Project: Oxygen

[darcilicious]

I think the #EXTM3U line is key? Maybe?

[darcilicious]

Oh, not sure if this matters with m3u files but making sure the file are saved in utf-8 is key for NFO files that Boxee can use to identify local video files.

BTW, if you can get this to work, I'll be one happy camper as I don't mind using NFO files for recorded movies (Boxee plays very well with those), but TV shows are problematic since they're all dumped into one folder...

(And yes, I know all about all the rename/symlinking tools but I'm too lazy, etc )

[darcilicious]

And... for what it's worth, I actually had a second video file listed in the playlist file and it played right after the first... so I'd have to say that generally, video playlist files work great

[Slugger]

Ok, thanks darcilicious for the nudge in the right direction. Turns out the box must have its playlists encoded as UTF-8 or it doesn't like them. Fair enough, problem solved and now I can playback the playlists of all my recordings on the box.

Here are the issues I'm facing now:

1) You can't delete files from the Boxee box!? Wow, that's not cool. Kind of takes the syncing out of this plugin. More depressing is that there is an open feature request for this - and it's been open since May 2011. Not promising.

2) When you start playback from the playlist, the box doesn't remember where you are if you stop playback early. (This is just brief, initial testing so I could be wrong or am missing a setting, etc. on this.)

3) The box refuses to scrape the playlists for metadata. If you add the root of playlists as video source, it never finds anything to add. So you add it as a non-scanned source and that's fine as it puts a nice bookmark to your playlists for easy access/browsing. When you then go and select a playlist you can click the "Identify" button and tell it what show these files are for and it then goes and scrapes the details. So I feel like there must be some way to automate this all, but haven't found it yet.

#1 is a bit of a show stopper for me... I do not want to have to manage recordings else where after watching them. But as far as browsing and playing back the hierarchy of playlists representing my recordings, it's all looking good right now. Issue #1 is enough for me, I think, to return this box before my 14 days are up, but at least knowing that in a bind I can definitely use it to play back via a nicely organized hierarchy of playlist files.

Got some real life things to deal with the next few nights and then, let's be honest, Sunday is a write off. I'll try to get the plugin in the repository maybe Friday morning if I have time before work. It should be fine, but after that little mishap the other morning, I'm wanting to give an extra night or two before I upload it.

[darcilicious]

1) Yeah, and actually much longer than that, since before I started using Boxee in late 2008 (early access beta tester for the Windows version) if you can believe it.

Not ideal but I guess I would just do this via the mobile web app...

2) I'll poke around at this.

3) I posted previously but you might have missed it, by default, Boxee will skip scanning files less than 50MB (it's a setting, see my post from a few days ago).

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

1) Yeah, and actually much longer than that, since before I started using Boxee in late 2008 (early access beta tester for the Windows version) if you can believe it.

Not ideal but I guess I would just do this via the mobile web app...

Still not ideal, but better than nothing. This is a major oversight by the Boxee folks, imho.

3) I posted previously but you might have missed it, by default, Boxee will skip scanning files less than 50MB (it's a setting, see my post from a few days ago).

Yeah, I changed this setting to 0MB, but didn't help. On the PC, even after changing the setting it said something about "m3u not recognized" or something. I haven't looked at the scraping logs from the box yet. Maybe you'll have better luck?

I can provide the zips and a manifest file for anyone wanting to install the latest build of the SageSync plugin if you wanted to do more thorough review/testing (Project: Oxygen becomes SageSync when added to the repository). I still need to do some more functional verification testing so you're kind of taking a bit of a chance if you want the files, but I think it's fairly solid at this point. PM me if you want it.

[darcilicious]

Still not ideal, but better than nothing. This is a major oversight by the Boxee folks, imho.

Yeah, I don't get it either.

I'll poke around some more re: scanning... but I'm not hopeful at this point...

[darcilicious]

So when you wrote this:

When you then go and select a playlist you can click the "Identify" button and tell it what show these files are for and it then goes and scrapes the details.

Was this on the Box or the desktop software? Also what version?

Because on the Box, when I select a playlist (no matter when I select if from) it just starts playing. I don't get a popup with a choice to play, identify, etc...

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

So when you wrote this:



Was this on the Box or the desktop software? Also what version?

Because on the Box, when I select a playlist (no matter when I select if from) it just starts playing. I don't get a popup with a choice to play, identify, etc...

On the box. But I think you have to ensure the playlist is encoded as UTF-8 and it has a .m3u8 extension.

[darcilicious]

So, can you send me a .zip file of an entire TV show (preferably two or more seasons)? It doesn't matter which one, I just want a set of m3u8 files to play with. I might have an idea of maybe being able to work around the autoscan not identifying anything...

[Slugger]

Zip attached...

[darcilicious]

Thanks! I might have a chance to try something tonight, definitely tomorrow latest.