Central FanArt Folder Improvments

[MeInMaui]

I think using the unprocessed title/series title for fan art storage is still really the best way to do this. I thought about using MediaFileID or AiringID for storing fan art, but it makes using one set of fan art for all episodes of a TV series problematic. If we want to process the title at all (i.e. to create a SortTitle), then the processed result should be stored in a different field or generated on the fly.

Aloha,
Mike

Edit: Do the AiringID's for different episodes in a series contain a common substring with a number for the episode completing the ID #? I seem to recall something like that. If this is the case then maybe something based on AiringID could work. Of course you would then lose the ability to intuitively browse the fan art folders, so I'm not sure if this is a good approach after all. Just thinking out loud.

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

I thought about using MediaFileID or AiringID for storing fan art, but it makes using one set of fan art for all episodes of a TV series problematic.

I like that idea. Could you not say if there is only one image in that folder then use that image for all seasons. If you had two images then alternate each season with each image. As TV shows now have their own background folder it shoud be fairly easy to do, shouldn't it? You could also apply the same logic to banners and posters

Sorry for all the ideas and no solutions, if I could I would.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

Edit: Do the AiringID's for different episodes in a series contain a common substring with a number for the episode completing the ID #? I seem to recall something like that. If this is the case then maybe something based on AiringID could work. Of course you would then lose the ability to intuitively browse the fan art folders, so I'm not sure if this is a good approach after all. Just thinking out loud.

There's a little correlation with the ShowID with Sage Recordings

House #1: MediaFileID=3813215 , AiringID=3756711, Show ID: EP6883590105
House #2: MediaFileID=3782330 , AiringID=3734218, Show ID: EP6883590104
House #3: MediaFileID=1910789 , AiringID=1836435, Show ID: EP6883590087

But that system would probably fall apart when you tried to bring imported videos into the mix.

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

But that system would probably fall apart when you tried to bring imported videos into the mix.

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

There's a little correlation with the ShowID with Sage Recordings

House #1: MediaFileID=3813215 , AiringID=3756711, Show ID: EP6883590105
House #2: MediaFileID=3782330 , AiringID=3734218, Show ID: EP6883590104
House #3: MediaFileID=1910789 , AiringID=1836435, Show ID: EP6883590087

But that system would probably fall apart when you tried to bring imported videos into the mix.

Could you create a unique ShowID when you scrape the file similar to Sage's ID but only for imported media.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

My sentiments exactly.... I think that using the Original Title is still probably the most effective means to select/store the fanart, especially given that tools, outside of sage will most likely process/download the fanart. Using an ID would be great, but I'm not sure how feasible it would be to implement.


As for the the title munging, "Robot, I", i like the idea of doing that as a display option, and similarly, we could provide several different options, such as Movie Display, TV Display, etc, and let a display api (much like was proposed earlier) take care of the details.

phoenix_api_GetMediaTitle(mediaObject)

This could first read the SeriesTitle, MovieTitle, or MusicTitle attribute and then depending on the Format options, it could rewrite it to what the user wants. If there isn't a Metadata property, then it will simply use the Title property.

Maybe as ep noted, we could combine SeriesTitle,MovieTitle, etc into a single Title attribute, such as MediaTitle, or OriginalMediaTitle.

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by stuckless

As for the the title munging, "Robot, I", i like the idea of doing that as a display option, and similarly, we could provide several different options, such as Movie Display, TV Display, etc, and let a display api (much like was proposed earlier) take care of the details.

As long as it's an option and not the only option.

[Ikarius]

Okay, read the entire thread, so I'm up-to-date. I've got a few questions, just want to make sure we're covering the bases

1. Are we sure we want to use titles for the filenames? Titles can contain non-valid characters for filenames (i.e. colons, foreign titles with unicode characters, etc). What do the scrapers do with multi-disc DVD sets and titles? Also, titles can change- this should be less of an issue if the user is using a scraper, but some users could rename movies, if they have extra-long titles. (Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark -> Raiders of the Lost Ark). Might we want to consider using MediaFileID for the filenames instead of title? That should be more persistant than titles, though it's unfortunately far less recognizable.

2. On the metadata properties API- it's not clear, but one important function may be missing. Either the "SetMediaFileMetadata()" function needs to accept "null" in the parameter field and take that to mean it needs to remove the named metadata field, or we ought to have a "ClearMediaFileMetadata()" function which allows us to remove metadata properties entirely. I'm assuming that if you call "GetMediaFileMetadata()" function with a metadata name that hasn't already been set, the return is null.

3. On the fanart API.... I see two levels for TV; Show and Season. I can see not caring to have episode-specific fanart, but one thing I'd like to confirm. I hope that there is an Episode->Season->Series child-parent relationship, and I can request fanart for an Episode, and if there's no fanart specific to that, it goes up the tree, and checks the season, and if there's no fanart for the season, it will fetch fanart from the Series. I wasn't clear on whether the API works this way just from reading what was posted.

Cheers
Ikarius

[Tiki]

I've seen a lot of good ideas in this thread, but wanted to throw in my own $0.02. I've been doing the Fan Art for Default STV import, and it would be nice if I could take advantage of the automatic scraping tools and the Jar code too. So,

(1)
The automatic scraping and storing of everything in folders will be nice, but you should remember that there is a lot of content out there with no fanart or with incomplete fanart (background but no banner, or vice versa). TheTVDB.com is the only source I've found for banner art, but they don't do movies or sports. In fact from what I've seen, people have tried to post fanart for sports and they have been removed.

I've found myself creating a lot of fanart manually. With the current central folder system:
(central banner directory)\tv\
(central banner directory)\movies\
(central banner directory)\music\

(central background directory)\tv\
(central background directory)\movies\
(central background directory)\music\

It's easy to creat a new banner or background and drop it in the correct location. With the new layout you are proposing with a folder for each show and every show folder having several subfolders, it will be more tedious to manually add fan art (and easy to make type-o's).

One other (very minor) drawback is that all those folders are a little inefficient space wise (with 64kB blocks each empty folder takes 64k) and take a little longer to process when running backups, anti-virus, etc.

(2)
Regardless of how the folder structure shakes out, I do have one other comment. I have added another feature to my latest (unreleased) version of the Fan Art for Default STV import which you may want to copy. If no fan art exists for a given show, I check the Category and Subcategory and look for a genre-specific banner or background. I've started creating some generic category banners (movies, sports, reality, science). When I display the generic banner, I print the Show Title over the top of it.

The way I have implemented it is to create another folder:
(central banner directory)\genres\

I name the banners <genre>.jpg.

Anyway, I haven't released it yet since I don't have many genre banners created to use with it yet, but I have been using it on my main Sage Box for about a week.

If you like the idea, you are free to implement it in SageMC. But, I was hoping there might be a way to work support for this into the Phoenix API too.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by Ikarius

1. Are we sure we want to use titles for the filenames?

Originally Posted by Ikarius

Might we want to consider using MediaFileID for the filenames instead of title? That should be more persistant than titles, though it's unfortunately far less recognizable.

The consensus is its the most portable and uniform way to do it, especially when you consider that we want the Sage Recording of a show and the imported videos of the same show to pull from the same fanart. As long as we standardize which characters we're removing to handle the illegal win32 ones it won't be an issue.

$illCharFileRegEx = "('|\"|\\\\|/|\\||<|>|:|\\*|\\?|\\&|\\;|`)";

Originally Posted by Ikarius

What do the scrapers do with multi-disc DVD sets

This is an ugly edge case so I don't think we worry about it. I think the best you can hope for is what stuckless is doing right now which is to try and pick out the series title and just scrape series information and fanart.

Originally Posted by Ikarius

Also, titles can change- this should be less of an issue if the user is using a scraper, but some users could rename movies, if they have extra-long titles.

Once again, I don't think we worry about that. None of the other HTPC front ends that have metadata (Boxee, XMBC, etc.) allow you to change anything. I think down the road we could revisit this, but its not necessary now.

Originally Posted by Ikarius

2. On the metadata properties API- it's not clear, but one important function may be missing. Either the "SetMediaFileMetadata()" function needs to accept "null" in the parameter field and take that to mean it needs to remove the named metadata field, or we ought to have a "ClearMediaFileMetadata()" function which allows us to remove metadata properties entirely.

Good call, i'll email sage to make sure it works like that.

Originally Posted by Ikarius

I'm assuming that if you call "GetMediaFileMetadata()" function with a metadata name that hasn't already been set, the return is null.

Yep, you can do a

if (GetMediaFileMetadata() == "")

Check.

Originally Posted by Ikarius

3. On the fanart API.... I see two levels for TV; Show and Season. I can see not caring to have episode-specific fanart, but one thing I'd like to confirm.

The only episode specific fanart is thumbnails and we're letting SageTV take care of that by scrapping them next to the original video...

originalVideo.mpg
originalVideo.jpg

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by Tiki

It's easy to create a new banner or background and drop it in the correct location. With the new layout you are proposing with a folder for each show and every show folder having several subfolders, it will be more tedious to manually add fan art (and easy to make type-o's).

I can see your point, but perhaps this can be smoothed out after we've locked in our first checking location hierarchy. Lets revisit this later.

Originally Posted by Tiki

If no fan art exists for a given show, I check the Category and Subcategory and look for a genre-specific banner or background. I've started creating some generic category banners (movies, sports, reality, science). When I display the generic banner, I print the Show Title over the top of it.

The way I have implemented it is to create another folder:
(central banner directory)\genres\

I like it, but once again lets revisit it after the first release, we're pretty far along and need to lock in what we have now.

[stuckless]

I've seen a lot of good ideas in this thread, but wanted to throw in my own $0.02. I've been doing the Fan Art for Default STV import, and it would be nice if I could take advantage of the automatic scraping tools and the Jar code too. So,

Tiki, the goal of creating the phoenix api is so that all developers can fully enjoy the benefits of presenting fanart without having the fully implement the details in each stv environment/plugin. If you PM with your email address, then I'll send you the unreleased phoenix jar so that you can work it into your plugin as well.

Over time I will add in as much functionality as we think is necessary, and everyone can enjoy the same benefits/functionality.

1. Are we sure we want to use titles for the filenames? Titles can contain non-valid characters for filenames (i.e. colons, foreign titles with unicode characters, etc). What do the scrapers do with multi-disc DVD sets and titles? Also, titles can change- this should be less of an issue if the user is using a scraper, but some users could rename movies, if they have extra-long titles. (Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark -> Raiders of the Lost Ark). Might we want to consider using MediaFileID for the filenames instead of title? That should be more persistant than titles, though it's unfortunately far less recognizable.

I don't think that using the sage id's for this will work for 2 reasons. The first is that the tools won't know what the media file id will be at the time the metadata is fetched. The second is that i think that sage will assign a new mediafile id to shows/movies that are reimported. ie, if i drop my import directory and then re-add it, will sage still retain the original mediafileid?? Titles is not perfect, but the nice thing about everyone using the same API is that we can change the layout later (i hope not) and the stvs would not need to change.

3. On the fanart API.... I see two levels for TV; Show and Season. I can see not caring to have episode-specific fanart, but one thing I'd like to confirm. I hope that there is an Episode->Season->Series child-parent relationship, and I can request fanart for an Episode, and if there's no fanart specific to that, it goes up the tree, and checks the season, and if there's no fanart for the season, it will fetch fanart from the Series. I wasn't clear on whether the API works this way just from reading what was posted.

The goal of GetFanartBackground() is that it will return season specific fanart and fall back if season specific fanart is not available (but it's not doing that right now, but when it's done, there is nothing specific that the stv will have to do differently, since it will be handled at the api level)

Tiki, while I agree that the new layout is fairly verbose, it does offer some additional benefits in that you can now have multiple fanart images per sections (banners, backgrounds, etc) and maybe users could even select which one they want. Perhaps your main concern about manually adding metadata could be addressed the tools by allowing a comand that would publish metadata to a location given a url (to download) and a title and file type??

As for item #2, maybe incorporating genres fanart is something that we could add in after the initial release. I think that if it were in the phoenix api then it could be shared across plugins.

[Ikarius]

Yep, you can do a
Code:

if (GetMediaFileMetadata() == "")

Check.

Did you mean "if ( GetMediaFileMetaData() == null )" ? I hope so. Null is much more useful than empty string, as empty string could in theory be a valid value.


On the Titles- Win32 isn't the only platform. We (in theory) support Linux and MacOS. I'm not sure if that regex sufficient? I'm not sure if most filesystems allow files to contain characters with say, german umlaut's and the like. On the other hand, I'm not sure if Sage supports those characters in it's titles. I think it uses unicode underneath, as it's java... but I've never tried. Just a few more things to make sure we're handling. I'm almost more inclined to use an inclusion-based regex than an exclusion-based regex, as then we're absolutely positive nothing which can break things gets in.


Cheers
Ikarius

[stuckless]

I don't think the issue of titles and new properties has been resolved... evilpenguin, this is what I propose for new properties...

MediaProviderDataID
MediaType
MediaTitle
SeasonNumber
EpisodeNumber
EpisodeTitle
StarRating
OrignalAirDate

I think that we don't need specific ids for ShowTitle, MusicTitle, MovieTitle, since we have MediaType to tell us the type of title.

We make the existing Title be whatever it is today, and that will be fine for default stv users (including myself).

Personally I think that StarRating should actually be UserRating since there is no guarantee that "stars" will be used to display it, but i'm ok with leaving it as StarRating

MediaProviderDataID is a unique id assigned by the metadata provider that wrote the properties.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I don't think the issue of titles and new properties has been resolved... evilpenguin, this is what I propose for new properties...

That all looks good to me and lets go with UserRating=.

As for MediaProviderDataID, lets do what you originally said and take the website name...

www.imdb.com
www.thetvdb.com
www.themoviedb.com
www.someWebsite.com

And then seperate it from the ID with a ':'...

MediaProviderDataID=imdb:12345;theMovieDB:12345;theTVDB:12345;someWebsite:12345

[evilpenguin]

(SetFanartPoster|Background|Banner)

Hey Stuckless, just a quick implementation question, how is this going to work?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Hey Stuckless, just a quick implementation question, how is this going to work?

It's complicated But I'll try to explain it (using banners as the example)

Since we are using folders for each image type (banners, posters, backgrounds) there can be more than 1 image per folder. So we need a way to identify which image is the primary one. I chose the rule that an image that has the same name as the processed movie title is the primary image.

So for the tv show Bones, the primary image is...
TV/Bones/Banners/Bones.jpg

If there isn't a primary image, then then it will find all images in the folder and simply select the first one... (roulette)

So in line with the concept of a "primary" image, then SetFanartBanner(mediaItem, imageFile) will make the passed file the Primary Image based on the rules above. ie, it will ensure that the file that you pass in, will be called Title.jpg. If there is an existing primary image, then it is renamed, and the new image is named as the primary image.

[Ikarius]

On the extra properties, How about a "ParentalRating" Property, as well as "UserRating"?

I've been looking at this as I'd like to display Parental (MPAA in the US) rating images for movies, and I'd like to put something together that has at least a small chance of working for folks outside the USA. I know jaminben is interested in this as well, and having the approach on this standardized would be nice for STV development.

I see a couple of potential approaches...

1. The Scrapers could pull the country from the SageAPI "GetCountry()" function, and we can establish a mapping from the country list supported by sage to the appropriate country ratings carried on IMDB, and the scraper can pull the appropriate rating.

2. The scrapers could simply pull and store the whole list of ratings from IMDB, and someone can put together a java function which checks the Country set in Sage, parses out and returns the appropriate rating from the whole list.

I would expect the ratings to simply remain stored as strings, which we could either display directly as text, or use as the basis for picking an image.



Thoughts?

[QueOnda]

Originally Posted by stuckless

As for the the title munging, "Robot, I", i like the idea of doing that as a display option, and similarly, we could provide several different options, such as Movie Display, TV Display, etc, and let a display api (much like was proposed earlier) take care of the details.

I kinda understand, would this be useful in displaying movies in alphabetically order without using the word "THE" under the letter T?

The Lord of the Rings (would be under letter L instead of T).

[evilpenguin]

Can you copy the image rather than rename it? When we bulk pull down images, the only way to be sure we don't unessisarily download the same image is to leave it with the same file name as the metadata site has it.