New XMLTV Import Tool

[StephaneM]

Hello Oliver,

Originally Posted by owilsky

How do I get a line break into the description of SageTV?I now have a CR/LF in my xmltv files although I know that that's not really conform to the xmltv standard.

I think you can't insert a line break at all.

What happens if I do an import of three weeks of xml data today and the same in one week? Will the middle week be imported a second time if ...

Nothing bad happens. All to be aired shows will be imported again : including existing ones and updated ones (exception : description is not updated if it is not longer than the existing ones and if the description is not used to create the EPGID)

a. if the EPIDs/ MVIDs/ SHIDs have been changed since then?
b. if they did not change, but e.g. a title or parts of the description has changed?

The EPGIDs change only when the data change (depending on the identity method used : ep.title only or ep.title / description). When the EPGID change the new EPGID is imported into SageTV. Then Importer guarantee that the EPGID doesn't change for the same show (same title / ep.title).

And what happens if my data provider updates its program maybe because there will be soccer tonight which was not planned two weeks ago. Actually there should have been a movie.
Will that movie get overwritten in the sage DB?

Yes new data overwrite old data.

I ask because I often see that if there is a conflict, SageTV will import nothing and the EPG reports "no data".

The Importer handle conflicts : if it find a show that conflicts with another one, the existing show is removed in favor of the last one (the shows are sorted by air date). In some cases : you can have a "No Data" in SageTV when the XMLTV data is very bad and shows are overlapping with each other badly. For instance show A, B and C are consecutive, but B start 1mn before A ends, C start 1mn before B ends => A will be deleted, B will be deleted, leaving only C. So you should be very careful in your XMLTV data to not have conflicts / overlapping (overlapping can be avoided by not including "stop" time in your XMLTV data, in this case the Importer assume that a show ends when another begins).

Regards,
Stéphane.

[owilsky]

Originally Posted by StephaneM

Hello Oliver,
I think you can't insert a line break at all.

I think it is possible. Before I found your importer, I had my own importer which was based on the old one by Lester Jacobs.
I tried this: I used nielm's webserver to edit a show info. I could simply press enter and line break is inserted. After saving I see that it is indeed saved in the DB.
The question now is how to import it into wiz.bin. I'm not sure, but maybe adding a "\n" creates a line break?

Originally Posted by StephaneM

The Importer handle conflicts : if it find a show that conflicts with another one, the existing show is removed in favor of the last one

Yes, but only if the conflicts are in the same xml file, right? What if I import tvdata for next week today, but tomorrow theres a new entry which conflicts for the same show which was imported the day before?

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by owilsky

I think it is possible. Before I found your importer, I had my own importer which was based on the old one by Lester Jacobs.
I tried this: I used nielm's webserver to edit a show info. I could simply press enter and line break is inserted. After saving I see that it is indeed saved in the DB.

Well you are talking about a direct edit through SageTV API. For the Importer there is more than this single step :

* XMLTV parsing into the Importer
* Transform data create XML files for java plugin
* Java XML parsing
* Injecting parsed data into SageTV

While the last part is very well capable of handling line feed. The three others certainly not (at least when I create XML files => no line feeds or unneeded spaces)

Yes, but only if the conflicts are in the same xml file, right? What if I import tvdata for next week today, but tomorrow theres a new entry which conflicts for the same show which was imported the day before?

Nope, this is still valid when you have more that one XMLTV files, and between import session. The last show being imported always wins when there is a conflict. So if show A was imported yesterday and show B imported today is overlapping show A, show B is discarded (you'll see it in the Import log).

Regards,
Stéphane.

[owilsky]

OK, I need some help.

I like recording Poker.
On Thursdays there are two shows in a row.
I saw in EPG that both shows from tonight were written in italics, so both were marked as watched.
I checked it and both had the same ID (don't remember which were the first two letters).

Show title is "Poker Exklusiv", episode title is "Superstars of Poker III" for both shows.

So I created a rule with setting "generic", did an import and clicked on "force update". I got sure that the import was finished (webserver showed 23.9 hours left before next update).

But both shows still have the same id: SH0007460013.

Is this normal?

Oliver

[StephaneM]

Hello Oliver,

Originally Posted by owilsky

Show title is "Poker Exklusiv", episode title is "Superstars of Poker III" for both shows. So I created a rule with setting "generic .../... But both shows still have the same id: SH0007460013. Is this normal?

Yes this is normal. Despites your shows have an "SH" prefix (and should be recorded both), as they do have an episode title, SageTV will apply the "Series" behavior for recording and watched status.

So there is nothing the Importer can do here... You'll have to set a manual recording for the 2nd show.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[owilsky]

Originally Posted by StephaneM

So there is nothing the Importer can do here... You'll have to set a manual recording for the 2nd show.

So I cannot create a favourite because SageTV will not record the shows which are marked as watched, right?

Oliver

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by owilsky

So I cannot create a favourite because SageTV will not record the shows which are marked as watched, right?

You can create a favorite, but SageTV will not record twice (or more) a show with the same episode title (unless you clear the watched flag and delete the recorded show).

So I would still create a favorite for this show, but set up a manual recording for epsiodes that you know should also be recorded.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[owilsky]

OK, enough is enough.
I missed some favorites which did not get recorded.
I will go back to option 3 (rightmost option, don't know how it is called right now), so please do not remove it as you planned (you mentioned it earlier).
This setup worked fine for me for over a year. I guess this way I get MV episode IDs for every show but that's OK for me.

Oliver

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by owilsky

I missed some favorites which did not get recorded.

Were they episodes with SH prefix but an episode title just like last time, or is it some other case.

As I said last time, with SH + ep.title SageTV will remember watched status, and there is nothing I can do about it (besides using the "air date" method). But you may ask SageTV dev. team to add this behavior as an option :

* either : remember watched status for SH + ep.title
* or : don't remember watched status for all SH shows even with ep.title

IMHO it worth it to report is as a "bug" / unwanted behavior (after the property may exists). Because if you don't have any other problems with other shows, it would be less than ideal to go with the "air date" method.

On the other hand, I can eventually add an option for dropping the ep.title for shows that have a "generic" rule (that is you will not see it in SageTV)

Regards,
Stéphane.

[ncdok]

Hi,

I'm running Vista Home Premum and I'm trying to install XMLTV Importer (STVXMLTVSetup2.6)

The installation starts and after a few seconds I get the following message :
"C:\Document and Settings" is not acessible. Access is denied

Do you have any idea to solve this problem ?
Thanx in advance

[StephaneM]

Hello,

Originally Posted by ncdok

I'm running Vista Home Premum and I'm trying to install XMLTV Importer.The installation starts and after a few seconds I get the following message :
"C:\Document and Settings" is not acessible. Access is denied

Have you upgraded your WinXP to Vista? It seems odd because "C:\Documents and Settings" should not be a path used in the installer for Vista, so you either:

* upgraded XP to Vista and "C:\Documents and Settings" is still used as the user options folder
* copied Importer settings from a previous installation on XP to your Vista machine

If you have any previous version of the Importer installed, you'll have to remove it as well as removing any settings (in the Program Files folder and Documents and Settings folder) and try to install it again.

You'll also need to acknowledge the elevation of the Installer (it should run with Admin privileges).

Also can you attach a screenshot of the exact error message you receive.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[ncdok]

Hi Stéphane,

I did'nt upgrade from XP to Vista. I'm using the Vista OEM version included in my PC.

I also tried to run the installer with admin privilege but I'm still stuck with the same error message, here's a screenshot :


Thanks

nc

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by ncdok

I also tried to run the installer with admin privilege

The installer should always ask for elevation (it does have a manifest requesting admin privileges).

As this error message is issued directly by the MSI installer and not from my custom install procedure: we will have fun troubleshooting this issue.

You can first try to review the security attributes of the C:\ProgramData directory (this is the directory where the installer will create settings files)

You can also try to create a log file for the Importer :

msiexec /i "C:\installer.msi" /l*v "C:\installer.log"

You'll have to :

* locate and copy the autoextracted installer (it will be in C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Temp and should have a random name like 2c1f8405.msi), you'll have to copy the installer before cancelling the installation otherwise it will be deleted automatically

* type the previous command line in an elevated command prompt after copying the installer out of the Temp folder

Send me then the produced log file.

Regars,
Stéphane.

[ncdok]

Stéphane,

Thanks for your answers.

I did'nt do anything but NOW IT WORKS

nc

[Mark SS]

Have been trying to get the importer to work with a clean install of the latest beta, on a new windows install. Worked well previously so bit puzzled as to what may be going wrong.

I'm grabbing all channels using the birtles grabber, and defining two lineups in the importer, one for Freeview and one for Sky. Import runs fine but not all of the channels defined in the importer are appearing in the Sage channel setup. Have wiped clean and started again several times but no matter what, I only end up with a subset of the channels I know are in the XMLTV file and defined in the importer.

Any thoughts?

[StephaneM]

Hello,

Originally Posted by Mark SS

Import runs fine but not all of the channels defined in the importer are appearing in the Sage channel setup.

Review the sage.plugin.log (in the C:\ProgramData\LM Gestion\SageTV XMLTV Importer\GuideData or C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\LM Gestion\SageTV XMLTV Importer\GuideData) to see if they are any errors when importing into SageTV.

Review the Windows event viewer log to see if there is any problems during the conversion.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[Mark SS]

Nothing strange in the logs or event log.

Appears to be caused by me not giving numbers to every channel. I had a number of channel entries in the list which I hadn't given numbers too, as soon as I did (by either giving them numbers or removing them from the XMLTV grab), all the channels appeared.

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by Mark SS

I had a number of channel entries in the list which I hadn't given numbers too

This is the expected behavior, channels without numbers are not imported.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[Mark SS]

The problem was that some channels which had numbers were not importing. I had allocated numbers to 10 channels and only 3 were appearing in Sage. When I had allocated numbers to all channels they appeared.

That said, I still have two that refuse to show up. Am going to try delete wiz.bin and sage.properties tonight to see if that helps.

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by Mark SS

That said, I still have two that refuse to show up. Am going to try delete wiz.bin and sage.properties tonight to see if that helps.

You do not need to delete the wiz.bin / sage.properties; from my experience the lineup is always replaced (new channels add / old removed) except if you made some modifications to the lineup in SageTV (thus creating a "lineup override" property in sage.properties file)

If you want, you can send me your configurations files zipped (the content of the Doc&Settings\...\LM Gestion\SageTV XMLTV Importer folder as well as your XMLTV file(s)) and I'll have a look.

Regards,
Stéphane.