Messages

Could it be possible to use the code/program Tellico. Tellico has been round for a long time and is built to manage collections of things like Books, Films, Music, DVD's, Wine etc.

It already has many scripts to go to imdb, amazon etc to get the information to tag files. Could we use these scripts to save us reinventing the wheel and just port the XML files to the sql statements into our database. Thus improving our searching abilties in our media browser's as we will have better tagged files.

At the same time Telico can output AJAX enabled sites. Providing our smart homes with the abilty to catagorise anything we want and to be accessible from a webpage.

Perhaps if under media types as well as the common types such as video file etc. You could have container types for directories. Giving a way for Linuxmce to understand what directories are.
 
You could have container types such as folders containing films, and folders containing parts of one film; that way if you have Part A and Part B Mce will play both subquestionally if you defined that folder as a container of parts of films rather than just a selection of films. You could also have containers defined as seasons or tv show's which might help the structuring of TV shows in combination to the media indentifier tool i suggested in another post (if linuxmce already knew the shows season it would make searching on an online database much easier). Another useful container would be for audio albums. That way you could create playlists by album etc. Currently acording to another user you have to enter the album folder and click play-all.  Finally a photo container, you could define a container of photos as wedding pics. Then in the screensaver plugin you could tell it to just use the wedding pictures photo container for X orbiter and the childrens holiday photos container on another orbiter. Uploading new media into a pictures container would automatically put them into the screensaver if its container was in use for a oribter's screensaver.

Once MCE understands folders you could also then set attributes to them which pass on traits to files below them. So setting a film container as an attribute of video files will set the files below it as video files. For tv shows this could be useful to automatically pass on director traits, show names etc.

By having container support it should allow a user to have any type of hirachy they wish (and mce still being able to understand it) and for those who just use media identification to still be able to  browse easily whilst provinding a backbone for some features of linuxmce to work better.

Whats peoples views on this?

Perhaps if under media types as well as the common types such as video file etc. You have container types for directories. Giving a way for Linuxmce to understand what directories are and to be able to differentiate between folders as seasons, folders as Shows etc. Even folders as containing films, and folders containing parts of one films. That way if you have Part A and Part B Mce will play both subquestionally if you defined that folder as a container of parts of films rather than just a selection of films. You could also then set attributes to these folders which pass on traits to files below them. So setting a film container as an attribute of video files will set the files below it as video files. For tv shows this could be useful to automatically pass on director traits, show names etc.

For TV episode information could it be possible to use www.thetvdb.com? It's very good at providing shows, episode information and images from shows in a structured way.

It should be easily possible to create a script much like the Amazon Script in combination with something like the Media Files Sync Script. When manually launched it analys videos under the folder by their path structures and then, if determined to be a TV Episode, go online and retrieve information about them. By manually being launched it will only start its navigation from the current level in the file tree. Like in my case /home/public/data/videos/raid/TV/ That way the script should not get confused and start trying to match up Films etc. In many cases i guess most people store their TV shows in a different directory to their Films for their own personal organisation.
A plugin for another piece of software (opensource but for windows) which does this is here:
http://www.team-mediaportal.com/files/Download/Plugins/VideoorMovies/MP-TVSeriesplugin/

In theory such a plugin will drastically reduce the time it takes to tag shows information and everyone who uses the tool would then have a more standerdised tagging structure for Tv. For shows that the computer has multiple options for, it can present them to the user much like the coverart tool.

Does anyone think this might be possible/a good idea?

So is there a way to turn all these Episodes of TV shows under one name. Like LOST for example and when i go into video from an orbiter instead of seeing on the left hand screen lots of episode names just the name Lost. Much like when i go into Audio i get my albums, and their songs.

I have added to my tv sersis of HEX these atributes (folowered by an example):
Title - The Story Begins
Program - Hex
Episode - 1
Release Date -
Director - Brian Grant
Composer/Writer - Lucy Watkins

Its set as
Type: LinuxMCE Video File
Media Sub-type: TV shows
File format: Standard def

These files are in turn in a folder called Season 1. And this is in a folder called HEX.

Is there a way for the files in video file viewer to only appear as one, HEX and in turn clicking HEX i get the seasons, and in that get the file. WITHOUT going into filename mode. Much like how audio from the orbiter works. Or is what im asking impossible?

Im doing it as i have ALOT of tv shows. As media browser defaults upon entry to everything tagged Video file everything gets loaded. It makes the screen look very unelegant and only looks nice once i change the filter over to movies. This is because i have serious problems with my TV shows. Ideally i would like them to default to a tree structure but again this is an option i have to press. Even if i was able to tag all my tv shows they would still appear as a big long list of videos to my system, (this is also causing problems on my mobile phone orbiter as it cant handle a few thousand videos in a list and becomes impossible to navigate). My tagging of tv shows are limited primarily to being unable to search for them on amazon as it just shows up as a box set. Trying to manually set it i dont know what kind of attributes are required which will help the problem and will take a few centuries to do. Last check was 2000 odd tv shows episodes. I wish there was something similar to Media Portals TV sersis plugin for tv shows as this would look incredibly elegant and easy to use. Currently my friends when they come over get put off when they want to watch something click videos and bamm a massive list. A word of guidance and they change the filter over to movies and they are then very confortable.
I would like any advice to solve this problem generically. My current wish for scenarios was just a way of tacklering this overall problem.

Im currently trying to create a button on my orbiter to allow me to just show Movies, and Another to just show TV. I know i can select this from options in the video browser itself but I would find two buttons to go to each quicker. From the scenarios ive created one which uses the Media-Wiz File/Disc as the template. And set the scenario commands to Show file list. However the value is PK_mediaType. Which i dont think will alow me to select media by the type of video it is aka TV show, Movie etc. Instead this value will select currently LinuxmceDVD,VideoFile,Game etc. Surely i want it as the Pk_MediaSubType so i can specify Movies or TV. Ive currently looked at the linuxmce DceCommands and added under Orbiter and associated it to orbiters Show media subtype. I then assigned a parmeter to it Description: PK_MediaSubType and type: int. I can then assign this command to my button and select a value aka 1 for tv shows, 2 for movies etc. But this button dosnt work. What am i doing wrong and how can i go about fixing it?
Thanks

Ive been followering LinuxMce for a while now and so far these are my experiences with the project:

Installation:
As long as you select recommended hardware everything goes without a hitch. Thanks to the AVwizard setting up audio and HDTV resolutions is much easier than manual ways. Kinda wish sometimes this tool appeared in standard distros. Only downside is the ATI problems, although this i believe is related to the driver from ATI itself.

Functionality:
Very good, having most devices plug and play is definatly good. Being able to use my remote straight out of the box is what i want from a media center. UI2 is also quite plesant and fancy to people. Only improvement I would particulary like is a way to turn flikr off if i don't want it. I have hundreds of my own pictures that I like appearing on the screens around the house, its just disappointing when your mum walks in and some raunchy pic from flikr shows up or a picture that dosnt display well comes on.

Javamo: Now this is a uber cool app which friends really enjoy. Being able to control the media center from a phone seems really only do-able from linuxmce. And im enjoying seeing this develop.

Event creation: this has two halves to it, on one hand i find it easy to use if i want basic things like lights down at sundown. Which is good. However say i want my outdoor lights on at sundown but want my lights inside my house to come on an hour before sun-down as the house gets dark around that time. I find i can not find easily locate such abilties in the event creation tool although im convinced people have done it.

Media final organisation: this is where i feel Linuxmce lacks behind abit. For movies this feature works very well and happy. I just click the file, search for it on amazon and volia. Only problem occurs when a film dosnt exist on amazon but does on IMDB. Like Operation Takedown. It would be useful if there was a manual feature to just type in an IMDB number (like in Mythtv) when i struggle auto-searching for a film and get it to pull down data that way.

and the biggie: TV shows.

This section provided me alot of problems. I have alot of tv-show sersis. And they are all stuctured nicely by Program name-Season-Episode. They appear in the video file window much trying to get information about a show is terrible. If i auto search on amazon it cant find (which is wernt expecting it to find individaul episodes). And trying to manually type in info is a laborious task and i have yet to be able to find a way to do it properly for the attributes. Atm i run a sql script that recursively sets some default values to seperate movies from tv shows. If there could be someway to get this part to work i would be eternally greatful. As at the moment i enter videos from a MD and i get hundreds of non-human readable file names of my shows (24 6x22) which isnt very user friendly. Then a few clicks to change the filter to movies and volia what i like to see. Just wish my tv shows could be the same. Also it might be an idea to default the video screen upon entry to Movies. As when you have TV shows there will always be many more episodes to films, which fills up lists quick and kills my Javmo . Alternatively TV shows could be organised in a tree like manner so i can select Stargate and it then shows the Season, Episode etc. Rather than just putting the file name in the linuxmce video tree. Obviously the reason why this isnt working at the moment is due to the way tv-shows are currently organised by the sync tool. I can set the tv-shows tag and this allows them to appear in the tv-shows filter but this is as far as it goes.

Features that would be sub zero cool- Voice control and Voice response. Now if this could be there goodbye any other media center. Think something like SARAH from In A Town Called Eureka. Although my girlfriend might be a little un-nerved by a 'Good-evening Professor Falcon, Would you like to Play a game of Chess' but i would find a chess playing house very good. :p

Raid: more of an off-topic one. But i have a raid 0 array of 3 drives. I add it to linuxmce my editing the mdadm conf file. I then add a device to linuxmce as an internal hard drive as it dosnt pick up the raid device and i specify /dev/md1 say. It then does set up the device and appear. However theres data on these drives already but sorted into the linuxmce structure. It dosnt add symlinks in for me, but if i add them manually they have a tendancy to disappear. Until i remake the sym link then rerun a media sync. Any ideas what could be causing this?

Other than that i find linuxmce a very promising project and would like to contuinue using it.

Solved! Plugged in a different bluetooth dongle and it connected imediadatly. Seems like the previous dongle although worked in linux and could pick up devices could not connect to devices. Unlike this dongle

actually the device died error dosnt stop it keeps on going. All the time that it picks up my phone regardless if its running javamo or not. The log fills up quite quickly!

Ah cool thanks. Got the log file copied up to my laptop. This is the contents:

== ATTEMPT FRESH START ==
1   06/26/08 21:40:57   /usr/pluto/bin/Spawn_Device.sh 76 (spawning-device)   16558 Dev: 76; Already Running list: 15,16,17,18,20,29,21,22,
== FRESH START ==
1   06/26/08 21:40:57   /usr/pluto/bin/Spawn_Device.sh 76 (spawning-device)   device: 76 ip: localhost cmd_line: LaunchBluetooth_Dongle.sh
0   06/26/08 21:40:57   76 (spawning-device)   Entering 76
========== NEW LOG SECTION ==========
1   06/26/08 21:40:57   76 (spawning-device)   Starting... 1
1   06/26/08 21:40:57   76 (spawning-device)   Found /usr/pluto/bin/LaunchBluetooth_Dongle.sh
05   06/26/08 21:41:04.098      Inquiry started <0xb6814b90>
05   06/26/08 21:41:22.280      Detected device mac: 00:05:C9:2E:DC:9C link quality: 0 <0xb5011b90>
05   06/26/08 21:41:22.285      Ignoring MAC: 00:05:C9:2E:DC:9C <0xb5812b90>
05   06/26/08 21:41:22.470      Inquiry complete
 <0xb6814b90>
05   06/26/08 21:41:22.471      Inquiry started <0xb6814b90>
05   06/26/08 21:41:22.471      Detected device mac: 00:1E:3A:30:5D:6F link quality: 0 <0xb5011b90>
05   06/26/08 21:41:22.474      About to connect to PlutoMO. We'll suspend scanning... <0xb5812b90>
05   06/26/08 21:41:22.474      Suspending scanning... <0xb5812b90>
Return code: 139
3   06/26/08 21:41:22   76 (spawning-device)   Device died... count=1/50 dev=76
Thu Jun 26 21:41:22 BST 2008 died
========== NEW LOG SECTION ==========
1   06/26/08 21:41:32   76 (spawning-device)   Starting... 2
1   06/26/08 21:41:32   76 (spawning-device)   Found /usr/pluto/bin/LaunchBluetooth_Dongle.sh
05   06/26/08 21:41:38.014      Inquiry started <0xb685db90>
05   06/26/08 21:41:51.074      Detected device mac: 00:1E:3A:30:5D:6F link quality: 0 <0xb505ab90>
05   06/26/08 21:41:51.077      About to connect to PlutoMO. We'll suspend scanning... <0xb585bb90>
05   06/26/08 21:41:51.077      Suspending scanning... <0xb585bb90>
Return code: 139
3   06/26/08 21:41:51   76 (spawning-device)   Device died... count=2/50 dev=76
Thu Jun 26 21:41:51 BST 2008 died

The Device died keeps going on and on until i stop the app on my phone. So im guessing something is trying to connect but having problems?..

I dont have a Bluetooth_Dongle_Launcher in the /var/log/pluto folder on the core. Could this be hinting at an underlying problem on my core? I do have 76_LaunchBluetooth_Dongle.sh.log in that folder though.

Im having some problems getting javamo working:

Hardware:
Nokia 6300 (with V 06.01 firmware)
Bluetooth Dongle
Core/Hybrid Linuxmce 7.10 i386

Ive copied to the core in /usr/pluto/lib the file libBDCommon.so from http://vt100.at/javamo/ . I rebooted the core. I sent from my laptop over bluetooth to my phone the .jar and .jad files and the manifest.mf file. I then loaded the app on my phone and it says 'waiting for connection'. My core picked up the phone and presents the usual phone adding menu. I select Symbian and it sends a file to my phone. I reject the file and the core says sending failed. I tell it not to send again. I then reboot the core. It generates some orbiter screens and then loads into its UI. The phone still says 'waiting for connection'. If i leave the app and enter back into it, it stills says 'waiting for connection'. Have i missed something or is javamo incomptabile with my phone?
Thanks