Hi, JimBob, the app will create the metadata folders as hidden folders if they are not present. This if the first I am hearing about this :-/.

Do you have anything in the log file in \programdata\tv library ?

Are you seeing that error only when you click into "Browse Series" then go into a folder then pick an episode?

What is the exact name of the series? CAn you post your *.series.xml file ?

Thanks

Jimbob_UK:

Installed TV Library and after a bit of messing about with the RegEx it seems to get the metadata ok etc.
When I go to browse a series, as soon as the mouse or remote goes to a video (which has correct title, thumbnail etc) I get an error: 'INVALID APPLICATION Unable to launch "tv library"'. Have tried a couple of different files with the same result. No messages in the log either.
The other issue I have is that the metadata folders show up everywhere. Do I need to turn off UAC or something to allow them to be hidden?
I've read all 22 pages and can't see anyone else having these problems which is a bit mysterious and probably means it's operator error
Thanks in advance.
J

Should have tried this before bothering you really...but thanks

I moved my test folder which had 1 show each of Bones & Lost in to my C drive - worked fine.

Usual layout C:\Test\Bones\Season 3\bones.s3e01.xxxxxx.avi, C:\Test\Lost\Season 4\lost.s4e01.xxx.avi

I think the problem is that my NAS (Linkstation Live) doesn't seem to allow hidden files - this has some knock on effect on your app. Surprised more people haven't seen it though.

In light of that, is there any different info that would be useful to you, or shall I just go and buy WHS

J

No bother at all. Hmm. I have since changed all engine code so I am not in a good position to do 'quick build'. However, I'm pretty sure the gallery was ignoring folders named "metadata".

For the 'crashing on video' error can you post the .video.xml for one of the episodes that crash? Ditto for the .series.xml

Bones.series.xml:

<Metadata>
  <NeedsMetadata>false</NeedsMetadata>
  <Actors>Jonathan Adams, David Boreanaz, T.J. Thyne, Emily Deschanel, Eric Millegan, Michaela Conlin</Actors>
  <BroadcastStatus>Continuing</BroadcastStatus>
  <AirsDayOfWeek>Thursday</AirsDayOfWeek>
  <AirsTime>8:00 PM</AirsTime>
  <FirstAired>2005-09-13T00:00:00</FirstAired>
  <Genre>Drama</Genre>
  <ID>75682</ID>
  <Network>FOX</Network>
  <Description>From executive producers Barry Josephson and Hart Hanson comes the darkly amusing drama Bones, inspired by real-life forensic anthropologist and novelist Kathy Reichs. Forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperence Brennan, who works at the Jeffersonian Institution and writes novels as a sideline, has an uncanny ability to read clues left behind in a victim's bones. Consequently, law enforcement calls her in to assist with murder investigations when the remains are so badly decomposed, burned, or destroyed that the standard identification methods are useless. Brennan's equally brilliant colleagues at the Jeffersonian's Medico-Legal Lab include earthy and bawdy Angela Montenegro, who's created a unique way to render an original crime scene in a three-dimensional computer image; Brennan's assistant, Zack Addy, a young prodigy whose genius IQ actually gets in the way of his finishing the several doctorates he's begun; "the bug guy", Dr. Jack Hodgins, who's an expert on insects, spores and minerals, but conspiracy is his hobby; and Brennan's boss, imposing lab director Dr. Daniel Goodman. Brennan often finds herself teamed with Special Agent Seely Booth, a former Army sniper who mistrusts science and scientists when it comes to solving crimes. Brennan and Booth clash both professionally and personally, but so far the chemistry between them has only played out in a fictionalized account in Brennan's lastest mystery novel.</Description>
  <Rating>TV-14</Rating>
  <RunTime>36000000000</RunTime>
  <Title>Bones</Title>
  <WatchSeriesIndex>0</WatchSeriesIndex>
</Metadata>

Bones.S02E02.Title.video.xml

<Metadata>
  <NeedsMetadata>false</NeedsMetadata>
  <Status />
  <Provider>http://www.thetvdb.com</Provider>
  <StationName>FOX</StationName>
  <OriginalBroadcastDateTime>2007-10-02T00:00:00</OriginalBroadcastDateTime>
  <OriginalRunTime>36000000000</OriginalRunTime>
  <Duration>25800000000</Duration>
  <EncodeTime>0</EncodeTime>
  <EndTime>0</EndTime>
  <Watched>false</Watched>
  <Position>0</Position>
  <Title>Bones</Title>
  <SubTitle>Soccer Mom in the Mini-Van</SubTitle>
  <SubTitleDescription>Brennan and Booth investigate the death of a soccer mom who was blown up in her mini-van, confused as to why someone would murder a seemingly innocent soccer mom.  They soon discover that the soccer mom, named June, was part of a group of radicals from the 70's, named the National Liberation Army.  June was also wanted by the FBI for decades, and might have been close to turning herself in, which makes motives for her murder really complicated.  Meanwhile, Brennan goes to see her father Max in jail.</SubTitleDescription>
  <Genre>Drama</Genre>
  <ParentalRating>TV-14</ParentalRating>
  <IsDelay>false</IsDelay>
  <IsLive>false</IsLive>
  <IsMovie>false</IsMovie>
  <IsPremiere>false</IsPremiere>
  <IsRepeat>false</IsRepeat>
  <IsFinale>false</IsFinale>
  <IsSAP>false</IsSAP>
  <IsStereo>false</IsStereo>
  <IsSubtitled>false</IsSubtitled>
  <ClosedCaptioning>false</ClosedCaptioning>
  <ContentProtected>false</ContentProtected>
  <DTVContent>false</DTVContent>
  <ATSCContent>false</ATSCContent>
  <HDContent>false</HDContent>
  <ID>334845</ID>
  <SeriesID>75682</SeriesID>
  <SeasonNumber>3</SeasonNumber>
  <EpisodeNumber>2</EpisodeNumber>
  <TitleDescription>From executive producers Barry Josephson and Hart Hanson comes the darkly amusing drama Bones, inspired by real-life forensic anthropologist and novelist Kathy Reichs. Forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperence Brennan, who works at the Jeffersonian Institution and writes novels as a sideline, has an uncanny ability to read clues left behind in a victim's bones. Consequently, law enforcement calls her in to assist with murder investigations when the remains are so badly decomposed, burned, or destroyed that the standard identification methods are useless. Brennan's equally brilliant colleagues at the Jeffersonian's Medico-Legal Lab include earthy and bawdy Angela Montenegro, who's created a unique way to render an original crime scene in a three-dimensional computer image; Brennan's assistant, Zack Addy, a young prodigy whose genius IQ actually gets in the way of his finishing the several doctorates he's begun; "the bug guy", Dr. Jack Hodgins, who's an expert on insects, spores and minerals, but conspiracy is his hobby; and Brennan's boss, imposing lab director Dr. Daniel Goodman. Brennan often finds herself teamed with Special Agent Seely Booth, a former Army sniper who mistrusts science and scientists when it comes to solving crimes. Brennan and Booth clash both professionally and personally, but so far the chemistry between them has only played out in a fictionalized account in Brennan's lastest mystery novel.</TitleDescription>
  <BroadcastFirstAired>2005-09-13T00:00:00</BroadcastFirstAired>
  <AirsDayOfWeek>Thursday</AirsDayOfWeek>
  <AirsTime>8:00 PM</AirsTime>
  <Director>Alan Kroeker</Director>
  <Writer>Elizabeth Benjamin</Writer>
  <Actors>Jonathan Adams, David Boreanaz, T.J. Thyne, Emily Deschanel, Eric Millegan, Michaela Conlin</Actors>
  <GuestStars>Ryan O'Neal, David Greenman, Deborah Zoe, Erich Anderson, Ron Canada, Richard Cox, Chris Tardio, Scout Taylor-Compton, Susan Rohrer</GuestStars>
</Metadata>

Apologies for massive post, forum wouldn't let me attach files

J

No worries, JimBob, I think I figured out. This might be the same problem James ran it before. What clued me in was that I was getting the same problem with one of my movies. I tracked it down to a ' quote character in the description properties. If this is the cause then chalk it up to this dang programmer forgetting to cleanup the descriptions when downloading the metadata.....

I am confident that this is the problem because xml treats a single quote as a special character. Try replacing the single quote with anything else as a test and lemme know :-)

Sample from bones.series.xml:

"Brennan's equally brilliant colleagues at the Jeffersonian's Medico-Legal Lab include earthy and bawdy Angela Montenegro, who's "

Sample from Bones.S02E02.Title.video.xml:

"was part of a group of radicals from the 70's, named the National Liberation Army."

PS. Thanks for clueing me in. I am adding that to my todo list for the metadata download stuff.

Hey, mayankel,

so you can't even open them up in explorer? I'll be honest with you guys: I haven't really thought of the globalization aspect. Obviously, I need to now :-P.

Plugin developers, how do you guys address these type of cases?

Use an actual database instead of XML files?

No, even though some "special" characters are not XML legal, you can work around it by setting the file as UTF-8 and handle everything in code.

ahelseth:

Use an actual database instead of XML files?

No, even though some "special" characters are not XML legal, you can work around it by setting the file as UTF-8 and handle everything in code.

poopoo on database! Wrong answer!!! BZZZT!!

crapola, so basically --if i read you right -- I'd have to not use xml  serialization and handle the reading of the values manually?

[Edit]

Come to think of it, the problem might be in the MCML and not with the actual xml file because when the video object is provided for display in the UI it's already been loaded from the xml file....so I might be ok with how I'm storing the data...must investigate.

Quick heads up on app: In about 2 weeks I should be able to recompile the app with the updated engine code...it will be buggier than before but at least I should be able to track down some of these metadata/mcml crashing errors....

Hehe, I really don't understand your unwillingness to use a DB approach, but what the heck, if it works for you :)

No, I'm deserializing my XML using standard .Net code - what I meant was the XML file itself should specify UTF-8 (which by the looks of things, it doesn't at the moment). I know I had some problems very similar early on, but I fixed it all in XML rather than code. (I know some people don't like using .deserialize, but I've found it to be way faster and easier to work with than iterating through each and every value in the file.).

I think the only issue in MCML is that it will "strip" out certain characters if not set properly - it should not crash (which I think the problem was above).

Bad new JL. Removed the apostrophes but it still gives the same error. I'm not that surprised though becuase I was thinking, if it was the cause of the problem, I would have had the same problem when I ran TV Library from my C drive instead of NAS share wouldn't I?

Thanks for continued support

ahelseth,

thanks for the heads up, I am serializing the whole object but had turned off name space as well as the 'encoding' header. I'll take a look at that. Also, does MCML allow a global error handler? When the MCML barfs on null references, I can't trap those types of errors to log. Any ideas how to do so ?

ahelseth:

Hehe, I really don't understand your unwillingness to use a DB approach, but what the heck, if it works for you :)

No, I'm deserializing my XML using standard .Net code - what I meant was the XML file itself should specify UTF-8 (which by the looks of things, it doesn't at the moment). I know I had some problems very similar early on, but I fixed it all in XML rather than code. (I know some people don't like using .deserialize, but I've found it to be way faster and easier to work with than iterating through each and every value in the file.).

I think the only issue in MCML is that it will "strip" out certain characters if not set properly - it should not crash (which I think the problem was above).

Jimbob_UK:

Bad new JL. Removed the apostrophes but it still gives the same error. I'm not that surprised though becuase I was thinking, if it was the cause of the problem, I would have had the same problem when I ran TV Library from my C drive instead of NAS share wouldn't I?

Thanks for continued support

No problem. thanks for the followup. I'll revisit it next week (house guests this weekend so no computer for me..says the wifey) and try to see what's going on.....

JackLuminous:

App Update:

Sorry, maybe I'm missing something, but where are these new builds your talking about?  The link in the first post seems to be a build from 5-16, but you've got notes about new versions up to just a couple days ago...  Are those builds somewhere else?  Where can I download the newest build?

Thanks for an amazing app!  Really appreciate your work!

Eddie

Hi

I was just wondering how i change the pictures in the first menu. for ex. in the gallery mode i have three diferent categories Movies,Recorded and Tv Show and i want each of them to have a different jpeg picture but i can only seem to get one working by going into the metadata and renaming a pic folder.cover.jpg?

Any help appreciated