by Jarrod on Mon Sep 04, 2006 8:22 am 
- If you find this software useful, please donate!, any amount helps!
TVMan (TV Manager) is a standalone application that creates an Xlobby database XML file for your TV episode collection, downloading information from TV.com and series images from epguides.com.
DOWNLOAD HERE - Version 0.6 - Updated Tuesday, Oct 24th.
Latest Version is always available from the above link.
Instructions:
1. Download zip file (above)
2. Unzip into a folder. All files must be in the same folder.
3. Run TVMan.exe
4. Add the paths for your TV Episode collections.
5. Select where to save the database XML file (eg. Program Files/xlobby/databases/tv.xml)
6. Choose whether to rename files where episode details are known
7. Choose filename format. Right click the rename text field to see the naming options. Select an option and it will be inserted into the field automatically.
8. Choose whether or not to use the built-in episode cover art. If you do not select this, episodes will not have any coverart assigned when browsing in Xlobby.
9. Choose whether to do a full rescan of your collection, or just update new files. By default this will be unticked if the XML file already exists.
10. Press the start button to begin the process.
The program will now search tv.com for episode information based on your tv episode files.
When the program finds more than one show matching the folder name, it will list all the matching shows (eg. Lost, Lost in space, etc) and you will have to select the correct show for the program to continue.
The program will then download a list of episodes for the season and will show a window to match your files for each season to the episode listing of the season. By skipping a season the file information is still added to the database, but the episode information (eg. air date, plot, etc) are not downloaded. If a file spans multiple episodes, simply select it and press the 'Span episodes' button and the filename will be added to the next blank spot and the episodes being spanned will be highlighted in purple. This is useful for if you have ISO files of DVD's which have multiple TV episodes on them. These files will not be renamed automatically even if the rename option is selected.
You can also drag and drop episodes in the list. Drag & Drop with left mouse click will swap the places of the selected item and the target item. Dragging with right mouse click will simply move the selected item to the target item and force other items to change spots.
If you accidentally remove a file or episode from the list, you can click the 'Rescan episode list' button to undo all changes.
Xlobby Setup:
1. Add an events folder called 'tv' to your skin events. Add an event called 'play episode', and make it do the catalog>execute command of the TV database.
2. Add a new screen to your skin (cloning the movies screen is the quickest way) call it 'tv'.
3. Change the catalog item to point to the tv database and change the display text, the overlay screen, etc.
4. Clone the movieviewer screen, call it 'tvviewer'
5. Add the episode information (such as series, season, episode, title, plot, airdate) to a text field on the tvviewer screen.
6. Make the play button execute the 'play episode' event added earlier.
NOTES:
Your TV episodes must be stored in the following format: "TV Folder/Series Name/Season ##/episodefile.***"
The file extension is configurable in the program.
The episode file can be in any format (and manually matched to an episode), but the program will recognise most common formats such as 's##e##', '###', '##x##', etc, where # represents the season or episode number.
If you want to add another filename format to the list, simply edit the 'filenameRegex' in the settings.xml file.
The season folder name must match the 'seasonRegex' in the settings.xml file. Currently it matches 'season ##' and 's##' with spaces and case-insensitive.
The regular expressions used to scrape content from tv.com can be edited in the settings.xml file. They are currently working perfectly, but may change in future as the tv.com website layout changes.
The coverart shown for season numbers and episode numbers is located in the 'images' folder of the zip file. If you want to change the way they look to match your skin, simply overwrite the existing images with ones of your choice. You can choose not to use episode coverart if you are using another method, such as screen shots of the actual episode.
TVMan can currently only be run from a local machine. Trying to run it over the network will cause it to crash. TV episodes can be anywhere on your network however.
Run TVMan from the machine Xlobby is run from. This will ensure all paths to TV episode files will be correct for Xlobby to launch the files.
TVMan is written in VB.NET and requires the .NET 1.1 Framework be installed.
If any error messages pop up along the way, please post them here so that I can fix them nasty bugs. Please read log.txt in the same folder as the TVMan.exe to see more details on any errors.
Let me know how it works for you, and if you have any feature requests please let me know!
Thanks,
