JackLuminous,

No worries!  I appreciate the time you've spent making the updates to this plug-in. It fits so well with and looks so much like the rest of VMC, it's very easy to forget it's a plug-in and not part of the original VMC.

I've installed 1.08!  Wasn't sure which way you would prefer that we install the app. I uninstalled the old version, renamed the metafolders  to metafolder001 (I guess I could have just deleted them) and then installed the new version.

If I might make some observations.... 

Suggestions

- Might it not be a good idea to have the DVD covers display on the launch screen as the default? When I installed it, I got the generic thumbnails again. It's an easy enough fix, one just updates the "Televsion.folder.xml" file with <ImageType>Cover</ImageType>.  But I imagine most every user is going to end up doing this. If so, why not make it the default?  It would be very slick to have the DVD covers come up automatically after install.

- Perhaps the program could begin to download series info in the background after install? Maybe it already does this, but it seemed that the series information did not begin to download until I clicked on "Watch Series" for each television show. If one has a high number of different television series, it takes a while to go in and out of each one to hit "Watch Series" Again, since most every user is going to end up doing this anyway, perhaps this step can be automated.

Problems

- For some reason, Browse Series function no longer works for me. When I click on the "Browse Series" button, I get a blank page with the series banner at the top.  Nor does FFWD button toggle between 1 and 2 row view.

Fixes

- Hey! Guesss what??  The episodes for Doctor Who - Season 19 are now recognized!!  Hooray!!  Thumbnails, sysnopsis, everything.  Sweet!!  However, for some strange reason, it only recognizes Episodes 1 to 18 and 23 to 26. It skips right over episodes 19 to 22.   The status line for Episode 19 reads:

 <Status>There were more than one possible matches for 'Doctor Who-S19E19-EarthShock, Part One'. The user needs to select the correct one.</Status>

The only thing I can think of is that these four episodes are in ".wmv" format while the other files are in ".avi" format.  Could that be causing it?

- Escaped Lion

After installing 1.08 some of my TV series fail to import... here's a screen of what's happening:

http://skitch.com/travisbell/urua/vmc-tvlibrary

When VMC has these broken windows open, the extension library .exe (for Vista) runs around 80% on my dual core. The second I back out to the season view, it idles down to nothing.

Something definitely seem to be amiss with 1.08 unless I missed something that needs some changing...

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Travis Bell
themoviedb.org | The open movie database

Judging from that sequence, your files are NOT being recognized as archived tv and, hence, it tries to identify it as a movie. If you do NOT have a custom regex for ArchivedTVExpression and are using the default, then the default regex is probably not including .wmv...

EscapedLion:

 <Status>There were more than one possible matches for 'Doctor Who-S19E19-EarthShock, Part One'. The user needs to select the correct one.</Status>

The only thing I can think of is that these four episodes are in ".wmv" format while the other files are in ".avi" format.  Could that be causing it?

- Escaped Lion

I've seen that  before when I was working on the 2-row  gallery and I thought I had it corrected. I need more context/background information  inorder to troubleshoot. Was this an existing series that already had metadata before you installed 1.08 or did you start from scratch w/o ANY .metadata folders and the app started doing that w/o downloading anything? . I just want get a better understanding of the scenario so I can try it on my HTPC.

 

No sweat.

Weeds was already imported yes, and so was season 4 but I was having issues with 3 of the episodes getting tagged (with version 1.06) so I trashed the .metadata in the Season 4 folder and went back in. I have not been able to get the data to display correctly.

Even though the display is broken, the .metadata has been re-created and all of the episode .xml and images exists.

Hope that helps...

---

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Travis Bell
themoviedb.org | The open movie database

travisbell:

No sweat. Weeds was already imported yes, and so was season 4 but I was having issues with 3 of the episodes getting tagged (with version 1.06) so I trashed the .metadata in the Season 4 folder and went back in. I have not been able to get the data to display correctly. Even though the display is broken, the .metadata has been re-created and all of the episode .xml and images exists. Hope that helps...

Thanks, that gives me something specific to try. I'll take one of my season folders, kill it's metadata then go into the Browse Episodes page. I will also try nuking all the metadata for all of my series to see what happens.

Edit:  Travisbell, problem reproduced. The first thing i noticed is that it didn't recognize the folder as either a season folder or a regular folder and, thus, there is no [folder name].season.xml or [folder name].folder.xml. No xml no imagesize control. I'll investigate from that angle.

Edit2: Turns it recognizes the folder as a season but didn't write any xml out (part of the overdue issue of not 'pulling down cover etc.' for new season folders). The real culprit turns out to be that the defaults for ImageSize, and ImageType (along with SortOrder) were not being set at all. There values were all NotSpecified which is not handled inside the MCML UI markup.

I'll work on the proper fix tonight or tomorrow night. In the mean time, creating a manual .season.xml will fix it . Sorry for the trouble.

Hey,
    I just got back into the library app now that it's 64-bit, so I'm still trying to catch up on 20+ pages of changes :)  I'm having a bit of trouble with the regex and the metadata showing properly for my shows now.  It worked on tv library, but now, on Chuck, I get:

Chuck.folder
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Metadata>
  <Title>Chuck</Title>
  <NeedsMetadata>false</NeedsMetadata>
  <NeedsUserSelection>false</NeedsUserSelection>
  <Status />
  <SubTitle />
  <Description />
  <ImageType>NotSpecified</ImageType>
  <ImageSize>NotSpecified</ImageSize>
  <SortOrder>NotSpecified</SortOrder>
  <SpannedFolders />
  <GetMostRecentVideo>false</GetMostRecentVideo>
  <CleanUp>false</CleanUp>
</Metadata>

And in the first episode:
Chuck - 101 - Pilot.series and .video
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Metadata>
  <Title>Chuck - 101 - Pilot</Title>
  <NeedsMetadata>true</NeedsMetadata>
  <NeedsUserSelection>false</NeedsUserSelection>
  <Status>Could not find any possible matches for 'Chuck - 101 - Pilot'</Status>
  <SubTitle />
  <Description />
  <ImageType>NotSpecified</ImageType>
  <ImageSize>NotSpecified</ImageSize>
  <SortOrder>NotSpecified</SortOrder>
  <SpannedFolders />
  <GetMostRecentVideo>false</GetMostRecentVideo>
  <CleanUp>false</CleanUp>
  <Actors />
  <BroadcastStatus />
  <AirsDayOfWeek />
  <AirsTime />
  <FirstAired>0001-01-01T00:00:00</FirstAired>
  <Language />
  <Genre />
  <ID />
  <Network />
  <Rating />
  <RunTime>0</RunTime>
  <WatchSeriesIndex>0</WatchSeriesIndex>
  <Zap2ItID />
</Metadata>

For this, what do I edit and which file to enable it to redownload everything to recognize the files?
Also, I'm not sure where to fix this, but these files play fine in WMP, but MCE is not liking Chuck this time.  It says there's a codec not installed to play them...anyone else have that problem?

I also tried 1.08, which didn't work, so I uninstalled, and put 1.07, which didn't crash upon entering the program.  Is there anything I'm missing on 1.08 to make it work?

James

James,

what's in the \programdata\videolibrary\videolibrary.log file? If it crashes on startup it most likely is a problem in the .config.

To redownload you just set NeedsMetadata = true. ...or simply blow away the .xml or the whole .metadata folder.

Update: finalizing code to 'download season metadata' when you add a season folder AFTER you've already got metadata for a series. This situation occured because season metadata were set the first time series metadata is downloaded and not again after that. The update I'm working on will fix that.

1. It will find the first season banner from \providercache and use that.

2. It will create a .season.xml file and set its gallery defaults as follows:

ImageType=Thumbnail

ImageSize=Large

SortOrder=SeasonAndEpisode

I am testing it out by recreating travisbell's scenario. Once that's confirmed to work as I expect, I'll nuke all of my .xml for all of my series then confirm that first-run is still good. Once that's good I'll upload 1.09.

JackLuminous:

travisbell:

No sweat. Weeds was already imported yes, and so was season 4 but I was having issues with 3 of the episodes getting tagged (with version 1.06) so I trashed the .metadata in the Season 4 folder and went back in. I have not been able to get the data to display correctly. Even though the display is broken, the .metadata has been re-created and all of the episode .xml and images exists. Hope that helps...

Thanks, that gives me something specific to try. I'll take one of my season folders, kill it's metadata then go into the Browse Episodes page. I will also try nuking all the metadata for all of my series to see what happens.

Edit:  Travisbell, problem reproduced. The first thing i noticed is that it didn't recognize the folder as either a season folder or a regular folder and, thus, there is no [folder name].season.xml or [folder name].folder.xml. No xml no imagesize control. I'll investigate from that angle.

Edit2: Turns it recognizes the folder as a season but didn't write any xml out (part of the overdue issue of not 'pulling down cover etc.' for new season folders). The real culprit turns out to be that the defaults for ImageSize, and ImageType (along with SortOrder) were not being set at all. There values were all NotSpecified which is not handled inside the MCML UI markup.

I'll work on the proper fix tonight or tomorrow night. In the mean time, creating a manual .season.xml will fix it . Sorry for the trouble.

redid it, and it got the series, but using Chuck as an example, VL doesn't pull the individual episodes or show the TV series' cover.  Any suggestions?

James

edit: deleted the metadata, now it downloaded.  Just gotta fix the cover view in the individual folder.

For some reason, Browse Series function no longer works for me. When I click on the "Browse Series" button, I get a blank page with the series banner at the top.

I'm having a similar problem with series that only have one series folder. If the series has two or more folders I get a fast switching between series 1 and 2, like I'm pressing left and right on the remote about 5 times a second. The covers never load. This happens to me when I click Browse Episodes from the series info screen. If I click Watch Series or Play Random I can still watch my videos.

Thanks again for adding the ogm support. The files were recognized today and play fine.

Fixed:
After reading your post above I changed my season tags to:

ImageType=Thumbnail

ImageSize=Large

SortOrder=SeasonAndEpisode

It works again. I also changed my series.xml to SeasonAndEpisode and that fixed the jumping problem.

I might have forgotten how, but I've got the new Doctor Who series, and how do we get that series to recognize again?  I reset the metadata, but it's pulling from the old 60's Doctor Who, not the new one.

Also, what were the options available for:
  <ImageType>NotSpecified</ImageType> (Cover, Banner, Thumbnail)
  <ImageSize>NotSpecified</ImageSize> ?
  <SortOrder>NotSpecified</SortOrder> ?

James

...I'm running through a few tv series, and I'm getting a few 'media center extensability host' errors that crash the VL, returning me to MCE.  Has anyone else encountered this as well?

James

JackLuminous:

Once that's confirmed to work as I expect, I'll nuke all of my .xml for all of my series then confirm that first-run is still good. Once that's good I'll upload 1.09.

Awesome. For now I can just use regular VMC folders ;)

---

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Travis Bell
themoviedb.org | The open movie database

The .ogm extension you so kindly added for me works...almost. The episode data isn't being read correctly. All my episodes have the same metadata from the series.xml. The video.xml for each episode is full of information about each episode, but the tags aren't being pulled in. I can play the files fine and they're in the correct order. I can even change the order by changing the season.xml, so something is being read...