Where do you want MC to go next? (Suggested Feature List)

I was thinking it would be convenient if you could edit multiple movies at once. For instance, sometimes I want to set the genre of a bunch of movies to the same genre, it would be nice to be able to select them all and edit the field and then hit save to update them all. This feature would also be nice when adding movies to sets.

Thanks for all your hard work and for listening to our opinions about your brilliant software.

What is your view on going open source? Post the source to Google code and you can still be the main approver of checkins. You can even integrate Google code with visual studio. That way others can contribute to your project.

leewsimpson wrote:

What is your view on going open source? Post the source to Google code and you can still be the main approver of checkins. You can even integrate Google code with visual studio. That way others can contribute to your project.

I have no big problem with open source, but I am unsure about whether people would easily be able to read my code. While I know the program inside out, there are not many remarks and little documentation. To make things worse, I taught myself to program, and I would imagine that a great many of my methods are unusual.

Additionally, I have no idea how open source works.

Obviously people can arange to work on different classes, but the vast majority of the code is in a single class (18,000 lines of code), even more so since I started using a single form with tabs. How do people keep their work in sync.

TBH open source does appeal to me, I feel there is much I could learn, there are a couple of places where I know there are better methods of achieving something, but have been unable to wrap my head around the method.
The ammout of time I can spend on MC is limited, I have a job, a family with 3 young kids, and I am studying part time for a degree so development would certainly be faster if I had help, i'm just not sure how easily it would be to implement, I have just rewritten MC and I don't really want to stall development another 6 months repeating this, nor do I want to spend an enormous ammount of time explaining the code.

I would second going open source even though you have stated the code is mainly in one class I being a C# developer myself would be interested in helping improve the code in both readability and speed, I think a large startup speed increase could be gained at least.

If you are interested in open sourcing take a look at sourceforge.net or google code for hosting and how CVS (Current Versioning Systems) work for commit and rollback of code changes. A common type of CVS is subversion.

Also if you are doing a degree (I assume in computer science or similar) it is a very good thing to have on your CV that you have run an open source project and also used a CVS system as most people initially code on their own so don't need to worry about this stuff.

From the sounds of the single class approach you currently have it might be better for a single developer to get a grip of your code before open sourcing and have a re-arrange. Most professional developers will have tools such as resharper or refactor pro for quickly re-arranging code like this to make it easier to maintain. You should lookup these tools too if you are generally interested in improving your development experience.

Just using 3.198 (thanks for the update) and a I had an idea. You've implemented locking completed shows to stop it searching these folders to speed things up. Have you considered expanding this function to within an open show to locking completed seasons? For example Top Gear is still in production but is currently at Season 14. We need to still be able to add new episodes but there are 13 seasons that don't need to be looked at every week. This could speed things up even further.

On the issue of going OpenSource:

Open-sourcing the code would be great. I think the initial point of interest for any contributing developers would be breaking it down into a more modular application. If done properly, users could simply write scripts for handling various tasks, leaving the main body of the code untouched. If someone wanted to handle music for example, they could write their own script for the task and share it. If the script exists in the directory, MC runs it. Another user could work on renaming. Scraper updates could be handled by people who are familiar with a specific API rather than one person trying to write them all. People could write their own rule scripts, create override lists for commonly misidentified movies... the possibilities are endless, and no one needs to touch the core program. Making MC scriptable would empower the users to make any modifications they want, share them with others, and that author could support their own work.

The down side is the existing code would have to be reviewed and changed again to facilitate this. Basically, you would begin by writing a new class to read in scripts from a subdirectory, and execute them. Then the existing functions would be transferred to their own files. Each would need a method for overriding, and a priority system for each script. It's doable, and there seem to be a few people here with enough experience to help initially.

The main advantage to this is being able to run down minor bugs with a user submitted script, rather than compiling a new version for every change and documenting it.

billyad2000 wrote:

I have no big problem with open source, but I am unsure about whether people would easily be able to read my code. While I know the program inside out, there are not many remarks and little documentation. To make things worse, I taught myself to program, and I would imagine that a great many of my methods are unusual.

Additionally, I have no idea how open source works.

Obviously people can arange to work on different classes, but the vast majority of the code is in a single class (18,000 lines of code), even more so since I started using a single form with tabs. How do people keep their work in sync.

TBH open source does appeal to me, I feel there is much I could learn, there are a couple of places where I know there are better methods of achieving something, but have been unable to wrap my head around the method.
The ammout of time I can spend on MC is limited, I have a job, a family with 3 young kids, and I am studying part time for a degree so development would certainly be faster if I had help, i'm just not sure how easily it would be to implement, I have just rewritten MC and I don't really want to stall development another 6 months repeating this, nor do I want to spend an enormous ammount of time explaining the code.

Billy, is the majority of the code really in a single class that's in a single file, or is it broken out into multiple files as a large partial class? On your worry noted above, any good developer should be able to figure out what your doing... There shouldn't be any "explaining of the code" necessary. Petebob796's post directly following yours was a pretty good rundown.

trunk = main development path
branch = sub development path (or module)
tag = release or snapshot refrence

Using an open-source repository service(source forge or googlecode) would allow all the dev's to use CVS to contribute to the code repository(or branch or trunk.. pending settings and authorizations). CVS allows you (or each developer) to contribute to a branch or area of development. It handles version control and conflict resolution to prevent two developers from overwriting each others code. As an example, there could be four branches: Core, TVShows, Movies, and Music. Each of these branches could have one or more developers that contribute to them. When your are ready to push a release you(or someone else) would merge down the branches into the trunk to release it (and also create a Tag in the repository to bookmark it). You could then at anytime revert or roll back pieces of any one of the four modules if needed. example two: Core, TVShows are ready, but Movies and Music modules are not.... To release, you would merge the Core, TVShows, and previous "tag" releases of Movies and Music. This allows those modules to continue to be worked on while the other modules get pushed as an update or revision.

Take a look at VisualSVN as a nice GUI plugin for Visual Studio to control the CVS Repository system. They provide a free licenses to open-source projects, so this should qualify.

Just as petebob796's post, this is a short "quick and dirty" rundown and only touches the ideas and methodologies, not the inner details. I am however guessing the technical know-how to contribute is here and trolling the forums. I'd be happy to help you get the open-source project started, or inspect your code-base as it is and make recommendations to better prepare the project for that direction.

Vlatro wrote:

Open-sourcing the code would be great. I think the initial point of interest for any contributing developers would be breaking it down into a more modular application. If done properly, users could simply write scripts for handling various tasks, leaving the main body of the code untouched.

For this kind of app there would need to be interface classes written to make it modular as you suggest. Other then scripting settings (e.g. scrapper parameter updates) I don't see how "scripts" would work things other then parameters, formats, or basically settings... They'd need to be full blown modules (eg. DLL's under a windows environment as MC is currently) abiding or plugged into those interfaces for any medium to heavy pieces of code.


.

billyad2000 wrote:

I have no big problem with open source, but I am unsure about whether people would easily be able to read my code. While I know the program inside out, there are not many remarks and little documentation. To make things worse, I taught myself to program, and I would imagine that a great many of my methods are unusual.

Don't worry too much about readability. Most people can work it out. For example with my recent post on UI issues I could have edited the source, and you just needed to click to accept or reject each difference. Doesn't require too much understanding of the code.

Quote :

Additionally, I have no idea how open source works.

Wow. Do you mean the mechanics or the philosophy?
This is the nightmare part - how much control do you want to give away? this will determine the license and the places you can store the code. I would suggest reading through the pages on code.google.com.
Are you prepared for someone to take your code and re-use it/develop it in a different direction?

Quote :

Obviously people can arange to work on different classes, but the vast majority of the code is in a single class (18,000 lines of code), even more so since I started using a single form with tabs. How do people keep their work in sync.

Keeping in sync is a matter of using versioning tools like subversion, git, mercurial. (look at wikipedia for further details) These tools can be integrated into dev tools such as Visual Studio.

You would have two code directories on your machine. A master would be held somewhere it is the definitive source. You check the code out to your working directory where you do all your development, compiling, etc. (e.g. check out the imdb scraper code.)
You check in the code, adding comments. The versioning system compares the code creating a diff set or patch, or just a straight merge.

You can then sync the master to a public repository such as code.google.com, along with the information in the patch.

I would then come along and either download the patch and apply, or sync with the repo in which case I would download the difference in the imdb scraper. Recompile and we will have the same config.

You can then get into branches which allow you to do testing of specific problems, whilst keeping the main-line code. You can then merge the changes or discard the branch entirely.

I in the meantime have added a new scraper which adds a new directory tree and new functions to the main class, a new window tab, etc. I upload my changeset to the public repo, you download it syncing with a new branch tag, and check for problems. You then integrate or discard the relevant patch(es).

There would also need to be a dialogue mechanism between you, other devs, feature reqs, etc. so that people don't duplicate effort at the expense of other features or problems.

Quote :

TBH open source does appeal to me, I feel there is much I could learn, there are a couple of places where I know there are better methods of achieving something, but have been unable to wrap my head around the method.

Quote :

... if I had help, i'm just not sure how easily it would be to implement, I have just rewritten MC and I don't really want to stall development another 6 months repeating this, nor do I want to spend an enormous ammount of time explaining the code.

perhaps mail the code to a couple of people to give them a look, and comment on?
depending on what they say you could then decide on opening it up.

From what you were saying earlier about the 18000 lines in a single class, you would benefit from 1) auto-source-documenting, and 2) exporting the code into manageable code chunks.
eg. in the mc\src directory there would be
\gui\main
\gui\movie
\gui\movietab
\scraper\codemain
\scraper\movie-imdb
\scraper\tv-thetvdb
\parser\xml
\parser\json
\nfo\reader
\nfo\writer
\files\dirwalker
\lang\english
\lang\german
\images\
\websupport\localcache
\websupport\proxy

This will "force" you into thinking about genericising certain code elements, and so think about as what level bit of code and needs input and output.

for example if you want to enable translatation of MC into different languages, you need to abstract the display strings so
(this is all psuedo-code)

if lang==
de (MOVIES=" ", TVSHOWS=" ",... );
es (MOVIES=" ", TVSHOWS=" ",... ) ;
else {
lang = en
(MOVIES="Movies", TVSHOWS="TV Shows", etc.);
}


and so your could would read

disp_button (type,posx,posy,height,width,MOVIES,clickevent());
instead of
disp_button (type,posx,posy,height,width,"Movies",clickevent());

another would be genericising the webscraper class to allow additional scrapers with minimal effort.



Regards,
Mark

There's a feature that would really help me.

I'd already burnt a lot of AVIs to DVD before I found MC and it seems the only way to scrape them now is to copy the files to my hard drive first, which would be too much work.

I originally thought if there was a way to scrape a DVD full of AVIs and have MC store the .nfo, .tbn, .jpg files on a designated folder on the hard drive, that would be the solution but thinking about it some more, it would actually just be quicker if I could type in the name and year of the film and have MC add them to it's list and scrape them, as if it had found the AVI itself.

To make this process as speedy as possible, I'd like to either be able to quickly enter each movies details one after the other and only have MC scrape them when I've finished, or perhaps even easier would be if MC could import these details from a simple .txt file, with one movie on each line in the format "Movie Name (year)" (without the quotes). Perhaps this way would cut down on the work required, in terms of additions to the GUI at least, to implement this feature.

Apologies if this is already possible. I've already learnt several times that MC has hidden depths, but if this isn't currently possible, I'd be so happy if it could be implemented some time.

doveman wrote:

I'd already burnt a lot of AVIs to DVD before I found MC and it seems the only way to scrape them now is to copy the files to my hard drive first, which would be too much work.

this is the offline folders feature. you don't need the files, you just need the name which can be gotten by 0-byting a filename for MC to scrape.

doveman wrote:

I originally thought if there was a way to scrape a DVD full of AVIs and have MC store the .nfo, .tbn, .jpg files on a designated folder on the hard drive, that would be the solution but thinking about it some more, it would actually just be quicker if I could type in the name and year of the film and have MC add them to it's list and scrape them, as if it had found the AVI itself.

You can do this, but it is not worth the effort, as you only need the file names that are consistent with the source ie. thetvdb.com / *.imdb.com

There is an offline feature that does what you want, certainly in movies, and I think in Tv as well. (not at the computer I normally use). I definitely know I've posted a message with how to do this. Search for my name and it will be within the last 10 posts.

Hi marked

I looked at your posts but couldn't see anything that tells me how to do what I want.

If the only way to do it currently is to create fake 0-byte files for each movie, I'm sure you appreciate that would be rather tedious and slow compared to just typing in the filenames, either directly into MC or into a text file that MC can read.

doveman...

MC can now handle Offline Movies, and create a 16 second movie clip that serves as a place holder for the DVD/Blu Ray.
To get this to work you need to follow the following steps.

• Decide where you want to store your offline movie collections and add this folder to the new 'Offline Movie Folders' list in the folders tab.
  
• For each offline movie you wish to add, create a folder, named after the movie you wish to add,
  eg.
  C:\Offline Movies\
  C:\Offline Movies\Star Trek (2009)
  C:\Offline Movies\Batman Begins (2005)
  
• The Year is not needed, but it can increase scraper accuracy.
  
• Search for new movies as normal, MC will hopefully identify the movie and create any files such as nfo, poster, and fanart, aswell as a 16 second movie clip of using the fanart.
  
• Rescraping, batch scraping, or selecting new fanart should update the movie clip accordingly.

from release notes of v3.265
https://billyad2000.darkbb.com/announcements-f1/new-release-media-companion-gen2-3265-t1094.htm

There are programs on the internet that can create a folder structure base on a txt file of names. This is how I did it in a few steps to go from my list of offline avi's to a folder structure to suit MC. If you need help, I can find those apps again for you.

Cheers

Hi StormyKnight

Thanks for explaining the process.

Having to create a folder for each movie seems a strange and unnecessarily long-winded way of handling Offline Movies but if that's what we've got at the moment then I would be grateful if you could point me to the apps you mentioned to do the folder creation based on a txt file.

I could do without the placeholder clip as well. Is there a way to disable the creation of these?

In fact, it seems perhaps it would be easier for me to ignore the Offline Movies feature and just create the fake 0-byte files that marked was talking about, if there's program that can do this based on a txt file. Do you happen to know of any such app? Even if it doesn't automatically add the .avi extension, I think I could select all the files and add this with one of the auto-rename apps that I've got, so that shouldn't be a problem.

The concept of the offline movies was so that you could have all the benefits of the details about a movie right there in either MC or XBMC. Using dummy avi's was the way we used to do it, however the offline method has a few extra advantages.

When you play the movie in MC or XBMC, you get a video that shows you that the DVD needs to be inserted to play it. Otherwise it will try & run the zero length avi.
In MC you can filter you offline movies from your online ones which allow you to filter say for example what is listed in the table view or perhaps what is exported as html.

I will find the programs I used to create the folder structure, I remember trying quite a few to get the steps I needed to be done so I will have to remember which ones did what & how

Cheers

doveman wrote:

if you could point me to the apps you mentioned to do the folder creation based on a txt file.

Create a text file with the names of the movies/tv episodes eg. movies.txt

from a command line prompt in the directory you want the movies, eg. x:\movies

for /f "delims=;" %f in (movies.txt) do mkdir "%f"

if you want 0 byte files
for /f "delims=;" %f in (movies.txt) do mkdir "%f" & touch "%f\%f.avi"

so for example
Alien
Aliens
X-Men (2000)
X-Men 2 (2003)
X-Men 3

would end up as
x:\movies\Alien\Alien.avi
x:\movies\Aliens\Aliens.avi
x:\movies\X-Men (2000)\X-Men (2000).avi
x:\movies\X-Men 2 (2003)\X-Men 2 (2003).avi
x:\movies\X-Men 3\X-Men 3.avi

touch is a program used to modify time, creation date, last accessed, last modified timestamps. I use the one from cygwin. GnuWin32 also has it.
you need the delims=; parameter otherwise you'll end up with single word directories.

you may also be able to use echo >"%f\%f.avi" instead of touch but I can't remember if redirection will work for this case.

Yes I have a similar method to marked, but I found a program to do the last bit...

STEP1

From a command prompt in the directory containing the avi's type

dir *.avi /b > folderlist.txt

Basically this does a directory listing of all the avi's without the header & footer information & writes it to a text file.


STEP2

Download Folder Creator... & Install 1.3MB

http://www.tonysfreeware.com/download/FolderCreator5.0.exe

STEP3

Run the creator & maximize it, it is easier to see whats happening this way.

Ignore the browse files section
Select the Get Text section & then in the upper window choose Load File
Locate the text file created before using the command line

Select the tick in the upper right corner for "Remove Ext" - this strips the ".avi's" from the files.

In the middle you should see a folder structure created.

Now select Browse from the top menu & select the root folder for your new folder structure to go into.

Lastly choose Create

Cheers

Hey Billy,

I was roaming around the XBMC forums and I noticed a site called xbmcstuff.com

One of the features that they have on the site is called 'TV Show Thumbnails' These thumbnails are like mini-fanart which replace the folder.jpg

These thumbnails (i think) look really good with a lot of the skins, and I was wondering if it would be possible to add in an option to scrape those thumbnails during the initial show scrape in MC. This way people would have a choice of banners, posters and thumbnails (mini-fanart).

http://www.themurrayworld.com/xbmc/paul-2.png

The above is an example of what the mini-thumbnail looks like (the Heroes picture, not the logos on top).

I know that someone has already written a plugin to download files from xbmcstuff, which is how I have gotten the thumbnails for now.

Thanks!!

EDIT:: I also forgot to add that something you could think about is music scraping functionality.

Great job, new to XBMC, MC combined with a small media renaming program called ZEEB to rename all my movie files (only took about two hours to sit through renaming 800 movie files) gave me about 99% accuracy for thumbnails... You should look into a similar renaming function.

Also, for the outlying thumbnails I couldnt get from the IMDB, etc, I found them through google images... maybe should consider adding them as a source if all else fails !!!!!!

AGAIN, AWESOME THANKS !!

Thanks marked and StormyKnight for the tips.

I've been too busy to try them out as every piece of tech I own seems to be developing faults and all of the 5 tech items I've ordered in the last couple of weeks have been faulty as well, so it's been quite trying

I still wish that MC could just work from a text file, but your tips will come in handy in the meantime. I'm probably using MC slightly differently to most people as I tend to have my movies offline, so just use MC as a handy database which lets me see what movies I have.

doveman wrote:

Thanks marked and StormyKnight for the tips.

I've been too busy to try them out as every piece of tech I own seems to be developing faults and all of the 5 tech items I've ordered in the last couple of weeks have been faulty as well, so it's been quite trying

I still wish that MC could just work from a text file, but your tips will come in handy in the meantime. I'm probably using MC slightly differently to most people as I tend to have my movies offline, so just use MC as a handy database which lets me see what movies I have.

I am assuming that you want to be able to create a movie list within a text file and import it into MC to be turned into offline movies.

The easiest way for me to achieve this would be to keep the current method - but add the facility for MC to create the needed folders in the offline directory from such a list.

Would that be suitable for you.

That would be a great help as then I wouldn't have to create the folders myself.

However, I would prefer not to have the folders created at all, but rather have the .nfo, .tbn and .jpg files just created in a designated folder (eg Movie Info), as to keep things tidy I currently move all the files for offline movies to this one folder, which obviously I have set MC to scan.

I understand though that it might be too much work to code MC to do this and if so I can just manually move the files from the created folders to my one folder before deleting the redundant folders.

I've searched the forum for such a feature, but the results didn't show any hits.

I'd like to see the ability to back up everything (nfo's, tbn's, fanart, dummy video file (iso) etc) to another location.

I already have a back up that mirrors my server on my WinPC. I keep all the files - including a dummy iso under a folder for each specific movie/TV Show. All my nfo's are modded (re-written etc) to reflect my tastes and the ability to be able to write to a back up location and restore the server from a back up location would be great. Currently this is all done manually and requires a considerable amount of work. I also like this ability because you could essentially mod either the server or the backup and still be able to restore should the results be less the satisfactory. (Or even offer a restore feature in case you want to revert)

My directory tree follows this format - ServerName/disk (1,2,3,4 etc)/movies(1,2,3,etc)/Individual Movie Folder. TV Shows follow a similar format.

This is a great piece of software. Well done and thx for your efforts.

Personally I use posters for my TV shows to keep things looking consistent throughout my whole library. However, I have just discovered the XBMC remote for Android phones and it (while still in Alpha) is a pretty awesome thing using posters for almost everything. For tv shows however it looks for banner.jpg in the directory for shows but then the poster (seasonXX.tbn) for seasons.

My question is: is it possible to download both the folder.jpg and banner.jpg for shows (+ be able to browse TVDB etc and change them similar to posters). I'm sorry if this is worded inneloquently.

Hi, first of all this is some great software! Thank you so much for giving your time to develop this for people.

As far as improvements/feature requests, I agree with some of the above posters about the ability to add other options for how to rename episodes. Also, being able to scan a folder (ie. Downloads) for episodes and automatically move and rename them into the appropriate TV Show\Season folder.

I would also love to see the ability to rename movies/folders. Perhaps being able to add ac3/encoding info etc, so these flags show in XBMC.

I often find that if a download includes a Subs folder/rar archive, then this is scraped as a separate movie. I don't know if it is possible to avoid this.

I do not feel the need for RSS downloading of torrents, as this seems a completely different purpose and so is perhaps best left to a separate program. Best be a master of one task, than jack of all trades.. is my opinion.
I also agree with Wizerd that Music can wait until TV/Movies finished, but obviously there are many who disagree with me!

Now, my main feature wish is that this could be used through a web interface. The reason for this is that I am planning on making a small HTPC running XBMC Live. There is one such media manager, but it is simply a way of viewing the XBMC database, not scraping etc. If this could all run in the background of XBMC live, then that can contain all downloading/media control/playback in one self contained unit.
Now, I know this would be based on entirely different code, so perhaps if this was open sourced, then someone could try this. I would be glad to try, although it would be quite a learning curve! Does anyone else think this would be useful?

constructacon wrote:

My question is: is it possible to download both the folder.jpg and banner.jpg for shows (+ be able to browse TVDB etc and change them similar to posters). I'm sorry if this is worded inneloquently.

It would be a simple matter for me to add this to media companion, but it is not supported by XBMC which only reads the 'folder.jpg' file.