Project: Oxygen

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by LehighBri

Sounds like a fantastic idea. I personally helped with both the boxee plugin and plex plugin and definitely think there has to be a better way ad oxygen seems to align to my needs as well.

Slugger - when do you think you'll have some code to share? Now that I'm done playing with plex for now, I've been using the new Xbmc Eden beta and love it, thus am very interested in helping.

I have a standalone app that creates the filesystem of playlist files and it's basically functional. Now I just have to rework it into Sage plugin form then it'll be ready for preview. Probably next weekend, maybe sometime this week if I find some free time.

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

All you really need to do is create the folder structure based on the VFS results, and point whatever UPnP or other streaming server to that folder structure. Leave the heavy lifting to whatever 3rd party server works for your device.

Recreating the folder structure is relatively slow (~10 seconds) on my server and I only have 900 recordings (this may improve when I move the code into the Sage JVM instead of using sagex over RMI). Not to mention, there is no UI to let users dynamically change their "view", unless they do it in the plugin settings within Sage? I see what you're saying, I like the idea, I just don't know how you can bring it to arbitrary devices when all you're giving them access to is a filesystem of playlists?

[darcilicious]

I did some poking around and I think I really figured out why Boxee's auto-scanning the m3u files doesn't work but manually does.

There's a setting to ignore files smaller than 50 MB that is enabled by default in Settings>>Media>>Advanced. Manually identifying will definitely override that setting.

[WellThen]

Oxygen sounds like a great idea. Anxious to try it out on my PC with Boxee software. If I understood your Wiki correctly, it would get even better with GKusnick's suggestion:

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Here's what I'd suggest:

Instead of putting the program titles directly under the root, allow the option to have several different "profile" folders in which recordings can be filtered and sorted according to different criteria. So my wife could have a folder hierarchy that organizes her shows the way she likes them, and I can have a separate folder hierarchy for mine.

I *really* like this idea. In my limited playing with the SageBoxee app (which I liked) my biggest gripe was being faced with a long alphabetical list of shows. If the newest show that recorded is Whitney, first of all I can't tell that from looking at the alpha list, and second, I have a lot of scrolling to do to get down to that show. The idea of having a way to generate the playlist with a preferred sort (mine would be that a Series with new recordings would be listed first) would make this great idea awesome! I realize this idea is not core to getting Oxygen working intially, but I wanted to add my vote for this feature.

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by WellThen

Oxygen sounds like a great idea. Anxious to try it out on my PC with Boxee software. If I understood your Wiki correctly, it would get even better with GKusnick's suggestion:



I *really* like this idea. In my limited playing with the SageBoxee app (which I liked) my biggest gripe was being faced with a long alphabetical list of shows. If the newest show that recorded is Whitney, first of all I can't tell that from looking at the alpha list, and second, I have a lot of scrolling to do to get down to that show. The idea of having a way to generate the playlist with a preferred sort (mine would be that a Series with new recordings would be listed first) would make this great idea awesome! I realize this idea is not core to getting Oxygen working intially, but I wanted to add my vote for this feature.

I'm still trying to figure out how this would even be possible to implement. Again, I like the idea, but someone's got to come up with a way to implement it because I got nothing.

Here's the issue, as I see it: I'm creating this hierarchy of playlist files and that's what the devices are browsing. It's just a plain old directory of folders and files. How those files are sorted is up to each device and I'd be shocked if a device didn't do anything but list them alphabetically. A device will probably let you sort them ascending or descending, but that's probably you're only options. Now, there could be an option to name the files different, but how useful is that? Let's say 'Late Show with David Letterman' was the latest recording and you wanted it to show up first (using an 'L' as it will tend to be in the middle alphabetically regardless of direction). The only way I see being able to do that is give it some artificial (i.e. meaningless) name so it shows up first alphabetically. And once you do that, how do you know what the recording actually is?

Again, I'm sold on the idea, I just don't see how to implement it.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Slugger

I'm still trying to figure out how this would even be possible to implement. Again, I like the idea, but someone's got to come up with a way to implement it because I got nothing.

Here's the issue, as I see it: I'm creating this hierarchy of playlist files and that's what the devices are browsing. It's just a plain old directory of folders and files. How those files are sorted is up to each device and I'd be shocked if a device didn't do anything but list them alphabetically. A device will probably let you sort them ascending or descending, but that's probably you're only options. Now, there could be an option to name the files different, but how useful is that? Let's say 'Late Show with David Letterman' was the latest recording and you wanted it to show up first (using an 'L' as it will tend to be in the middle alphabetically regardless of direction). The only way I see being able to do that is give it some artificial (i.e. meaningless) name so it shows up first alphabetically. And once you do that, how do you know what the recording actually is?

Again, I'm sold on the idea, I just don't see how to implement it.

If you base the source on a Phoenix VFS view and recreate your virtual structure based on the structure of Phoenix VFS, then you can configure you views in phoenix/bmt and expose them the same way they look in Phoenix.

From your side, it would mean that you'd accept a Pheonix VFS view as the input, and a physical location as the output, and you'd create that view in the given location.

Your project is something that I was considering doing in Phoenix as well.. but if you were to use Phoenix as the VFS provider then it would be one less thing that I'd have to do

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by stuckless

If you base the source on a Phoenix VFS view and recreate your virtual structure based on the structure of Phoenix VFS, then you can configure you views in phoenix/bmt and expose them the same way they look in Phoenix.

From your side, it would mean that you'd accept a Pheonix VFS view as the input, and a physical location as the output, and you'd create that view in the given location.

Your project is something that I was considering doing in Phoenix as well.. but if you were to use Phoenix as the VFS provider then it would be one less thing that I'd have to do

I'm still missing something... let's say I use a Phoenix VFS view as the input. This view sorts recordings by airing date, descending.

No matter what order I write out the playlists to disk, they're still going to be sorted by an external device alphabetically, right? Unless I name them with a number prefix or something to help nudge the ordering? Then you end up with a root dir of something like:

0000 Late Show With David Letterman\
   Season 19\
      Late Show With David Letterman-S19E15-1234567.m3u
0001 30 Rock
   Season 06\
      30 Rock-S06E04-123456666.m3u

And then to maintain the ordering, I basically have to rewrite the entire tree of playlists anytime one is added or removed. Is that really ideal? Constantly rewriting the entire tree is not how the code currently works and would be a rather large change so the first version I'm prepping definitely won't support this kind of thing, but let's see where the discussion goes because I'm not against doing it though I'm still skeptical as to its usefulness/effectiveness.

[WellThen]

Originally Posted by Slugger

... I'm sold on the idea, I just don't see how to implement it.

Ah, I begin to see the problem. You would be relying on the playback device to order the files in a given "directory", so the sort is out of your hands.

How about the idea of creating 3 different folder structures? For the first, the high level folder is "All", and otherwise looks just like what you described in the wiki. In the second, the high level qualifier is "Unwatched" and only shows that don't have the watched flag go into that structure. The 3rd structure is of course "Watched". Would that work?

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by WellThen

Ah, I begin to see the problem. You would be relying on the playback device to order the files in a given "directory", so the sort is out of your hands.

How about the idea of creating 3 different folder structures? For the first, the high level folder is "All", and otherwise looks just like what you described in the wiki. In the second, the high level qualifier is "Unwatched" and only shows that don't have the watched flag go into that structure. The 3rd structure is of course "Watched". Would that work?

So everything is listed alphabetically (or however the device chooses), but what shows up in a root is filtered out?

So:

All Recordings/
   30 Rock/
   ...
   Whitney/
Watched/
   Breaking Bad/
   ...
   The Simpsons/
Unwatched/
   Family Guy/
   ...
   The Big Bang Theory/
Newest/ << This filter may find the 5, 10, 20, whatever latest recordings and only show them
   Late Show With David Letterman/
   Local News/
   ...
   Whitney/
MyPreferredFilter/
   Kids Show 1/
   ...
   Kids Show 400/

Hmm... that seems doable. I don't think we can control the ordering of elements in a folder (without some yucky prefixing of show names, etc.), but filtering what shows end up in a folder is doable.

[WellThen]

Originally Posted by WellThen

Ah, I begin to see the problem. You would be relying on the playback device to order the files in a given "directory", so the sort is out of your hands.

How about the idea of creating 3 different folder structures? For the first, the high level folder is "All", and otherwise looks just like what you described in the wiki. In the second, the high level qualifier is "Unwatched" and only shows that don't have the watched flag go into that structure. The 3rd structure is of course "Watched". Would that work?

Or maybe, instead of the "Unwatched" group, you create a high-level folder with the Airing Date. That way, you are not rewriting everything all of the time, just updating the All structure and the "Airing Date" structure (for today) as each new recording shows up.

[WellThen]

Originally Posted by Slugger

So everything is listed alphabetically (or however the device chooses), but what shows up in a root is filtered out?

So:

All Recordings/
   30 Rock/
   ...
   Whitney/
Watched/
   Breaking Bad/
   ...
   The Simpsons/
Unwatched/
   Family Guy/
   ...
   The Big Bang Theory/
Newest/ << This filter may find the 5, 10, 20, whatever latest recordings and only show them
   Late Show With David Letterman/
   Local News/
   ...
   Whitney/
MyPreferredFilter/
   Kids Show 1/
   ...
   Kids Show 400/

Hmm... that seems doable. I don't think we can control the ordering of elements in a folder (without some yucky prefixing of show names, etc.), but filtering what shows end up in a folder is doable.

Newest/ <-- NICE! This would probably be my favorite.

One more idea, and then I'll stop making trouble for a while. You could have the name of the playlist include a suffix to indicate whether a show had been watched or not. If I saw:

30 Rock-S06E04-123456666(W).m3u

in the list, I'd know that this was a show I'd watched, and skip over it. Or maybe, that would break some player's ability to scoop up metadata?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Slugger

I'm still missing something... let's say I use a Phoenix VFS view as the input. This view sorts recordings by airing date, descending.

No matter what order I write out the playlists to disk, they're still going to be sorted by an external device alphabetically, right? Unless I name them with a number prefix or something to help nudge the ordering? Then you end up with a root dir of something like:

I agree... and yeah, I'd prefix the items by their index order so that the ordering is retained... that way you are order descending by aired date, and the physical view will keep the ordering.

I only suggest the Phoenix VFS as an input source, since given the number of differences in what people are wanting for the output, this would enable you to offer people any view they choose instead of you having to manually build it up in your code.

From what I've seen so far, if you offer "Watched" or "Unwatched", views, then you are going to have to rebuild the physical views based on the user actions... so either way, you are rebuilding the physical structures.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by Slugger

Here's the issue, as I see it: I'm creating this hierarchy of playlist files and that's what the devices are browsing. It's just a plain old directory of folders and files. How those files are sorted is up to each device and I'd be shocked if a device didn't do anything but list them alphabetically. A device will probably let you sort them ascending or descending, but that's probably you're only options. Now, there could be an option to name the files different, but how useful is that? Let's say 'Late Show with David Letterman' was the latest recording and you wanted it to show up first (using an 'L' as it will tend to be in the middle alphabetically regardless of direction). The only way I see being able to do that is give it some artificial (i.e. meaningless) name so it shows up first alphabetically. And once you do that, how do you know what the recording actually is?

My thinking was to force the sort order by prefixing a sequence number to the folder or playlist name, much like track numbers in a CD rip folder.

[GKusnick]

Seems to me there are any number of events that could require a full tree recalc. In particular, if views are flexible enough to allow my Favorites to be grouped separately from my wife's Favorites, then you're inevitably in a situation where any change to Favorite properties (including adding or deleting Favorites) can potentially invalidate large numbers of recordings and affect which view(s) they show up in.

[Fuzzy]

True, but in my experience, rebuilding an entire tree takes < a minute, and doesn't have to happen all the time. It will likely take longer for whatever server you are running to re-parse the folder for changes.

[Slugger]

Oh Groovy, you failed me this time, or at least I failed it...

So I moved the plugin to production this morning since I was up early... it's very important to realize that the string 'false' is not the same as boolean false and you best better convert the string to a boolean before you inspect its value.

That little mishap cost me ~66% of all of my recordings being deleted before I realized what was happening. Luckily it was mostly archived syndicated content, which I can record again. Anyway, bug fixed.

No more time until later in the week or this weekend, but once I fixed that bug what I'm seeing is looking good - it only does the "All Recordings" view right now. And that's all it's going to do on this initial release.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by Slugger

Oh Groovy, you failed me this time, or at least I failed it...

So strongly typed languages are not going to die soon?

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

So strongly typed languages are not going to die soon?

Unlikely, but this speaks more to my testing env's lack of media content... I don't record anything on my test server (no dedicated sat feeds to it) so I just have a dummy encoder that I use to provide a few fake recordings when needed. What I failed to realize was that all those recordings were indeed wiped off the test system due to this bug, but since I rarely have media files on the test server I didn't really pay attention. Trust me, I payed attention this morning as recordings were vanishing on my production server. Lucky for you all, I didn't release this bug into the wild - I'm sure I'd have gotten quite a few complaints.

[Slugger]

So here's where I stand with device testing...

WDTV Live HD

This device really frustrated me. It's playlist support is garbage and the device is so closed I can't get any logs to figure out what's going on. I managed to get some advice on their user forums, but it was next to useless. All I've been told is that playlists can only contain relative paths and that you may or may not be able to point to files on other physical devices (and was told probably not). So that was strike 1.

Strike 2: The Windows networking support is messed up. Half the time it wouldn't even connect to my WinXP SP3 shares, which are wide open, full r/w, no pwd. If you're on my LAN you get access. That's not good enough for this device. If you restart it enough times it eventually connects and lets you browse. This is the reason I've put this little guy back in its box for return to the store.

Strike 3: Support is lacking.

What did I like about this device: When I just browsed to my recordings, it played back everything flawlessly; MPEG2 from PVR-x50 cards and H.264 from Colossus. Playback is as advertised, but I can't get it to playback playlists, which is the point here, and network support is flaky, at best. Back to the store it goes!

D-Link Boxee

Well, I'm disappointed in this one as well, but at least I've got some log files and can maybe figure out a solution.

For some reason, choosing a playlist to playback on the device doesn't work and based on the logs it's because it's assuming playlists only refer to audio files and not video files. Yet, doing the same thing on the PC version of Boxee happily plays back the video files with no issues.

So if you have a Boxee box and want to help out then simply create a playlist file pointing to an absolute smb:// URL video file and get it to actually load the playlist and play it back. If we can solve this then we should be good to go.

I've been creating and using M3U playlist files, which works in XBMC and Boxee PC versions. Feel free to get any supported playlist to actually work - it's trivial to dump any playlist format to disk.

What I like about this box: Again, throwing my MPEG2 and H.264 recordings at it seems to be no issue. Playback (based on the limited testing I've had time for so far) is excellent.

[darcilicious]

So if you have a Boxee box and want to help out then simply create a playlist file pointing to an absolute smb:// URL video file and get it to actually load the playlist and play it back. If we can solve this then we should be good to go.

This worked for me on the Boxee Box v1.5.0

Filename:
0. Video Playlist.m3u

Contents:
#EXTM3U
smb://babyface/videos/sagetv/310toYuma-13947799-0.ts

Browsed to the m3u file via Files>>Browse, selected it, and it started playing the video.

Is that what you needed?

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

This worked for me on the Boxee Box v1.5.0

Filename:
0. Video Playlist.m3u

Contents:
#EXTM3U
smb://babyface/videos/sagetv/310toYuma-13947799-0.ts

Browsed to the m3u file via Files>>Browse, selected it, and it started playing the video.

Is that what you needed?

Just that simple, eh? Yeah, that's what I want to happen, but it didn't for me. Will go back and look at my playlist files again after work.