Plugin: Upcoming Movies

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by mkanet

thanks for all your hard work. Could you please explain the difference between "IMDB Search" + "Read, Write, and Edit Metadata" and "Complementary Metadata Tool (CMT)"? Did you consolidate the two plugins into one larger plugin meant for SageTV 7.1.5 and newer?

Yes, it is a merge of the 2 plugins. I was finding that I was ending up with a lot of duplicated code between a few different plugins.

John

[mkanet]

Everything seems to work great.

I'm not sure if this is normal Phoenix fanart behavior, but the SageTV Client that's on the same PC as my sageTV server (sageTVService.exe), the fanart background look much better than the old Upcoming Movies backgrounds; but not as resolute/detailed as the same movies in my imported movies collection. If I had to guess the TV movies use 480p/720p backgrounds while the Imported Movie (same movie title) has 1080p backgrounds. All the backgrounds look about the same on my extender.

-Michael

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

Yes, it is a merge of the 2 plugins. I was finding that I was ending up with a lot of duplicated code between a few different plugins.

John

[JREkiwi]

What's the resolution of the PC display? and are you running it full screen or windowed?

The plugin does do scaling based on the screen resolution of the UI.

John

[mkanet]

I need to look into this more. I am positive that the backgrounds are far more detailed than before. Its a little hard to tell since there appears to be a different alphablended grey image overlayed over the phoenix background (instead of using CenterBGWithBorder.png from Diamond). Is there a way to to only use CenterBGWithBorder.png to overlay over the background?

[mkanet]

Feature Request to consider: Date filter. Comcast and other TV providers tend to broadcast very old movies (such as from 1965, 1972, etc). I can't think of any movies I would want to watch older the 1980. It would be great to set a date filter to not show movies older than a certain year. Maybe you could see the value in that?

[jorton]

Hey JREKiwi,

Is there any way to select/filter only the channels you want to see? If it's already there and I missed it please nudge me in the right direction

I have quite a few HD movie channels but I'm only interested in recording movies from certain HD channels that do not have commercials etc... If not would it be hard to add a channel filter?

Upcoming Movies 2 and your new CMT are working great for me on Diamond.

Thanks,

Jeremy

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by mkanet

I need to look into this more. I am positive that the backgrounds are far more detailed than before. Its a little hard to tell since there appears to be a different alphablended grey image overlayed over the phoenix background (instead of using CenterBGWithBorder.png from Diamond). Is there a way to to only use CenterBGWithBorder.png to overlay over the background?

The backgrounds will be far more detailed, compared to the old version, but as I said, it will still be scaling based on your display resolution. I could add an option to not scale at all. It should be using the same CenterBGWithBorder.png as it should be picking it up from the them you're using. I do change the alpha to 220 when there is a background to display. I'd need to do a comparison to see what Diamond is doing when it displays a background.

Originally Posted by mkanet

Feature Request to consider: Date filter. Comcast and other TV providers tend to broadcast very old movies (such as from 1965, 1972, etc).

Originally Posted by jorton

Is there any way to select/filter only the channels you want to see? If it's already there and I missed it please nudge me in the right direction

I'll have a look at adding a few more filters. Channels should be relatively easy. Date is very dependent on the quality of your EPG data.

Originally Posted by mkanet

I can't think of any movies I would want to watch older the 1980.

Some of my favorite movies are pre 1980.

Originally Posted by jorton

Upcoming Movies 2 and your new CMT are working great for me on Diamond.

Thanks Jeremy, I did do some testing with Diamond, and couldn't see anything obvious that I'd broken, but great to have some feedback from someone in the know .

John

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by mkanet

I can't think of any movies I would want to watch older the 1980.

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

Some of my favorite movies are pre 1980.

I wasn't even alive then, but some of the best movies ever were filmed before then. The original clash of the titans is one of my favorite movies. The new one was terrible. I wish I could un-see it. Planet of the apes anyone? I could go on and on.

[mkanet]

John, that would be great if you could match the same alpha diamond uses. I dont think that Diamond manipulates alphablending at all in respect to CenterBGWithBorder.png; leaving it up to the transparency level in the image itself. I think that's why the background looks more faded/darker in Upcoming Movies 2 than other Diamond menus that use CenterBGWithBorder.png. The CenterBGWithBorder.png that I use doesnt obstruct the background at all around the edges; which reveals the background very clearly in those areas in diamond menus that use CenterBGWithBorder.png.

As far as the date filter goes... its not a big deal; but having that flexibility would sure be a nice!

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

The backgrounds will be far more detailed, compared to the old version, but as I said, it will still be scaling based on your display resolution. I could add an option to not scale at all. It should be using the same CenterBGWithBorder.png as it should be picking it up from the them you're using. I do change the alpha to 220 when there is a background to display. I'd need to do a comparison to see what Diamond is doing when it displays a background.

I'll have a look at adding a few more filters. Channels should be relatively easy. Date is very dependent on the quality of your EPG data.
Some of my favorite movies are pre 1980.

John

[mkanet]

One thing I noticed about Upcoming Movies 2, on my machine, there was a short pause or brief sageTV spinning circle when scrolling through Upcoming Movies. I'm guessing this is because I have phoenix fanart for just about every movie on TV (>4000 folders in central fanart parent folder). Even on SSD disks, it takes significant time for the OS/Java to browse an NTFS folder with thousands and thousands of items. I stumbled on a tweak which fixes this performance issue instantly (without a reboot) with very noticeable difference. Im not sure if it will work on other setups; but I thought I would at least post about it in case anyone else has a large amount of fanart stored and having a small lag when scrolling through upcoming movies items:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...0&postcount=94

[JREkiwi]

I've seen some conflicting reports about the benefits of NtfsMemoryUsage.

I'm planning on doing some changes on the loading of fanart while scrolling which I'm hoping will fix the pause you're seeing. It's more to do with the fact that the images are at least 4 times the size as in the previous version and loading those images takes time. I've found a more efficient way of handling the scrolling that PluckyHD uses in some of his code, which I'll be attempting to replicate.

John

[mkanet]

Anything to improve displaying of high res backgrounds on a high res display would be nice. I know for a fact though the setting NtfsMemoryUsage=2 definitely made a significant difference to Upcoming movies 2 (and Windows Explorer browsing of a non-sageTV related folder with over 30,000 files) ...at least on my PC. I can make a significant portion of the pause go away and come back by changing the value from 2 to 0 and visa-versa without rebooting. However, no matter what, scrolling through 1080p backgrounds on a 1080p PC client/display I still notice a very small delay even with the tweak enabled.

On an unrelated note, I can confirm that on my other displays/clients... Upcoming Movies 2 does display a slightly more faded background than other diamond menus that use CenterBGWithBorder.png. The problem wasn't just one client/display. This is why I thought the fanart background resolution appeared to be less than the display/original image pixel resoluton. It looks like you were right that it was caused by Upcoming Movies added alphablending).

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

I've seen some conflicting reports about the benefits of NtfsMemoryUsage.

I'm planning on doing some changes on the loading of fanart while scrolling which I'm hoping will fix the pause you're seeing. It's more to do with the fact that the images are at least 4 times the size as in the previous version and loading those images takes time. I've found a more efficient way of handling the scrolling that PluckyHD uses in some of his code, which I'll be attempting to replicate.

John

[Muchacho]

Thanks for putting this together. I really missed this feature from sageMC when I switch to diamond.

I use this to find new movies that I wanted to see when they came out. As I am a busy old guy, I cant really remember the names of most of the films by the time they make it to TV. What I used to do in sageMC is sort by date with the most recent on top and then scroll through them. I like this new pluggin much better because of the metadata, fanart, and posters- which makes it easier for me to remember the movies.

Is there a way to sort by release date AND group by title. Right now each movie is listed multiple times which makes scrolling through them a bit tedious.

Nice work!

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by Muchacho

Is there a way to sort by release date AND group by title. Right now each movie is listed multiple times which makes scrolling through them a bit tedious.

There's currently not a way to do that. It's still on my list of things to add, but I've discovered it's a little more complex to do than I initial envisioned.

John

[nettech_gt]

I had 1.8.6.3 installed when I was running Sage 7.0.23 and it worked great. I now have Sage 7.1.9 installed and am having some issues. I uninstalled 1.8.6.3 and installed 2.04, but I don't see it listed on the TV menu (or on any menu) anymore. Help!

[JREkiwi]

Have you got any other plugins installed that manipulate the Main Menu?

I know that if you're using the Another Dynamic Menu (ADM) plugin you need to add the plugin menu items manually

John

[nettech_gt]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

Have you got any other plugins installed that manipulate the Main Menu?

I know that if you're using the Another Dynamic Menu (ADM) plugin you need to add the plugin menu items manually

John

I do have ADM. I tried creating a new menu item but I didn't see and "action" item for "upcoming movies". I browsed through the ADM wiki but I'm still not sure how to do it. Help!

THANX!!

[Fuzzy]

Look into ADM's copy mode. It will basically switch you back to the stock main menu, so you can choose the plugin's upcoming movies item, and copy it into the ADM configuration.

[nettech_gt]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Look into ADM's copy mode. It will basically switch you back to the stock main menu, so you can choose the plugin's upcoming movies item, and copy it into the ADM configuration.

Thanx! That worked.

[les_bloom]

I have been playing with this plugin and it has been great.

One thing I can't seem to figure out though. Is there a way to filter out movies that I have already recorded, ripped, or scheduled to record but not yet watched?

The reason I ask is because my display shows a bunch of movies that I have already scheduled for recording. It would be nice to be able to not have to scroll past those options any more.

Thank you for this great plugin

Les