STV Import: MovieTimes Movie Listings Import v0.57 Beta

[popechild]

Originally Posted by mightyt

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 ...

This has been a while, so hopefully you're still around...
I'm upgrading to Vista and am having trouble setting up the scheduled task. It's setup the same way it was in XP, and mtsa.exe runs fine manually, but when the sheduled task kicks it off, it pops open a cmd window and then very quickly shuts it down before I can even read what it says.

I'm choosing to run it as the user that I'm logged in as (which is setup with a password), but I'm not sure if I'm understanding what you did here that allowed you to run it through the task manager.

Any help is appreciated!

[Shield]

Anyone having recent problems with this? I'm not having any trouble on the Sage side; when I run this now I get this in the log:

Media library empty! Search aborted.
[MediaLibrary] Search complete.

[pjpjpjpj]

Yeah, Shield, I think this one is broken with the latest software version.

I had not looked at it since upgrading. Tried today and got nothing (before even seeing your post).

It tells me the config file can't be found or is bad... but I am pointing right at the same old config file it has always used. It doesn't see it anymore.

Anyone else experiencing the same? Anyone have an idea why it broke?

[sungod]

I am guessing that you mean latest software version of Sage the 6.5, right? I am also running Sage 6.5.9.204 with the latest firmware to my HD-100.

I get the same error... I get two "theaters" to show up, but both are blank spaces with the numbers 1 and 2.

[sungod]

I am not positive, but it seems to me that the MTSA.exe program is not drawing any data for me of any theater, even in the standalone mode.

It runs, says it is finished, but it does not populate the locations.xml file as it says it will. I tried it with a command line mtsa /updatetheatersonly and it says it ran just fine when you check the log but nothing ends up being changed.

[sungod]

If your MovieTime program stopped working, you are not alone. There seems to be an issue with the MTSA.exe file not pulling data anymore as of late February, 2009. Here is a link for more info:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...090#post341090

[sungod]

I got mine working now on both the PC-based SageTV and my HD-100 extender. I will post later on how I did it if anyone else wants or is in need of help.

I must say, this thing is awesome!

Thanks to the many many people who have contributed, especially:

Aperry - author and creator of the program. Wow, just wow.

Robogeek - made the differing STVI, which is what worked for me with trailers

Whoever made the MTSA.exe program (I think its Keymaster, but not 100% positive)

MKAnet - for continued help with the MTSA and installation

Nielm - whose name I can never type in correctly (especially in searches)

gplasky - who's posts gave me some really good ideas on what I was doing wrong

and I am sure many others whom I have forgotten to mention, but thanks just the same.


I will post, once I figure it out, how I got mine to run in an effort to help others--this does not apply to the Media Center edition (MC) which seems to run differently.

[lotusvball]

bump - Any update on this?

[sungod]

Originally Posted by lotusvball

bump - Any update on this?

yeah, sorry. I am still working on how I did it. Making notes, etc. I should have something in a few days (hopefully Sunday).

[ToonGal]

Originally Posted by lotusvball

bump - Any update on this?

Well, mine's working fine, so here's what I have.

Use the home page for Nephilim - http://nephilim.gofreeserve.com/wordpress/mtsa

The link at the bottom marked "Latest version: 4.5.3 (13 feb 2009)" is really version 4.5.5 when unpacked and installed. For me, v4.5.5's mtsa.exe replacing broken versions works just fine.

Should be simple. Let me know if it doesn't work for you, because I can check my side to see if there was anything else.

Cheers.

[pjpjpjpj]

It's been a while and I have been happy with this import the way I have it, but a recent "blip" made me want to ask some questions of those in-the-know, so here goes:

I have the most recent version of the mtsa file in place (post above this one), and it works fine for listings and theater times and such. It also is automatically loading trailers into a folder called "Media" (I think that's the name - not at home right now). That's all well and good.

However, recently, the "Star Trek" trailer was loading one in Russian - and, indeed, when I went on Apple Trailers, there was a huge list of versions in a bunch of languages, and "Ukraine" was first. I am assuming that this is why I got this version - that it is taking the first-listed trailer for any particular movie?

Then I also realized that there were quite a few other movies that are currently in theaters, that I don't have trailers for, but which have trailers on the Apple site - Angels & Demons, for example.

That led me to start wondering how this portion of the MTSA program actually works (or whether that portion is actually within the Sage STVI)... and if changes could be made to correct certain issues. I don't read code at all, so forgive my cluelessness....

So - my questions:

1) Could some sort of filter be added that would look for naming conventions - i.e., language/country names at the end of trailer titles - and skip those, so as to only grab the American/English version?

2) What is the actual methodology for hunting for trailers and auto-loading them? Does it look for all that are currently in your theaters and then only get those that are actually hosted by the Apple site (rather than linked to external)? (maybe this is why Angels & Demons did not load?)

3) I am just curious why the trailers which I get - which appear to be HD - are smaller file sizes than even the smallest one that I see on the Apple website. The 480P trailer on the website is usually quite larger than the file I get auto-downloaded, yet when I watch them on the HD extender, they are 16:9, and appear to be HD... where/which/what is the version that the file downloads?

4) And finally, I saw some of the discussion on the previous two pages about downloading based on genre and such, and got completely confused, so I have to ask - is there a way to set this plug-in to download other movies besides those in theaters? Is that what the discussion was about? And if not, could a search screen be created in Sage - even if it was a custom screen you had to add with dynamic menus - similar to the title search or youtube search - where you could search for trailers in the Apple website (any trailer they have, not just ones in theaters) and it would download it? Granted, you would have to wait for it to download at that point, but it would be a cool feature.

[robogeek]

I think the short answer to most of your questions is, the MovieTimes STVi by itself won't be able to add many of these features and would require the author of MTSA to incorporate these into the MTSA program first. The MovieTimes STVi mainly just presents the MTSA data on the SageTV screen and has very little to do with getting the movie times and trailers (other than allowing you to set some config options).

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

1) Could some sort of filter be added that would look for naming conventions - i.e., language/country names at the end of trailer titles - and skip those, so as to only grab the American/English version?

The MTSA program searches for and downloads the trailers, so MTSA would need to either do better searches to get the right version of a trailer or have an option added to the MTSA config.xml to allow MTSA to fetch trailers giving priority to a chosen country or language.

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

2) What is the actual methodology for hunting for trailers and auto-loading them? Does it look for all that are currently in your theaters and then only get those that are actually hosted by the Apple site (rather than linked to external)? (maybe this is why Angels & Demons did not load?)

MTSA uses the movies that were fetched for your theaters to look up the trailers at the Apple site. I'm not sure why it's missing Angels & Demons. I'd guess it's probably because of the & in the title, but I'm just guessing on this. If it's failing because of non-text characters in the movie titles, then the issue would have to be addressed by the MTSA author.

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

3) I am just curious why the trailers which I get - which appear to be HD - are smaller file sizes than even the smallest one that I see on the Apple website. The 480P trailer on the website is usually quite larger than the file I get auto-downloaded, yet when I watch them on the HD extender, they are 16:9, and appear to be HD... where/which/what is the version that the file downloads?

The only thing I can think of is that you don't have your trailer quality set to one of the HD settings (which I don't think are available in the current MovieTimes STVi). The MovieTimes STVi was developed before the newer HD trailer quality settings were available in MTSA. If you set the quality option as HIGH in the plugin config page, I'm pretty sure you're not getting the HD trailers. You can't change it to one of the HD from the MovieTimes config page in SageTV, so you'll have to open the MTSA config.xml file with a text editor and change the <TrailerQuality> setting to one of these other settings: HD480, HD720, or HD1080
I'm not sure if this related problem was addressed, but in a much earlier version of MTSA, setting the quality to HD1080 only downloaded HD1080 trailers. And if a 1080 version of the trailer didn't exist, it wouldn't revert to a lower quality so you would have movies that wouldn't get any trailers even though a lower HD quality trailer existed. You'll have to try HD1080 and if you get fewer trailers, set it to HD720 or HD480. And you'll have to delete your existing movie trailers so MTSA can re-download the HD trailers.

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

4) And finally, I saw some of the discussion on the previous two pages about downloading based on genre and such, and got completely confused, so I have to ask - is there a way to set this plug-in to download other movies besides those in theaters? Is that what the discussion was about? And if not, could a search screen be created in Sage - even if it was a custom screen you had to add with dynamic menus - similar to the title search or youtube search - where you could search for trailers in the Apple website (any trailer they have, not just ones in theaters) and it would download it? Granted, you would have to wait for it to download at that point, but it would be a cool feature.

I didn't follow that discussion, but no, MTSA only fetches trailers for the movies it has downloaded show times for. This feature would have to be added by the author of the MTSA program and then someone would have to integrate into SageTV with an STVi. Alternatively, I would say that this feature would probably better fit in with stuckless's BMT project. BMT already scans the media library and does online searches for posters and fanart...an option to download trailers from the Apple site seems like it could be doable. Then trailers could be incorporated into any of the various movie browser imports to allow playing a trailer from their movie detail screens.

[robogeek]

I just checked and seen that I am getting a trailer for Angels & Demons...not sure why you aren't pjpjpjpj. I also have my trailer quality setting at HD480 and I'm running the SageMC STV now, so I'm running the SageMC version of the MovieTimes plugin.

I'm not sure what version of the MTSA program you have, but I'm running the latest one (MTSA v4.6.4.32432) posted a couple of weeks ago in the SageMC MovieTimes thread and can be downloaded from the bottom of this web page:
http://nephilim.gofreeserve.com/wordpress/mtsa

<edit>
I just checked Nephilim's page, and the download at Nephilim's page is labeled v4.6.4 but it is actually v4.6.8.19679. I downloaded and tested it and it still seems to be working without issues.
</edit>

[pjpjpjpj]

Just checking in after a busy weekend - thanks for the info. I don't know why I am not getting some trailers - it's not the ampersand in "Angels & Demons" because I didn't get something simple like "Up" either. I currently (from memory - I am at work now) have something like 12 trailers... but I have many more movies showing at the theaters I have selected. I will check my quality settings (both Sage and/or MTSA XML) and and see what I can find - hopefully it is something as simple as that "no 1080 available" issue.

Thanks for your help.

[thomaszoo]

I just got it set up and the trailers are the only thing giving me a problem. I do not get any trailers at all. I have tried High, HD1080 and HD480 in the config file. I get everything else, including posters. Any ideas?

Wayne

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by thomaszoo

I just got it set up and the trailers are the only thing giving me a problem. I do not get any trailers at all. I have tried High, HD1080 and HD480 in the config file. I get everything else, including posters. Any ideas?

Wayne

What does the log file say when it's looking for the trailers? There should be something in there to give you an indicator as to what the issue is.

[thomaszoo]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

What does the log file say when it's looking for the trailers? There should be something in there to give you an indicator as to what the issue is.

I didn't think to look in the log file. But I am now even more confused. It looks like it is downloading (most) trailers, but he Trailers folder is empty. I also do not understand the first part of the file that shows many setting to be false.

They are attached FYI. Does this look normal?

Wayne

[robogeek]

Originally Posted by thomaszoo

I didn't think to look in the log file. But I am now even more confused. It looks like it is downloading (most) trailers, but he Trailers folder is empty. I also do not understand the first part of the file that shows many setting to be false.

They are attached FYI. Does this look normal?

Wayne

Try creating a seperate directory for Posters and change the directory for the Posters to this new directory. You currently have it set to the same directory as the Temp directory, which gets cleared when MTSA finishes each task.

I think MTSA compares contents of the Posters directory with the contents of the Trailer directory to determine which trailers need to be downloaded...since no posters are in the Temp directory after it gets cleared, MTSA thinks there are no trailers to download.

<edit>
I did a quick check of the source code and it doesn't look like MTSA compares with the Poster directory.

Do you have any files at all in the Trailer directory?

If you have files in the Trailer directory but don't get the trailer button in SageTV, did you install the my updated STVi from post 591 (http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...ostcount=591)?
</edit>

[robogeek]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Just checking in after a busy weekend - thanks for the info. I don't know why I am not getting some trailers - it's not the ampersand in "Angels & Demons" because I didn't get something simple like "Up" either. I currently (from memory - I am at work now) have something like 12 trailers... but I have many more movies showing at the theaters I have selected. I will check my quality settings (both Sage and/or MTSA XML) and and see what I can find - hopefully it is something as simple as that "no 1080 available" issue.

Thanks for your help.

I'm using HD480 for quality and I've got 14 trailers out of 16 total movies listed in SageTV. I also don't have a trailer for Up and the poster art downloaded for Up is wrong as well...it downloaded the poster for Knocked Up. With such a short name, the poster and trailer search is probably not very accurate and that's probably why Up is causing trouble.

[thomaszoo]

Originally Posted by robogeek

Try creating a seperate directory for Posters and change the directory for the Posters to this new directory. You currently have it set to the same directory as the Temp directory, which gets cleared when MTSA finishes each task.

I think MTSA compares contents of the Posters directory with the contents of the Trailer directory to determine which trailers need to be downloaded...since no posters are in the Temp directory after it gets cleared, MTSA thinks there are no trailers to download.

<edit>
I did a quick check of the source code and it doesn't look like MTSA compares with the Poster directory.

Do you have any files at all in the Trailer directory?

If you have files in the Trailer directory but don't get the trailer button in SageTV, did you install the my updated STVi from post 591 (http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...ostcount=591)?
</edit>

I created a separate directory for the posters and it is working just fine. I can see some small (most less than 40K) temp trailer files appear (some starting with appletrailer...) but all are deleted when MTSA completes. I have absolutely nothing in the trailers directory. The "Play Trailer" button appears but gives an error when I try to play. I did download the updated STVi and it was the only thing that got me this far. I have attached my latest config and log files.

Wayne

EDIT:

I just noticed that in trying to play a trailer that the Web Interface reports it is trying to play a file named dragmetohell-tlr1rr_h480p. Don't know it that helps at all.