Bling - making NextPVR pretty

[b00sfuk]

Spent a few days playing with this and must say how impressed I now am with what NPVR provides. With a new skin (excellent NextBlue by NorthPole) and the native cover/fanart/xml support I have it looking as I want it. A few comments I have are:

- There is no perfect scraper for NPVR. The best I use is the old WizdataGrabber(external version) from these forums that was originally designed for GBPVR (but it only does episode XML files and screenshots): Not perfect but better for NPVR than the others. Ember (revisisted) was the nearest but it was very unstable and I had some problems with the NFO files it produces (used it though to download the fanart). The others seemed to not support a wide enough range of filestypes (e.g. using tbn or specific to XBMC etc.) and also usually demanded a more rigorous folder structure.

- I take back an earlier statement of mine that a database solution is preferred. The file (along with some ADS support) solution works great and provides I think more flexibility.

- Still have a custom task to launch (and return from) XBMC but this is only to launch their excellent UK video streaming iplayer/ITVplayer/4ODplayer/OnDemand5 plugins.

- Still to try out searchlite/imagegrablite plugins. I am not fully clear on what they do (and if it has any region focus) but I guess it is to bling up the recordings module.

Thanks again to sub and NorthPole.

[mvallevand]

- Still to try out searchlite/imagegrablite plugins. I am not fully clear on what they do (and if it has any region focus) but I guess it is to bling up the recordings module.

SearchLite (plugin) and imageGrabLite (utility), get cover art and meta data at the series and film/movie level There is a bit of regionalization in that they can search online sources at the language level which presents some problems at the default "en" level with shows like "The Office" The are mainly optimized for NorthAmerican data but the atlas (was RT) EPG does allow pretty good detection of films from themoviedb

The main function of imageGrabLite is to get new cover art when you schedule recording in some of the NextPVR script files. You might want to consider the renaming capability if you want to keep films since it will rename films to the "Film Name (year)" format. North American data allows the S#E# notation for TV series, the atlas data is not as good, although I could do a better job on handling files where the Subtitle starts with "Season #, Episode # of #" but no one is asking for this.

Martin

[gEd]

Just an FYI, I have XMLTVGUI enabled to preface the episode info to the subtitle (not sure if I had this enabled when I sent you my db a few weeks back Martin)

e.g. Outnumbered - Season 4, Episode 2 of 6.ts
Great Barrier Reef - Season 1, Episode 2 of 3 - Reef to Rainforest.ts

imageGrabLite is a very worthwhile addon to npvr. Just pop it in your PostUpdateEPG.bat and postprocess.bat files as per the details on Martin's thread on the forum.

[mvallevand]

Just an FYI, I have XMLTVGUI enabled to preface the episode info to the subtitle (not sure if I had this enabled when I sent you my db a few weeks back Martin)

e.g. Outnumbered - Season 4, Episode 2 of 6.ts
Great Barrier Reef - Season 1, Episode 2 of 3 - Reef to Rainforest.ts

gEd yes I saw those but you probably have a basic script with NScripthelper doing that. If I supported this I'd probably rename them to

Outnumbered.S04E02.ts
Great Barrier Reef.S01E02.Reef to Rainforest.ts

Martin

[b00sfuk]

SearchLite (plugin) and imageGrabLite (utility), get cover art and meta data at the series and film/movie level There is a bit of regionalization in that they can search online sources at the language level which presents some problems at the default "en" level with shows like "The Office" The are mainly optimized for NorthAmerican data but the atlas (was RT) EPG does allow pretty good detection of films from themoviedb

The main function of imageGrabLite is to get new cover art when you schedule recording in some of the NextPVR script files. You might want to consider the renaming capability if you want to keep films since it will rename films to the "Film Name (year)" format. North American data allows the S#E# notation for TV series, the atlas data is not as good, although I could do a better job on handling files where the Subtitle starts with "Season #, Episode # of #" but no one is asking for this.
Martin

Thanks, looks like one of the final pieces in the puzzle. I already use a renaming script which works well on my XMLTV EPG using Digiguide UK data (which has good SxxExx support) so will probably just use for the coverart on recording screens. I also assume the XML data adds nothing when you already have a good EPG source? (UPDATE: Looking at it again I guess it provides XML data for the series in the Ready/Recurring screens while the EPG just provides data for each episode)

[jam_zhou]

what happens if you have two of the same recordings?

[mvallevand]

what happens if you have two of the same recordings?

To the original topic you can have meta data at the file level (show) folder level (shows) or in Media\Shows (series including all archives). For imageGrabLite it uses Media\Shows which does cause conflicts with some shows. Arthur would be be a perfect example of a problem show since it can be a TV shows, and also two different film years. NextPVR will only record them to one folder (Arthur) and the Media\Shows data will only be applicable to the first one. The rename function of of imageGrabLite will work.

Martin

[OTAjunkie]

I made a donation to MC2XML and became eligible to recieve MS "newest service" which provides an image for most shows.

Here's how it's presented in the xml file:

____________________________________

</credits>
<date>20120207</date>
<category lang="en">Action/Adventure</category>
<category lang="en">Drama</category>
<category lang="en">General</category>
<category lang="en">Series</category>
<icon src="http://images.windowsmedia.com/tvcards/org/3715_19.jpg" />
<episode-num system="ms_progid">1.269143327</episode-num>
<episode-num system="dd_progid">EP00681911.0210</episode-num>
<episode-num system="onscreen">210</episode-num>
<video>
<aspect>16:9</aspect>
<quality>HDTV</quality>
</video>
<audio>
<stereo>stereo</stereo>
</audio>
<new />
<subtitles type="teletext" />
<rating system="VCHIP">
<value>TV-14</value>
</rating>

NextPVR does not appear to be able to do anything with it.
Is it possible?

DISREGARD ABOVE:I forgot to purge EPG. Cheesy images are now displayed.

[mvallevand]

DISREGARD ABOVE:I forgot to purge EPG. Cheesy images are now displayed.

Where are they displayed in the Guide?

Martin

[OTAjunkie]

[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]They're availble it seems only on program selection.


They appear to over-ride the file from ImageGrab in the guide but I doubt they're used during loading/play of recording as is ImageGrab