Automatic library scanning/updates?

Hey guys,

Just a quick question. My primary media center at home is a Windows box but here at work and my main machine (and at home) are Macs. I grabbed Plex and it looks like they have a new feature where you can enable automatic library scanning (in the background) rather than just at startup. This is something I would love to see in the version of XBMC for Windows.

Is there plans on implementing this feature?

This can be done via builtin functions already, but involves a reasonable amount of mucking around (eg it could be done via a python script for instance, or via the skin, or FTP, or via the web API).

We're currently in feature freeze, so such a feature won't be happening until Atlantis is released.

Cheers,
Jonathan

Cool. I saw a thread with a Python script that you could run every "x" hours but it just seemed to me that having something built in would be the way to go.

I saw you guys mention XBMC is feature frozen until the next release so that's cool. Just wondering if you guys had thought about it before.

Thanks Jonathan.

Out of curiosity, do they scan the library at an interval?

I don't believe they're doing anything of the sort - at least I haven't noticed it in the git repo (mind you, I don't really keep all that much of an eye on it).

Seems to me they are:


Click for full size

Also, seems to work to boot.

XBMC has that setting as well. Plex had to get it from somewhere, after all. All it does is hides the scanning progress dialog. We've since defaulted it to off and hidden it from the GUI as it clearly gives the wrong impression as to what it does.

You can still set it via advancedsettings.xml if the dialog annoys you.

EDIT: A quick check through their git shows they're using it the same way as we are (to hide the dialog). Whether or not they're using it elsewhere to initiate a scan I have no idea - I'm not going to checkout all their code to look through it - you are welcome to though. Do a grep for videolibrary.backgroundupdate.

Got it. Glad to know that's what it does and you're not wrong about it giving the wrong impression