XMLTVImportPlugin: Demideus

[Demideus]

RSage seems to already have covered this, but I'll expand on it (thnx RSage ).

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

If I wanted to move from the nielm plugin to this one, are there any advantages (other than this one is still actively developed)?

Advantages:
- More data is obtained from the xmltv file.
- It is configurable.

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

If I did, is there an easy step-by-step process to switch over?

If I'm using the same two xml files (1.xml and 2.xml), would my lineups/mappings in Sage get messed up? Would I have to re-apply the lineup to the tuner in Sage?

I don't know about easy, but here it goes:

Create the following files in the SageTV directory:

xmltv.properties

configurations=xmltv1.properties,xmltv2.properties

xmltv1.properties

provider.name=Lineup in 1.xml
provider.id=1
xmltv.files=1.xml

xmltv2.properties

provider.name=Lineup in 2.xml
provider.id=2
xmltv.files=2.xml

Next you would have to enter the channel details for each channel in xmltv1.properties and xmltv2.properties. The important setting for this is channel.<id>.numbers since it controls the channel mapping.

This should give you the same result as Nielm's plugin.

However, since you asked this a month ago, you probably will have tripped over the lineup since then, and are now suffering from zombie channels.

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

Is it possible with this plugin to influence the filenames that Sage uses for the MPG? Can I get it to include channel number?

No. Sage handles that itself. It only has the option of adding the episode name to the filename.

I guess, I could add an option to add the channel number to the title or the episode name. But that also means that you will see that in the Sage interface.

Maybe the people from Sage can oblige.

[Demideus]

Originally Posted by technazz

Now I had American Idol set up as a favorite with first runs only. Sage had Tuner #1 recording on Channel #12 then it decides to Add it for Tuner #3 2 times causing a conflict on two different channels for the same tuner. Both instances were first runs and both had the same title. Does sage determine what to record by epsiode number, description or just first run??

Sage seems to resolve conflicts based on the favorite. Since there is no way to override a favorite with itself the conflicting cannot be resolved.

Originally Posted by roxy99

I think it must go by episode ID because I have the same problem every week with "The Soup" and "Best Week Ever" even though the show information is the same.

Nope that isn't it. Though if you change overrides often enough, the engine becomes so knotted up that you cannot reverse an override anymore. In such cases I simply remove the favorite and add it again.

The episode ID only seems to be used in determining if you have already watched a show. It is not even used for marking a show as don't like.

Originally Posted by technazz

Yes that I see is different show ID for the same Episode on different channels on the same tuner.

Im using the XMLTV output from MT and ther is NO Epsidode data even in the original MT database that I can see.

If a non-Movie show has no episode name the showid is calculated using both the title and the starting date and time. This will result in different showids even if the shows actually are the same.

Since there is no accurate way to determine that these shows actually are the same this is how it should be. Otherwise all shows with the same title would be marked watched as soon as you have seen one of them even if those shows aren't actually the same.

An exception to this would be if both the season and the episode number were available in the xmltv_ns. I haven't however coded that yet.

[Demideus]

Originally Posted by grooves12

episodename.add.episode.number=false
episodename.add.part.number=false

Oops. It seems that a typo got into the documentation.
You'll need to use the following lines:

episode.name.add.episode.number=false
episode.name.add.part.number=false

Originally Posted by grooves12

Is it possible to have the original air date imported and displayed in the deatiled info view in sage. I think that is some of the most important info, and since I am having some trouble with marking 1st runs properly, this would make things MUCH easier, plus I think it is a nice touch to have in the guide

Use the following setting:

date.year.decoration={0,date,short}

If you do not like the format of the date, try replacing short with something like dd-MM-yyyy.

[Demideus]

Originally Posted by paulb

Is it possible to append an indication of source to channel name to make it easy to determine which tuner is being selected? I've looked through the thread but can't see anything, I've tried in my 'channel mapping' file which I include in xmltv.properties (and xmltv 2)
eg.
channel.48.names=1-BBC News 24 {rather than BBC News 24}
channel.48.numbers=12

As it didn't work I assume the channel name comes from the epg data directly to the program guide???

This should work. Assuming of course that the channel in the epg looks something like this:

<channel id="48">
<display-name>BBC News 24</display-name>
</channel>

Maybe it is just a matter of the EPG updating again. Try disabling and then re-enabling a channel in the setup.

[paulb]

Ok thanks, I'll try it again - the channel information is as you indicated.

Also I'm trying to set up the category for news, however the category field in the xml file contains 'News and Current Affairs' so, with

translate.category.News and Current Affairs=News

it doesn't work.

I'm assuming the spaces between the words are the issue and have tried News\and\........ and News/and/...... plus quotes around the string and even News and News* all to no avail. Any pointer would be gratefully received, it's not a show stopper but irritating now I've noticed it.

Thank you for the plugin, very useful

[AtariJeff]

Thanks to this plugin and the XMLTV one for MT I can now pull in my listings for all channels off the satellite with ratings, categories, and PPV titles. Great job I did notice though that original air dates or years never seem to get picked up correctly (everything says 2006). I also noticed that episode names never get identified correctly. I am pulling in EPG data from 2 different sats in North America with identical results for both. Should this info be working correctly?

[marneb17]

Originally Posted by Demideus

Yes. If you add the following line to your xmltv.properties that specific combination will be switched:

translate.category.Gaunerkomödie/Spielfilm=Spielfilm/Gaunerkomödie

However if you simply add the following line to the properties:

translate.category.Spielfilm=Movie

The plugin will automatically use that category as the primary category. The plugin does this for all known colored categories.

Also, the plugin will generate the showid differently for shows with the Movie category.

Thanks. I actually had tried thsi before, but my mistake was that I thought the category in SageTV was called 'Sports' and not 'Sports event'. Sorry, my mistake.

But I have one more thing that has been there from the beginning that I use xmltv data. Some shows have a second title or a short description that my grabber puts into the episode name field. So I always have show called 'Zapp' with the episode title 'Das Medienmagazin'. Your plugin will always create the same showid for the show, but infact they are different 'episodes'.
The same thing is true for 'tagesthemen' on weekends with the episode title 'mit Sport'.

Would it be hard to implement something that would check the episode name tag for certain strings and just delete them please
This would solve one of my two small problems I am still having.
The other has to do with the source of my xmltv data, that they sometimes have overlapping shows in the shedule and sageTV will just display 'no information' instead of one of the entries. But it would be really difficult to always check each show for it overlapping with another show.

Thanks again for your great plugin!

Marne

[AtariJeff]

Originally Posted by Demideus

Update 26-4-2006

• Corrected the typo in episode.name.add.*
• Added option to put the full xmltv <date> into Sage's show-year. date.year.decoration=<decoration>
• Added option to delay the update until a specified timeslot timeslot=<time>-<time>
• Use the Zap2it showid if it is found in the xmltv feed (<episode-num system="dd_progid">EP808403.0006</episode-num>)

Nice! How does the timeslot option work? If I only want to update between 5 and 6am I put the time range in? What format do I use for the times? It's like you read my mind on that one

[rsagetv99]

Originally Posted by AtariJeff

I did notice though that original air dates or years never seem to get picked up correctly (everything says 2006).

Pretty sure this is a product of the MT Exporter and not the Demedius importer. I seem to recall reading that if there was no date information provided then the MT exporter would put 2006 by default.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by paulb

Also I'm trying to set up the category for news, however the category field in the xml file contains 'News and Current Affairs' so, with

translate.category.News and Current Affairs=News

BTW: if this is being done in order to set the category names to something that SageTV can use for category color coding, then in v5, you can add your own category names in Setup -> Help -> Interface Guide -> View Category Colors.

- Andy

[motobarsteward]

I'm working with a clean install. I've installed the xmlvt plugin (Demideus' one) into the xmltv folder created under the sage folder. I've added the line epg/epg_import_plugin=xmltv.XMLTVImportPlugin
into my sage.properties file. I've got the xertes file in the java place. I've got my epgdata.xml file in the sage folder. As I had with my previous install, which worked! When I try to get sage to use the plugin (I'm prompted for the zip code) I enter 00000 (that's five zeros), the screen prompts me to select my cable or satellite provider but there is nothing in the screen to select! Sage 5.0 does not appear to be trying to load the plugin. Has the zip code that you enter to for it to load the plugin changed? Any other ideas what might be going wrong?

[motobarsteward]

As usual, whilst writing the post, I come up with my own solution.

I think this should go in as a sticky

Sun have rolled out a new runtime (1.5.0.6), which my machine has dutifully installed for me. Guess what's not in the /lib/ext folder of the new version? The xerces.jar file! This is why my plugin was not loading.

I have a feeling that this will catch out quite a few people.

[KrisAcker]

Originally Posted by motobarsteward

As usual, whilst writing the post, I come up with my own solution.

I think this should go in as a sticky

Sun have rolled out a new runtime (1.5.0.6), which my machine has dutifully installed for me. Guess what's not in the /lib/ext folder of the new version? The xerces.jar file! This is why my plugin was not loading.

I have a feeling that this will catch out quite a few people.

Putting jar files in the C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV\JARs folder gets around that problem! It's been there since version 4 I think.

[Demideus]

Originally Posted by paulb

Also I'm trying to set up the category for news, however the category field in the xml file contains 'News and Current Affairs' so, with

translate.category.News and Current Affairs=News

it doesn't work.

I'm assuming the spaces between the words are the issue and have tried News\and\........ and News/and/...... plus quotes around the string and even News and News* all to no avail. Any pointer would be gratefully received, it's not a show stopper but irritating now I've noticed it.

That is a silly thing about .properties files. Any spaces before the equals sign have to be escaped with a backslash. Consequently whenever you want to put a backslash in, it too has to be escaped.

Your translation should be as follows:

translate.category.News\ and\ Current\ Affairs=News

Originally Posted by Opus4

BTW: if this is being done in order to set the category names to something that SageTV can use for category color coding, then in v5, you can add your own category names in Setup -> Help -> Interface Guide -> View Category Colors.

Nice. I'll have to add that info to the configuration details.
Also I've noticed that these colors are stored in Sage's properties. The next version of my plugin will read that color configuration and make sure that, if one of those categories is present, it is passed to sage as the primary category.

Whilst I'm at it, I probably should look in at using the AiringAPI.AddAiringDetailed method. (Maybe I should then stop supporting Sage versions prior to v5...)

[Demideus]

Originally Posted by AtariJeff

I did notice though that original air dates or years never seem to get picked up correctly (everything says 2006).

Try the following setting:

date.year.decoration={0,date,short}

Maybe I should make that a default?

Originally Posted by AtariJeff

I also noticed that episode names never get identified correctly. I am pulling in EPG data from 2 different sats in North America with identical results for both. Should this info be working correctly?

Yes, it should.
However our feeds are not equal. Post the xml of a couple of programmes where the episode name is not carried to the EPG. I can then test this to see where it fails.

Originally Posted by AtariJeff

How does the timeslot option work? If I only want to update between 5 and 6am I put the time range in? What format do I use for the times?

Your setting should be this:

timeslot=0500-0600

Let me know how it goes. I've not extensively tested that option. If anything about the plugin can make Sage unstable, then this is it...
It shouldn't be a problem, since my own update takes several hours, but this can delay the update up to 23 hours.

[Demideus]

Originally Posted by marneb17

But I have one more thing that has been there from the beginning that I use xmltv data. Some shows have a second title or a short description that my grabber puts into the episode name field. So I always have show called 'Zapp' with the episode title 'Das Medienmagazin'. Your plugin will always create the same showid for the show, but infact they are different 'episodes'.
The same thing is true for 'tagesthemen' on weekends with the episode title 'mit Sport'.

Would it be hard to implement something that would check the episode name tag for certain strings and just delete them please

Hmm, I guess I can put an option in like this:

episode-name.ignore.file=<filename>

This would allow you to create a file containing an episode-name per line. Perhaps even regular expressions.

Originally Posted by marneb17

The other has to do with the source of my xmltv data, that they sometimes have overlapping shows in the shedule and sageTV will just display 'no information' instead of one of the entries. But it would be really difficult to always check each show for it overlapping with another show.

I'll look into that. No promises though

[AtariJeff]

OK here is a sample from a movie listing

</programme>
<programme start="20060425220000 -0500" stop="20060426000000 -0500" channel="C481.www.mtepgdplu.com">
<title lang="en">Serving Sara</title>
<length units="minutes">120</length>
<desc lang="en">PG-13(L)  - Serving Sara Movie. Matthew Perry, Elizabeth Hurley, Bruce Campbell.  (2002) A woman hatches a scheme with a bailiff to prevent her husband from serving her with divorce papers</desc>
<rating system="advisory">
<value>Language</value>
</rating>
<rating system="MPAA">
<value>PG-13</value>
</rating>
<star-rating>
<value>0/5</value>
</star-rating>
<category lang="en">Movie</category>
<date>20060101</date>
</programme>

Note the date. Sample from a TV show

</programme>
<programme start="20060425140000 -0500" stop="20060425150000 -0500" channel="C486.www.mtepgdplu.com">
<title lang="en">The West Wing</title>
<length units="minutes">60</length>
<desc lang="en">PG  - He Shall, From Time to Time... Series. Martin Sheen, Bradley Whitford, Allison Janney. The president is found unconscious during preparations for his state of the union speech</desc>
<rating system="MPAA">
<value>G</value>
</rating>
<star-rating>
<value>0/5</value>
</star-rating>
</programme>

I see there is no sub-title entry for the episode name. Perhaps I need to process the XML coming from Dom's MT exporter to correctly identify episode names, years, and possibly the cast list as well. Hey I just noticed the rating didn't get picked up right either

[rsagetv99]

Originally Posted by Demideus

Since this is very specific I will not make this configurable (until someone asks me to do that).

Sorry, I failed to ask, but can you remove the "." from the episode-num? So in the above example it would be "EP8084030006", I'm pretty sure this is the way Sage shows it.

[something fishy]

I'm using this plugin to create separate listings for my digital and analog cable boxes. I'm having a problem with 2 of the movie channels that appear only in the digital listing. Shows that do not have a sub-title element are not appearing in Sage - the channel shows "no-data" apart from those few shows where a sub-title element is present.

Here is an extract from the XML file:

<programme start="20060509163000 +0800" stop="20060509183000 +0800" channel="ch65.starhub.com">
<title lang="en">The Password Is Courage</title>
<desc>A British soldier plots to escape a World War II prison camp.</desc>
<credits>
<director>Andrew L. Stone</director>
<actor>Dirk Bogarde</actor>
<actor>Maria Perschy</actor>
</credits>
</programme>
<programme start="20060509183000 +0800" stop="20060509204000 +0800" channel="ch65.starhub.com">
<title lang="en">Making Of A Legend</title>
<sub-title lang="en">Gone With The Wind</sub-title>
<desc>
Christopher Plummer hosts this documentary tracing David O. Selznick&apos;s battle to make the legendary epic.
</desc>
<credits>
<director>David Hinton</director>
<actor>Christopher Plummer</actor>
<actor>Butterfly McQueen</actor>
</credits>
</programme>
<programme start="20060509204000 +0800" stop="20060510003000 +0800" channel="ch65.starhub.com">
<title lang="en">Gone With The Wind</title>
<desc>
This film chronicles the trials and tribulations of a spoiled Southern Belle during the American Civil War.
</desc>
<credits>
<director>Victor Fleming</director>
<actor>Clark Gable</actor>
<actor>Vivien Leigh</actor>
</credits>
</programme>

in this case only the middle show: Making of a legend, would display.

The two movie channels are the only ones where this is happening but they are the only channels where shows without subtitles exist that are not duplicated in the analog listings.

xmltv.properties is simply:

configurations=analog.properties,digital.properties

analog.properties is just:

provider.name=XMLTV Analog
provider.id=3125853096
xmltv.files=epgdata.xml
initcap.title=true
initcap.episode.name=true
initcap.channel.ids=*
initcap.skip.words=the, a, an, at, in, on, and, of, from, to, is, with, not, en, de, ER

digital.properties is just:

provider.name=XMLTV Digital
provider.id=4282075141
xmltv.files=epgdata.xml
initcap.title=true
initcap.episode.name=true
initcap.channel.ids=*
initcap.skip.words=the, a, an, at, in, on, and, of, from, to, is, with, not, en, de, ER

I'm using java 1.4.2; any ideas?

Thanks
Eric

[JREkiwi]

Update 5-1-2005

* Removed the show description from the show ID calculation. It caused same shows to show up with different ID's simply because the description wasn't the same. (I really should have had this update out earlier...)

Would it be possible to make a configurable option to include show description in the Show ID calculation?

Our feeds have shows with the same Title and Subtitle but different episodes are identified by different descriptions. It may also help marneb17's problem.

Originally Posted by marneb17
But I have one more thing that has been there from the beginning that I use xmltv data. Some shows have a second title or a short description that my grabber puts into the episode name field. So I always have show called 'Zapp' with the episode title 'Das Medienmagazin'. Your plugin will always create the same showid for the show, but infact they are different 'episodes'.
The same thing is true for 'tagesthemen' on weekends with the episode title 'mit Sport'.

Would it be hard to implement something that would check the episode name tag for certain strings and just delete them please