Online vs. Offline

[JP]

Steve, please don't apologize. You bend over backwards for all of us and it really is appreciated. Really, thanks for even considering this type of stuff.

1. Drawing over the cover is sort of neat. If there is a way to not lose this functionality that would be nice since I am sure some people might use this. As a matter of fact I have been playing with my displays a bit and this might be my preferred method. Is it possible to have both or is that going to get too cumbersome?

2. Thanks. This is really a need for me at least. I can do away with dvdstarter altogether and exclusively use xlobby if I had this functionality

3. This would be a neat feature but if this is too difficult I don't think I would bother. The fact is all I have to do is a refresh once I move stuff around and those items that are offline and online should appear accurately, at least I think I haven't really been moving forward aggresively until I know that I can sort (online,offline,both). Once I can do that I know I can fine tune everything.

Again, thanks so much for the work.

[stevenhanna6]

1. Now that I looked at the online/offline overlays it looks like you could make a large seethru png image with a small image in the bottom corner to show if its online or offline. You know what I mean?

2. I have one question before I do the offline/online/both stuff, I need to know the following. Lets say we have 3 buttons to show those three states, just say you select "offline" to show all the offline items...now if you start filtering do you just want to see filtering on JUST the offline items or both offline/online. I need to know so I can figure out which way to program it, I dont care either way both are pretty easy.

3. I have add a new command called "category>update status" this will go through an entire database and update that status of each item depending if it finds the "parameter" exists or not. You can try it out with this exe, I didnt try it but it should work.

http://www.xlobby.com/xlobby2.zip

[JP]

1. Yes, I do know what you mean. The more I think about it the more I like it the way it is setup now. I think I am going to go with a bigger list on the screen rather than just five pieces of cover art at a time. Since the preview on the left displays the currently selected movie anyway it is sort of a moot point.

2. Sorry Steve. I know this is my ignorance that is causing my confusion here. When you say filtering I assume you mean another level of filtering beyond the offline/online/all filtering. For my purposes all I really need to see is everything that is offline, online, or all. Any filtering from there would probably just confuse me So I guess what I am saying is I would do whatever you think is best.

3. I tried and it worked perfectly. Doesn't get much easier than that

[gamejester]

Steven,

This automatic offline/online thing has always worked!
I have a movies category linked to a dvdprofiler database and on initial import it checks to see which films have a corresponding directory with ISO/vob/etc.... and marks them online accordingly.

If I then delete a movie from the hard drive and do a refresh category database the item status is changed to offline.

What I have noticed is that if I delete a DVD from DVDprofiler, save the XML and refresh the XL category, the movie is not removed from the XL db.

[gamejester]

2. filtering.

I think it should filter the already reduced filter group.
So if viewing ALL and apply a genre filter of ACTION, it filers on ALL DVD's. However, if you are displaying just ONLINE DVD's and filer on ACTION, you get just those online action movies to choice from.

This seems to give the best of both worlds.

[dalanik]

I keep films with 2 avi files in sub folders. All other films are displayed in root, only films with 2 avis are in subfolders, and those subfolders are imported in db. They are correctly shown ON-LINE, but the folder they're in is shown OFFLINE

D.

[gamejester]

I also had this problem when using the movies template, that is why I store all my movies in their own folder now, even if they are a single avi. I also found that the import process would fail somtimes if I had too many files in the root movies dir.

This is beacause the movies template uses
<folderitem>item</folderitem>
therefore expecting each movie to be in its own sub.

[dalanik]

Created folders for all movies but it still displays offline for multi-part avis...

[gamejester]

That's strange, I also have multi part avi movies and it works OK for me, this is the only method I have tried though:

1. Add new movie to DVD profiler and re-save new XML file.
2. Create new movie dir \movies\'the new movie'
where 'the new movie' = title of DVD in DVDprofiler
3. Copy all parts of movie here (I have done this with 2 and 4 part avi's)
4. Hit refresh category in XL

New movie is imported only once and has DVDprofiler data with the parameter variable set to the new movie folder path.

[dalanik]

The only differences with my approach is that i use ANT and I do not have these movies in ANT catalogue. I keep only offline movies in ANT, and online movies are imported with "refresh"...

[gamejester]

Sorry for high jacking this thread, but I am always interested to learn how other people do things.

dalanik, from what you are saying it looks like you are using a custom movies template, is this correct?

does it have
<folderitem>item</folderitem>
set in the XML?

I could not get a combination of avi's in a root floder and some movies in there own folder to work with the XML setting folderitem set as item.
From what you say, the movies that do not work are not in a profiler DB (in your case ANT), but are just movies correctly named in a folder. ie

\movies\matrix.avi
\movies\matrix revolutions.avi
\movies\matrix reloaded\matrix reloaded disc 1.avi
\movies\matrix reloaded\matrix reloaded disc 2.avi
etc......

this would inport 4 entries in the movies db and mark them all as online?!?
but you are saying the folder 'matrix reloaded' is showing as offline?!?

for me this would fail to import, I would have to restructure as
\movies\matrix\matrix.avi
\movies\matrix revolutions\matrix revolutions.avi
\movies\matrix reloaded\matrix reloaded disc 1.avi
\movies\matrix reloaded\matrix reloaded disc 2.avi

I would then end up with 3 entries in the movies db all marked as online, and a zm play playlist would then play the multi-part movies.

[edgley]

I would love an autocheck feature.

So when I import my dvdprofiler xml file XL automaticly marks films it can not find on the disk as offline.

[dalanik]

Sorry, I didn't explain it right. All movies are organized like this:

d:\media\movies\matrix\matrix.avi
d:\media\movies\cold_mountain\cold_mountain.avi
d:\media\movies\only_fools_and_horses\episode1\episode1.avi
d:\media\movies\only_fools_and_horses\episode2\episode2.avi
d:\media\movies\only_fools_and_horses\episode3\episode3.avi
d:\media\movies\only_fools_and_horses\episode4\episode4.avi
d:\media\movies\grease\grease.avi
d:\media\movies\malena\malena_1\malena_1.avi
d:\media\movies\malena\malena_2\malena_2.avi

So each avi has it's own folder. Because of the coverart (it is the only way to get the desired jpg as coverart, right? If I have 2 jpgs and 2 avis in a folder, how does it know which one to take?)

The template should be standard:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<import>
<extentions>video_ts.ifo,iso,avi,vob,mpg,divx,wmv</extentions>
<coverart>jpg,jpeg,bmp,gif</coverart>
<folderitem>item</folderitem>
<metamasks>
<mask>\\(?&lt;genre&gt;.*)\\(?&lt;name&gt;.*)\\video_ts\\video_ts\.ifo</mask>
<mask>\\(?&lt;name&gt;.*)\\video_ts\\video_ts\.ifo</mask>
<mask>\\(?&lt;name&gt;.*)\\.*\.iso</mask>
<mask>\\(?&lt;name&gt;.*?)\\.*?</mask>
<mask>\\(?&lt;name&gt;.*)</mask>
</metamasks>
<options type="movies">
<parameter>none</parameter>
<parameter></parameter>
<parameter></parameter>
<parameter></parameter>
</options>
</import>

The problem is with the following lines:

d:\media\movies\malena\malena_1\malena_1.avi
d:\media\movies\malena\malena_2\malena_2.avi
d:\media\movies\only_fools_and_horses\episode1\episode1.avi
d:\media\movies\only_fools_and_horses\episode2\episode2.avi
d:\media\movies\only_fools_and_horses\episode3\episode3.avi
d:\media\movies\only_fools_and_horses\episode4\episode4.avi

The folders are shown as OFFLINE, and when I open them, the films show correctly ONLINE.

D.

[JP]

I'll attempt to regrab this thread again Steve, did my last explanation about sorting make any sense? Any chance this functionality will be added soon?

As per usual thanks so much for all your help. It is appreciated.