Central FanArt Folder Improvments

[Ikarius]

QueOnda- That is certainly my intent. I've already got a version of that working with functions I wrote and threw into a JAR.... but if something similiar is going to go into the SageMC JAR or something else more centralized, I'll probably update my code to use that instead.

[Lost85]

ok so i am confused on a part in my imported vidoes i have some series that i have as h.264 format any way i have all my fanart in a centeral location \media\Fanart\<tv><music><movies>
no matter what folder i put in i cant get my fanart to show up on any of the season or pure episode and i want different ones depending on which season am i missing something or is this even posible yet so for instance i have \Tv Series\Doctor Who\Doctor who Season 1\
\Tv Series\Doctor Who\Doctor who Season 2\
\Tv Series\Doctor Who\Doctor who Season 3\
\Tv Series\Doctor Who\Doctor who Season 4\
and i want different fanart even if i put the fanart as Doctor who season 1 it wont show up ?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by 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.

Sure.. that makes sense... just renaming was easier

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Lost85

ok so i am confused on a part in my imported vidoes i have some series that i have as h.264 format any way i have all my fanart in a centeral location \media\Fanart\<tv><music><movies>
no matter what folder i put in i cant get my fanart to show up on any of the season or pure episode and i want different ones depending on which season am i missing something or is this even posible yet so for instance i have \Tv Series\Doctor Who\Doctor who Season 1\
\Tv Series\Doctor Who\Doctor who Season 2\
\Tv Series\Doctor Who\Doctor who Season 3\
\Tv Series\Doctor Who\Doctor who Season 4\
and i want different fanart even if i put the fanart as Doctor who season 1 it wont show up ?

My understanding is that is currently not possible. It will be possible once the phoenix apis are released, and the format would be...
TV/Doctor Who/Season 2/Backgrounds/
TV/Doctor Who/Season 2/Banners/
TV/Doctor Who/Season 2/Posters/

with fallback locations in
TV/Doctor Who/Backgrounds/
TV/Doctor Who/Banners/
TV/Doctor Who/Posters/

in the event that there isn't season specific artwork.

Hope that helps.

[JREkiwi]

Just noticed this thread, so here's my $0.02

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.

Just making sure that you aren't going with the ShowID idea. As well as the imported video issue, there's also a problem for anyone not using a SageTV provided EPG. The quality and consistency of the ShowIDs are very poor.

John

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

Just noticed this thread, so here's my $0.02Just making sure that you aren't going with the ShowID idea. As well as the imported video issue, there's also a problem for anyone not using a SageTV provided EPG. The quality and consistency of the ShowIDs are very poor.

John

Thanks... As much as I'd love to use an ID, I don't think that there is a single consistent ID we could use for all cases.

I think that using a processed filename is the best can do for now... and it offers the advantage of being human readable.

[stuckless]

I think i'm the hold up here But I think that I have a build of my tools that is ready to go.

If you guys want to set set a date, and we can all try to release at the same time.

evilpenguin, you mentioned that you were going to write a script that would convert from the old fanart location to the new.... is that a cross platform script. I was going to write something, but I hoped that you'd have something that I could use

[MeInMaui]

I could probably use another day or two to hammer out a few last things with SageMC.

The big problem for me is that I haven't been able to get hold of Dirk in a while. I'll have to look back in my old e-mails. I think he gave me access at one point to the server where the files are stored.

If that doesn't work out, it is easy enough to post the next release in the pre-release thread until everything gets straightened out.

Aloha,
Mike

[evilpenguin]

@Mike - Do you have the source code for Dirk's .jar files? If not, and if he plans on being less active in Sage community, can you ask if we can get them? I can start up a SageMC Sourceforge page and get everything up there. We could also use it for distribution.

@stuckless - I'll crank out some quick scripts for every platform so you don't have to worry about it.

[MeInMaui]

@evilpenguin

I sent Dirk an e-mail requesting the jar file source code a day or two ago. I haven't heard anything yet.

Aloha,
Mike

[stuckless]

@stuckless - I'll crank out some quick scripts for every platform so you don't have to worry about it.

That'll be perfect... thanks

@mike - A few extra days is good everyone... I still have a few little things to work out as well

[jaminben]

I was playing with the new fan art system late last night and found an issue with the new naming of images and system slow down (using EP's new Scraper). If I renamed all the images to the title of the show then it would load screens far faster than the new method. This affects PC clients as well as Extenders. This could all be down to the fact that it was late and I wasn't paying attention but it maybe a good idea if someone else could test this out before you go live.

Slowdown example:

3462-1.jpg
3462-2.jpg
3462-3.jpg

Faster example:

Bones-1.jpg
Bones-2.jpg
Bones-3.jpg

Unfortunatly I'm working away from home this week so I cannot check again myself until Thursday night.

[stuckless]

That is interesting.... I'll have to do some checking, but I can't see why one would be any faster than the other, given that in both examples, i have to do the same thing, which is list all files in a given directory. I only ever look at the name of the image, when I 'm trying to find the "default" one, and in that case, it would be Bones.jpg.

On a side note, in my metedata tools, when I'm downloading fanart, I actually leave the name the same as it was on the remote site. ie, i'm not renaming it to bones-1, bones-2, etc. I'm doing this, so that if I re-run the tool to grab new fanart, I can tell if I've already downloaded a particular image. The fanart apis don't actually care about the filenames, so leaving them the same isn't an issue.

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by stuckless

That is interesting.... I'll have to do some checking, but I can't see why one would be any faster than the other, given that in both examples, i have to do the same thing, which is list all files in a given directory. I only ever look at the name of the image, when I 'm trying to find the "default" one, and in that case, it would be Bones.jpg.

On a side note, in my metedata tools, when I'm downloading fanart, I actually leave the name the same as it was on the remote site. ie, i'm not renaming it to bones-1, bones-2, etc. I'm doing this, so that if I re-run the tool to grab new fanart, I can tell if I've already downloaded a particular image. The fanart apis don't actually care about the filenames, so leaving them the same isn't an issue.

Yeah, I thought I remember you saying this but I couldn't figure out why my clients were running extreamly slow with some shows and others ran fine. I then looked at the fan art folder and noticed the slow ones had the new image naming policy and the faster TV shows had just the show title. I then renamed the images to the show title and it ran alot quicker. Again it was late so it could just be me making a mistake or missing something else.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by jaminben

Yeah, I thought I remember you saying this but I couldn't figure out why my clients were running extreamly slow with some shows and others ran fine.

Throw in a debug message before and after the API call and then you can verify it with timestamps in the log if that's where the slow down is happening.

It could very well be a Sage issue.

[stuckless]

It may also have to do with the quality of the fanart... if the image sizes are extremely large then that might have an impact... but I'll add some log statements to the code as EP noted, that way we can decide if it's the api or the renderering.

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by stuckless

It may also have to do with the quality of the fanart... if the image sizes are extremely large then that might have an impact... but I'll add some log statements to the code as EP noted, that way we can decide if it's the api or the renderering.

I checked the file sizes at the time and the ones I was using were 150k, I could also use 500k+ images named as the show title and they performed better than smaller image sizes not using the show title as the filename so I don't think its that.

[Fekker]

Hi all,

I have some ideas that I would like to put out there for images and media information. This is based on xbmc's way of handling images and information about movies, shows, and music.

Let me provide a glance of the "why" here. I created Media Info Plus (formerly Movie Info Plus) for XBMC. This is a Windows application that allows management of your media collection and outputs all the necessary files for xbmc to load everything about your media. Users requested that I add support for other applications as well.

My intention is simple, help folks manage media across multiple platforms, and different applications.

Image files:
Movies
<moviename>.tbn - thumbnail file for the movie, takes the full moviename, less file extension, and appends .tbn to the image, this is the poster.

<moviename>-wide.tbn - wide thumbnail for the movie file, takes the full moviename, less file extension, and appends -wide.tbn to the image, this is the wide image for the movie.

<moviename>-fanart.jpg - background (fanart) file for the movie, takes the full moviename, less file extension, and appends -fanart.jpg to the image, this is the wide image for the movie.

The .tbn allows for any image type to be in the container, jpg, png, gif, etc.
The fanart is a jpg as these are generally large files and .jpg is one of the better choices for the compression.

Some variants
movie.tbn - used when 1 movie is in a folder by itself
fanart.jpg - used when 1 movie is in a folder by itself

Information files, xml formated information about the movie
for xbmc, it's the .nfo file, which is an xml file that contains all the information about the movie, it has the extension of .nfo, but is just an xml file.

TV Shows
<showname>.tbn - for the image
season00.tbn - season 0 (specials) image
season01.tbn - season 1 image
season02.tbn - season 2 image
... etc
fanart.jpg - the background for the entire tv show
season00-fanart.jpg - the background for the special shows (called season 0)
season01-fanart.jpg - the background for season 1
season02-fanart.jpg - the background for season 2
etc.

Music files
music would be sorted by artist / album
in the artist folder, a folder.jpg that is the artist image
in the artist folder, a fanart.jpg that is the artist image
in the album folder, a folder.jpg that is the album image
single tracks could be <musicfilename>.tbn


I know at first glance these seem complicated, but they do work very well and scale to any size collection.

There's another reason I'd like something similar to these, so that files work with more then just one application.

Regardless of the end format that is selected on a per application basis, I can add support to MIP for that appliction. There are 6 Media Centers that have been requested for support, xbmc support is complete, sage tv was the next logical choice as I own and can test that one as well.

Information files for details about the movie/show/music
XML makes sense, it's cross platform and easy to read and write from any language and by it's nature handles complex formats and data.

Here's an example movie information (.nfo) file (which is xml) for xbmc

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<movie xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <fileinfo>
    <lastupdate>2009-03-17T16:23:59.273-08:00</lastupdate>
    <version>1.2</version>
    <streamdetails>
      <video>
        <width>528</width>
        <height>288</height>
        <codec>MPEG-4 Visual</codec>
        <formatinfo>MPEG-4 Visual</formatinfo>
        <duration>1h 31mn 14s 15ms</duration>
        <bitrate>933 Kbps</bitrate>
        <bitratemode />
        <bitratemax />
        <container>.avi</container>
        <codecid>XVID</codecid>
        <codecidinfo />
        <scantype>Progressive</scantype>
      </video>
      <audio>
        <language>eng</language>
        <codec>MPEG Audio</codec>
        <channels>2</channels>
        <bitrate>128 Kbps</bitrate>
      </audio>
    </streamdetails>
  </fileinfo>
  <title>Alvin and the Chipmunks </title>
  <rating>5.6</rating>
  <year>2007</year>
  <top250 />
  <votes>14,279</votes>
  <outline>A struggling songwriter named Dave Seville finds success when he comes across a trio of singing chipmunks: mischievous leader Alvin, brainy Simon, and chubby, impressionable Theodore. </outline>
  <plot>In a tree farm, three musically inclined chipmunks, Alvin, Simon and Theodore, find their tree cut down and sent to Los Angeles. Once there, they meet the frustrated songwriter David Seville, and despite a poor house wrecking first impression, they impress him with their singing talent. Seeing the opportunity for success, both human and chipmunks make a pact for them to sing his songs. While that ambition proves a frustrating struggle with the difficult trio, the dream does come true after all. However, that success presents its own trials as their unscrupulous record executive, Ian Hawke, plans to break up this family to exploit the boys. Can Dave and the Chipmunks discover what they really value amid the superficial glamor around them?</plot>
  <tagline>Here comes trouble. </tagline>
  <runtime>92 min </runtime>
  <thumb />
  <fanart url="http://www.themoviedb.org/" />
  <mpaa> Rated PG for some mild rude humor.</mpaa>
  <playcount />
  <id>tt0952640</id>
  <genre>Comedy / Drama / Family / Fantasy / Music</genre>
  <credits />
  <director>Tim Hill</director>
  <premiered />
  <studio>Fox 2000 Pictures</studio>
  <watched>no</watched>
  <actor>
    <name>Jason Lee</name>
    <role>Dave</role>
    <thumb>http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMjA1NDE2Mjg5Nl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNTgxNzQxMQ@@._V1._SY30_SX23_.jpg</thumb>
  </actor>
  <actor>
    <name>David Cross</name>
    <role>Ian</role>
    <thumb>http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BNjU5OTkwMjYyMV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMTk1MTkxMQ@@._V1._SY30_SX23_.jpg</thumb>
  </actor>
</movie>

[stuckless]

fekker,

Here are my thoughts... The best way that your application can support SageTV is for your application to produce files that SageTV can consume directly.

While I don't doubt the above layout and file information works well for xbmc (since xbmc can consume those files directly), it isn't the best option for sagetv, since sagetv can't consume those files directly.

SageTV has a documented set of properties, stored in java property files, that it uses for importing metadata into the system. Once imported, the property files are never used again. While I'd prefer to store the move information in an xml file, it doesn't make sense, given that sage can't actually consume the file directly.

As for the Fanart... that is something newly being developed/redeveloped within the Sage community. Initially SageMC introduced the concept and it's since caught on with other developers writing various plugins, etc. The goal of this thread was to create a single library that all stv developers could leverage, instead of each developer having re-implement the same logic in their plugins. We'll hopefully be releasing this in few days.

I'm not personally attached to the nested Folder/Title approach, but so far, it's the best idea that I can see working for all scenarios.

Fanart also needs to be supported within the Guide data. ie, when you select a show from the guide. This is where a pure filename based system falls apart, since when you are viewing a guide entry, there isn't a filename to match on.

While I'm not personally interested in a multi-platform windows only tool, the majority of Sage Users are windows users, and would welcome such a tool. Feel free to ask questions about the sage specific details of java properties and file locations/naming conventions.

[evilpenguin]

I'd argue that the folder structure is more robust and expandable than just using the filename.

* By putting the images in folders we don't need to alter the file names. This let's scrapers recognize if an image has already been downloaded.
* Users can also drop their own images in the folder structure w/I worrying about a persise naming convention.
* All we need to do to determine how many of a certain image type we have is list the contents of a folder rather than read in every image and filter them using regexs or string compared.

We're putting together a pretty good fanart architecture, feel free to read through this thread to see how were doing it.