[bertrand]

Hi,

maybe this has been asked before, but i was not really able to find any clear description of a similar issue, so here it goes. In several mediacenter solutions i've tried before, there was some kind of support for offline media (Meedio, MediaPortal through MovingPictures...).

Here's the thing: I store my medias using external, usually unplugged USB hard drives. I like to have ALL my files indexed, and when I try to play a file, if it is located on a disconnected drive, have my mediacenter request that I plug drive X.

Has this ever been discussed ? Is there some kind of support for it already ?

I have also identified this similar feature request:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=24443
it however only relates to DVD-disc indexing.

Thank you for your attention

[spiff]

no such support. nobody with the interest has stepped up

[bertrand]

Well... would anybody else be interested in such a feature ?

[spiff]

noone on the dev team i'm aware of. certainly not me

[bertrand]

That's bad news, it really makes it unlikely that this feature is ever added... right ?

[spiff]

nah, it just means none of us will do it. if a patch shows up we will gladly add it (assuming it is clean). and i would gladly explain interested parties how to get it going

[bertrand]

I would really be happy to help / work on this, but my C++ skills are really something I'm not proud of

But who knows...

I can however contribute by quickly detailing how this works in other systems that I've used:
- The VolumeName and DiskName are indexed for each media
- There usually is an option to either indicate that media files with a non-existent root-folder should not be removed when checking for removed items (e.g. if x:/ is not available, x:/movie.mkv won't be removed. If x:/ is available but movie.mkv is not there, it is removed
- Filtering is usually made possible on volume name, even though such a hackish solution wouldn't belong in XBMC (for a simple reason: it's more user friendly than all the other solutions)
- When you start playback of an offline item, you get prompted to insert the Volume where the item is stored.

I realize this post won't make it an interesting feature, but it may at least help a bit to describe it

[Ironman1965]

Could you implement some way for XBMC to link media files to a drives/discs label? I store all my media on ESATA Hard Drives that are hot swapped via external docks (currently 6 drives 500gb+). This way as I select a movie from the library XBMC could look for the label and ask for the appropriate one to be inserted if not already. This would be useful for DVD's/CD's as well. I think this could be an awesome solution for large offline media libraries. Thanks.

[spiff]

if any of you offline-users wants this you will have to add it yourself.

[Ironman1965]

If I knew how to program I would. Thanks for the reply.

[slash]

Hi,

I'm also interested in this feature. I think it will become more popular (file size increase with Blue ray) :-).

Such a feature might impact the video DB and I don't mind looking into it (know DB and a bit of coding). I don't know the rules about changing the DB schema or adding tables.

I'll think of something (on my spare time).

Cheers

[ezechiel1917]

+1
I would love this feature.

Long time ago it was working on XBOX (before all the ports). If you scanned your media on cd/dvds to library and wanted to play something offline, CD/DVD xxx was requested (with simple dialogue window). After library redesing it was removed and nobody was interested anymore to make it working like that again (because you should have all your stuff online, I was told Even with today's sizes of HDDs this could be really useful for big libraries of mkvs, if you don't want tons of HDDs running.

[donabi]

yes, many posts with many ideas.
my idea:
add an extra expression for offline-media.
if it is a dvd, the ending of the file should be mymovie.dvd
and that "filetype" could get its on library entry.

just an idea.


actually i'm using fake-files and added the "file-name"-info string to the invo-view.
instead of the writer of the movie i get the filename in the info-screen.
for example:
204.mpg
so, by pressing the info-button, i see where to look for the movie.
this is the way i store those files:
f/movie/matrix/204.mpg
this is fine, as long you don't use aeons fake-flag support.

[yop289]

Hi,

I'm also interested in this feature

[budo]

In my opinion this would not be a great feature... it's an ESSENTIAL one!

Really... we have many many many movies... and it's impossibile to have all of them in just one harddrive (and just imagine what would happen if it breaks) or to connect several drives to the same PC...
... and finally we have many many many DVDs which are, by nature, external pluggable storage media.
So it's really a pitty that XBMC core team is not going to implement support for this scenario, that is IMHO the more frequent one.
I'm wondering how they (the developers) are using XBMC in their life, how the organize their movie files/DVD. I'm asking this not for flaming!!! just to have some ideas: if nobody in the development team feels the need for such support, then perhaps I'm not using XBMC in the right way? there's a better way to organize media? (but please don't answer "use a single or fixed HDD" please, it's impossible).
...
I've noticed that in Linux, when you connect a USB device, it's mounted in a directory with the name of the volume... for example if it's a HDD with label "MY_ANIME_1" it's mounted in "/media/MY_ANIME_1"... this is very usefull since XBMC won't confuse dirs/files of different HDD... so what is really missing is just having XBMC say "Insert/connect media MY_ANIME_1" when pressing "play" in the Library View for a movie that is in that media (that is still unconnected) instead of just doing nothing...
Even having the Skin present the name that follows "/media/" in the movie file path would be enough to accomplish the work!
...
So, Spiff, in your opinion, are there any chances of having such "prompt" implemented?
... if not, the idea to just present the name of the media using Skin programming, instead of modifying XBMC core code, is a viable solution? does skinning have such capabilities?
Thanks to all of you for your work!