[bertrand]

ya lost me there

Sorry, my personal battery was almost dead yesterday...

if your asking if the new unified media manager will interact with xbmc's database, yes, that's what we intend to do. When you save an item, the goal is for everything to get updated. (information and images) .. i don't think we will be adding new items directly though, that's better left to xbmc at this point. I'm pretty sure we can send a command to xbmc to tell it to update the library (i.e. add new items).

My question was related to that one, but only related: based on what you said, my guess is that you will implement this DB interaction directly, using SQLite API or some abstraction layer.

While I think that from a user perspective this is a great idea, it bothers me a bit that the library will be changed directly using straight SQL queries. Even though the database model is not extremely complex or anything, there is ONE big drawback to this approach: you will end up maintaining a database interaction API / library that depends on a specific version. The database structure is still considered low level (imho), and as soon as something changes in the DB structure, you will have to adapt your code.

The question was then as follows: is XBMC providing some kind of re-usable API / library (as in .so or .dll) that abstracts the database manipulation, or do you intend to execute SQL directly.

That's it :-)

[fekker]

Sorry, my personal battery was almost dead yesterday...


My question was related to that one, but only related: based on what you said, my guess is that you will implement this DB interaction directly, using SQLite API or some abstraction layer.

While I think that from a user perspective this is a great idea, it bothers me a bit that the library will be changed directly using straight SQL queries. Even though the database model is not extremely complex or anything, there is ONE big drawback to this approach: you will end up maintaining a database interaction API / library that depends on a specific version. The database structure is still considered low level (imho), and as soon as something changes in the DB structure, you will have to adapt your code.

The question was then as follows: is XBMC providing some kind of re-usable API / library (as in .so or .dll) that abstracts the database manipulation, or do you intend to execute SQL directly.

That's it :-)

I see what ya mean. Yes if the db changes, it'll need an update in the app as well. I think the plan is to make the api on our end and then call it to update xbmc's database.. so it's still being abstracted, just on our end, i've broken that part out into it's own module so it'll be as easy as changing the version that's called from umc, and of course updating the module that interacts with xbmc

[bertrand]

Okay, that's good to hear ! It all looks great then

[kizer]

What will happen say for us that have different platforms in our house? For example that I have:

Xbox hooked up in the living room to my BigScreen
PC in my office I use while tinkering
Wifes laptop.

All of my content is stored on a NAS and every box is told to look for new content on reboot.

If this system is designed to interact with the DB directly its going to well cause havick unless of course you can connect directly to each individual unit.

Or is this thing going to kick out a database file and you upload to each?
Equiring Minds want to know.

[fekker]

What will happen say for us that have different platforms in our house? For example that I have:

Xbox hooked up in the living room to my BigScreen
PC in my office I use while tinkering
Wifes laptop.

All of my content is stored on a NAS and every box is told to look for new content on reboot.

If this system is designed to interact with the DB directly its going to well cause havick unless of course you can connect directly to each individual unit.

Or is this thing going to kick out a database file and you upload to each?
Equiring Minds want to know.

as long as it can get to the database, it can update it. it won't be creating a new database (pathing would have to be really strict to do that)..

there's still a bunch of details that will have to be worked out but i've got some ideas on the how portion

[fekker]

Ok scripters and command line folk

Anyone care to compile a list of things they would like to be able to do via the command line.

[kizer]

Update TV shows for sure, well at least for starters. I'm sure you've already thought of it, but I'm completely for that.

[Therms]

Ok scripters and command line folk

Anyone care to compile a list of things they would like to be able to do via the command line.

It depends upon what exactly UMM is capable of. I'd like to be able to tell UMM, "Here's a new file (or folder full of files), get meta data and then add to database." I'd also like to be able to do the above but have an interactive mode where UMM went out and got the meta data but then presented a stripped down dialog so we can confirm the information is right.

When I say stripped down, I'm thinking of a simple dialog that presents the fetched information with maybe a checkbox for each item that we can confirm is correct. For incorrect items, you could launch in to the full UMM interface for corrections.

[Therms]

It depends upon what exactly UMM is capable of. I'd like to be able to tell UMM, "Here's a new file (or folder full of files), get meta data and then add to database." I'd also like to be able to do the above but have an interactive mode where UMM went out and got the meta data but then presented a stripped down dialog so we can confirm the information is right.

When I say stripped down, I'm thinking of a simple dialog that presents the fetched information with maybe a checkbox for each item that we can confirm is correct. For incorrect items, you could launch in to the full UMM interface for corrections.

After using a couple of the current media managers something I'd like to add to my above request is that this software waited till it downloaded information for all the shows it knows about before presenting dialogs to ask the user for info. That way you can walk away and it'll download everything possible and then when you come back you can answer whatever questions are needed.

This prevents the scenario where you walk away and it gets to the third movie/tvshow in a list of hundreds and then stops working because it wants you to answer a question.

[snoxbox]

AI'd like to add to my above request is that this software waited till it downloaded information for all the shows it knows about before presenting dialogs to ask the user for info.

+1. That's very frustrating.

[infy]

+1. That's very frustrating.

+2

[pko66]

+2

+3

Seems to be a lot of people that wants this!!!

[fekker]

Downloading what it knows before user selection should be doable for some things, please put in the feature request on sourceforge and when we are building that area we will try to add lots of options on how it can process things for download..

[fekker]

It depends upon what exactly UMM is capable of. I'd like to be able to tell UMM, "Here's a new file (or folder full of files), get meta data and then add to database." I'd also like to be able to do the above but have an interactive mode where UMM went out and got the meta data but then presented a stripped down dialog so we can confirm the information is right.

When I say stripped down, I'm thinking of a simple dialog that presents the fetched information with maybe a checkbox for each item that we can confirm is correct. For incorrect items, you could launch in to the full UMM interface for corrections.

processing a folder and scraping - no prob
adding to xbmc database - maybe, pathing is going to be fun to sort out, best to tell xbmc to update the library (which i think we can pass an api call to tell it to do that)
process a folder, update info, update data in xbmc database - that we should be able to pull off
process a folder, update info and images, update data and images for xbmc - should be able to do that as well


doesn't popping up a dialog go against the command line idea as it's moving into gui land?

I do understand what ya mean, it's a good idea, just curious on dialogs and command line apps.

[fekker]

Update TV shows for sure, well at least for starters. I'm sure you've already thought of it, but I'm completely for that.

for certain that's in there and working (save for the scraped data)

update and manage from a touch panel in the drive bay, GadgetGuru is building a prototype that can do just that, it's very cool, full color touch panel in that fits in a drive bay (2.4" lcd screen), has a scroll wheel (clickable) as well as button options (all programmable, open source driver and api for the hardware), connects via usb, can also display current running movie info from xbmc (well it will when he's done).. it's a pricey little sucker, but if there's enough interest in them he will build them.

i'm thinking we need a way to send a single to the popcorn machine, to tell it the movie will be playing in xx minutes, start making the popcorn.. i'll have the GadgetGuru try that one