Clarification of Path Substitution

[Phydeaux]

I've been battling with getting playback of recorded tv to skip commercials using X-NEWA.

Headless PC running Windows 7 with NextPVR installed. Records locally to D:\Recorded TV\ and this is a share (smb://192.168.168.128/Recorded TV/). Comskip is kicked off by NextPVR as per standard practice and is creating the .edl file correctly. Yes, comskip.ini has edl_skip_field=3 set.

LibreELEC 7.0.2 (KODI Jarvis) is running on other systems in the house with the X-NEWA plugin. All functions seem to work fine (well, live TV is a problem at the moment but that's another thread if I can't debug it...). The problem is that playback of a recording in X-NEWA is not commercial skipping. If I play it in KODI just by selecting the recorded file directly from the folder (I've added the folder as a source), it plays and skips the commercials just fine.

So... research here tells me to use folder substitution in KODI's advancedsettings.xml - No Problem:

<from>D:/Recorded TV/</from>
<to>smb://192.168.168.128/Recorded TV/</to>

(Yes, the other required lines are there, just showing the two pertinent lines)

Here's my question (finally):
The <from> is from who's perspective? How would KODI know anything about a D: drive which is on a totally different system. KODI has no issue understanding the <to> so it's happy to use the smb... but in place of what, since KODI knows nothing about the D: path. In any case it does't work for me... do you see anything wrong with these two lines?

Cheers,
RLW

[BrettB]

Here's my question (finally):
The <from> is from who's perspective? How would KODI know anything about a D: drive which is on a totally different system. KODI has no issue understanding the <to> so it's happy to use the smb... but in place of what, since KODI knows nothing about the D: path. In any case it does't work for me... do you see anything wrong with these two lines?

"KODI" knows about the D: drive because X-NEWA is getting the list of recordings (including their file path/name) from the NextPVR server's database.

As far as what's wrong in your case goes: it's hard for us to guess. You really need to turn on debugging in Kodi, launch X-NEWA, play a recording, and then upload the kodi.log file so that we can see it.

[Phydeaux]

Yep, I can sure do that and will tomorrow. And that may well lead to solving the problem. However, it doesn't answer my question, which is "who's" perspective is the <from> ?

Cheers,
RLW

[mvallevand]

Think of it as search and replace on the filename passed by x-newa to the Kodi video player engine so who is the client.

Martin

[BrettB]

However, it doesn't answer my question, which is "who's" perspective is the <from> ?

As I said, the <from> would be to match the file path/name of the recording stored in the NextPVR server's database.

[Phydeaux]

Ok, now I get it. X-Newa tells Kodi to play D:\Recorded TV\Foo.ts and Kodi says "Whatchu 'talkin' 'bout Willis?"

But with the path substitution, Kodi says "Oh, you mean smb://192.168.168.128/Recorded TV/Foo.ts" and proceeds to play from there...

Makes perfect sense. Except that before I ever put the path substitution in place, Kodi would play the file just fine (albeit with no comskip recognition). So somehow it knew where D:\Recordings\Recorded TV\Foo.ts was...

In any case, cheers, now I get the <from> and how Kodi interprets it.

Thanks!
RLW

[BrettB]

Makes perfect sense. Except that before I ever put the path substitution in place, Kodi would play the file just fine (albeit with no comskip recognition). So somehow it knew where D:\Recordings\Recorded TV\Foo.ts was...

Basically, X-NEWA first tries to have Kodi play the file natively/directly. With the path substitution in place, it can find the file and play it directly (along with reading the corresponding .edl file from comskip). However, if Kodi can't find/play it directly, then X-NEWA will fall-back to having the NextPVR server stream the file via HTTP and telling Kodi to play that incoming HTTP stream. Kodi's HTTP stream "player" doesn't have a mechanism for passing a .edl file, so you won't get automatic skipping when the file is played via this method.

[mvallevand]

The default in x-newa is http streaming if a file cannot be found. Kodi doesn't support http comskip. BTW your example is not what I see with your advanced settings

Martin

[Phydeaux]

@BrettB - Yep, that clears that up in my mind, fallback operation basically. Thanks!

@mvallevand - Yep, I knew Kodi can't do comskip via http stream, hence the need to go native if one wants it to use an edl file.
And I see the error I made in my original post and my example above. The D: drive label is Recordings and somehow I threw that into the mix here in my posts. It's NOT in my advancedsettings.xml, however. NextPVR records to: D:\Recorded TV\ and the Kodi substitution is for D:/Recorded TV/ As I've said before... good eye!

I'll edit the posts so it's not confusing if anyone else should stumble upon this with similar interest...

@Everyone else - ignore this last bit about my drive label.

Cheers,
Robert

[Phydeaux]

OK, I've exhausted the limits of my pea-brain and am attaching the Kodi log file with debugging turned on.

Cheers,
Robert