STV Import: MovieTimes Movie Listings Import v0.57 Beta

[Andrew54]

I have trailers turned on now using "internal Sage player. I still get that fatal error. Could someone post their config.xml file and location.xml file. I would like to review them and possibly load them. For some reason it is not saving the location.xml file. The default location.xml file that comes with program has conflicting information.

Thanks for the help,
Andrew

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Does anyone know if it is possible to have movie trailers available and viewable on the HD100 extender?

When I first installed this customization, I had the "trailers" option completely turned off (per the suggestion in the instructions). But since everything is working fine, I would like to turn it on and be able to view current movie trailers through SageTV on my extender.

If it is possible, what player do I need to choose as my default viewer, and do I need to do anything unusual to set it up?

Thanks!

[gplasky]

If you're using this plugin on the default STV choosing "internal Sage player" doesn not work. That option choice is only for SageMC 16x9, not the default STV.

Gerry

[Andrew54]

Thanks - I will take any suggestions of things to look at. I am using SageMC 16x9.

If you or anyone could post their config.xml file and location.xml file, I think I can trouble shoot the problem.

Thanks, Andrew

Originally Posted by gplasky

If you're using this plugin on the default STV choosing "internal Sage player" doesn not work. That option choice is only for SageMC 16x9, not the default STV.

Gerry

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by Andrew54

Thanks - I will take any suggestions of things to look at. I am using SageMC 16x9.

If you or anyone could post their config.xml file and location.xml file, I think I can trouble shoot the problem.

Thanks, Andrew

Config

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
<ConfigurationSettings>
<LocationFile>\\MAIN\MovieTimes\locations.xml</LocationFile>
<!-- Enter the file location where you want to store the location information. -->
<LogFile>\\MAIN\MovieTimes\Media\log.txt</LogFile>
<!-- Enter the file location where you want to store the log file. -->
<TempFolder>\\MAIN\MovieTimes\Media\Temp\</TempFolder>
<!-- Enter the folder location where you want to store temporary files. -->
<NumberOfDays>7</NumberOfDays>
<!-- Enter how many days into the future you would like movie listings for. Note that some countries do not support this setting. -->
<DownloadExtraDetails>True</DownloadExtraDetails>
<!-- Choose whether or not you would like to download extra movie information from IMDB.com. -->
<!-- Values: True False -->
<PosterFolder>\\MAIN\MovieTimes\Media\Poster\</PosterFolder>
<!-- Enter the folder location where you want to store movie posters. -->
<PosterQuality>High</PosterQuality>
<!-- Choose whether or not to download higher quality (but larger in size) movie posters, lower quality posters, or none at all. -->
<!-- Values: High Low None -->
<TrailerFolder>\\MAIN\MovieTimes\Media\Trailers\</TrailerFolder>
<!-- Enter the folder location where you want to store movie trailers. -->
<TrailerQuality>High</TrailerQuality>
<!-- Choose whether or not to download higher quality (but larger in size) movie trailers, lower quality trailers, streaming (links only), or none at all. -->
<!-- Values: HD1080 HD720 HD480 High StreamHigh Medium StreamMedium Low StreamLow None -->
<RemoveOldMedia>True</RemoveOldMedia>
<!-- Choose whether or not you want to automatically delete old (non-referenced) posters and trailers. -->
<!-- Values: True False -->
<XmlDataFile>\\MAIN\MovieTimes\Media\moviedata.xml</XmlDataFile>
<XmlSchemaDataFile>\\MAIN\MovieTimes\Media\moviedata.xsd</XmlSchemaDataFile>
<!-- Enter the file locations where you want to store the XML movie data and the associated XML Schema file. -->
</ConfigurationSettings>

locations

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
<LocationList>
<!-- ****************************************************************************** -->
<!-- Country: Select the country to retrieve movie listings for. -->
<!-- Values: Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Spain, United Kingdom, United States -->
<!-- ****************************************************************************** -->
<!-- Locations: Select the postal code and/or city name to retrieve movie listings for. -->
<!-- Note: Separate each value with a "|" character. -->
<!-- ****************************************************************************** -->
<!-- Active, Inactive: Select one or more theaters to retrieve movie listings for. -->
<!-- Note: Separate each value with a "|" character. -->
<!-- ****************************************************************************** -->
<LocationDetails>
<Country>United States</Country>
<Locations>48170</Locations>
<Active>AMC Laurel Park 10|AMC Livonia 20|Emagine Novi</Active>
<Inactive>
|AMC Star Southfield 20|Emagine Canton|Farmington Civic Theater|Goodrich Canton 7|Penn Theatre|Phoenix Theatres West River Centre|Redford Theatre|SR Movies Novi Town Center|State-Wayne Theater</Inactive>
</LocationDetails>
</LocationList>

Gerry

[Andrew54]

Thanks for everyones help and thanks Gerry for posting your config files.

What finally made it work was redoing step 3 a and b - unzipping the files.

So if anyone in the future receives this error redo step 3 a and b.

This MovieTimes really adds a WOW factor to SageTV.

Thanks again,
Andrew

[mightyt]

Does anyone know if this works with Vista and Sage 6.3.1? The first post only shows testing with Sage 5 and I'd expect XP.

If it does work ... anything special I should know before taking the adventure?

[mightyt]

Originally Posted by mightyt

Does anyone know if this works with Vista and Sage 6.3.1? The first post only shows testing with Sage 5 and I'd expect XP.

If it does work ... anything special I should know before taking the adventure?

Well ... Not hearing good or bad I decided to take a risk.

In the end, the anser is it works with Sage 6.3.1 and Vista. Note Vista's Task Scheduler is different than XP's, but you can set it up. It took a few tried though to make sure it kicked off the download. Make sure you tell the Scheduler to allow "users" to run the task in the Security Options.

The only thing is when mtsa.exe runs it launches a DOS box on the screen while downloading. Would be great if that was silent.

Other than that, I was able to list out my local theaters and movies!

Wonder if aperry is still considering adding Trailers to this or if work on this project stopped. Would be nice ...

[mightyt]

I guess I spoke too soon ... Now the config keeps disappearing!

It doesn't seem to want to stick. Sometimes I select the file, manually download and still nothing.

So, I guess I take it back ... It doesn't seem very reliable for 6.3.10.

[mightyt]

Found a new version (4.3.1) of the mtsa plugin here ...

http://movietimes.home.comcast.net/~...mes/index.html

This one adds movie trailors and has a "quiet" no DOS box executable.

We'll see if the settings stick.

Works pretty good. You will need to download QuickTime though.

Since after playing a trailer QuickTime does not automatically close, the only thing I have to figure out is how to get EventGhost to send the exit command to QuickTime without also exiting Sage.

More to come ...

[robogeek]

Just an FYI... with the new SageTV v6.4.2 beta, I have been able to play back the quicktime trailers in SageTV (Server and PC Client) AND on the MediaMVP I have both QuickTime and QuickTime Alternative installed on the server and client PC's, so I can't say for certain if either or both of these are required or not. But they do playback with Purevideo and PDVD8 decoders on my PC's and I was quite surprised when they also played back on the MVP as well

I modified my full stv to change and add a couple of things to make it work (not perfect, but better than nothing). I don't have the time or desire to make an stvi out of it, so here is my stv if anyone wants to try to recreate the MovieTimes stvi and fix up the mess I made out of it in my stv. Sorry, this is my full stv which has several imports in it:

http://www.tfo.net/SageTV3-9.zip

Basically, I made changes to the area where the Play Trailer button logic is and pass the trailer to the Watch function and call the OSD. I had trouble with the MediaPlayer OSD so I made a copy of it and called it TrailerPlayer OSD and made some changes to the Stop listener and the hook that is called at when a media file is done playing. Sorry, not at the server so I can't be more specific. I'm sure somebody knows enough about Studio to do this a better way, so by all means, have at it.

[r00st3r]

When you say "quicktime trailers" are you referring to the ones on the "http://www.apple.com/trailers/" website? are you downloading these manually?

There are several users in the site that would like to be able to download HD (or high res) trailers other than the ones for the movies at our local theater (like upcoming trailers). I have not found a solution as of yet. Can you explain how you are doing it?

[robogeek]

Originally Posted by r00st3r

When you say "quicktime trailers" are you referring to the ones on the "http://www.apple.com/trailers/" website? are you downloading these manually?

There are several users in the site that would like to be able to download HD (or high res) trailers other than the ones for the movies at our local theater (like upcoming trailers). I have not found a solution as of yet. Can you explain how you are doing it?

The trailers are downloaded by the MovieTimes Standalone (MTSA) executable with the trailer quality setting at High and they are downloaded from apple.com. Checking the file properties in Media Player Classic it shows they are MPEG4 H.264 varying from about 640x272 to 640x340 resolution...so no, not true HD. The details tab of the MPC properties for one of my trailers shows this for the video/audio info:

Video: MPEG4 Video (H264) 640x272 [Apple Video Media Handler]
Audio: AAC 44100Hz stereo 96Kbps [Apple Sound Media Handler]

As for how I'm doing it, I guess you need at least SageTV v6.4.1 and possibly a quicktime or H.264 capable decoder...I'm not really sure what the minimum requirement is, it just started working for me I saw the 'Added support for playing back H.264 videos from YouTube' in the release notes for v6.4.1 and recalled the movie trailers being H.264 as well. So, after upgrading to the latest beta, I used the media file browser on the MVP to browse to my movie trailers and selected one to play. I was pleasantly surprised when I got both audio AND video on the MVP from the .mov trailers. Then I went to confirm it also played back on the Server PC and the Client PC. I had previously installed Quicktime and Quicktime Alternative for use with Meedio. Since these were already installed on both server and client machines, I'm not certain if either of these are needed or not. I'm using Purevideo decoder on the server and PDVD8 Cyberlink decoder on the client PC, both with AC3 Filter audio decoder, and VMR9 renderer and it just works, not sure what else I can say.

[edit]
OK, since these are MPEG4 H.264, the audio/video decoders shouldn't matter...it either uses DirectShow or SageTV Player for playback, depending on your MPEG4 Playback setting in the Video/Audio section of the Detailed Setup. Also, after poking around in the MTSA config.xml file, I found that you can change the trailer quality setting to some additional settings that aren't included with the MovieTimes Movie Listings Import. I manually changed mine from HIGH to HD720 (the additional settings are listed in the config.xml file) and re-ran the MTSA executable. Most of the new downloads were higher resolution, but I had trouble playing them back on both the client and MVP...probably due to the fact that both the server and client machines are single core sub 2GHz machines. It appeared the server bogged down while transcoding and the client had too high CPU usage to play back smoothly, but at least I still got audio AND video so assuming you have the hefty hardware to playback and/or transcode HD H.264 files, it should work.
[/edit]

[mightyt]

Just an update since I have Movie Times installed a few days now ...

1 - The good news is it kept the configuration for the most part.
2 - The bad news is after selecting the theaters, they would not reorder to my liking. Always stayed in alphabetical order. Then when I deleted all but one, they all still showed up.
3 - If I went to load the config file again, it said, 'No configuration found or is bad." If I try to reselct it, it still shows the same theaters.

So, this plugin is still a bit quirky ... though it is better than before ...

[mkanet]

This plugin has worked for about a year for me without any issues. The past couple of nights, MTSA.exe gets stuck downloading. I have it automatically scheduled to download at 3am. It stays stuck even at 7am.

[robogeek]

Originally Posted by mkanet

This plugin has worked for about a year for me without any issues. The past couple of nights, MTSA.exe gets stuck downloading. I have it automatically scheduled to download at 3am. It stays stuck even at 7am.

I can confirm the same thing. It appears to hang when trying to find/download the trailers from apple. Go figure...now that trailers play back on the MVP, I can no longer download them automatically

You can set the trailer quality setting to 'None' to disable the trailer downloads and hopefully keymaster or someone can fix MTSA trailer downloads. If anybody is interested, keymaster has the Visual Basic source code posted at http://movietimes.home.comcast.net/~.../download.html

[key master]

Originally Posted by mkanet

This plugin has worked for about a year for me without any issues. The past couple of nights, MTSA.exe gets stuck downloading. I have it automatically scheduled to download at 3am. It stays stuck even at 7am.

I'm on it... Apple must have changed their site. Check back here for updates.

-Jim

[mightyt]

Is anyone supporting the Windows version of this?

[Gophermofur]

Jim, I found a solution to the issue. It's a very crappy, 2:00 am work around, but it seems to work.

The issue seems to be that when loading up the XML files for each of the movie categories, the application isn't stopping when it is supposed to. I noticed the application is looking for "126 of 126" or something, but looking at the xml files on apple's website, none of the final pages have that string in them. That must have been the change that has caused hell with your program As it traverses through such URL's as:

http://www.apple.com/moviesxml/g/documentary_1.xml
http://www.apple.com/moviesxml/g/documentary_2.xml
...
It goes too far and ends up to a url that doesn't exist, such as: http://www.apple.com/moviesxml/g/documentary_8.xml

As a result, when the method "SaveWebPageToFile_UserAgent" is called on the non-existent page, it goes through various errors, then ends up deleting the .tmp file. As a result, there are no listings of any categories and therefore none of the trailers can be found/downloaded.

----------------
My current solution
----------------

Once again, this is a pretty bad hack job at your code, but hopefully it helps.

I modified the "SaveWebPageToFile_UserAgent" method to take in an optional argument (ByRef boolean) that indicates if there was an error loading the page. Also, I removed the code that deletes the temp file if there was an error (since this is what is causing the issue).

In the while loop that checks if the "# of #" has been found, I also added an additional clause that states "AND (errorOccured = false). That way the loop breaks if the "SaveWebPageToFile_UserAgent" finds that the page doesn't exist, which it indicates by setting the errorOccured variable to True.

Beyond that it works flawlessly. Note that i can't seem to get trailers working in Stream mode, but then again, I only just installed SageTV yesterday so that may just be a configuration issue . Also note, that it works perfectly when downloading. Great plugin!

Hope I helped.

[Gophermofur]

Key Master, if I can make another suggestion... I see that you are searching through each Category of movies to find the specific XML file for any given movie. I was wondering why a bunch of trailers didn't download (Iron Man, what happens in Vegas...) and I realized that they aren't categorized under any category in the apple index.xml file.

What I did was duplicated the code that adds movie categories (Do while loop in the GetCategoryPages method), but instead of searching by "Genre" I searched by "Studio". This way it loads the xml files for both Genres and Studios.

Turns out that while Iron man and other trailers were listed under their Studio's xml file, it wasn't listed under a specific category. It will still search through categories first, but searching through studios is a good backup in case the movie doesn't have a specified genre.

I'm not 100%, but it would make sense that even if a movie doesn't have a genre, it must have a studio. If that's the case, in the future you can just remove downloading of the category pages and instead start downloading studio pages exclusively.

Just so you know what I'm talking about...
http://www.apple.com/moviesxml/s/paramount/index_1.xml

is the only page you can find a link to the Ironman XML file.

[key master]

Originally Posted by Gophermofur

Key Master, if I can make another suggestion... I see that you are searching through each Category of movies to find the specific XML file for any given movie. I was wondering why a bunch of trailers didn't download (Iron Man, what happens in Vegas...) and I realized that they aren't categorized under any category in the apple index.xml file.

What I did was duplicated the code that adds movie categories (Do while loop in the GetCategoryPages method), but instead of searching by "Genre" I searched by "Studio". This way it loads the xml files for both Genres and Studios.

Turns out that while Iron man and other trailers were listed under their Studio's xml file, it wasn't listed under a specific category. It will still search through categories first, but searching through studios is a good backup in case the movie doesn't have a specified genre.

I'm not 100%, but it would make sense that even if a movie doesn't have a genre, it must have a studio. If that's the case, in the future you can just remove downloading of the category pages and instead start downloading studio pages exclusively.

Just so you know what I'm talking about...
http://www.apple.com/moviesxml/s/paramount/index_1.xml

is the only page you can find a link to the Ironman XML file.

Whoa, good finds. Thanks for looking into it - so far, I just looked into the index page and was tweaking some things there.

Good point about the studios... I would also guess that more movies are listed in there over the categories section... it sounds like you did some code? Did you have it search automatically for the studios via live links or did you hard code the studio links? Either way, could you send me your code? You would probably save me time and have a new version out sooner

Thank you!!
-Jim