STV Import: Phoenix Fanart for the Default STV

[tmiranda]

phelme,

Lots of questions for you:

1. Can you post or zip all of the entries in the log file that start with "PFFD:"?
2. Please let me know what version of sagex you are using, it should be 6.6.2.
3. Are there any java errors in the log file?
4. Did you enable the "advanced search" feature? That is slow and will cause the spinning circle for sure.
5. What is your directory structure where the genre fanart is stored? It should be //SageTV-Server/fanart/Genres/<banners, backgrounds, posters>
6. Are you running under Linux?

Please let me know so I can debug this further.

Tom

[phelme]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

phelme,
Lots of questions for you:

Please let me know so I can debug this further.

Tom

1. Can you post or zip all of the entries in the log file that start with "PFFD:"?

attached

2. Please let me know what version of sagex you are using, it should be 6.6.2.

6.6.2 according to the BMT web interface

3. Are there any java errors in the log file?

not that I can see pertain to BMT or Metadata/Fanart. see attached file.

4. Did you enable the "advanced search" feature? That is slow and will cause the spinning circle for sure.

Possibly... where is the "advanced search" feature enabled? I did enable the Display title thing in BMT, but have since turned it off since it didn't really help. What I've notciced is that on some shows, say "General Hospital" where there are a gazillion actors attached to it, a search is done for their JPGs too and things get really pokey. It constantly is looking too, as long as that page is up and I try to navigate in it.

5. What is your directory structure where the genre fanart is stored? It should be //SageTV-Server/fanart/Genres/<banners, backgrounds, posters>

I tried using <FANART PATH>/Genres/<banners, backgrounds, posters> but that doesn't work for me. I'm using <FANART PATH>/<banners, backgrounds, posters> because that currently works with all the images "flat".

I tried again using //SageTV-Server/fanart/Genres/<banners, backgrounds, posters> with no success. From the logs it never is looking in a Genre directory, it's looking in the <banners, backgrounds) directory for <genre>.jpg.

6. Are you running under Linux?

6. No, Win XP.

I'm sure I've borked something somewhere. Thanks for the help!

[tmiranda]

The log file will help a lot, thanks. Also thanks for answering my laundry list of questions, that will help too.

Some initial observations:

- There is a bug somewhere because there are null pointer exceptions being generated by my code.

- There are lots of sagex debug messages going to the log file which will slow things down. I think there is a way to change the "log4j" file to tell sagex to dump less debug info. I don't know how to do that off the top of my head so I suggest searching the sagex and phoenix api threads. I don't think this is the cause of your problems, but it will generally speed things up.

- Are you using Dynamic menus? There are loads of java errors that I *think* are being thrown from the Dynamic menu STVi or some other STVi. Can you eliminate all STVi's except for the BMT STVi and the Phoenix fanart STVi? It could be that my STVi is not playing nice with some other STVi's so let's try to narrow that down.

- Please look in your .properties file and let me know what the following are set to:

pffd/Background_sleep_duration=
pffd/advanced_debug=
pffd/advanced_matching=
pffd/detailed_info_layout=
pffd/jump_to_detailed_info=
pffd/max_background_retries=
pffd/wait_before_background=
pffd/wait_before_background_retry=

I have to put the kiddies to bed and will not be able to help any further tonight. I'll look more deeply into this tomorrow.

Tom

[JREkiwi]

Tom, just confirming phelme's observation that Recording Detail is very slow when a background is not found.

Originally Posted by phelme

One other comment, if there is no default JPG for a show, bringing up the "View Recording Detail" page is awfully slow (assumedly because it's looking for JPG that doesn't exist). I even get the spinning wheel of death for about 5 seconds before anything happens.

Also the NullPointer Exceptions occur when no banner is found.

Fixed both of those on my machine by ensuring I had a jpg in both
D:\Fanart\Genres\Default\Banners
D:\Fanart\Genres\Default\Backgrounds
where D:\Fanart is my fanart directory

John

[tmiranda]

Thanks John. I'll look into this as soon as real life permits.

[tmiranda]

phelme, John,

I can't reproduce these errors at all. I found something else a little odd, but I do not think it relates to what you are describing.

Are you running other STVi's or just this one and the BMI/BMT import?

Can you take a look in Studio to see if it is importing properly or if you do not want to mess with Studio can you ZIP and attach the STV that results after performing the imports?

Thanks,

Tom

[phelme]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

The log file will help a lot, thanks. Also thanks for answering my laundry list of questions, that will help too.

Some initial observations:

- There is a bug somewhere because there are null pointer exceptions being generated by my code.

- There are lots of sagex debug messages going to the log file which will slow things down. I think there is a way to change the "log4j" file to tell sagex to dump less debug info. I don't know how to do that off the top of my head so I suggest searching the sagex and phoenix api threads. I don't think this is the cause of your problems, but it will generally speed things up.

- Are you using Dynamic menus? There are loads of java errors that I *think* are being thrown from the Dynamic menu STVi or some other STVi. Can you eliminate all STVi's except for the BMT STVi and the Phoenix fanart STVi? It could be that my STVi is not playing nice with some other STVi's so let's try to narrow that down.

- Please look in your .properties file and let me know what the following are set to:

pffd/Background_sleep_duration=
pffd/advanced_debug=
pffd/advanced_matching=
pffd/detailed_info_layout=
pffd/jump_to_detailed_info=
pffd/max_background_retries=
pffd/wait_before_background=
pffd/wait_before_background_retry=

I have to put the kiddies to bed and will not be able to help any further tonight. I'll look more deeply into this tomorrow.

Tom

pffd/Background_sleep_duration=1000
pffd/advanced_debug=false
pffd/advanced_matching=false
pffd/detailed_info_layout=Default
pffd/jump_to_detailed_info=false
pffd/max_background_retries=150
pffd/wait_before_background_retry=10


yes, I'm using Dynamic menus and others like imdb and CPU watching. I'll pull out all other STVi's and try rerunning.

[JREkiwi]

Tom, 2 alterations for the Null Exception

"REM If there is a banner, then print the date / time next to it." [TIKI-20442]
       If BannerImage!=null
          If IsFilePath(BannerImage) [TIKI-20443]
...........
"REM If there is no banner, then print the title" [TIKI-20449]
     If BannerImage!=null
        true
            If IsFilePath(BannerImage) [TIKI-20450]
               false  [TIKI-20451]
                  AiringTitle = GetAiringTitle(Airing) [TIKI-20452]
        else
           AiringTitle = GetAiringTitle(Airing) [TIKI-20452]

+ with the slow video detail, it looks like Step 14 is looping trying to find a background.

Might pay to clarify the instructions to ensure that users have a default banner and background available.

D:\Fanart\Genres\Default\Banners\banner.jpg
D:\Fanart\Genres\Default\Backgrounds\background.jpg
where D:\Fanart is my fanart directory

John

[tmiranda]

John,

Thanks for debugging my code I actually put in the two checks for a null BannerImage last night, but I did not think it would make a difference. I'll look into step 14 looping issue. I could not get it to loop last night.

I see you posted a change to one of your imports. Is there something else I should change to make sure this STVi works with yours? I consider myself an STVi newbie and am always looking for ways to learn and improve things.

Tom

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Thanks for debugging my code I actually put in the two checks for a null BannerImage last night, but I did not think it would make a difference. I'll look into step 14 looping issue. I could not get it to loop last night.

I could get it to loop by renaming the d:\Fanart\Genres\Default folder. Looks like it has no way to exit Step 14 if it doesn't find any art.

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I see you posted a change to one of your imports. Is there something else I should change to make sure this STVi works with yours?

I just needed to change where one of my BeforeMenuLoad hooks was linking. It was also slowing down the video detail screen, but was also causing the background to not display when a background was available. This is different to the slow video detail screen when it can't find a background.

John

[tmiranda]

John, phelme,

Can you try the attached STVi? It's just the STVi so unzip it directly to SageTV\SageTV\STVs\SageTV3. I think I may have found the issue but I can't test it on my machine.

Thanks,

Tom

[JREkiwi]

Tom, that's got the Null Exception fixed, but the slow video detail panel when there is no background available is still there. I'll try and do some debugging on that for you.

John

[JREkiwi]

Tom, looks like the problem with the slow video detail panel is in the Background display code. I don't understand why there needs to be the retry code before displaying the Background panel. I've tried some changes and they seem to work both when there is and isn't a background image available.

Here's a little stvi that you can import to apply the changes.

John

[tmiranda]

Thanks John. I have not been able to reproduce the slow background problem and I haven't had a lot of time to get deep into it. I'll take a look at what you did and I'm sure that will point me in the right direction.

I'm at work and can't look at the code, but I'm not sure what you are saying about "retry code". There is a loop within two of the steps where I am looking for actor images, maybe that's what you are refering to? (I stay on the same "Step" while looping through all of the actors to see if I can find a valid image.)

I hope to have some time this weekend to look at this.

Tom

[tmiranda]

John,

Now I see what you mean by retry code, and I also see why the spinning circle is happening. The retry code is to handle the case where the background tries to load before the BeforeMenuLoad hook has had time to look for a background. Without the retry code the background is always blank for a second.

Thanks much for the help,

Tom

[tmiranda]

John, phelme,

Here is another update that fixes both issues. Please try it out and let me know how it goes. It's just the STVi so unzip to SageTV\SageTV\STVs\SageTV3 and import it instead of the normal Phoenix FanArt STVi.

If it fixes your issues I will upload it to the downloads section.

phelme - Thanks for pointing out the problem. It was a pretty serious bug , I'm amazed nobody pointed it out sooner.

John - Much thanks for all of the help. The fix was easy once I knew where to look. The reason I could not reproduce the problem was because of differences in where IsFilePath() and the phoenix APIs look for images. IsFilePath() seems to execute relative to the server while the phoenix APIs execute relative to the SageClient. I copied all of my fanart from the server to the client so I could delete images without losing the originals and changed the FanArt directory on my client to c:\Program Files\SageTV\.... instead of \\SERVER\SageTV\Fanart. When I did this InFilePath() would find the images on the server (even if I deleted them on the client because the directory structure on my client and server are the same) so I never experienced the delay caused by the loop in the code.

Tom

[JDavis]

I was having the same issue and this latest STVi seems to have fixed it.

And thanks for your work on this.

[tmiranda]

Thanks for the feedback and the compliment.

[JREkiwi]

Tom, that looks like it got it fixed.

Originally Posted by tmiranda

The reason I could not reproduce the problem was because of differences in where IsFilePath() and the phoenix APIs look for images. IsFilePath() seems to execute relative to the server while the phoenix APIs execute relative to the SageClient.

check out page 155 of the Studio manual

John

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

Tom, that looks like it got it fixed.

check out page 155 of the Studio manual

John