XBMC not treating .strm as a video file for scraping
#1
I did some tests with a dummy .avi file and some .strm files to see if the imdb scraper would treat them the same. The end result is that it does not see a .strm file as a video file type. Is this parameter editable via XML or python file or is the video extension list hard coded in the source?
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#2
It's a video type, but I believe strm files (as well as some others) are intentionally excluded during a scan.
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#3
I'm not sure why they would be intentionally excluded, but if you'd like to add them there's a setting in advancedsettings.xml. Look it up on the wiki. But be warned, if it's intentionally excluded there may be good reason.
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#4
According to the wiki, .strm is already a default video extension. Even so, I tried adding it and it doesn't change the behavior of the scanner/scraper.
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#5
Have you looked at your log file to see if it's even attempting to scan the file? If so, is there any related error? Have you tried renaming the strm file to the same as a confirmed working avi to be sure it's not IMDB. ie, if you know Batman.avi scans correctly, make a file (or rename your strm) Batman.strm to see if it gets picked up. If not, report it as a bug.
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#6
malloc Wrote:Have you looked at your log file to see if it's even attempting to scan the file? If so, is there any related error? Have you tried renaming the strm file to the same as a confirmed working avi to be sure it's not IMDB. ie, if you know Batman.avi scans correctly, make a file (or rename your strm) Batman.strm to see if it gets picked up. If not, report it as a bug.

Yes, I've looked at the log -- it doesn't appear to error when I tell it to scan. I have tested with the same name with .avi and it works as expected. If I select the folder containing the files and hit "I" it comes back with a dialog box with "No video files found in this path!". Because of this I was thinking that it was possible it was doing this by design. Interestingly enough, I also tried renaming the .strm file itself to an .avi -- this worked with the scan, and surprisingly, xbmc even starts streaming, but crashes when I hit "X" to stop the movie. This isn't something that I'd expect to work in the first place.

I'll go ahead and file a bug for the scanner skipping over .strm file and see what happens. Thanks for your assistance.
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#7
Alright, I got official word from jmarshall, strm files are treated like playlists and are therefore excluded (since they often have multiple files listed). If you've got a good idea for how to make this feature better, you can submit a feature request, but it won't be going into the Atlantis release since we're in feature freeze.
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#8
i consider this a bug as strm's cannot hold multiple urls
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#9
wellity, wellity, it looks like you win mr. b. go ahead and report it and we'll try to fix it for atlantis release.
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#10
sorry, ive been having "technical difficulties." i didnt want to go into the technical details earlier, but yes, a .strm file is a playlist. its intention was really to allow xbmc to play internet urls, but it will work for anything.

why do you want to scan a strm file?

(and im quite surprised that a strm file renamed to avi actually works!)
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#11
the reason... Smile

I've been struggling with figuring out the best way to stream usenet content for a long time. There are several approaches which I'll briefly explain as it ties into my desire to be able to scan .strm files.

The first problem is how one is to get files and feed them to xbmc. The more popular request is to somehow tie an NZB downloader (like sabnzbd) to xbmc's ability to play incomplete RAR sets. A different, easier method is to simply make use of easynews' autounrar files. There's upsides and downsides to both and Ed Bortoni actually did make an easynews streamer script at one time, although it didn't have the functionality I'm looking for.

So, the big problem is this. If you have 200 days worth of juicy good usenet content that you want to have organized in a nice, coherent manner, how do you do that? As I mulled over the question I keep coming back to the fact that one of xbmc's big features is its media organization and presentation. With all that said, one fairly simple approach to the whole problem is to use a few sites as reference (newzbin/nzbmatrix/etc + easynews) in order to create a database of the content which has nice normalized naming and categorization of the content. Use that DB to create the folder/file structure for all of the TV and movie content with .strm files representing the video's themselves, and let xbmc do the scanning in order to pull the info data from imdb and thetvdb.

Unfortunately, it'd be vastly more popular if it was an NZB based solution, but as far as I can tell, that would require creating a nice interface to the huge amount of content. I was trying to see if I could solve the problem while making the best use of xbmc's built in capability.
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#12
i see. so you're using the strm file as a record locator of sorts...

if you make a strm file with multiple files, does it play correctly from file view? if not, rename it as m3u as test. (they should be treated the same.)

if either work, here's a hack workaround... append .avi to the filenames, something like foo.strm.avi and scan. this will force them to scan.

after the scan is completed, close down xbmc (to be safe). open up myvideos34.db in the sqlite application of your choice. (i think its 34. those used to be schema version numbers at one time. either way, its some numbers.) you'll be interested in the files table. find your .strm.avi files and rename them in the database to just .strm.
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#13
thanks for the workaround kraqh3d -- I tried it as a one-off and it worked as you said with the exception that it wouldn't display the thumbnail in library mode by default (instead it substituted the default thumb for strms)... I manually grabbed a thumbnail (hit "i" and "get thumb") and it stuck. I'll try a few different things -- in the end it may work better to have a 3rd party app generate the .nfo and .tbn ... still trying to come up with the best solution.
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#14
If you know python, a plug-in might be the solution.
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#15
just recently figured out there was a difference between scripts and plugins and am working on hunting down documentation for plugins...
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