STV Import: MovieTimes Movie Listings Import v0.57 Beta

[aperry]

Originally Posted by snoopy

Do you have to use Studio to get this to work?

I've heard that Nielm's dynamic menu can be used, but I have not tested it myself... The PDF file does have specific instructions as to how to add it though, and it is pretty easy to do.

[grooves12]

Originally Posted by aperry

I've heard that Nielm's dynamic menu can be used, but I have not tested it myself... The PDF file does have specific instructions as to how to add it though, and it is pretty easy to do.

That's how I set it up... and it worked fine to get up and running.

Aperry: did you look at my post above about the menu displaying garbled text because it is posting the info to the wrong window??

[garyellis]

OK..I give up..where is the download? I'm sure it is obvious, but I can'tfind it...not on the download page.

Forgive me, it was my birthday yesterday and I feel older...

Gary

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by garyellis

OK..I give up..where is the download? I'm sure it is obvious, but I can'tfind it...not on the download page.

Forgive me, it was my birthday yesterday and I feel older...

Gary

What about this ...

[aperry]

Originally Posted by grooves12

did you look at my post above about the menu displaying garbled text because it is posting the info to the wrong window??

I think that may be a side effect of using it with the Dynamic Menus program. If I were to make an educated guess, I think that our themes may be interfering with each other. The longer we go, the closer I am getting to possibly renaming the themes so they don't reference the system themes. Sage normally seems to handle this okay, but I have seen problems like you're describing.

[cslatt]

Originally Posted by garyellis

OK..I give up..where is the download? I'm sure it is obvious, but I can'tfind it...not on the download page.

Forgive me, it was my birthday yesterday and I feel older...

Gary

Don't feel bad, I looked on the download page for 5 minutes before I found the link. It's very small and it is near the bottom. It's a white "Download Here" link in the middle of the blue bar. It really ought to be a gigantic "DOWNLOAD" button at the top of the screen.

[cslatt]

Originally Posted by aperry

Yeah, I've thought of that too. I think that is something we'd have to put "down the road" though. I want to at least get some sort of trailer playback working first.

Hey aperry,
What if I added code to MTSA to re-encode the trailers to a format that Sage / MVPs support natively when it downloaded them. Would that speed things up for you getting trailer support going? If the author opens up the actual MTSA source code (which seems likely since the source for the other version is open) I could add it directly, or if he doesn't want this feature added or doesn't open the source, I could make it a stand-alone program that runs in a batch file directly after MTSA runs (so you would just schedule the batch file to run instead of scheduling MTSA to run directly).

(My .NET skills are so rarely useful for Sage Customization, I feel I should offer when the rare occasion occurs that they might).

[grooves12]

Originally Posted by aperry

I think that may be a side effect of using it with the Dynamic Menus program. If I were to make an educated guess, I think that our themes may be interfering with each other. The longer we go, the closer I am getting to possibly renaming the themes so they don't reference the system themes. Sage normally seems to handle this okay, but I have seen problems like you're describing.

it worked perfectly fine with the older version... this did not occur until I installed the new version.

Plus, I would think the way the main menu is called upon would have little to no effect to the way a menu that is nested deep into the plugin has interaction with itself. My guess is there is some code that got lost when you changed the way menu are re-ordered. Maybe it only pops up for people that upgrade. I don't know... but the latest version is unusable for me now.

[stewy417]

I continue to get overlapping text when viewing movie times and descriptions. Unless I missed it, I did not see this problem in the thread.

Any thoughts?

[aperry]

Originally Posted by grooves12

it worked perfectly fine with the older version... this did not occur until I installed the new version.

Plus, I would think the way the main menu is called upon would have little to no effect to the way a menu that is nested deep into the plugin has interaction with itself. My guess is there is some code that got lost when you changed the way menu are re-ordered. Maybe it only pops up for people that upgrade. I don't know... but the latest version is unusable for me now.

One quick question. Did you re-install this to a clean STV file? If you try to install this to an STV/XML that already has the MovieTimes in it, things get broken. As I mentioned a few posts back, I hope to correct that at some point, but for now, you have to reinstall the STVI.

To install a new version:

Go back to a version of your SageTV STV/XML file where the MovieTimes was not installed.

Download and extract the MovieTimes files from the ZIP files (BE CAREFUL NOT TO OVERWRITE YOUR config.xml AND locations.xml FILES, otherwise you'll have to reconfigure everything)

Do the steps to import the MovieTimes STVI and create the menu item in the new STV.

At this point, you should be "good to go" with the new version.

--

Yes, I know the reinstalls are a pain, but that's what we have to work with at this point. I still don't know enough about Studio to be able to make it be able to overwrite itself... Someday though...

If it's any consolation, the new versions should slow down a bit now once things stabilize and trailer playback gets added.

[aperry]

Originally Posted by cslatt

What if I added code to MTSA to re-encode the trailers to a format that Sage / MVPs support natively when it downloaded them. Would that speed things up for you getting trailer support going? If the author opens up the actual MTSA source code (which seems likely since the source for the other version is open) I could add it directly, or if he doesn't want this feature added or doesn't open the source, I could make it a stand-alone program that runs in a batch file directly after MTSA runs (so you would just schedule the batch file to run instead of scheduling MTSA to run directly).

(My .NET skills are so rarely useful for Sage Customization, I feel I should offer when the rare occasion occurs that they might).

I sent you a PM to request your email address. Please respond back to that private message and I'll put you in touch with the MTSA author so you guys can talk it over.

By the way, I have seen that there are limited occurrences of trailers in AVI format out on the web, so perhaps you and him might look into that as a possibility.

In the meantime, I'm probably going to put in some VERY BASIC support for a command-line based call to play trailers (something like a config screen with a program name to select, and a text field for you to put in parameters). It won't work for all, but at least some of us will be able to make use of that for the time being.

[aperry]

Originally Posted by stewy417

I continue to get overlapping text when viewing movie times and descriptions. Unless I missed it, I did not see this problem in the thread.

Any thoughts?

I have seen others have this problem. I think that my themes and perhaps some other STVI's themes and/or the main program wind up stepping on each other for some versions.

A quick suggestion would be to run Sage v5.02 if you aren't already. Next, try installing MovieTimes into a clean unaltered version of the SageTV3.XML file.

If it still happens at that point, then perhaps I'll get some config data from you so I can try and figure out what's going on. Not really sure how we'll fix it though if that's the case...

[grooves12]

Originally Posted by aperry

One quick question. Did you re-install this to a clean STV file? If you try to install this to an STV/XML that already has the MovieTimes in it, things get broken. As I mentioned a few posts back, I hope to correct that at some point, but for now, you have to reinstall the STVI.

To install a new version:

Go back to a version of your SageTV STV/XML file where the MovieTimes was not installed.

Download and extract the MovieTimes files from the ZIP files (BE CAREFUL NOT TO OVERWRITE YOUR config.xml AND locations.xml FILES, otherwise you'll have to reconfigure everything)

Do the steps to import the MovieTimes STVI and create the menu item in the new STV.

At this point, you should be "good to go" with the new version.

--

Yes, I know the reinstalls are a pain, but that's what we have to work with at this point. I still don't know enough about Studio to be able to make it be able to overwrite itself... Someday though...

If it's any consolation, the new versions should slow down a bit now once things stabilize and trailer playback gets added.

That did it for me... I just had to make sure I rolled back to an older verion that didn't have it before reimporting the stvi, and now I don't get the overlapping text. Thanks...

[farscapesg1]

Should this import work with the SageTV client software? I installed it fine on my server system, but when I try to set it up on the client it doesn't let me direct it to the msta file. I click on the Load Config File but it won't browse the system. I opens the box that would normally allow you to navigate through the local drives, but nothing shows up on the righthand side. Any ideas?

[aperry]

Mike1961 got his working with a client setup. Also, I gave instructions a while back regarding setting up a share (geared towards mike1961's setup, but you should be able to make it work with your setup).

[farscapesg1]

Originally Posted by aperry

Mike1961 got his working with a client setup. Also, I gave instructions a while back regarding setting up a share (geared towards mike1961's setup, but you should be able to make it work with your setup).

Well, if I could get the client to even let met point to a share I would try it

I'ts really odd. The STVI imports, I set it up in Studio and following the steps I get to where I would click on "Load Config File". I select the option, then the "select configuration file" option, and I get the box that says "select the configuration file you want to use". The problem is that all I get on that screen is the "Cancel" option on the left side and right above that it says "Current: My Computer" but there is nothing on the left side for me to select to point it at the msta file. I know the file browser works by testing the media center option "Browse Media Files". The file browser just doesn't seem to work for this STVI, and only on the client system?

Oh well, I guess it isn't that big of a deal since I don't use the client system much (bedroom PC)

[mike1961]

farscapesg1 - The TRICK to making it work in a SageClient setup is to first install EVERYTHING and get EVERYTHING working on the server. Once that is all working the next step is to use a UNC in the SageClient properties (ie: \\server1\sharedz\movietimes....etc). I'm not sure if the latest versions support a direct drive mapping but since I have my SageClient mapped such that Z: on my sage client is actually Z:\SharedZ on my server I'm using a UNC. So, just first make it work on the server (run Sage on the server). Then on your Sage client quit out of Sage and modify the sage properties. It's actually really easy but you will spend an eternity trying if you don't first get it working by running Sage on the server. Download the movie locations and the MTSA movies on the server. Check the locations.xml file to amke sure your movie locations are in that file and check the moviedata.xml to make sure the movies and times are properly downloaded (you can just open them with notepad or something). Then, it should work on the clients with no problem at all.

EDITED: You have to modify the properties file on Sage client and setup a UNC path to get the SageClient working. The problem I discovered with SageClient is when viewing the drives and you look at DriveC for example, it's actually the drive C on the server and not the client. The basic problem is when trying to do the mappings on SageClient, the software thinks you are actually on the server. Therefore, suppose your client is mapped such that Z: on the client is Z:\SharedZ on your file server. In Sage client the software will try to map your sageclient to Z:\SharedZ\movietimes etc... even though that path on your sageclient does not exist. This can present some confusion especially if the mappings to the server are not directly to the root drive. But, a UNC path takes care of all those problems.

aperry - I haven't downloaded the latest version just yet. Is it safe to download? I noticed others are having some issues but I"m not sure if that is with the MVP or what...(guilty..I kind of skimmed over the posts...really rushed right now). Second, I'm using this plugin along with the Nielms Dynamic menu and also GermSage which allows me to use Nero Showtime media player to play my mp4s. If there's anyway to tell Nero Showtime or perhaps a simple txt file to specify a media player to play the trailers from direcly from your plugin it would just be awesome. The only other thing I think that others have suggested is a link to Nielms IMDB.

Thanks again for a great plugin.

Mike

[key master]

Additional features like that would definitely be welcome! Any better .NET functions that you see would work better anywhere in the code would be cool, too I think people have used mtsa enough sucessfully for it to go out of "beta" so I can post the source code. I'll post it soon (along with a new non-beta release) and will post back when it's up. I wanted to look into why certain trailers aren't downloading that aperry mentioned. Apple seems to occasionally change their website to where some trailers stop downloading.

-Jim

Originally Posted by cslatt

Hey aperry,
What if I added code to MTSA to re-encode the trailers to a format that Sage / MVPs support natively when it downloaded them. Would that speed things up for you getting trailer support going? If the author opens up the actual MTSA source code (which seems likely since the source for the other version is open) I could add it directly, or if he doesn't want this feature added or doesn't open the source, I could make it a stand-alone program that runs in a batch file directly after MTSA runs (so you would just schedule the batch file to run instead of scheduling MTSA to run directly).

(My .NET skills are so rarely useful for Sage Customization, I feel I should offer when the rare occasion occurs that they might).

[jlabrue]

Just a little update on my progress with this plugin so far for those interested in trying it out. It is working great for me and does everything I need (trailers are not a huge req for me) aperry has done a super job with this and with the help of key_master this is an awesome add on for Sage. it would be great to see this implemented in the Sage core like the Weather mod was but then it might lose some of its flexibility.

Thanks for all the hard work aperry! I might just be able to completely win my wife over with Sage after all.

[mkanet]

So, is everything working now except for movie trailers? Are all reproducable issues resolved? I've waited for this addon to mature a lttle bit before integrating it into my sageTV PC. Is now a good time?