Getting Started: Diamond + Phoenix? Wha?!?

[alleghator]

The screenshots and main menu customizations are gorgeous and I want them. But I haven't done anything with customizing SageTV since back in the early-ish SageMC days. It's been years and I don't remember what I'm doing.

So ... say I want my Sage v.7 install to have the pretty menus and fanart and so forth.....

What do I do first? What plugins, mods, etc do I need? BMT? Diamond? Phoenix?

Pretend I'm very, very stupid and give me a step-by-step, please.

--Heidi

[darcilicious]

For Diamond and per the sticky at the top of this forum section, have you tried reading through the Diamond Wiki?

[PiX64]

Give Phoenix ui a try too! You'll love it.

[alleghator]

I read the Diamond Wiki and I understand how to install Diamond. But it says that I'd need Fanart from another source, such as Phoenix. And then Phoenix refers to BMT which says that it is used by Phoenix.

So, do I start with a BMT install? Then Phoenix and then Diamond?

Does Diamond require BMT and Phoenix or just for fanart purposes?

Is Phoenix a stand-alone UI and Diamond is redundant?

--Heidi

[Spectrum]

The Phoenix Fan Art plugin is what you are looking for. It is responsible for scraping for fan art. BMT is just a configuration/management tool for PFA.

[jorton]

Phoenix is a UI replacment like SageMC. Diamond is "UI Mod" to the default Sagetv UI adding fanart and some bells and whistles.

Diamond will install the Phoenix API (Diamond depends on it) so you will just need to install Diamond and then install BMT to manage the fanart via the web UI.

You can also install the Phoenix UI and use that at the same time as Diamond or back and forth etc, it's up to you and it's pretty easy to switch back and forth from Phoenix UI to the default Sagetv UI (with Diamond on top ) by using Phoenix admin tools in the UI.

Also coming from V6 to V7, the plugins are installed via the repository not manually anymore. Settings/Plugins in the default menu.

J

[stuckless]

In the Phoenix sub-forum, there is a sticky on installing Phoenix. Sage7 makes installing plugins much easier than in the past. Check out the link that I provided as it contains a somewhat short step-by-step.

Phoenix doesn't require BMT, so you only need to install bmt if you want more control over editing your fanart/metadata, or if you want to perform a batch update on your entire media collection.

Once everything is setup, phoenix will continue to download fanart/metadata as new recordings or media files are added to the collection.

[pvr599]

This is a great writeup. I was really confused on this too. Thanks for asking the question Heidi.

I just installed Phoenix. I guess I had Diamond installed all along. I didn't even know it. I was using MBDiamond-Blue two for a theme, does that mean I was using Diamond?

Phoenix looks GREAT out of the box. I just have two questions.

On the standard UI, when I went to video's, I could sort by folder. On my HDD I have my movies separated in folders and some are family video's, so I never had to sift through them to get to the movies.

Also, when I go to pictures (memories I think) the UI goes back to the standard/old UI. Nothing new or different about it.

Are there any topics out there that cover this kind of stuff?
Sorry to be so dumb, but I was happy with the UI I was using, but WOW'd now using Phoenix.

THANKS and PLEASE Google don't take SaeTV away from us

[jorton]

Originally Posted by pvr599

I just installed Phoenix. I guess I had Diamond installed all along. I didn't even know it. I was using MBDiamond-Blue two for a theme, does that mean I was using Diamond?

You only had the MBDiamond Blue Two "theme" installed. MBDiamond was just a theme that later developed into the Diamond UI Mod (includes themes in the installer).

To install Diamond UI mod you have to install Diamond in the UI Mod section of the plugin repository.

J

[pvr599]

Ahh ok, thanks Jordan

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by pvr599

On the standard UI, when I went to video's, I could sort by folder. On my HDD I have my movies separated in folders and some are family video's, so I never had to sift through them to get to the movies.

Also, when I go to pictures (memories I think) the UI goes back to the standard/old UI. Nothing new or different about it.

I'll quickly answer those... but since this is a Diamond sub-forum... you should consider posting those questions (or new ones) in the Phoenix sub forum

1. You should be able to sort by "Title" which would be the folder name when viewing folders. You should be able to change the sort in the UI... or if you are daring enough, you can create your own custom views and define the sort in the view creation.
2. We haven't implemented "Pictures" yet (and a few other things), so when you hit a menu and it takes you back to the default ui... it's because we haven't implemented that yet.

[pvr599]

Thanks for the tips stuckless. Sorry about posting here. I got off the diamond subject. Those are some great documents you posted on Google docs. Found them a little late last night, but will for sure be reading through them.