[EoDTris]

Development Halted!

Development has been halted on the PG: MMS. Focus is now elsewere

Sorry chaps, we just didn't have the time and manpower to maintain a piece of software as well as the website.

EoD

[el_cabong]

hey, looks awesome so far. any thoughts for expanding to cover movie covers, and possibly editing info at some point? Im watching a few projects like this as its one of the last things i feel im missing for my media handling.

[lukeyboy]

Don't worry EoD I'll give you a hand with the C#. It might be worthwhile making it Mono .Net compatible so you can have a cross platform capable application. Between the two of us we have Windows, Mac OSX and Linux operating systems to test the code with. GTK# is the framework we need.

It needs movies support too!

[EoDTris]

@el_cabong

Thanks for your feedback, yes we do have plans for those features in the timeline including support for movies and likely meta data editing in the future. As mentioned by lukeyboy, he is going to be helping with a lot of the code during the transition from php to C#, rest assured there will still be a web based interface for the C# app.

[hernandito]

This looks quite nice and promising. I have a couple of questions/comments...

How well does it integrate with the XBMC database? In other words, if you change the artwork for a show, will the change be reflected in XBMC? I use the centralized MySQL database on my setup.

I get my TV shows through Sickbeard. Without any input on my part, it adds the shows and all the appropriate media. I am not sure if SB downloads the images, or if XBMC does this during the library update. It would be nice if this application would allow me to fine tune the images to something that I like better, and the change is reflected in my XBMC and XBMC Commander...

I vote adding movie covers as well...

Sorry about the non-programmer question - I cannot follow the C# PHP issues. Will the final product run as a Windows exe file, or would I still need Apache? If one still needs Apache (again forgive my complete ignorance ) could it use Python instead like Sickbeard and CouchPotato and others?

I am crossing my fingers here!!!

[EoDTris]

@hernandito

Hi, thanks for your comments, first of all yes you are right about the final app being run from a .exe instead of apache. The long term aim is to have a lightweight server built into the app which serves a web interface for remote control. This means you could then manage your art from both a browser and within windows.

In terms of injection into your XBMC library and mySQL this is something I need to have a think about during the planning of the C#.NET (.exe) app. I would certainly like to impliment the ability for it to inject the artwork remotley as this may save refreshing XBMC's cache when a change is made, although it may cause alot of compatability problems to arise with different peoples setups as artwork is usually scraped from within XBMC in library updates(im not sure if sickbeard handles artwork). It will need plenty of planning thats for sure.

UPDATE: Ive done some research regarding this feature which ive woffled on about in the post below for you.

Thanks, EoD

[EoDTris]

@hernandito

So I was intreeged and ive spent the past few hours researching some things to do with controlling XBMC and its database. Heres what ive found, although don't hold me to it, lol:

From what ive read it seems sickbeard handles artwork and show information in just the same way as other media managers. When a show is added the post processing feature will grab the artwork and dump it in your show folder and create a .NFO file for XBMC to look at to retrive its information and artwork related to the show. It then seems to call upon the JSON-RPC API within XBMC allowing it then to initiate a update of your library saving any issues with the 3rd party app breaking your database.

Manual modification of XBMC's library I believe is only possible using mySQL. It seems though that may not be the best solution as different versions of XBMC will store different data in different ways, which could lead to neverending incompatability problems. Its best to leave the modifications to the library upto XBMC itself to be on the safe side.

So whats PixelGrafters plan you ask?

It will be similiar to the way SickBeard works, let me explain........ The JSON-RPC API, allows only control of functions within XBMC and not manual modification of its library. This leads me to believe that the best solution for the final version of PixelGrafters would be to initiate the necesary API calls to fire XBMC into updating its library itself after you have changed the artwork locally or added a new tv show from within the PixelGrafters app. This would save manually modifying the database which could cause issues. A feature like this would most likley get implimented as a "Update Show Artwork/Info in XBMC" button in the interface for you to press after completing your changes.

Note: XBMC has ways of caching images and can be known for taking days to properlly reflect artwork changes made from 3rd party apps. (Annoying i know) The usual way of forcing a show to refresh its image cache is to select a show and press 'I', and select 'Refresh', if that doesnt work, XBMC is meant to update the image cache every 24 hours anyway. So far I havent come across a way of doing cache refreshes remotley.

I hope this explains a little better how 3rd party apps get their changes into XBMC, let me know if ive confused you, I do tend to babble.

EoD

[Aenima99x]

I'm really interested in this and looking forward to see what you come up with. Are you planning to keep it platform-agnostic?

[EoDTris]

@Aenima99x

Thanks alot for your kind words, your question is yes, the plan is to use the MONO framework for coding in C#. It will use the GTK# library for the interface so it will be compatible with linux, osx and windows.

Thanks, EoD.

[hernandito]

Thank you EoD!! You sure are doing your research.... I really look forward to seeing what you come up with. Unfortunately my server (unRAID) does not make it easy to setup Apache. Or at least in a way I could handle it.

I was NOT aware about the cache refreshes... I am going to do an experiment and manually change a file and wait a day or two and see if XBMC makes the change,

PLEASE keep up the good work. I am very excited about this project...!

[lukeyboy]

Look's good that there is some interest!

EoD - we need to set up a web site or something for this project so we can keep track of bugs and feature requests.

Integration into the XBMC database would be ideal and it should be possible whether XBMC is configured to use MySQL or SQLite. There are a lot of cool things that could be done but until the basics are completed then nothing else can happen. By then we will have forgotten some of the suggestions!

[EoDTris]

@hernandito

Hi, me again. Just thought as you are trying out a test on XBMCs cache I would let you know a little more about the future improvements on the cache if you havent stumbled across it already yourself.

Here is a link to the changes made in XBMC at the end of May, these changes will only be reflected in the nightly builds until a new stable version of XBMC is released. May Cycle Improvements

This talks about "Image Caching Improvements" and by a release of a new stable version you should be able to change an image in your TV shows directory or Movie folder and the Artwork will change as soon as you navigate to the item on XBMC. The impending new version of XBMC will no doubt make like a lot easier for everyone. Also im not 100% sure if the 24 hour cache update is only working in current nightly builds or if it was implemented into the Eden stable release, but its worth a test to make sure.

@lukeyboy

Yes I agree, ill get hunting down some kind of free ticketing system we can use and point people in this thread to, for making feature requests.

EoD

[EoDTris]

we need to set up a web site or something for this project so we can keep track of bugs and feature requests.

@lukeyboy

Site well and truly set up at mms.pixelgrafters.com. Also the online version is finished for users who want access to all sources of artwork quickly and easily at PixelGrafters.com.

Enjoy, EoD.

[Livin]

EoD,
Curious as to why you'd develop this in .NET and not for the web? Seems to me having a web based app is more accessible (anytime, anywhere, no install) and better for cross platform... iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, etc

[EoDTris]

@Livin

Thanks for your comments. We thought of making a fully online based app but decided against it due to efficiency of having the site scan a users library. The most effective way we could think of that wouldn't compromise speed with that kind of method would have been to have a user manually add all their shows to a big list in a user account on the site, but we saw that as kind of tedious.

Eventually we settled on the idea of a .NET app that could be used as a desktop app and with an in built web server running on a custom port the app would be hosting its own web interface, so access to the apps functions would be available from anywhere on any computer as long as you have a always on computer and the necessary port forwarded on your router.

That was the thought process anyways, hope this clears up a few things.

EoD