What is the state of TV Series management under Sage?

[CiXel]

Hi Y'all
What is the state of TV Series management under Sage? I can't seem to find much info on it nor many reference to theTVdb where I would assume data would be aggregated from. My wife is using the TV Series plugin for MediaPortal presently for all her set of shows and I'd love to unify everything under Sage if possible.

[bcjenkins]

In SageTV, you tag a show as a favorite to record a series. You can specify channel, first run/rerun, padding, and more. Is this what you're talking about?

B

[CiXel]

Actually, I'm referring to existing series management. For instance the box sets that she watches of say The West Wing, where the episode information is pulled down from theTVdb.com along with associated artwork such as banners and the like.

The DB is actually kept pretty well up to date by the community over there, so it could also potentially be used for newly recording episodes as well if desired. As it stands I have all her sets labeled as something like 'The West Wing - 1x01 - Pilot', which makes it really easy to parse. I just can't find much info on anything that will do this on Sage, but it seems a like a perfect match.

[bcjenkins]

You should take a look at the meta data importer by Stuckless. http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/down...do=file&id=239

You can create properties files for each episode and run it against theTVdb.com if you write the interpreter.

B

[stuckless]

Or if you are willing to wait.... adding a metadata plugin for tvdb.com and adding the ability to find cover art from additional locations, is on my list of fall/winter projects I suspect that I'll need to do some minor refectoring, in order to support tv show type information in the exsting tool.

[CiXel]

Certainly an interesting solution. I'll probably play with trying to modify the syntax of the current plugin when I have the time to see if I can just change the paths to just redirect the query to thetvdb. That way you could run 1 instance for movies (imdb) and 1 for TV series (theTVdb). Perhaps that might be an easy way to expand the functionality and test in the short term as opposed to trying to combine both into one. I suppose there would be some different fields to populate for series and episode number, but it should be pretty similar. Thanks for the heads up.

[kolakowj]

TV series are a pain. Would like to hear if there's been any progress on this front. I would love to see the present "MY VIDEOS" be split into the following 3 distinct workflows: Movies vs TV Series vs Camcorder vids.

I have over a hundred camcorder vid but don't then mixed with movies but still want to see on TV via SageTV interface.

[ohpleaseno]

I use Media Scraper for two of those three categories and it puts them all in the right folders and seasons.

[lash]

Originally Posted by kolakowj

TV series are a pain. Would like to hear if there's been any progress on this front. I would love to see the present "MY VIDEOS" be split into the following 3 distinct workflows: Movies vs TV Series vs Camcorder vids.

I have over a hundred camcorder vid but don't then mixed with movies but still want to see on TV via SageTV interface.

I'm not sure exactly what you are asking here, but I used this method: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?p=272527 to separate on the front end but it requires that you have your different types of videos separated in folder structure.

I just spent a week getting SageTV and BMT working on over 16,000 media files, about 70% are TV files and BMT is a champion. As far as I see it, BMT is a SageTV savior, otherwise I wouldn't see it as a viable option for anyone given what the competition is offering in this area.

I have no experience with this stuff, but I can't imagine a better user contributed interface for metadata than BMT. The web interface is really slick.

In this area in general, SageTV's problem is the database and that is what is holding it back. Its like putting a scooter's engine in a Formula 1 racer. Databases are so common and free and open these days, its actually puzzling why SageTV would stick to whatever they are using. How much easier would it be to not have to work through limited properties files? Or to be able to add fields and sort by them in the front end? All this is possible with a standard open database. An XML parser run from the commandline instead of bloated and slow properties file reading and forcing constant reindexing of an entire database containing over 16,000 entries every time a naming convention change is made. On the fly search and replace, instead of constantly forcing BMT to overwrite 16,000+ entries. The list is endless.

The best move forward would be to ignore this company's database and write a plugin that that forces SageTV to stop using wiz.bin entirely. Better would be for this company to give up the antiquated idea that forcing customers into closed systems is acceptable. I don't agree that it is.

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by lash

The best move forward would be to ignore this company's database and write a plugin that that forces SageTV to stop using wiz.bin entirely. Better would be for this company to give up the antiquated idea that forcing customers into closed systems is acceptable. I don't agree that it is.

Are you volunteering yourself to write this nice new database plugin?

[lash]

Heh, I could answer that question if I could see studio. I'm on like day 10 of my trial.

Actually, I spent a little bit reading about studio and its not encouraging. It seems even someone I would definitely consider an extremely skilled developer, Stuckless, can't get into this studio thing. I am surprised at that. My nephew has written a plugin for windows media center (or so he bragged to me) and he's a kid without any development training. I am curious how studio could be so difficult when a kid can write a plugin for a similar product. For now, I have to say no comment but I will look at studio if\when I am allowed to. I am not a developer, so if Stuckless can't really get into it, I have severe doubts I will.

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by lash

Heh, I could answer that question if I could see studio. I'm on like day 10 of my trial.

Actually, I spent a little bit reading about studio and its not encouraging. It seems even someone I would definitely consider an extremely skilled developer, Stuckless, can't get into this studio thing. I am surprised at that. My nephew has written a plugin for windows media center (or so he bragged to me) and he's a kid without any development training. I am curious how studio could be so difficult when a kid can write a plugin for a similar product. For now, I have to say no comment but I will look at studio if\when I am allowed to. I am not a developer, so if Stuckless can't really get into it, I have severe doubts I will.

I was only joking, we (Ortus) already have our own newly developed database.
Studio isn't that hard, I have no programming skills (electrician by trade) and I manage to work things out but maybe that's because I had no preconceptions of how to code so didn't get puzzled by Studios oddities and how things should be coded.

[lash]

Jaminben, you have just made a SageTV sale . That is great news!