myGBPVR: use XMBC as GBPVR FrontEnd

[carpeVideo]

Hi,
I did remove all shows from the database. The "TV Shows " option was removed. So I set again the content as TV show and XBMC rescanned the directory and still created duplicates.. Very strange. The directory contains only one nfo per recording. Any ideas ?

As Kram_0 said - its best to use the file mode not library mode. XBMC is very pretty but it is not very flexible. It wants all TV series its own set of directories in a very specific way and all movies in another set of directories in a very specific way. The XBMC structure is nothing like GBPVR's more flexible method. So my call was just to get the info into XBMC in the easiest way possible without re-arranging directories etc. to do that I create an NFO where basically every file has an nfo created that calls it an episode of an unknown show. In file mode the info shows up by right clicking and hitting episode info.

I hope some day XBMC gets a little more flexible and lets you specify in the NFO file what the parent series or movie and allows any directory structure. In the meantime when Ton gets time to add play from the menu in myGbpvr it may all be unnecessary since he grabs the show info there from the web service.

CV

[Ton]

As Kram_0 said - its best to use the file mode not library mode. XBMC is very pretty but it is not very flexible. It wants all TV series its own set of directories in a very specific way and all movies in another set of directories in a very specific way. The XBMC structure is nothing like GBPVR's more flexible method. So my call was just to get the info into XBMC in the easiest way possible without re-arranging directories etc. to do that I create an NFO where basically every file has an nfo created that calls it an episode of an unknown show. In file mode the info shows up by right clicking and hitting episode info.

I hope some day XBMC gets a little more flexible and lets you specify in the NFO file what the parent series or movie and allows any directory structure. In the meantime when Ton gets time to add play from the menu in myGbpvr it may all be unnecessary since he grabs the show info there from the web service.

CV

Well, I love library-mode. It's just so darn pretty!! (see screen-shot)

That's one of the reasons why I chose to nake a file-based export from GBPVR (using 2XBMC). The 2XBMC program takes care of most of the issues mentioned in the previous post (it renames the file, creates a matching "NFO" file and copies the "comskip.txt" file as well. It also takes care of directory and show-naming...

I'm hoping to make a start on the "play" function this weekend, and hope to be able to use this to watch in-progress recordings (that's the only thing currently missing)...

[carpeVideo]

It does look nice - but not all of us have NAS to copy all the files too :0(. In addition, I don't know why XBMC is so strict, if the NFO files are correct then there is no need for the draconian file structure because everything the library scraper needs is in those files. Maybe I will drop a request on the XBMC site.

[Ton]

Hi all,

I have coded up a first draft of the "play directly from GBPVR" function...

What I've done is the following:

- Added two settings to the settings-screen
- One for the location of the GBPVR recordings
- One for the default extension of the recordings

- Added a "play" button to the recording-details screen
* Note: the button only shows when:
- You have defined a recording location
- There is a "download" url specified by the EWA web-service (only for available recordings)

When the "play" button gets pressed, I retrieve the download URL from ewa. This is a "m3u" file that contains both the name of the recording-file and the download link for viewing it over HTTP.

I had some problems getting the HTTP view to work (XBMC seems to lock up for me when I close the stream, don't know why yet), so for now I'm retrieving the file-name from the M3U.

I then stitch together:
- the defined recording location
- the show title
- the filename
- the default extension

And then feed that to the internal xbmc player. It seems to work for me....

Here is a snip from the new readme-file (on the definition of the GBPVR recording path):

Code:

Viewing recordings:
In the settings menu, there are two settings related to viewing recordings directly from GBPVR. These are:
- Path to GBPVR Recordings
    This is the path to the GBPVR recordings directory. It can either be a direct path (on the same computer) or
    an SMB path. When entering an SMB path, please follow the XBMC syntax:
    smb://[user]:[pw]@[server]/[share]
    Please note the use of forward slashes (also for defining sub-directories)
- Extension for GBPVR Recordings
    This is the extension for default recordings. myGBPVR will append this to the filename.

Attached is a screen-shot of the new "detail" view and the changed files for the new functionality.

To install the update, extract the zip-file to your current (working) myGBPVR directory (make a backup first, to be sure). Allow it to overwrite existing files and restart myGBPVR.

If I get confirmation that everything works, I'll update the first post and update the archive....

[carpeVideo]

Tried the new play on the recording screen option, but now I am getting the same error as pbs:

Code:

08:02:15 T:4068 M:2259558400  NOTICE: Written to: D:\programs\XBMC\scripts\myGBPVR\mygbpvr.ini
08:02:15 T:2176 M:2259558400   DEBUG: ------ Window Deinit (D:\programs\XBMC\scripts\myGBPVR\resources\skins\Default\720p\gbpvr_settings.xml) ------
08:02:15 T:4068 M:2259558400  NOTICE: --> AreYouThere() socket on port 7647 using ip=192.168.0.10
08:02:15 T:4068 M:2259558400  NOTICE:                   mac:00:23:54:33:f3:f3broadcast: 255.255.255.0
08:02:15 T:4068 M:2259558400  NOTICE: This got: True / 00:23:54:33:f3:f3
08:02:15 T:4068 M:2259558400  NOTICE: --> AreYouThere() returning: True
08:02:16 T:4068 M:2259402752  NOTICE: EXCEPTION: : Traceback (most recent call last):
                                              File "D:\programs\XBMC\scripts\myGBPVR\resources\src\gbpvr\home.py", line 152, in refreshOnInit
                                                self.statusData = self.gbpvr.GetGBPVRInfo(self.settings.GBPVR_USER, self.settings.GBPVR_PW)
                                              File "D:\programs\XBMC\scripts\myGBPVR\resources\src\GBPVR_Connect.py", line 134, in GetGBPVRInfo
                                                self.channels = self.getChannelList(userid, password)
                                              File "D:\programs\XBMC\scripts\myGBPVR\resources\src\GBPVR_Connect.py", line 156, in getChannelList
                                                ret_soap = client.service.getChannelListObject(soapheaders=authObj)
                                            WebFault: Server raised fault: 'Server was unable to process request. ---> String was not recognized as a valid DateTime.'
08:02:16 T:4068 M:2259374080    INFO: Loading skin file: DialogOK.xml

Any suggestions?

Also one possible snafu for later - I have recordings with all sorts of extensions (.ts,.mkv, .mpg, .mp4) due to different recording sources and transcoding activity.



Thanks,

[kram_0]

Well, I love library-mode. It's just so darn pretty!!

The Library mode is great but file mode is pretty much the same thing. The only features that I notice I'm missing is the show and episode info that would normally be displayed with the "Info List" view (you can still press "i" to display that information) and the number of episodes available listed beside the show. You also can't list the recently added episodes, etc. but I don't use that anyway.

[carpeVideo]

Ton,

Any suggestions on the date issue PBs and I are having, I am confused since myGbpvr was working before and I have made no changes and now I get the date error and can no longer use myGbpvr

[Ton]

Hi,

Sorry for the late reply, business trip abroad kept me away from email and web for a few days...

Ton,

Any suggestions on the date issue PBs and I are having, I am confused since myGbpvr was working before and I have made no changes and now I get the date error and can no longer use myGbpvr

Mmm. not sure... I'm going to need a little more info before I can say anything.... First off, could you check the EWA log? pBS was getting some messages there like:

2010-04-20 01:11:52.140 INFO [4] nowTime = 4/20/2010 6:11:52 AM
2010-04-20 01:11:52.140 INFO [4] Credential time string = 20-04-2010 01:11:00

It looks (from what I can see) that the server is having problems understanding the date-time string I am sending from xbmc... Could you tell me what settings you have for date/time in XBMC and GBPVR? It could be that there's some default processing taking place in the .Net date/time parsing from EWA that's messing things up.
I'll also try to make another "debug" version that shows what's going over the wire.... Expect that later today or tomorrow.... Hopefully that will give us enough info to get to the bottom of this.

I'll also have a little think about the extension issue.. Problem is that I am only getting the filename (without extension) from EWA, and I'm letting XBMC do the playing of the file (and I think it needs an extension). I'll test to see if it accepts wildcards. Otherwise we might ask UncleJohnsBand to make a little change in EWA to also provide the extension.... Maybe there's other options as well, but I need a little time to think on that.

[carpeVideo]

Where is the ewa log? I can't find anything in the log or the web dir?

[Ton]

Hi,

Where is the ewa log? I can't find anything in the log or the web dir?

I myself find it easiest to retrieve via the EWA Web-Interface... It's under the "statistics" tab...

//Ton