New XMLTV Import Tool

[Alfiegerner]

Originally Posted by StephaneM

If SageTV was doing this differently : conflict resolution would be a nigthmare because a "First run" record job would only record the very first airing of the show disregarding all repeats of this show within the week. So if SageTV was doing this and two first run, you want to record, were airing at the same time, you would have a conflict (with one tuner) even though one of the show will be aired at another times during the week.

Regards,
Stéphane.

That makes sense, thanks for clarifying that. My understanding now as to how this impacts on favourites scheduling goes like this:

Say you a have a programe aired on E4 and E4 +1 ,even though both are marked as first run a favoutirte set to only record first runs would only select one or other of these programs but not both.

Is this right?

[StephaneM]

Hi Ron,

Originally Posted by ron.smythe

I have a favourite for 'Only fools and Horses' which is being show on station UKGold, UKGold has a time shift channel (UKGold +1), which after using version 2.1 of the importer has the same ShowID now as all I do is copy UKGolds show details. I was under the impression that if sage has already recorded the show, say on UKGold then it would not record the +1 showing. Am I wrong in this?

Yes this is exactly what should happen. I just made the test, I created a "+1" channel and set up a favorite for a show and SageTV does schedule only one of the show. If I create on purpose a conflict on the first airing, the SageTV record the show on the "+1" channel as it should.

However SageTV will record again the show if :

* you deleted the recording
* the recording was not set as "watched"

Also when I created my "+1" channel I choose a different ID for it, for instance : the orginal channel ID (XMLTV) is canal+.fr, I choosed canal+decale.fr as the ID of my "+1" channel.

Do you have the IR feature of SageTV turned on? Because it also may re-record some shows (I read on the forums that some users have found that SageTV may record already recorded/watched shows)

Regards,
Stéphane.

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by Alfiegerner

Say you a have a programe aired on E4 and E4 +1 ,even though both are marked as first run, a favorite set to only record first runs would only select one or other of these programs but not both.

Yes, SageTV will only select one of the show to be recorded. The one choosed is dependant on the other recordings that can occur at the same time (and their relative priority).

[Jabroni]

Originally Posted by StephaneM

* I schedule the Importer to run at 6 am
* I once forced SageTV to reload its EPG at 8 am

Just wondering, you use a plain .bat to execute the web request to force the EPG reload?? Or u used any extra util (something like wget but for windows)

Guess I anwsered my own question.. just found a wget port for windows.. i used that to trigger the update, seems it works fine.. now its time to get back on my round with getting the MT EPG to xmltv and import it correctly to sage

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by Jabroni

Just wondering, you use a plain .bat to execute the web request to force the EPG reload?? Or u used any extra util (something like wget but for windows)

Even more simpler : I just forced once the EPG reload with the Web Server plugin (but you can do it by disabling / enabling a channel directly in SageTV) and after that the EPG download is scheduled every 24h from this time...

Regards,
Stéphane.

[ekiwi]

Hi Stéphane

I do not get any ratings transfered into sage from my xml data

in the xml file i have data like the following

    <rating system="NZ">
      <value>PG</value>
    </rating>

in the ratings file is have

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?>
<ratings>
  <rating name="M" id="TV14" extended="" />
  <rating name="PG" id="TVPG" extended="" />
  <rating name="G" id="TVG" extended="" />
  <rating name="16" id="TVM" extended="" />
  <rating name="18" id="TVM" extended="" />
  <rating name="MC" id="TV14" extended="content" />
  <rating name="MV" id="TV14" extended="violence" />
  <rating name="18L" id="TVM" extended="language" />
  <rating name="PGV" id="TVPG" extended="violence" />
  <rating name="16C" id="TVM" extended="content" />
  <rating name="18S" id="TVM" extended="sex" />
  <rating name="16L" id="TVM" extended="language" />
  <rating name="16V" id="TVM" extended="violence" />
  <rating name="PGR" id="TVPG" extended="" />
  <rating name="AO" id="TV14" extended="" />
  <rating name="NR" id="TVG" extended="" />
  <rating name="PGC" id="TVPG" extended="content" />
  <rating name="18V" id="TVM" extended="violence" />
  <rating name="MA" id="TV14" extended="" />
</ratings>

but i can not see any ratings info within sage.

any ideas?

I am on the Jan version of you importer and release version 6 of sage

-Rob

[StephaneM]

Hello Rob,

Originally Posted by ekiwi

i can not see any ratings info within sage.

Are you sure you are looking in the right place. Within the default SageTV STV ratings are displayed when you view the full program information.

Otherwise you can check the EpisodeXX.xml (where XX is a number depending on how much lineup you have) in C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV\3rdPartyGuideData to see if you can find some nodes with TVPG inside like this one :

<lm-parental-rating>TVPG</lm-parental-rating>

If nodes like that exists then the information is imported into SageTV.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[ekiwi]

Hi Stéphane this is weird

i have 1 imported xmltv file. from this i create 3 lineups

1 sky
2 analog
99 disabled

The 99 lineup is where i put channels i don't subscribe to or don't want to see
the analog lineup is a subset of the sky lineup and is made up entirely of additional "duplicated" channels from the sky lineup


if i look in the EpisodeXX.xml file for lineup 99 i see
<lm-parental-rating> tag pairs and <lm-expanded-rating> tag pairs. Some with ratings between and some empty with nothing between the tags

but for the episodexx.xml files for line ups 1 and 2 there are not even empty tag pairs if fact the word rating does not appear in either of these 2 files anywhere (ie using a search)



any ideas

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by ekiwi

The 99 lineup is where i put channels i don't subscribe to or don't want to see

You can simply delete your "99" lineup. If you do not want to import a channel don't put a channel number for this channel (this will reduce greatly import duration).

if i look in the EpisodeXX.xml file for lineup 99 i see
<lm-parental-rating> tag pairs.../...but for the episodexx.xml files for line ups 1 and 2 there are not even empty tag pairs

In this case delete all files in the 3rdPartyGuideData folder, modify your lineups and proceed with the import. Check the new files in the 3rdPartyGuideData folder.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[cortechs]

Hey,

I was wondering if it was possible to use wildcards (*) in the "categories" screen.
I'm using Kazer's XMLTV Updater as a grabber for the french lineup because it's way faster than the official xmltv one (1min against 45min), but it doesn't use the categories the same way xmltv does.

For example, for the Series' category, instead of having "Série", I got "Série policière, Série hospitalière, Série sentimentale ,...." and that is the same thing for Movies, Sport, News. This means the lineup isn't color coded when i go into the guide of SageTV.

So is there a way to make this working with this importer?

Regards,
Cortechs.

[StephaneM]

Hello

Originally Posted by cortechs

I was wondering if it was possible to use wildcards (*) in the "categories" screen.

The Importer use implicitly wildcards.

For example, for the Series' category, instead of having "Série", I got "Série policière, Série hospitalière, Série sentimentale ,...."

Just use "série" as the keyword and it will match all these categories.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[cortechs]

Humm, doesn't look like it's working!

I've tried reloading the service and the program, and forcing the epg to update but the colors don't show up in the guide.

Is your Importer case sensitive? I also noticed that I often have a trailing periode in the category field of my xml file... might that be of any effect?

thanks for helping,

Cortechs

edit:

Ok, i removed all my tuners and set them back up and the colors showed up right away for all but "série".... maybe the accents broke something up.

edit:

Nope! not case sensitive apparently!

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by cortechs

Ok, i removed all my tuners and set them back up and the colors showed up right away for all but "série"....

Yes, sometimes SageTV is a little conservative for categories (you'll find that when you update SageTV to a newer version the next epg update after a new import, the categories are wrong).

Also, by default, SageTV has colors for Sports, News and Movies. Series are not colored by default so you have to edit the colors (it is somewhere in the settings can't remembre where exactly).

Regards,
Stéphane.

[owilsky]

Originally Posted by StephaneM

Series are not colored by default so you have to edit the colors (it is somewhere in the settings can't remembre where exactly).

I don't know where exactly but I remember that I was quite surprised finding it somewhere under the help menu ...

Oliver

[cortechs]

I've tried to create a new color category for the guide called "Series" to match up the with the lm-category tag found in programs0.xml but it didn't do much.
Once again I've reset all my inputs but it didn't show any colors for my category (Série).

Last, I renamed all the tags called "Série ..." to "Serie ..." from the xml I grabbed and also deleted all the files included in the 3rdPartyGuideData directory and relaunched the Importer.

As you might have guessed, none of this worked.

Thanks for helping,

Cortechs.

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by cortechs

As you might have guessed, none of this worked.

So you'll have to wait for a future version of the Importer (don't know when exactly) where you'll be able to better categorize categories. Basically, what SageTV is expecting is something like Movie / Action or Serie / Comedy (but it could very well be in French or other languages). That's the only way for it to be really effective. So you'll create the top level categories and sub categories based and try to match them with what you have in the XMLTV file (this will require a lot of work from end users that's why I don't have introduced this yet).

Regards,
Stéphane.

[xred]

I had my setup going PERFECT for a while there so you know something was due to break..... I finally got around to installing the latest version of the registered importer. Is anyone else having an issue where the episode titles being brought in from Zap2it are including the audio and air date info? For example the SageTV importer (which I use for cable) is importing shows as "Heroes" while Stefan's importer imports the same episode from Zap2it it as something like "Heroes - Stereo - (2007)"

The difference in the episode name causes Sage to tape two instances of the show, both at the same time. If it happens with two shows, I get 4 recordings going at once, which makes the HDD light blink lots as you can imagine.

Any ideas? Anyone seen this before?

TIA

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by xred

For example the SageTV importer (which I use for cable) is importing shows as "Heroes" while Stefan's importer imports the same episode from Zap2it it as something like "Heroes - Stereo - (2007)"

the "(2007)" part is what should be displayed for movies, and this is SageTV that is adding it after the movie name (but without a dash, so more like this "Heroes (2007)").

Moreover the Importer is not adding anything into the ep.title except ep.number. even though the EPGID of the show is always computed on the "naked" ep.title (the addition are done after retreiving EPGID). Movie year, aspect ratio, sound format are all retrieved but put in the appropriate SageTV DB fields (are you sure this is not the other XMLTV plugin that is formatting the title with extraneous informations?)

So, you'll have to check first the EPGID of the shows, they should be the same as SageTV is recording all of them.

You can send me your XMLTV file zipped to lmgestion@hotmail.com and let me know what detection method you use in the Importer (ep.title / ep.title + description / ep.title + air date) and I'll see if you should have the same EPGID for "Heroes" or not.

Also I would be curious to know how you can use two XMLTV plugin at the same time?

Regards,
Stéphane.

[cortechs]

Thanks for the answers!

I 've done a little bit more of investigation around the Importer and it looks like it doesn't work very well with the Serie's category.

What I've done is switching the News category for the Serie's one (in your program) and all of a sudden, my series were color coded (as News) while now my news were not.

So looks like there is a bug in the importer trying to fetch the series data.

Thanks for helping sorting this out,

Cortechs

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by cortechs

So looks like there is a bug in the importer trying to fetch the series data.

This is not a bug. This is the expected behavior and this is a historical feature: SageTV was only providing colors for News / Sports and Movies (before some v5 version if I remember correctly) and you cannot choose new colors / adding categories etc...

So the Importer only rewrote the categories for News / Sports and Movies (for instance if one of your movie is a "film, action", the Importer will import it as a "Movie / film, action"; "Movie" is the main category, "film, action" the sub category). It was not needed at this time to rewrote the "Series" categories at all, so the Importer is not doing it (and you can colorize the series with the SageTV feature, but I think SageTV expect you to give the full category name eg. Series, drama).

In a future version of the Importer all of this will be removed : the Importer will no more add a "Movie" / "News" / "Sport" main category but instead let's you redefine the main category and sub category as you want to (and you'll have to use SageTV feature to colorize them accordingly, because obviously you'll have main categories in French like "Films" / "Séries" / "Documentaires" / "Sports" / "Infos" etc...)

I'm only hesitant about this because :

* users you'll have to figure out how this will work
* I expect some frustrations (because you need to a) edit your categories in the Importer b) colorize the categories in SageTV.
* Users that use SageMC (as I do) will lost all color coding into the program guide (SageMC will have to provide some way to do color coding as in the default STV).

But I guess this is the way to go (at least it will be a cleaner way to handle this)

Regards,
Stéphane.