IMDB and TV.com listings like in "My Videos"?

[Jeff]

I've added support for this site in the VA plug-in, but I still find that IMDB (which does require screen scraping) responds faster and usually has more information.

Jeff

[capone]

Basically what reven had in the control panel. Where you could assign multiple directories, allowing you to group & organize your videos, and recognize directories in a drill-down format.

In my setup, I have one for movies, one for shows, one for my son's movies, his shows, etc. The movies are easy enough. They just have folders w/ the movies (usually one or two video files and sometimes subtitle files).

The shows get more complicated. Our shows aren't bad. There is a folder, Shows, and then folders for the name of the series. W/in those are the individual episodes.

The most complicated is my son's shows. His are the only ones we don't delete as we watch and continue to grow. He has a folder called Shows. Within that, I have sub-categories of show names or types (Dinosaurs, Superheros, Trains). Within those are the names of the series (Walking w/ Dinosuars, Justice League, Thomas the Tank Engine, etc), and within those, the shows (5 seasons of JL, 5 of Teen Titans, 100+ eps of Thomas, etc).

Without this hierarchical system, and being able to create a root of mapped direcrtories (these files reside on two separate networked systems), it would be a total mess. I know we easily have over a hundred folders and 2000 files (and that's w/ us deleting our shows and movies as we go).

What type of additional organization are you looking for? The video archive plug-in lets you assign videos to groups and lets you create users with selective access to the various groups. This can be used to create accounts for your kids, for example.

Jeff

[capone]

I just installed VA, and found the problem I personally have. It does everything I need, except how it treats to top directories you add.

When I add dirs like movies, shows, etc, it mixes them altogether. It does the subdirs just great. If it treated the top lvls are individual entities, it would be perfect. I can't do it on the server end becuase those folders are on different systems and drives. Otherwise I would just make a folder called "videos" on a system, and dump everything in there, and it would work perfectly now.

If that were a toggle, I think you'd get all the My Video orphans, or at least those that rely on it for organization's sake. That, and if you could have different view for different folders (being able to do movie posters for movies, and folders for shows).

Btw, I noticed if you take a dir out of the control panel, it doesn't remove the videos that were added before. I take it those need to be removed manually? Would the same thing be true if I deleted a folder from windows explorer? (I delete a movie folder on my computer, VA would still have it in DB as being there?)

[sgilani]

I agree with capone, the hierachical structure of My Videos was much better.. assigning those virtual directories is just perfect.

thanks for dropping in reven with the tip; i'm sure you have your reasons for quitting development of the plugin, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who really really misses your work.

[Jeff]

I just installed VA, and found the problem I personally have. It does everything I need, except how it treats to top directories you add.

When I add dirs like movies, shows, etc, it mixes them altogether. It does the subdirs just great. If it treated the top lvls are individual entities, it would be perfect. I can't do it on the server end becuase those folders are on different systems and drives. Otherwise I would just make a folder called "videos" on a system, and dump everything in there, and it would work perfectly now.

If that were a toggle, I think you'd get all the My Video orphans, or at least those that rely on it for organization's sake. That, and if you could have different view for different folders (being able to do movie posters for movies, and folders for shows).

Btw, I noticed if you take a dir out of the control panel, it doesn't remove the videos that were added before. I take it those need to be removed manually? Would the same thing be true if I deleted a folder from windows explorer? (I delete a movie folder on my computer, VA would still have it in DB as being there?)

I'm not sure I understand what you are looking for at the top level. I have my videos spread over 3 machines on the network (1 with 7 disk drives and 2 LINUX based RAID machines). On each drive I have "videos" directory and a "dvd" directory as the root for recordings and dvds. The individual files are then stores in sub directories under these. I don't keep any video files at the "root" level.

If GBPVR is always running (for example a copy serving an MVP) then the plug-in will detect files being added and removed and update its lists and database in real time automatically. Note that "real-time" is literally real-time for windows based machines that the plug-in has read/write access to and is within 15 minutes for UNIX or read-only drives.

If you delete files when GBPVR is not running (and thus when the plug-in is not running either) you will need to tell it to rescan for files by pressing the GO key on the remote (F11).

I never liked the way my videos remembered the view for a given folder since I wanted the same view for all folders and found that I had to change it for each one each time, but I suppose I could make this a configurable option if people like it that way. Would you want it for each sub folder, or would all recordings folders have the same view and all dvd folders have the same view?

Jeff

[capone]

I'm not sure I understand what you are looking for at the top level. I have my videos spread over 3 machines on the network (1 with 7 disk drives and 2 LINUX based RAID machines). On each drive I have "videos" directory and a "dvd" directory as the root for recordings and dvds. The individual files are then stores in sub directories under these. I don't keep any video files at the "root" level.

What I mean here is when I add dirs like /movies and /shows in the control panel, I'd like to have those as folders in VA. When I added those, it just took the contents of each and had them all togther.

If GBPVR is always running (for example a copy serving an MVP) then the plug-in will detect files being added and removed and update its lists and database in real time automatically. Note that "real-time" is literally real-time for windows based machines that the plug-in has read/write access to and is within 15 minutes for UNIX or read-only drives.

If you delete files when GBPVR is not running (and thus when the plug-in is not running either) you will need to tell it to rescan for files by pressing the GO key on the remote (F11).

Ah..cool. That's perfect. Thx.

I never liked the way my videos remembered the view for a given folder since I wanted the same view for all folders and found that I had to change it for each one each time, but I suppose I could make this a configurable option if people like it that way. Would you want it for each sub folder, or would all recordings folders have the same view and all dvd folders have the same view?

I'm just speakign for myself, but I think it would be enough to be able to toggle each main dir. So I could map a movies folder and turn it on for it, and map one called shows, and turn it off for it.

I think a way to do all of this would be right where you add the dirs now. Instead of having just the path, add three cols. One would be dir top level (y/n), name (text), the other list/preview (y/n).

Path---------------Top Lvl?------Name---------Preview?
//server/movies--------y---------Movies------------y
//server2/shows-------y----------Shows------------n

I think adding that would let happy VA ppl keep things the same, and MyVid ppl convert in a biz-as-usual way.

Btw, I'm just offering suggestions. Didn't want you to think I was trying to steer you. I think I'm just speaking for a few of us that looking for these functions, and know there will be a day where either imdb changes and breaks that w/ MyVids, or a change in GB makes it unusable.

[capone]

Actually, I think I figured out a simple solution to the mapped dir/top lvl thing. If I just take all the movies in //server/movies, and put them in a dir called Movies, I think I get the same result.

Sry...that one should have occured to me. I guess I'm so used to doing the other way I didn't see that forest there...

[sgilani]

Is the TV episode lookup working well Jeff? I'll look into it tonight, but how does it scan for the info? All my episodes are named to work with My Videos since I used that before... examples:

Star Trek TNG - 7x03 - Interface.avi

... so it's Star Trek TNG .. season 7, episode 3, title of the show "Interface"

for movies its just the title of the movie .. like "Star Trek Nemesis.avi" .. My Videos picked up all of the episodes and movies in one sweep with no problem. Can VA do this as well?