MpegImport utility added to wiki

[GoodGuys]

Hello Sixgun -
Thanks for the utility.
However, it doesn't work well for me because it doesn't know about UTF-8 filenames. I get the filenames in the XML like this:
"?????_????_2006042906200820.mpg"
Not very useful for me. Do you think you could add support for this?

Thanks,
GGF

[sixgun]

Hello Sixgun -
Thanks for the utility.
However, it doesn't work well for me because it doesn't know about UTF-8 filenames. I get the filenames in the XML like this:
"?????_????_2006042906200820.mpg"
Not very useful for me. Do you think you could add support for this?

I don't know anything about how to support UTF-8 filenames.

I've not done anything "odd" in the code for the MpegImport utility, i'd have thought it'd just work. I've had a quick look at my compiler options and cannot see anything in there that i need to turn on to enable it.

I can add some logging to the util and send it to you directly, if you don't mind trying it a few times, as i try different things out.

I can't promise anything, as this is all new to me.

Regards.

[GoodGuys]

Hi sixgun,

Sure - I'll help. I'll send you my email in a private message.
Basically, I think two things are missing. The least of the two is the xml header line, which should be:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1255" ?>

And the other is that you can't treat the filename as if it has 8-bit characters because in windows-1255 encoding, the characters are 16-bits wide. I was wrong to say UTF-8, because windows-1255 is actually a subset of UTF-16.
If you send me bits of the source code that deal with the filename, I'll see if I can help. I think .NET has specialized functions that will work with any encoding...
By the way, here's a really cool (and short) article about the basics of internationalization: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html

Will be sending you my email address right now.

GGF

[sub]

And the other is that you can't treat the filename as if it has 8-bit characters because in windows-1255 encoding, the characters are 16-bits wide. I was wrong to say UTF-8, because windows-1255 is actually a subset of UTF-16.
If you send me bits of the source code that deal with the filename, I'll see if I can help. I think .NET has specialized functions that will work with any encoding...
By the way, here's a really cool (and short) article about the basics of internationalization: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html

Assuming the utility is written in .net, you shouldnt need to worry about these low level details. Adding the correct XML header will probably go a long way to fixing the problem.

[GoodGuys]

Hi sub,

I didn't know that. But I think this is not the case. The XML file really contained just '?'s for all the Hebrew characters... So changing the XML header would do nothing.

I'll wait to hear from sixgun - we'll figure it out for the benefit of everyone, I am sure

GGF

[sub]

Yeah, thats why I didnt say that it'd definitely fix it. I dont know how this utility works - he could still be doing things in his app that would stop it from working. For all I know, the app might not even be written in .net.

Personally I've not had to worry about unicode/UTF-8/UTF-16 etc anywhere in GB-PVR. .NET is pretty good at just making it work, and hiding the fact that all strings are unicode behind the scenes. That said, there are few places (like XML files) where some care needs to be taken.

[ubu]

Nice utility. Helped me recover some orphans from last time I rebuilt my PVR box. One problem - the "import" button appeared to successfully run an import but no new recordings showed up in the mdb table. I had to run the import from the GBPVR config app and then it worked like a charm.

Thanks

[sixgun]

MpegImport is written in .NET (recently moved to v2.0 of the framework). There is a bit of VB code in there, but it's mostly C#.

When i originally wrote it, i thought the header tag in the recordings-dump.xml file was specific to GBPVR. But now, as far as i can gather, it's specific to the locale of the PC.

Sub - I use an XmlTextWriter to dump the xml to a file. Do you know what i call to set the encoding to the correct type for the PC? Currently, i am using the following :-

Code:

System.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding("ISO-8859-1")

Thanks.

[sixgun]

Nice utility. Helped me recover some orphans from last time I rebuilt my PVR box. One problem - the "import" button appeared to successfully run an import but no new recordings showed up in the mdb table. I had to run the import from the GBPVR config app and then it worked like a charm.

Thanks

MpegImport gets the location of GBPVR.EXE from the following registry key :-

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Devnz\GBPVR InstallDir

Currently, it assumes (always bad to do, i know!) that the path ends with a \ character. Then it sticks gbpvr.exe on the end, and then runs it with a parameter of "-import". It doesn't do any checking, just assumes it worked ok when i presents the message "GBPVR import completed".

Sub - does GBPVR.EXE return any error messages or an exitcode when run with the -import command line parameter that i could check for.

I added this as a last minute thing when i did the last release, which is why i didn't do much error checking.

Regards.

[UncleJohnsBand]

MpegImport gets the location of GBPVR.EXE from the following registry key :-



Currently, it assumes (always bad to do, i know!) that the path ends with a \ character. Then it sticks gbpvr.exe on the end, and then runs it with a parameter of "-import". It doesn't do any checking, just assumes it worked ok when i presents the message "GBPVR import completed".

Sub - does GBPVR.EXE return any error messages or an exitcode when run with the -import command line parameter that i could check for.

I added this as a last minute thing when i did the last release, which is why i didn't do much error checking.

Regards.

You can use this code to find where GBPVR is installed:

static string DATABASE_FILE = "gbpvr.mdb";

RegistryKey SUBKEY;
RegistryKey TAWKAY = RegistryKey.OpenRemoteBaseKey(Microsoft.Win32.RegistryHive.LocalMachine,"");
string subkey = "Software\\devnz";
SUBKEY = TAWKAY.OpenSubKey(subkey);
strPath = (string) SUBKEY.GetValue("GBPVR InstallDir");
Console.WriteLine("Using Path " + strPath );

if ( File.Exists(strPath + DATABASE_FILE) == false )
{
Console.WriteLine("File not found");
return ( false );
}
return ( true );