.

For example random PBS nature and cooking shows, as well as various HGTV shows. These are not on theTVDB and I don't see them ever showing up there. These are shows that are watched and then deleted. I'm not going to archive them so no need in taking the time to add them all to theTVDB either.