two providers in same M3u

[thecubasekid]

Hi All,

i currently have the latest V4 installed (actually i have it installed side by side with 5, so i can send a full channel list to some TV's in my house and a list with just kids channels to the TV's my kids in bedrooms)

i am using Kodi on CoreELEC as front end.

I have two providers for ITPV. i manage the m3u through online m3u-editor that syncs with my providers daily and allows me to merge the lists from both providers, make custom groups, arrange group and channel order, set custom Logos, and map EPG, and I then get my fixed up combined m3u from m3u-Editors configurable url.

I cant seem to get this to work in nextPVR when accessing from Kodi. When i import the m3u, it numbers the channels that appear first in the m3u starting at number 1 ascending, then when it gets to the first line in the m3u that is from my second provider, that has a different streaming location, instead of numbering the channel incrementally 1 higher than the previous channel from my first provider in m3u, it starts again at 1. All looks OK apart from that on the PC and all channels work in the client app on my PC, but the Kodi plugin will not load any channels with the below error (repeating many times for all channels / groups)

ERROR: cb_transfer_channel_group_member: Cannot find group 'IPT USA Movie Networks' or channel '28010'

If i separate out the providers with a url for each in m3u-editor, both work fine on their own and load in Kodi, but never when both are loaded at the same time, regardless to weather i load as a url with both providers combined, or are separate url for each provider doing two imports on my device, or as a combined m3u on my PC or two separate m3u from my PC. i am able to load the combined m3u from both file and url without issue in simple IPTV client, and it also loads in V5, but V5 re-sorts my group order alphabetically rather than the order i configured in m3u, with no option i can see to alter group order from alphabetical, and V5 only downloads a handful of the channel icons, .vs all channel logos downloaded in V4.

i managed to get a bit of a workaround by exporting the channels after import to xml, then deleting the device, setting up a new device and importing from xml rather than m3u, or url providing m3u. this worked and all the channels loaded in Kodi from both providers at the same time, but i lost all my groups, and as soon as i placed channels in to groups with nextpvr.exe, kodi failed to load again with the same error about not being able to find group or channel.

has anyone faced similar issue before? is there something i can do to get past it?

Thanks!

[sub]

i am able to load the combined m3u from both file and url without issue in simple IPTV client, and it also loads in V5, but V5 re-sorts my group order alphabetically rather than the order i configured in m3u,  with no option i can see to alter group order from alphabetical

The groups in NextPVR v5's database are still in whatever order it found them in your m3u file, but it's sorting them into alphabetical order to show you them in the UI. The reason it is doing this is because most IPTV providers don't seem to sort them into any meaningful order, other than US channels first, and with a large number of groups, it ends up looking like an unintelligible random order. (so sorting into alphabetical order made them more usable for the bulk of poeple)

and V5 only downloads a handful of the channel icons, .vs all channel logos downloaded in V4.

The only issue I'm aware of with this (and it was the same in v4), is that when you import the channels, the icons are downloaded asynchronously, and continues well after the initial import channel appears complete. If you happen to restart NextPVR, before it completes, it wont download the rest of the icons. So...try reimporting again, and make sure you give it some time.

If that doesn't help, and you're still having issues downloading the icons in v5, let me know and I'll help you work through it.

[thecubasekid]

i am able to load the combined m3u from both file and url without issue in simple IPTV client, and it also loads in V5, but V5 re-sorts my group order alphabetically rather than the order i configured in m3u,  with no option i can see to alter group order from alphabetical

The groups in NextPVR v5's database are still in whatever order it found them in your m3u file, but it's sorting them into alphabetical order to show you them in the UI. The reason it is doing this is because most IPTV providers don't seem to sort them into any meaningful order, other than US channels first, and with a large number of groups, it ends up looking like an unintelligible random order. (so sorting into alphabetical order made them more usable for the bulk of poeple)

and V5 only downloads a handful of the channel icons, .vs all channel logos downloaded in V4.

The only issue I'm aware of with this (and it was the same in v4), is that when you import the channels, the icons are downloaded asynchronously, and continues well after the initial import channel appears complete.  If you happen to restart NextPVR, before it completes, it wont download the rest of the icons. So...try re-importing again, and make sure you give it some time.

If that doesn't help, and you're still having issues downloading the icons in v5, let me know and I'll help you work through it.

in V5 it stops, and in the log it says something about scan not active, so i only get maybe 30%. also for the channel order, it sends them to Kodi Alphabetical, and there is no way in Kodi i have found to manipulate group order. maybe i will prefix with numbers or letters to my groups go back and their order matches where the channels are imn the main list in a logical way :-)

i have been doing some more investigation on v4...

i took a look in the DB comparing a working install to the problematic with two providers. i could not see any difference apart from the channel numbers starting from one again when it reaches the new provider in the problem install. i updated that in channel and mapping etc but it didst make any difference in Kodi. i could see from the settings app that changes had taken with a single increasing number against all channels and the client app still works.

what i could not see and cant work out is where NPVR stores the stream url for each channel. i could not see it in the DB, and couldn't find any files in users or program files that looked likely candidates to store this.

does anyone know where it is stored? or is it not stored and each time channels are accesses NPVR checks the m3u or m3u url to get the stream url?

Thanks

[sub]

in V5 it stops, and in the log it says something about scan not active, so i only get maybe 30%.

If you're can either post the logs, or PM me a m3u url try here, I can check it out for you.

also for the channel order, it sends them to Kodi Alphabetical, and there is no way in Kodi i have found to manipulate group order. maybe i will prefix with numbers or letters to my groups go back and their order matches where the channels are imn the main list in a logical way :-)

I can probably add some config.xml setting for you, like <SortChannelGroups>false</SortChannelGroups>.

i have been doing some more investigation on v4...

i took a look in the DB comparing a working install to the problematic with two providers. i could not see any difference apart from the channel numbers starting from one again when it reaches the new provider in the problem install. i updated that in channel and mapping etc but it didst make any difference in Kodi. i could see from the settings app that changes had taken with a single increasing number against all channels and the client app still works.

what i could not see and cant work out is where NPVR stores the stream url for each channel. i could not see it in the DB, and couldn't find any files in users or program files that looked likely candidates to store this.

does anyone know where it is stored? or is it not stored and each time channels are accesses NPVR checks the m3u or m3u url to get the stream url?

The urls are stored in the CHANNEL_MAPPING table, in the 'tuning' column. The url is wrapped up inside a bit of xml.

The actual channel numbers are in the CHANNEL table.

[thecubasekid]

thecubasekid Wrote:

    (53 minutes ago)sub Wrote:

        Quote:
        in V5 it stops, and in the log it says something about scan not active, so i only get maybe 30%.

    If you're can either post the logs, or PM me a m3u url try here, I can check it out for you.

    thecubasekid
    i will grab the logs, you will see i suspect. i it looks like the scan / download does not last long enough. i made some changes in config.xml on fields that looked like they may be relevant, <ScanCollectionMS> and <ScanDropTime>, changing from 3000 and 2500MS respectively to much larger values as the 3000 seemed to match how long it was grabbing icons in the log, but i guess these are something else as it made no difference. the m3u should be OK, in V4, it grabs logo from m3u for every channel that has one (about 95%, i spent an age on m3u editor googling, downloading and assigning them!)


        Quote:
        also for the channel order, it sends them to Kodi Alphabetical, and there is no way in Kodi i have found to manipulate group order. maybe i will prefix with numbers or letters to my groups go back and their order matches where the channels are imn the main list in a logical way :-)

    I can probably add some config.xml setting for you, like <SortChannelGroups>false</SortChannelGroups>.



    thecubasekid
    that would be cool thanks! my M3u from provider comes a mess, but i spent a huge amount of time in m3u-editor getting the channel order, channel icon and groups to match the premium cable i used to have, and fixing up the broken and missing mapping. the epg from my provider is quite good, but the m3u is not and does not point to lots of stuff that was readily available in xml. i even made a few additions to improve over the cable i had. m3u editor was pretty good as it kept track of my changes while also syncing with my provider daily adding / updating channels as needed but also keeping my changes were possible

        Quote:
        i have been doing some more investigation on v4...

        i took a look in the DB comparing a working install to the problematic with two providers. i could not see any difference apart from the channel numbers starting from one again when it reaches the new provider in the problem install. i updated that in channel and mapping etc but it didst make any difference in Kodi. i could see from the settings app that changes had taken with a single increasing number against all channels and the client app still works.

        what i could not see and cant work out is where NPVR stores the stream url for each channel. i could not see it in the DB, and couldn't find any files in users or program files that looked likely candidates to store this.

        does anyone know where it is stored? or is it not stored and each time channels are accesses NPVR checks the m3u or m3u url to get the stream url?

    The urls are stored in the CHANNEL_MAPPING table, in the 'tuning' column. The url is wrapped up inside a bit of xml.

    The actual channel numbers are in the CHANNEL table.



thecubasekid
thanks, i was in both those tables making the channel number incremental across both providers, as i (wrongly!) had a hunch that might be the issue, i just never fully expanded the cell i guess

[sub]

i made some changes in config.xml on fields that looked like they may be relevant, <ScanCollectionMS> and <ScanDropTime>, changing from 3000 and 2500MS respectively to much larger values as the 3000 seemed to match how long it was grabbing icons in the log, but i guess these are something else as it made no difference.

Yeah, they're unrelated. These are to do with scanning digital devices.

[sub]

that would be cool thanks! my M3u from provider comes a mess, but i spent a huge amount of time in m3u-editor getting the channel order, channel icon and groups to match the premium cable i used to have, and fixing up the broken and missing mapping. the epg from my provider is quite good, but the m3u is not and does not point to lots of stuff that was readily available in xml. i even made a few additions to improve over the cable i had. m3u editor was pretty good as it kept track of my changes while also syncing with my provider daily adding / updating channels as needed but also keeping my changes were possible

That's exactly why I've sorted it alphabetically - everyone has m3u groups in some horrible messy order. Alphabetical order is an improvement for most. Very few people would ever have sorted theirs manually.

I've added support for that <SortChannelGroups> config.xml setting in the next v5 build, so you can disable the default sorting.

[thecubasekid]

that would be cool thanks! my M3u from provider comes a mess, but i spent a huge amount of time in m3u-editor getting the channel order, channel icon and groups to match the premium cable i used to have, and fixing up the broken and missing mapping. the epg from my provider is quite good, but the m3u is not and does not point to lots of stuff that was readily available in xml. i even made a few additions to improve over the cable i had. m3u editor was pretty good as it kept track of my changes while also syncing with my provider daily adding / updating channels as needed but also keeping my changes were possible

That's exactly why I've sorted it alphabetically - everyone has m3u groups in some horrible messy order. Alphabetical order is an improvement for most. Very few people would ever have sorted theirs manually.

I've added support for that <SortChannelGroups> config.xml setting in the next v5 build, so you can disable the default sorting.

Thanks!

i have recreated the channel Icon issue and grabbed clean logs showing from start up. i have few observations; some channels in my m3u, don't have and are unlikely to ever have EPG info. these channels either have tvg-id="" or don't even have the tvg-id tag in the file. No attempt is made to download icons for these channels that i can see. This happens in v4 and v5 (in V4 it also stops that channel being added to its group, or having its group even created if all channels in the group have no tvg-id.

i was able to work around this with a crude fix using find and replace in notepad giving the channels a dummy tvg-id after downloading my m3u but this is a headache for updates, as i can no longer use the url through my editor that updates daily and need to manually hack the file whenever there is an update. when using the hacked file in 4v i get all the icons, and v5 tries to get all of them. would be cool if icon import worked regardless of tvg-id.

for the channels that do have a tvg=id with i ran the test in v4 and v5. in v4 i get 2074 icons, and of these 15 are '0kb' this is expected as those icons are broken at my provider and i have not got round to manually updating with my own image in m3u-editor, the remaining 2059 icons download correctly and this take 3 or 4 seconds.

in v5 it downloaded 2074 icons, same as v4 but of these 1862 are 0kb empty files. i have been testing this quite a few times through the week and the number that are 0kb varies but is always a large number, over 75%. often the 0kb files are locked, and remain open in nextpvr and cant be deleted untill the service is stopped) although that didn't happen this evening). i left it over night earlier in the week in the hope it would complete but no change and i needed to stop nextpvr service to be able to delete the files.

if i use the hacked m3u with tvg-id on all channels then my icon count goes up to over 3000, and all work in v4 apart from the 15 known broken ones, but in v5 the majority arey 0kb empty files

i also observed few times earlier in the week processing seemed to stall, with a half written log print and noting after that in the log, although nexpvr was still working and streaming in Kodi.
this didn't recreate tonight, but using tonight log i have took a snippet to illustrate the sort of thing i would see

2020-04-24 22:25:29.539 [DEBUG][18] GetExtraInfo: DownloadAsync
2020-04-24 22:25:29.539 [DEBUG][18] GetExtr
 
no more would be printed to the log after that until I restarted the service, but streaming was unaffected at this time.

i have attached log from v5 from this evening, see line below taken from the log that looked to happen immediately after the GetExtraInfo finished and coincided (or appears to coincide) with activity on the icon download stopping.

2020-04-24 22:25:32.211 [DEBUG][7] {"stat":"Failed","code":11,"msg":"Scanner not active"}

i also noted a null exception a but further down the log tonight. this is the first time a saw that, i don't think it was present when testing earlier in the week..


sorry for such a long post and thanks for your help!!

also fyi, i worked out why the channels start at 1 again for my second provider. school boy error... there was a spurious chan-no entry on the first channel for the second provider making it channel 1, so all the next channels incremented after that. i removed it and retested but no change, kodi still wont load the channels with the two providers in same m3u on v4...

[sub]

i have recreated the channel Icon issue and grabbed clean logs showing from start up.

You forgot to attach the logs

i have few observations; some channels in my m3u, don't have and are unlikely to ever have EPG info. these channels either have tvg-id="" or don't even have the tvg-id tag in the file. No attempt is made to download icons for these channels that i can see. This happens in v4 and v5 (in V4 it also stops that channel being added to its group, or having its group even created if all channels in the group have no tvg-id.

The usual way you'd get channel icons is via the tvg-logo="...." urls specified in the m3u.

If you source does not specify where to get an icon, it wont go looking anywhere else, so you end up with no icon for that channel. Ultimately NextPVR doesn't know where to get an icon for your channel unless it has this.

i was able to work around this with a crude fix using find and replace in notepad giving the channels a dummy tvg-id after downloading my m3u but this is a headache for updates, as i can no longer use the url through my editor that updates daily and need to manually hack the file whenever there is an update. when using the hacked file in 4v i get all the icons, and v5 tries to get all of them. would be cool if icon import worked regardless of tvg-id.

It only uses tvg-id for the guide mapping. It uses tvg-logo for the icons.

for the channels that do have a tvg=id with i ran the test in v4 and v5. in v4 i get 2074 icons, and of these 15 are '0kb' this is expected as those icons are broken at my provider and i have not got round to manually updating with my own image in m3u-editor, the remaining 2059 icons download correctly and this take 3 or 4 seconds.

in v5 it downloaded 2074 icons, same as v4 but of these 1862 are 0kb empty files. i have been testing this quite a few times through the week and the number that are 0kb varies but is always a large number, over 75%. often the 0kb files are locked, and remain open in nextpvr and cant be deleted untill the service is stopped. i left it over night earlier in the week in the hope it would complete but no change and i needed to stop nextpvr service to be able to delete the files.

Ok, post the logs and I'll take a look.

[thecubasekid]

i have recreated the channel Icon issue and grabbed clean logs showing from start up.

You forgot to attach the logs

i have few observations; some channels in my m3u, don't have and are unlikely to ever have EPG info. these channels either have tvg-id="" or don't even have the tvg-id tag in the file. No attempt is made to download icons for these channels that i can see. This happens in v4 and v5 (in V4 it also stops that channel being added to its group, or having its group even created if all channels in the group have no tvg-id.

The usual way you'd get channel icons is via the tvg-logo="...." urls specified in the m3u.

If you source does not specify where to get an icon, it wont go looking anywhere else, so you end up with no icon for that channel.  Ultimately NextPVR doesn't know where to get an icon for your channel unless it has this.

i was able to work around this with a crude fix using find and replace in notepad giving the channels a dummy tvg-id after downloading my m3u but this is a headache for updates, as i can no longer use the url through my editor that updates daily and need to manually hack the file whenever there is an update. when using the hacked file in 4v i get all the icons, and v5 tries to get all of them. would be cool if icon import worked regardless of tvg-id.

It only uses tvg-id for the guide mapping. It uses tvg-logo for the icons.

for the channels that do have a tvg=id with i ran the test in v4 and v5. in v4 i get 2074 icons, and of these 15 are '0kb' this is expected as those icons are broken at my provider and i have not got round to manually updating with my own image in m3u-editor, the remaining 2059 icons download correctly and this take 3 or 4 seconds.

in v5 it downloaded 2074 icons, same as v4 but of these 1862 are 0kb empty files. i have been testing this quite a few times through the week and the number that are 0kb varies but is always a large number, over 75%. often the 0kb files are locked, and remain open in nextpvr and cant be deleted untill the service is stopped. i left it over night earlier in the week in the hope it would complete but no change and i needed to stop nextpvr service to be able to delete the files.

Ok, post the logs and I'll take a look.

[quote pid='539058' dateline='1587766739']
sorry think i just browsed to it but didn't click attach.

i am using the tvg-logo for my icons, but i found that if a channel does not have a tvg-id="not empty" or if that tag is totally missing from the line, v4 and v5 do not load the channel logo from the tvg-logo tag that is present on that channel. adding a tvg-id="any value but not empty" fixes it and both v4 and v5 grab the logo from the url in the already existing tvg-logo field. see example below minus the streaming url. the working line i fixed by adding tvg-id and my own dummy value "Pass 1" when i re-imported the to fresh device the logo was downloaded

working line, logo downloaded, or at least attempted in v5
#EXTINF: -1 tvg-id="Pass 1" tvg-name="World Soccer Pass 1 HD (Live During Events Only)" tvg-logo="http://neczbm.to/images/channels/WorldSoccerPass.png" group-title="World Soccer Pass", World Socccer Pass 1  (Live During Events Only)

not working line, v4 does not add it to its group and does not download icon, V5 adds to group but does not try to download icon
#EXTINF: -1 tvg-name="World Soccer Pass 2 HD (Live During Events Only)" tvg-logo="http://neczbm.to/images/channels/WorldSoccerPass.png" group-title="World Soccer Pass", World Socccer Pass 2  (Live During Events Only)

also if tvg-id tag is present but has an empty value (tvg-id="") the same happens with groups and logos. Is nextpvr using tvg-id like some sort of primary key to identify the channel when it looks for the tvg=logo value?

Thanks!
[/quote]