Getting Pluto extra to work

[mvallevand]

I am not concerned about comments specific to Pluto TV but if logs are needed in the future remember I need Kodi DEBUG logs.

From what I saw in NextPVR there is a delete

2024-08-06 18:50:49.613 [DEBUG][25] PlaybackPositionHelper.DeletePlaybackPosition(D:\Media\Video\Recordings\Stargate SG-1.S01E06.The First Commandment.ts)

and the Kodi asked for the refreshed recording pretty quickly

2024-08-06 18:50:57.228 [DEBUG][18] method=recording.list

and then Kodi goes through some logic updating all its internal files.

If you want it to be faster delete in Kodi since the communication with the server is via polling or use a UI client which are stateful.

Here is the Omega PR https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/25550 so it should be in the Omega nightlies now.

Martin

[sub]

I am most certainly interested, but not sure how much use that might be aside from running real world scenarios and commenting. That is where my experience lies, as opposed to programming or version control. I didn't even know what a PR was until looking for Ksooo's patch for the Kodi group manager. Which I still haven't found, btw.

The VOD interface in NextPVR is pretty difficult to navigate, starting with the categories approved in the Pluto lst files not appearing in alphabetical order as expected. I was comparing the list in the action movies category with that on the Pluto page, and it seems the NextPVR VOD list is limited to 17 rows. The Pluto website is so bloated when allowing JavaScript that it caused a browser crash, and it didn't go down cleanly, forcing a reboot. Guess using an old Win7 laptop for NextPVR probably isn't a great idea. Using the Pluto app on an Android box affirms that their on demand section indeed offers more than 17 rows worth in a sufficiently large movies category.

I was about to send logs showing that Kodi Recordings wasn't synching to NextPVR Recordings when 2 recordings were simultaneously selected for download, but a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. A recording deleted in NextPVR still appears in Kodi for several minutes before finally being removed, indicative of a sync timer being in play. So all good there.

NextPVR's VOD support is very basic. It's never really had much effort put into it, and virtually no comments at all from the community. Most people are here for live tv and the ability to recording tv.

There is no limit on 17 rows. I just checked one VOD I list I have, and I don't know exactly how many rows its showing me, but it's got to be about 100 rows of 6 columns.

From memory with VOD download as a recording, each job is queued, and it does them one after another. It also does them as quickly as possible - for fast internet connections and IPTV services, it might only be a few minutes per download.

[sub]

The items are sorted in alphabetical for the next release.

[sub]

Next release it'll also record into a subdirectory off the recording directory, rather than in the root of the recording directory.

[mvallevand]

There should be a vod XML file in the data folder where you can check to see if only 17 rows are coming from the addon.

Martin

[bouilliabai]

If you want it to be faster delete in Kodi since the communication with the server is via polling or use a UI client which are stateful.

Deleting files from within Kodi worked beautifully. Was just checking my options for managing recordings, given that the lack of VOD capability in Kodi necessitates the use of a browser or alternate GUI for NextPVR already.

Was there any merit to the suggestion to use a pseudo recording structure to fool Kodi or other front end into treating available VOD files as actual files?

Here is the Omega PR  https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/25550 so it should be in the Omega nightlies now.

Thanks. I'm starting to get a handle on how that all works now.

[bouilliabai]

There is no limit on 17 rows. I just checked one VOD I list I have, and I don't know exactly how many rows its showing me, but it's got to be about 100 rows of 6 columns.

It appears to be an issue in Pluto vod.py limiting the number of items in each category to 100.

From memory with VOD download as a recording, each job is queued, and it does them one after another. It also does them as quickly as possible - for fast internet connections and IPTV services, it might only be a few minutes per download.

I believe that somehow the recordings were done in parallel, because they both appeared in NextPVR/Recordings in the same state and on hard disk, but only one showed up in Kodi. Whatever happened, it wasn't repeatable.

[sub]

From memory with VOD download as a recording, each job is queued, and it does them one after another. It also does them as quickly as possible - for fast internet connections and IPTV services, it might only be a few minutes per download.

I believe that somehow the recordings were done in parallel, because they both appeared in NextPVR/Recordings in the same state and on hard disk, but only one showed up in Kodi. Whatever happened, it wasn't repeatable.

I checked it yesterday to confirm the details.

For real recordings, which come from a device or a live stream, these obviously happen in parallel.

For VOD downloads (which end up looking like a recording in NextPVR), it's as I mentioned above. The download jobs are placed in a queue and done one at a time.

[bouilliabai]

The items are sorted in alphabetical for the next release.

Good deal. While Pluto, and Roku for that matter, don't distinguish between movies and series in their web interface or app, the Pluto extra and Kodi do. Any chance of putting those items under subheadings in order to facilitate the selection of categories?

[mvallevand]

The nightly has another new PR to fix an issue with the groups.

I did mention that the plan for Kodi was to do it as recording. It won't matter for you though since if I do anything at all for VOD it will not support live streams just VOD with a direct video source URL.

There wasn't an issue with VOD in Pluto, it was never meant to be a downloader for PlutoTV, just a reasonable sampling of the content. If you need to browse more than 100 movies to find some "instant" satisfaction you probably should use their app or a content app like JustWatch. I specifically filter everything for Live and VOD because 1,000s of shows would be ridiculous.

Martin