XSuite beta version

[fla]

I may be the only XGuide user left but just in case, I posted a new version to the wiki that fixes a very old bug in the horizontal guide view. Some shows would not fill in immediately until I paged away then back as someone reported here ages ago.

1. Page down 4-5 times
   
2. Scroll back up with the arrow by a few channels
   
3. move left with the arrow 5-6 hours in the past
   
4. Page down until the guide wraps back to the beginning
   

Result: the shows in the first channels don't fill in when the wrap around to the beginning occurs.

This is the oldest bug I've ever fixed even in my professional career. :eek: It's been appearing occasionally for me for years but I could never reproduce it on demand until now. A nice side effect is that PgDn in XGuide's horizontal guide is noticably faster on my slow HTPC. The PgUp speed is unchanged though.

[Kevina]

Hey fla, thanks for the updates to xrecord. I am a new user of the plugin, having just recently upgraded to 1.3.11 and as a result I lost our favorite plugin, video archive. So, in my search for a good replacement, I stumbled across the fact that you are making updates to xrecord.

So far, we really like the functionality that it brings, and we're learning new tweaks all the time. Was curious about a couple of things though. When I go to the Watched menu item, it tells me that "You have no watched shows", even though we have watched several through the plugin as well as through Recordings. Was wondering what I'm missing. Is there a configuration setting that I need to change, missing files, what? Also, is there a reason that the previously watched state isn't simply indicated within the main listings? That's how Recordings handles this, and is also how Video Archive indicated what you had already watched. That way as I'm scanning through my recordings, I can easily tell what we've already watched, and simply select the next one in sequence. So I guess that's my first request.

Next, I was wondering how difficult it would be to add a list view to the available views? With over 1500 recordings, it would sure be nice to be able to see more names per screen without the thumbnails. VA had a nice summary view where the folders (or series names) were on the left half of the screen, and once you selected one, the individual shows would show on the right half of the screen. Didn't know how easy this would be, but thought I would ask.

Lastly, was wondering what the best approach would be for grouping videos into a singe folder. Putting all of our Christmas recordings into a singe Christmas folder, for example. That way good old Frosty and Rudolph would be together in a single folder, even though their titles would normally put them very far appart. VA handled this by simply having you create a folder name, and moving the actual recordings into it. It appears as though the Movies functionality might work the same, but haven't tried yet.

Anyway, thanks for all the great work, we really appreciate it!

[fla]

In XRecord it's more of a recordings tracker than a "Watched" flag actually. I think the wiki page mentions:

rectracker %1 > rectracker.log line within your PostProcessing.bat

The XSuite installer would have created a PostProcessing.bat with this line if no PostProcessing.bat existed.

After any recording, it will then add a record to rectracker.mdb to remember that an episode has been recorded. This database is used by CDK scheduler (the advanced scheduler in XSuite) to know if a recording is a duplicate. The "Watched" screen is a gui editor to the rectracker.mdb database.

The watched feature in gbpvr came after XSuite was written so XRecord doesn't display that. I'll add the displaying of gbpvr's watched flag to my todo list.

The Pause (Ctrl-Q) button toggles advanced (thumbnail) and list mode. Does this list view help at all? The GroupLines value="12" in the skin tells me there are 12 items per page in the list mode.

The code that displays the Videos screen does a recursive directory search beneath the paths you give XRecord in the config application. If you have folders under there, they should appear as separate shows with the episodes inside.

There's a categories feature explained here. You can have user defined categories where certain shows always appear in predefined categories. I've never tried this feature myself.

Note that XSuite was written by jorm and KingArgyle. It's a legacy plugin so it uses the old gbpvr rendering not the new PVRX2 rendering. I'm mostly keeping it alive for die hard existing XSuite users. I personally like open source software and having the source for my Guide, Recordings, Search and Scheduler is something I prefer. It's in maintenance mode so major enhancements are not likely.

[fla]

Uploaded a new version of XRecord to the wiki. It now displays an indicator next to each watched or partially watched episode. The composite images in the skin called VideoWatched, VideoWatchedPartial and VideoNotWatched are for the video list and HeteroWatched, HeteroWatchedPartial and HeteroNotWatched are for the hetero list.

The hetero list is enabled with "Set Mix" in the Stop/Ctrl-S Menu and is used by default in the Movies panel.

Note the VideoNotWatched and HeteroNotWatched are commented out by default in the skin so things look more like gbpvr.

[Gedanken]

I recently switched to an UnRAID server to store several of my archived shows. This works great except that XRecord appears to always display files in the 'Videos' menu in the order that they appear in the directory. For NTFS, this puts files nominally in alphabetical order. But for the journalling file system (across multiple disks) on my Slackware Linux based server, the file order is all over the map.

Any chance you could add file name sorting to the Video display? Setting the 'Filename sort order' flag does odd things to my 'Recordings' display (which I don't like) but has no effect on the Videos display order. Being able to choose whether to sort by filename or date like in the Recordings list would be perfect (hopefully as a separate control from the Recordings control)

Example Directory listing:

Code:

F:\TV Shows\Life on Mars>dir *.ts
Volume in drive F is Videos
Volume Serial Number is 0979-0AAC

Directory of F:\TV Shows\Life on Mars

02/11/2009  11:02 PM     6,846,752,448 Life on Mars [2009-02-11 2102] - Let All the Children Boogie.ts
01/28/2009  11:00 PM     6,412,860,480 Life on Mars_20090128_21022200.ts
03/04/2009  11:00 PM     6,422,019,840 Life on Mars [2009-03-04 2102] - Revenge of Broken Jaw.ts
02/04/2009  11:02 PM     6,590,028,672 Life on Mars [2009-02-04 2102] - The Dark Side of the Mook.ts
03/11/2009  10:00 PM     6,569,616,384 Life on Mars [2009-03-11 2102] - Coffee, Tea or Annie.ts
03/18/2009  10:00 PM     6,597,159,888 Life on Mars [2009-03-18 2102] - All the Young Dudes.ts
02/18/2009  11:02 PM     6,949,991,520 Life on Mars [2009-02-18 2102] - Home Is Where You Hang Your Holster.ts
04/01/2009  10:00 PM     6,530,427,408 Life on Mars [2009-04-01 2102] - Life Is a Rock.ts
03/25/2009  10:00 PM     6,655,060,128 Life on Mars [2009-03-25 2102] - Everyone Knows It's Windy.ts
               9 File(s) 59,573,916,768 bytes
               0 Dir(s)  287,877,046,272 bytes free

[jksmurf]

fla, not related to the beta, but for some reason in the pending recording screen, the icons for show series that are pending, but that have not been recorded, show as no image available. This despite the icons actually being present in the art/media dir. Seems odd.

Conversely, icons for show series that are pending, and one or more shows have already been recorded, show the icon.

What do you need to help troubleshoot?

k.

[fla]

fla, not related to the beta, but for some reason in the pending recording screen, the icons for show series that are pending, but that have not been recorded, show as no image available. This despite the icons actually being present in the art/media dir. Seems odd.

Conversely, icons for show series that are pending, and one or more shows have already been recorded, show the icon.

What do you need to help troubleshoot?

k.

I just went into XGuide and did Quick Record on "The Office" which is a few hours from now. I've never recorded this show before. I then went into XRecord's Pending screen and no image available was there. I then went into the Stop/Ctrl-S menu and selected the download with program image tool (which I have installed). I then got a poster for "The Office" in the pending screen and the file "The Office.jpg" in the devnz\gbpvr\media\art folder had the current time stamp so it seems new Pending shows can have posters.

How did you put the images in media\art? Is it possible the name is not exactly what XRecord is expecting? If there's nothing in the log file, I could create a special version with more logging to figure out the problem. Any strange characters like apostrophe are removed from the filename if I remember correctly so "America's" would become "Americas".

[fla]

I recently switched to an UnRAID server to store several of my archived shows. This works great except that XRecord appears to always display files in the 'Videos' menu in the order that they appear in the directory. For NTFS, this puts files nominally in alphabetical order. But for the journalling file system (across multiple disks) on my Slackware Linux based server, the file order is all over the map.

Any chance you could add file name sorting to the Video display? Setting the 'Filename sort order' flag does odd things to my 'Recordings' display (which I don't like) but has no effect on the Videos display order. Being able to choose whether to sort by filename or date like in the Recordings list would be perfect (hopefully as a separate control from the Recordings control)

Added to my list.

[Gedanken]

fla, not related to the beta, but for some reason in the pending recording screen, the icons for show series that are pending, but that have not been recorded, show as no image available. This despite the icons actually being present in the art/media dir. Seems odd.

Conversely, icons for show series that are pending, and one or more shows have already been recorded, show the icon.
k.

Since Folder art displays in the Videos section too, you might try creating a folder with the correct name there and just place a NULL file with an AVI or some such extension. Play with the folder name and see if you can get it to show up. A folder with the same name as the folder in the Recordings tree should behave the same. If one icon image displays and the other not, that would confirm a bug.

[Gedanken]

Added to my list.

Great! Thanks. My wife was less than thrilled when all of her shows appeared in random orders but I like my new server. <grin>