[bleze]

Is support for profiles in there for those of us having kids?

[charrua]

OK...
thanks again......
So finally.... just to see if I understood the benefits of this little trick....
Let's suppose (like in my case) I have :
1 NAS
2 PCs (PC1 and PC2) win7 running XBMC
With this configuration, this is what will happen:
1 - I insert a new Movie into my NAS shared folder
2 - Go to PC1 and from within XBMC, I download ALL the new movie info from
my online scraper website (mymovies.it). So I get the movie cover jpg,
the fanart, the movie related info...etc, etc
3 - Go to PC2, and theoretically, browsing the same media sources I should
be able to have ALL those movie info, movie cover, movie fanart,
etc etc WITHOUT DOING ANY EXTRA STEPS.......
Did I miss something or did I include something Wrong
I'm sorry for this extra clarification.....

Clarification is good...
Pretty much you got the concept of it, just one part of point 3 is not completely true: the movie covers, fanart and actor images are locally cached by XBMC, when you have a central database setup, there are some situations in which XBMC has problems building the local image cache from an instance that wasn't the one that scraped the media files, read back this same thread for details of the problem and possible solutions.

[bradvido88]

OK...

1 - I insert a new Movie into my NAS shared folder

2 - Go to PC1 and from within XBMC, I download ALL the new movie info from
my online scraper website (mymovies.it). So I get the movie cover jpg,
the fanart, the movie related info...etc, etc

3 - Go to PC2, and theoretically, browsing the same media sources I should
be able to have ALL those movie info, movie cover, movie fanart,
etc etc WITHOUT DOING ANY EXTRA STEPS.......

Almost... You will have all the movie information shared across all your XBMC instances, but the thumbnails, cover, fanart and any pictures are not shared, they are locally cached

EDIT -- charrua is too quick!

[charrua]

Almost... You will have all the movie information shared across all your XBMC instances, but the thumbnails, cover, fanart and any pictures are not shared, they are locally cached

EDIT -- charrua is too quick!

Just for writing, my friend...

[rtrimarchi]

Originally Posted by bradvido88
Almost... You will have all the movie information shared across all your XBMC instances, but the thumbnails, cover, fanart and any pictures are not shared, they are locally cached

so....

if I want to have the same info (covers and fanarts included) basically I will have to download the new movie infos ALSO from the PC2

[bradvido88]

so....

if I want to have the same info (covers and fanarts included) basically I will have to download the new movie infos ALSO from the PC2

AFAIK, yes you will. I'm still working out a system for my multiple XBMC instances, but from what I've seen, if you want the fanart/images on the XBMC which did not originally scrape the movie, then you have to re-scrape on the second instance.

Someone please correct me if i'm wrong. Like i said, I'm still trying to work this out myself.

So far this central MySQL DB just adds nice features like "follow me" and keeping "watched" flags synced. It also syncs all the movie info (text-info), but you get anyway that when you have to re-scrape to get the fanart.

There was talk about storing the image URLs in the DB, to avoid this problem. But i'm not sure what that status is or if it still a viable solution

[charrua]

so....
if I want to have the same info (covers and fanarts included) basically I will have to download the new movie infos ALSO from the PC2

Nope, I told you to read back your own thread:

I'm using this solution and it is pretty great. The thing that will make it kick@$$ is when the thumbs/fanart gets rolled into it.
Current i still have to do a manual update on all my XBMC instances in order to keep fanart updated in all.

There are two alternative methods for that right now:

a-Copy the thumbnails folder from the XBMC where you scraped the media files and paste it into the XBMC userdata folder of the other XBMC clients.

b-After scraping new media files, in the other instances of XBMC (not the one that scraped the files) go and browse the new files in file-view (instead of library-view).

jmarshall is currently working on a better image cache system, having in mind the central db schema among other things.

[bradvido88]

jmarshall is currently working on a better image cache system, having in mind the central db schema among other things.

For more info see these threads:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=37315
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=55794 (developer thread)

[charrua]

AFAIK, yes you will. I'm still working out a system for my multiple XBMC instances, but from what I've seen, if you want the fanart/images on the XBMC which did not originally scrape the movie, then you have to re-scrape on the second instance.

Someone please correct me if i'm wrong. Like i said, I'm still trying to work this out myself.

So far this central MySQL DB just adds nice features like "follow me" and keeping "watched" flags synced. It also syncs all the movie info (text-info), but you get anyway that when you have to re-scrape to get the fanart.

There was talk about storing the image URLs in the DB, to avoid this problem. But i'm not sure what that status is or if it still a viable solution

I disagree with the first part, there are some "not perfect" solutions posted before that save you from scraping all the media again with every XBMC client to have all the images in the local cache.

Regarding the storing of URIs (not URLs) in the db, the status as far as I know is still pending some details at definition level.

[bradvido88]

I disagree with the first part, there are some "not perfect" solutions posted before that save you from scraping all the media again with every XBMC client to have all the images in the local cache..

Care to elaborate on any automated solutions? Any links?

[charrua]

Care to elaborate on any automated solutions? Any links?

I didn't say anything about automated solutions, I just said that there are some better solutions than to scrape everything again. I already explain two possible solutions in reply to one of your posts before... twice.

[bradvido88]

OK thanks. I thought you were referring to something else that you hadn't already posted.

For anyone interested, this is what I'm doing in the meantime until a full DB solution is implemented:
For me (personally) the easiest solution is to have XBMC automatically update the libraries at start-up in the background. You can do this by checking "update library on startup" in the gui settings, and setting "<backgroundupdate>" to true in advancedsettings.xml for library sections.

This way XBMC always rescans when it starts up, and does so in the background so the user really doesn't notice anything. I prefer this because it's "automated" in that it runs automaticaly everytime you start xbmc.

[charrua]

OK thanks. I thought you were referring to something else that you hadn't already posted.

No problem.

For anyone interested, this is what I'm doing in the meantime until a full DB solution is implemented:
For me (personally) the easiest solution is to have XBMC automatically update the libraries at start-up in the background. You can do this by checking "update library on startup" in the gui settings, and setting "<backgroundupdate>" to true in advancedsettings.xml for library sections.
This way XBMC always rescans when it starts up, and does so in the background so the user really doesn't notice anything. I prefer this because it's "automated" in that it runs automaticaly everytime you start xbmc.

Good! With each new automated scan you are adding only the media that it's not in the library central db already, so be aware that for thumbs and fanart to be in each local cache you'll still have to perform the steps listed before.

[rtrimarchi]

I'm sorry guys

Now I remember the two other options

At this point I think I willpostpone a little more this option....

For me covers and fanarts are very important...and as of now there is no a real automated solution....easy at the same time....

But for sure now I know much more about xbmc

Thanks to you all

[charrua]

I'm sorry guys
Now I remember the two other options
At this point I think I willpostpone a little more this option....
For me covers and fanarts are very important...and as of now there is no a real automated solution....easy at the same time....

Yes, that's correct. No fully automated solution for image caching yet.

But for sure now I know much more about xbmc
Thanks to you all

Always a good thing