New version of Video Archive plug-in released

[bluesxman]

Is there any way to manually replace an image that is currently stored in the database?

[Jeff]

For DVDs you can use the DVD Info Editor utility. A linkto it is installed in the GBPVR program group on the windows start menu. For each mpg file it finds in a DVD directory it will show what info the database has. You can edit any info that you'd like (runtime, description, name, etc) as well as enter new images. To update the image, just drag and drop the image you want to use on the image portion of the editor screen (the lower right corner). I am thinking about updating the utility so that when it starts it will autoupdate the database will all images found, eliminating the need to do the drag and drop for files you already have in the right place with the right name.

Jeff

[bluesxman]

Thanks for the reply, Jeff. I was thinking more for recordings (should have said that). I would use the folder.jpg method but I'd like the folder containing the recordings to be removed once all shows have been deleted - which it won't if the folder isn't empty.

[Jeff]

Ah. folder images aren't stored in the database at all; they are only read from the folder.

Jeff

[bluesxman]

Ah. folder images aren't stored in the database at all; they are only read from the folder.

Jeff

OK, I clouded the issue there! At the moment I have a recording of "Six Feet Under", it pulled down an image for that which I'd like to change - anyway I can do that? A further question... how does it work with regarding storing images for a series - with my example, is there one Six Feet Under image stored in the database, or one for every episode? Thanks in advance.

[Jeff]

The way it works for recordings is as follows. The image shown in the "show" list (i.e., the directory), is taked from the first recordings folder that is found to contain a file called folder.png, folder.gif, or folder.jpg (in that order). If you have images in your GBPVR recordings folders these will always be used. If not it will look along the archvie path until it finds something.

For any given episode (i.e., the file) it currently looks to see if the is a file in the same folder as the directory with an extension of .png,. .gif, or .jpg. If not it then looks in the database to see if there is a stored image for that file name, and if nothing is found there either then it defaults to using the folder image. In the next release I am going to swap the order of the first two steps. So if you want a particualr image for a recording named episode1.mpg you would simply put an image named episode1.jpg in the same directory.

Jeff

[bluesxman]

Thanks for clarifying that Jeff. I thought that VA downloaded images for current recordings but I must have been getting confused - I've been playing with a few plugins lately. I've decided to stick with VA, so a big thank you for all the work you've put in here!

I do though have just a couple of things to mention .

1. When I go to VA from the main menu, I see a folder named .Videos appear in the recordings list (I assume this is the virtual root folder for my archived recordings). There are no files in this folder, only sub folders, once it has been selected, or highlighted twice, it disappears. Is this normal?

2. Would it be/Is it possible to choose the location to store archived recordings? i.e. choose to store a recording in dir A or dir B?

Thanks!

[Jeff]

For the first point, yes. The .videos directory is used to show recordings in the "root" of all your recordings directories. If you don;t have any recpordings at the root level (sounds like you don;t, and neither do I) this directory will dissapear the first time the plug-in tries to fill it in and finds out that there are no files to be found.

On the second point, you can not specifiy a directory, but you can get some control by specifiying the archive algorithim via the plug-in configuration. it can be set to either move the file to the first disk in your list of archive directories that has enough space to hold the file (starting with the first and working down to the bottom of the list) or it can be set to copy it to the disk with the most free space.

Jeff

[Jeff]

A new update has been posted at http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Plugin/VideoArchive


2005-10-08 :

• Added config option to disable auto-fetching of images from the Internet
  
• Updated DVD Info Editor utility to automatically load new images into the records stored in the database if a jpg, png, or gif image file exists for a DVD.
  
• Lots of other small changes and bug fixes, but I didn't keep a list this time...
  

[King Mob]

Navigation suggestion here:

1. When scrolling vertically through the recordings folders, can you make pushing the left arrow on the remote page through folders in 3s? Just to speed it up a bit.

2. When scrolling horizontally within a recording folder, can you make the down button jump back to the verical menu and to the next recording folder in order?