XBMC plugin for SageTV

[jhh]

Kricker,

I never use SageTV to play back files and that probably is the reason why my Sage generatedthumbnails folder is empty.

If you look in the SageTV Web Interface and you select Schedule recordings / Favorites manager then it gives an overview of all favorites; there is an xml button to export the list. If you open that list in an editor you can see the link between the favorite id number and what it really is. I thought the advantage of this method was that I could end up with thumbs that would be consistent and not just a random frame from a recording. It is a bit more work to set up as I have over 100 favorites. You have to delete cached thumbs in xbmc if you make new thumbs available or it will not refresh them.

For manual recordings there is no favorite id so I just use the SageTV icon although I could have used 'genre' to make it more specific, i.e. movie, cartoon, ... but I didn't bother.

jhh

[kricker]

So you made a thumbs folder on your Sage server and put thumbnails in there then made it a network share called thumbs?

For a default favorite icon, the Sage logo is fine for now. I could make a generic favorite icon to replace it.

[jhh]

Originally Posted by kricker

So you made a thumbs folder on your Sage server and put thumbnails in there then made it a network share called thumbs?

Almost, you can use the webserver to host other files also - so I have created a thumbs folder under webroot where the icons are hosted. That folder is not pwd protected although it should not be too difficult to give it the same user id and pwd as the SageTV Web Interface.

Only thing to do is to create the folder under webroot and fill it - no further config necessary.

Jhh

[jhh]

hi,

I made another small change - but would need to make some more updates to allow an easier configuration although I don't have that planned.

Copy the folder in the XBMC root. There is one option in the plugin settings and that should have the webserver URL for thumbnails which are hosted in http://my_sagetv_webserver: port/thumbs You need to enter the URL to the path where the thumbs are and then they will be retrieved if they are saved as 'favourite_id_number.jpg' in that thumbs folder (which should not be password protected).

Apart from that the configuration file is identical to the xbmc SageTV script which is here: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16518

[kricker]

Thanks. I'm gonna give this a whirl today.

[kricker]

It appears that any of my Sage compressed shows (.avi) files will not play thru the plugin.

Where is the thumb setting? I don't see it in the supplied setting.xml file.

[jhh]

Originally Posted by kricker

It appears that any of my Sage compressed shows (.avi) files will not play thru the plugin.

Where is the thumb setting? I don't see it in the supplied setting.xml file.

Entirely my mistake - I had mixed up 2 things. I've written a scraper that reads .xml files hosted on the SageTV webserver for my movie information so I get movie description and thumbnails easily on all xboxes.

The plugin gets the thumbnails from:

icon = 'http://'+ipaddress+':'+port+'/thumbs/'+re.compile('Favorite and so on

so its a /thumbs directory in the root of your SageTV webserver.

Sorry for the confusion,
Jhh

[kricker]

No biggie, I saw where it was hardcoded. I'll change it as I need it, and see if I can figure a way to add it to the settings.xml file. I'm going to see if I can make it so it uses the thumbs Sage generates in the Sage folder. That would be mush easier to setup for other users.

Any ideas why it won't play the Sage compressed in place videos?

[jhh]

Originally Posted by kricker

No biggie, I saw where it was hardcoded. I'll change it as I need it, and see if I can figure a way to add it to the settings.xml file. I'm going to see if I can make it so it uses the thumbs Sage generates in the Sage folder. That would be mush easier to setup for other users.

I don't ever use Sage for playback so probably that is why I don't have thumbnails in Sage unless I'm not looking in the right place?? So you would need to have a way of generating them (and finding them back) or else it will stop working if you no longer use Sage for viewing.

Originally Posted by kricker

Any ideas why it won't play the Sage compressed in place videos.

hm - not sure - what is the exact line after 'Files:' in the detailed view in the webserver - that is what it will use (after a path substitution as in the original SageTV script). You could use the info button for the video entry in XBMC as I think in the detailed info it gives the filename it is using or check the log file?

[kricker]

Originally Posted by jhh

I don't ever use Sage for playback so probably that is why I don't have thumbnails in Sage unless I'm not looking in the right place?? So you would need to have a way of generating them (and finding them back) or else it will stop working if you no longer use Sage for viewing.

The Sage folder should have a generated thumbnails folder in it. There is an option in sage for automatically generating thumbnails...although that might only happen when you are browsing the recordings in Sage. I'll look into this.

Originally Posted by jhh

hm - not sure - what is the exact line after 'Files:' in the detailed view in the webserver - that is what it will use (after a path substitution as in the original SageTV script). You could use the info button for the video entry in XBMC as I think in the detailed info it gives the filename it is using or check the log file?

XBMC log shows it trying to play the correct file. I'll look into this more when I get home later as well.

Thanks for this updated plugin, it has rejuvenated my efforts to get this all in XBMC.

[jhh]

Originally Posted by kricker

The Sage folder should have a generated thumbnails folder in it. There is an option in sage for automatically generating thumbnails...although that might only happen when you are browsing the recordings in Sage. I'll look into this.

My C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV\GeneratedThumbnails is empty - and I prefer the consistency of favourite linked icons so if we both want to be happy we'll have to allow for both scenarios. But it's nice to have someone else looking at this also (looking at increasing my support options )

Jhh

[kricker]

Sorry, I've been sidetracked again, but this is high on my "to do when I get free time" list.

[kricker]

I got time to play with this tonight.

I got my playback issue sorted out. It was user error. My settings file was using UNC patchs with Server name, but Sage is set to use UNC paths with acutal ip address. Once I fixed it the plugin worked fine.

Well, it worked fine for a while, then all of a sudden it crashes when loading the list of shows. It always crashes on number 81. Here is the log.

[jhh]

Originally Posted by kricker

Well, it worked fine for a while, then all of a sudden it crashes when loading the list of shows. It always crashes on number 81. Here is the log.

Most likely it is an interrupted recording resulting in multiple files - for reading some more detailed info it goes to the 'edit show info' on the 'detailed information' page. The webserver cannot show that info and the script does not like it.

If you PM source for 'detailed information page' and 'edit show info' then I can have a look.

I was lucky - I had it once or twice but the recoding was not so important so I deleted the recording instead of fixing the script.

p.s.: is the thing fast enough when it reads the list of recordings?

Jhh

[kricker]

Originally Posted by jhh

Most likely it is an interrupted recording resulting in multiple files - for reading some more detailed info it goes to the 'edit show info' on the 'detailed information' page. The webserver cannot show that info and the script does not like it.

If you PM source for 'detailed information page' and 'edit show info' then I can have a look.

I was lucky - I had it once or twice but the recoding was not so important so I deleted the recording instead of fixing the script.

p.s.: is the thing fast enough when it reads the list of recordings?

Jhh

it reads the list of recordings pretty darn quick. Instant would be better but I think it responds faster than the original script did.

I'll look thru and find what show it is. I am sure it is one that has multiple parts, because sage crashed and I had to restart then the error started happening.

The edit info page says "MediaFile is segmented: cannot function on segmented media files". XML from detailed info on the way.

[jhh]

Originally Posted by kricker

The edit info page says "MediaFile is segmented: cannot function on segmented media files". XML from detailed info on the way.

I'll give it a try a bit later - will be a quick fix like ignoring the recording which is at least better than what it does now. If you kill the file which has the second (shortest) part of the recording then it should work again.

Bedtime now.

jhh

[aaronb]

I've been using this for a few weeks now, and it works great for the most part. The one problem I have: I cannot seek on MPEG2 recordings from my HDHomeRun. If you try it jumps back to the beginning of the file. Probably 90% of my recordings are from the HDPVR and work fine, so it hasn't been a huge problem for me, but it really hurts the WAF.

Unrelated request: any way of adding the ability to delete recordings in this plugin?

[kricker]

Originally Posted by aaronb

I've been using this for a few weeks now, and it works great for the most part. The one problem I have: I cannot seek on MPEG2 recordings from my HDHomeRun. If you try it jumps back to the beginning of the file. Probably 90% of my recordings are from the HDPVR and work fine, so it hasn't been a huge problem for me, but it really hurts the WAF.

Unrelated request: any way of adding the ability to delete recordings in this plugin?

Playback issues should be reported to the XBMC devs. I'm curious as to why the HDHomerun recordings would be any different.

Deleting can possibly be done, it was in the original script.

[jhh]

Originally Posted by aaronb

Unrelated request: any way of adding the ability to delete recordings in this plugin?

Script and plugin are 2 different worlds - in the script you're in control of everything: you have to build the UI, you can define all possible actions and so on. Plugin is just a dataprovider, you tell XBMC what recordings there are, where they are and what they are about. From then on it's all XBMC.

So if in the context menu for a video in the plugin there is a delete option then that's great. If there is not then there is nothing I can do about that.

As a lot of plugins are giving external web hosted video content it made sense there is no delete option - i.e. we're not supposed to delete videos on Youtube. But we can always ask the XBMC people - I guess if there is some demand there's more chance they would be willing to look at it.

Jhh

[kricker]

There is a delete option in the context menu. I didn't try it last night, but I bet it works just fine.