I went back to 'tv library' because it wasn't clear to non-techies in the house when I say "no, use the other 'video library'...".

 I have question for all current users (the 5+ of you out there) who like Dr Who or the Twilight Zone. Given that that there are multiple series for these shows, how do you name them ? Do you include the year in the file/folder name? Ex. Twilight Zone (1985), or Twilight Zone (1985).S01E02.avi ?

I ask this, because, while investigating the "high steadily-increasing RAM usage" problem, I have decided to tackle a bunch of annoyances since day one: (1) seasons and series spanned across multiple drives, (2)video files w/o any tv series folder structure.

I want to support

(1) E:\My Bombad TV Show\Season 1\ and F:\My Bombad TV Show\Season 20

(2) E:\Downloads\Some Show.S01E04.mp4. Note that this file indicates the series name, season number, and episode number but doesn't use any tv series folder hierarchy.

Towards this end, I am considering de-emphasizing folder structures as a requirement. The scanning code will still detect series via the folder structure but it won't be required. As long as the entire file path of a file meets any of the numerous archive tv regular expressesion then it will identified and stored properly. The fly in the ointment is where do I store the .metadata folder?

Example Scenario: E:\TV Shows\Dexter\Season 1\Dexter.S01E02.avi,  C:\users\public\downloads\Dexter-S02E04.avi, and G:\Dexter\Dexter.02x09.avi.

Question: When I am scanning all watched folders for the first time, where do I stored the .metadata folder for the series "Dexter" ? Do I use the first folder location found?

 For Doctor Who, I've got the folder named "Doctor Who" without anything else on it, and also "Doctor Who Confidential" for the behind the scenes stuff.

 As to where to store the metadata, the simplest option is to put it in the exact same folder as the video file.  Second simplest, a subfolder of that folder called 'metadata', or present user choice as to where to put the metadata for the series.

I've been out of the loop on the thread for a while, so I'm getting caught up again.  I just finished upgrading to Win7 Ultimate 64, so that's where I'll be operating from on this plugin.

 James

thanks for the feedback but this has to be automatic

What about all the different Dr. Who series?

What happens if there a series has seasons folder on two different drives? or a series folder across two or more different drives? I'm trying to deal with spanned folders.

 Personally, I only have the recent series, as I cannot watch the old one.  If someone had the old one, the best user-facing option is to present a two-sided list.  On the left, show matches from TVDB, and on the right, show the first three to five episodes of the series in your user folder, so you can be sure of what you're matching it too.

 As to spanned folders, I vaguely recall you said you took that out?  Hmm...perhaps a small pop-up saying "two folders found with the same series.  Do you want TV Library to present them together when browsing?" and then span the folders based on the yes/no.  In the pop-up, show the names of the folders, their paths, and perhaps any folder art / names of a few episodes so the user can verify they are in fact, the same series.  If there are multiple instances of duplicate titles, left/right arrows across the instances might work, from a user interface perspective.

I did a theoretical mockup here. and here.

Those are just my thoughts on how to resolve it...

James

Okay, I have to be doing something wrong as even after a fresh reinstall of Windows it won't open the application I get an error of "Invalid application. Unable to launch tvlibrary"

So, maybe someone can point me in the right direction. I first ran the setup.exe - which installed the SQL server and TV Library. Restarted. Launch Media Center. Found icon on menu strip. Click, and get error.

What files should I check for to make sure it was installed correct?

I am running Windows Vista Ultimate 32Bit. - Tried both SP1 and SP2(separate machine same OS/Bit)

 Yup, I had that problem as well, seems the code has moved on to windows7 without us.... there's a post a page or two back by jack.  If you have an older copy of the code that may work, never got around to trying, I've been using mediabrowser and metabrowser very successfully.  You may want to check them out. 

http://www.mediabrowser.tv/

http://themetabrowser.com/

Does anyone have a copy of the older version before 2.0?

 Any news on this plugin?  I'm needing to re-install it on my Windows 7 64-bit machine, and I'm looking forward to hearing what's coming up.

Well, I've been doing some experimentation and other junk but suffice to say, I'm simplifying this plug-in some more. Here are the highlights:

• The entire UI will be around tv shows and nothing else, except for "unsorted" videos --in case some things weren't identified properly. All the code and pivots for movies, music, etc. are still there but just 'turned off'
• If a series has only one season, clicking on the series will display all the episodes. Think of anime OVAs (ex. Macross Frontier) or other one-season shows.
• Metadata format changed slightly.
• Installer will properly set permissions for database and log files at install-time.
• ProgramData and ProgramFiles folders are going to be called "VideoLibraryEngine".
• Put more work into the Dvd Extender. This is a More With This plugin that uses transcoding along with a simple dvd menu. This menu lets you pick chapters, subs, language, and extras.
• Detection code will only scan for PLAYABLE files. In other words, it will not explicitly look for series or season folders. It will just look for episode files. This was done to get around the whole 'spanning' problem where series are split across multiple drives or folders. This change makes that all moot since series and seasons are just virtual constructs. This has 2 implications
• All seasons metadata (images, xml)will be stored under the series .metadata folder as [Series Name].S[season number].season.*
• Series metadata (images, xml) will be stored under the first matching series folder. For example, if the synch/discovery code picks up D:\TV Shows\Babylon 5\ followed by F:\More Shows\Babylon 5, Babylon 5 will be added once to the database and the metadata will be stored under D:\TV Shows\Babylon 5\.metadata
• Thread priorities were decreased to limit CPU-hogging during first-run scans
• By default synch/discovery scan interval will be 2 hours if nothing changed. If the file watchers detect a file change/rename/delete then the interval will be temporarily be dropped to 15 mins. If no file changes occur after that and no new content was added then the interval goes back to 2 hours. I did it this way to limit the waste ful scanning.
• Dvd Extender available from More Info | More | Dvd Extender. This lets you select chapter, language, subtitle, or extras. It tries to detect whether the dvd is a movie or a bunch of episodes and displays the appropriate buttons. In addition, it tried to detect the correct forced sub stream but this is far from perfect and is more of a best guess/hack based on my movie collection.

Right now, I am going to focus on the ProgramFiles problem on x64. After fixing this for the 32-bit installer, I might put this project on ice. I want to get it to the point where it will work 80-90% reliably for Windows 7 32bit and 64bit in the areas of show and episode detection and call it a day. I am just getting frustrated with eHome's design decisions and the amount of work needed to do UI.  The other thing I want to do is add a proper Genre pivot.

I burnt a few snow days (@)#@&#(@ snow!!!) trying to understand and recreate the slide deck UI and gave up after realizing how much work was needed. It wasn't a good enogh ROI. I would love to team up with someone to handle the UI side of things if they are willing to adhere to the current engine/back-end architecture already in place. Anyone capable and willing to do this with me? Before I put this project on ice publicly (I still use it at home all the time), I'd like to make it look more like the native movie library and less like the older Internet TV.

SofaCinema

Jack, Great work so far. Thanks for your contribution to the community. Would it be possible to release a verision that just does tv? After all it is called TV Library . I use MCs librarys for everthing else. I would really appreciate it as nothing else comes as close to looking right.

Wish granted. See previous post

 Jack, you made my day with that update there.  If you're looking for some help on the UI I would try asking mikinho.  He's a prolific programmer here.  Perhaps you two could team up on this!

James

Dude, I am using your other post to MS/eHome as my 'bible' right now. Also, it's funny you talk about "tv library" in Windows 7 because I've been thinking of the same bloody thing! I am adding it my "Things to do with tv library before putting it on ice" list. I want to get away from specifing watched folders in a config file. I'd rather create a "tv library" then just let people easily use their windows shell/explorer to manage that list.

 Hey Jack,

Thanks! I do have to say, that out of all the TV Library managers I've seen and tried, yours wins hands down, since you're the one who's actually trying to make it look like a part of Media Center!  And don't worry about that slide-deck pop-up UI stuff.  It's kinda cool, but I tended to like your implementation of keeping it as a simple page for the synopsis and all, as it felt more WMC, and actually reminds me of Zune's marketplace presentation. 

If you keep the slide-deck bit, try it out in the built-in movie library.  It's used to house the synopsis (while playing), actions, similar movies, cast+crew, and review.  In TV Library, you could certainly use it for that, keeping it for when playing a video, but for general browsing (click on a TV series) using the regular page with backdrop, top banner, synopsis, and season list, with action buttons on left; while looking at the entire library, you could keep it for the right click 'TV series details' or just go into the TV page, and then use pivots at top to duplicate the 'slide-deck' functionality, which would be pretty cool, and likely easier to code.

 So, avoiding the 'slide-deck' UI:

-click on a TV series, go to the TV series synopsis page, list seasons (same size as the 2-high DVD covers) along the bottom in a row, numbered and with year; along the top, show pivots at top for: synopsis ('home page' of the show), actions (play, add to playlist, add to now playing, update metadata, change series cover, change banner, change backdrop), similar shows (list in-library similar shows), cast+crew (fed from metadata, click on this to get swivel search of in-library content with the actor, actress, director, writer, in 2 pivots - movies, tv shows), and reviews

-right click on a TV Series, season, or episode to get: series details (go to series page), play, add to now playing (adhoc playlist), add to playlist,  view large (2-high), view small (3-high?), manage library (?), settings (TV Lib settings, choose pivots?)

 I don't mean to add anything else but this stuff doesn't fit in with the other post very well.  Perhaps you can work with a poster here going by 'mikinho' - he's interested in working on a TV Library himself, and if you two pooled your resources, you might be able to to come up with something.

JackLuminous

SofaCinema

Jack, Great work so far. Thanks for your contribution to the community. Would it be possible to release a verision that just does tv? After all it is called TV Library . I use MCs librarys for everthing else. I would really appreciate it as nothing else comes as close to looking right.

Wish granted. See previous post

Thanks Jack. I will give it a go as soon as i can. I have been working on intergrating emulators lately and now my 5 year old is obsessed with "Elmo's Fun with Numbers" on the N64. I don't know when she'll stop, probably sometime around midnight Thanks again.

Good afternoon, folks,

 I have posted new 32bit and (hopefully working) 64bit builds.

http://cid-bc8c4296c2addc53.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Public/tvlibrary

Notes:

• Pivots look more like native galleries and not like old Internet TV plug-in (i.e. large pivot font is gone) 
• Update schema. Please delete your Content.sdf prior to install
• New genre and people pivots

For 64-bit users, please let me know if VideoLibraryEngine.Service.exe runs automatically without user intervention. Previously, the plug-in wasn't finding the correct Program Files (x86) folder on 64-bit. Please let me know if this has been resovled.