STV Import: Fan Art for Default STV by TiKi (v2.2 Feb 22, 2009)

[Polypro]

I use MCE codes in a Harmony and just found out that D-Pad right while in SageTV Recordings...brings up Detailed Info. So Select brings up options and D-Pad R shows the backgrounds...pretty cool and no changes needed.

P

[Narflex]

I was trying this out on Linux and it works pretty good. You need to make a couple minor changes to your STVI to fix cross-platform issues though. Just whenever you do things like:

BannerPath = BannerPath + "\\Movies\\"

you should instead do:

BannerPath = BannerPath + java_io_File_separator + "Movies" + java_io_File_separator

I fixed it for my own purposes; but I'm sure you'd rather fix it in your codebase as well.

Cool plugin BTW.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by Narflex

I was trying this out on Linux and it works pretty good. You need to make a couple minor changes to your STVI to fix cross-platform issues though.

Thanks. I knew that the java_io file separator would probably cause a problem for someone, but nobody had complained yet and I hadn't gotten around to fixing it. The other compatibility issue that I will probably need to address is the alternate movie category (which defaults to "Film" but could be set to anything) - there are some places where looks for the category to be "movie" to determine if it should treat a Sage recording as a TV show or a Movie). Again, nobody complained about it yet... If there are any other compatability issues people encounter, please let me know and I will try to fix.

I haven't had much time to work on this lately, but hope to get back on it soon. There are a couple of other minor issues I still need to fix (such as handling categories with a special character in the name (like "home/garden", "track/field", and "gay/lebian"). And then I would like to work on integrating support for the Phoenix API's so that people can use some of the automatic fanart scrapers that are being developed and easily move back and forth to SageMC if they want.

[bcjenkins]

Here's a vote for the Phoenix API's

B

[Sean977]

I was just wondering if any more work is being done on this amazing import? Will we see compatability for the Phoenix API's anytime soon? I prefer the default UI and this import really makes a difference when using it, but I would really like to use this feature with the new central fanart folder structure and BMT.

Thanks again for all your work.

-sean

[tmiranda]

Sean,

I have been using a combination of Tiki's import and Sean's (stuckless) metadata tools (which use the Phoenix APIs.). I can tell you that right now Sean is focused on SageMC and imported media. There is not a lot of focus on the default STV or recorded TV. The work Sean is doing is really good and I'm not complaining, just giving you a heads up.

What I did was to install Sean's STVi for the default STV so I can search for Fanart from the default STV. (The automatic plugin does not help me a lot because I have lot's of recorded TV shows and few imported movies.) When I find new Fanart I rename and copy it (manually) to the right folders for Tiki's import. It's not a great solution, but it works.

I would also like to see Tiki update his import so I have one Fanart directory structure.

Tom

[Eckwell]

I too am doing what Tom is doing... with the same plugins. I would love it if Tiki could update the paths portion to support looking for images that way Sean's metadata tools save the images.

[Fuzzy]

Tiki, any chance of either porting this over to using the Phoenix API, or at least using the Phoenix API's folder structure for Fanart?

<CentralFolder>//<TV|Movies|Music|Genres>//<Title|Artist|Category>//<Banners|Backgrounds|Covers>//<Any Number of Files, Randomly Selected>

I'm working on a crusade to bring the flock back to the Default STV (It has started to show great potential as of late, with the frequent updates from Frey, plus there is declining update rate for SageMC), and this is one of the missing pieces of the puzzle. This would allow the same central fanart and scraper tools (BMT) to be used throughout, and make the transition easier.

[Tiki]

I did plan to implement the Phoenix API's eventually - I just haven't had much time to work on it lately and also I wanted to wait until things came out of "Beta". Right now it would require using a beta version of Sage, a beta version of the Phoenix APIs and a beta version of the Batch Meta Data tools (just too many unstable pieces for my taste).

Also, it seems that they still have some issues recognizing Movies from TV shows (this is a show-stopper for me since I don't rip a lot of movies, but I do record a ton of movies from premium cable channels and some of the movies I record have the same titles as TV series that I record, so I want to be able to get the right fan art).

[Fuzzy]

Eh, what's another beta... The movie/tv show issue hasn't really been much of an issue for me, but then again, it's not hard to manually correct the ones that don't work quite right. I would like this to use the new folder structure at least, so it could at least coexist peacefully with phoenix based fanart sources. Just changing the folder sources shouldn't be TOO hard...

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Tiki, any chance of either porting this over to using the Phoenix API, or at least using the Phoenix API's folder structure for Fanart?

<CentralFolder>//<TV|Movies|Music|Genres>//<Title|Artist|Category>//<Banners|Backgrounds|Covers>//<Any Number of Files, Randomly Selected>

I'm working on a crusade to bring the flock back to the Default STV (It has started to show great potential as of late, with the frequent updates from Frey, plus there is declining update rate for SageMC), and this is one of the missing pieces of the puzzle. This would allow the same central fanart and scraper tools (BMT) to be used throughout, and make the transition easier.

Not to be a bubble buster but speaking from my point of view looking at the default stv for the last couple of days trying to code my wall to work with it good luck bringing people over with ortus and phoenix down the pipeline I don't see anyone using sagemc chosing the default over those

You talk about the changes I am guessing you are talking about things like sytem messages and channel setup changes if so those are both in sagemc as well

Sorry didn't mean to take the topic offhand

[Fuzzy]

Taking it off topic i suppose, but my concern isn't necessarily for the default STV being better than SageMC or others, but that, in my eyes, it would be better to add most the features of SageMC as stvi's on the Default STV than as a whole new STV. I understand that back when SageMC was started, it was because there were significant limitations in the default STV. Most those limitations are since gone, and it would be much better for an end-user experience if those features were instead implemented as individual add-ons to the default STV. The only major advantage i see to SageMC currently over the default STV is the availability of differing menu arrangements. This COULD be made as an STVi, as an improvement to the dynamic menu import.

[tmiranda]

Tiki,

In your post in the "Phoenix API" thread you showed a screenshot using a genre background. Can you post the genre backgrounds you have? You posted the banners (see post 56 in this thread) but as far as I can tell you have not posted the genre backgrounds. If they are posted and I missed them please let me know.

Thanks again for this. And thanks for working on porting to the Phoenix APIs, it will save me a lot of copying of files!

Tom

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Tiki,

In your post in the "Phoenix API" thread you showed a screenshot using a genre background. Can you post the genre backgrounds you have? You posted the banners (see post 56 in this thread) but as far as I can tell you have not posted the genre backgrounds. If they are posted and I missed them please let me know.
Tom

Tom, I haven't created a whole lot of Genre Backgrounds yet and I'm not the greatest artist in the world, but I zipped up what I had and posted them to a Windows Sky Drive account (the Sage Forum limits attachments to 750kB):
http://cid-0c667dc62472e4cf.skydrive...2009-07-13.zip

I hope these are useful for you.

[Sean977]

Hey Tiki,

I was just wondering if we will ever see the new Phoenix API's folder structure for Fanart supported with this stvi for the default ui? I'm using BMT to gather all the backgrounds, posters, etc but find it too time consuming (Ok and maybe I'm a little lazy) to rename the fanart files and copy them over to the folder structure that this stvi currently supports. I really miss the extra bling that this brought to the default stv.

I know I could switch to Sagemc but I have my system pretty much the way I want it aside from your import not supporting the new fanart folder structure. Don't get me wrong your import is fantastic and works great, but I guess I'm just hoping that you might add this in a future release.

Thanks for all your hard work. It really is appreciated!
-sean

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by Sean977

I was just wondering if we will ever see the new Phoenix API's folder structure for Fanart supported with this stvi for the default ui? I'm using BMT to gather all the backgrounds, posters, etc but find it too time consuming (Ok and maybe I'm a little lazy) to rename the fanart files and copy them over to the folder structure that this stvi currently supports. I really miss the extra bling that this brought to the default stv.

I will probably put out another release sometime after the current SageTV moves out of Beta (current Beta is 6.5.20). If all goes well, I will try to add support for the new folder structure at the same time. I haven't started working on it yet though, so no promises on exactly when it will be available (probably a month or two from now).

[tmiranda]

Thanks for the backgrounds. They were better than the ones I was using.

[dblaine2]

Thanks to tmiranda we now have a port of Tiki's fanart using Phoenix API for the default STV.

I knew the conversion between directory structures would be a pain especially on the TV side. For movies, I deleted what I had and rescanned the directories again.

Here is a couple of little DOS batch files that I used to convert the directory structure. It by no means is elegant and it is given without warranty

So I called the batch files redir.cmd and redir2.cmd. And ran them as redir.cmd TV. It reads all the files and creates directories from their names and then moves those files to a subdirectory called Backgrounds or Banners.

Like I said it was a hack but it works!

For the backgrounds...

@Echo Off
For %%J in (%1\*.*) Do (
MD "%%~dpnJ\Backgrounds"
move "%%J" "%%~dpnJ\Backgrounds")

For the bannres....

@Echo Off
For %%J in (%1\*.*) Do (
MD "%%~dpnJ\Banners"
move "%%J" "%%~dpnJ\Banners")

Then I merged the directory structures together (cut and paste).

[mshellberg]

What is the best way to get a single background image to display for each episode in an imported TV series?

I found the fanart import uses the "Title" field of the .properties file to search for the displayed background. Sounds reasonable except that the title field is different for each episode of a series: i.e. "Series 1x01 Something", "Series 1x02 SomethingElse". So to get a background to display for each episode, you'd need an image named specifically for each...?

I considered changing the "Title" fields to the series name instead of the episode name, but then only the series name is displayed on the recording detail screen; where you'd want to see the episode name.

I think, unless I'm missing something (quite likely); the fanart import should find backgrounds via the "MediaTitle" field, which seems to hold the series name... or the recording detail page should display the "EpisodeTitle" field instead of, or in addition to, the "Title" field.

Can somebody set me straight here? How are you all dealing with this issue?

Thanks for the great import. Having a lot of fun tweaking Sage lately.
-Matt

[Belgrath]

I'm wondering how everyone handles these two plugins in order to get the new imported banner/background fanart to work smoothly.
- Tiki Fan Art Import
- MetadataFanartTools

Tiki's tool likes having
~\Banner
~\Background

And the MFT&BMT tool likes having
~\TV\Banner
~\TV\Background
~\Movie\Banner
~\Movie\Background

The only way I can figure it out is to do some manual copying and renaming. but I'm guessing that there's an easier way that someone has worked thru already.

Thanks ahead of time,
Belg