Multi-Episode Files
FreQi
FreQi
Kristopher Gilbert
Yeah like the Bones season opener was a two-parter but they were aired back-to-back so there is one file with “S04E01E02” in the filename and the Burn Notice premiere is one episode but it was aired in two parts so it’s two files with “E01.Part1” and “E01.Part2” in the filenames.
The latter one is easy, just make MB have two files listed but add “Part 1” and “Part 2” to the episode-names and maybe at the end of the episode description.
The former… Yeah. Not sure. We’d have to do what you said and allow multiple episodes to be attached to a single file. There’s really no way to know the point in the file where the next episode starts so, like you said, the only real solution is to change some stuff around in the XML and allow each episode entity to be a collection that contains multiple episode titles and descriptions. That would at least get the episode titles and descriptions working.
I’m not sure if this is a feature or bug but I think we should hold off until we’re sure the current stuff in trunk is stable before working on this stuff, eh?
Kristopher Gilbert
I keep meaning to post about “Special” episodes. Like Doctor Who has a Christmas Special each year and Doctor Who Confidential has the Christmas Special this year and the New Doctor special, etc. Tvdb has a special season called “Specials” but each special also has an episode number. And it looks like they have a fields for “airs before/after” or something. Personally I’d like the specials to show up in season folders because technically the Who Christmas specials should be watched after the last episode of the season that for the year of that Christmas, but whatever. I’d be happy with just a “Specials” folder that has the Specials in order.
There doesn’t seem to be a “scene” naming convention for specials either. I suppose our naming convention would depend on if we want them to show up in a season or have their own folder. ATHF used “blah.SPECxx.blah.ext”, but, ironically, Tvdb has them as part of Season 4.
Actually look at this shit:
http://thetvdb.com/?tab=seasonall&id=77120&lid=7
There’s two ATHF Christmas Specials, Tvdb has one of them as an episode and one of them as a “Special”. And the “Movie” is listed on the Tvdb, which, I guess, technically makes sense because the movie was aired on Adult Swim, but it’s also a real move:
http://themoviedb.org/movie/13158
(HA! Best backdrop evar…)
Hmm, I think the key to working this out is the “Airs Before” field. The second Xmas special is tagged as “Airs Before Dickesode” which is technically correct. So if we use that field, we can put the “special” episodes in the proper order.
It seems to be that, at this point, using a simple folder structure isn’t going to cut it and we’ll need a SQL backend, right? Cuz everyone’s going to put “Specials” in a folder called “Specials” and in order to make them display in the “Season X” folder, we’ll have to know about folders other than the current one.
And while we’re on this topic, might as well bring up “one-off” “specials” like this Joana Lumley thing:
http://thetvdb.com/?tab=series&id=83681&lid=7
and Hogfather:
http://thetvdb.com/?tab=series&id=79988&lid=7
Lumley’s thing is a single “special” with no season which means we can’t get metadata for it since we don’t pick up metadata for Specials. Hogfather sorta works if you put it in a Season 1 folder and rename “-Part1” and “-Part2” to “S01E01” and “S01E02” but that’s sorta non-intuitive since it’s a “one-off” and not really a “proper series”.
Paul J, how does TVScout handle specials?
Anyway, I’m rambling so… I propose we use ATHF, Hogfather and Lumley’s thing as the benchmark for adding this stuff since they seem to cover all of the permutations, at least the ones I can think of. Anyone else have any other TV shows with weird stuff like this that might cover any other permutations?
Ahh, just remembered, Bones and Burn Notice and the ones FreQi listed have special cases where episodes are combined into one file or split into multiple files. So those should be on the benchmark list too.
And since this all seems to lead up to SQL…
MSSQL/SQLExpress
Advantages:
Fast
Can have a single back-end for multiple Media Center boxes
Good Visual Studio integration
WiX/VSSetup can auto-download
Disadvantages:
Big download
Can be a nightmare if the install goes wrong
People are scared of it
SQLCE (Trust me, it’s VERY similar to SQLite)
Advantages:
Small
Can be embedded into the .msi
Good Visual Studio integration
Disadvantages:
Not as fast as MSSQL
People are scared of it (though they won’t know we’re using it unless they look at the code/ProgramData folder)
Might be x64/x86 issues
SQLite
Advantages:
Hella small
Seems to have VS2008 integration via ADO.NET providers (at least the SF.NET download says so)
x86/x64 in same DLL (trusting Sam on this, no idea how they’d do that)
Disadvantages:
Not MS, may have non-MS style integration issues
Personally, I’d like to see the SQL DB be provider based, let the user decide. That way we can have support for an MSSQL DB on a WHS that multiple machines can all access. I realize this is complicated so maybe that’s a feature for v3! For now, I was leaning toward SQLCE, but after reading a bit about it and keeping Sam’s inclination toward non-MS stuff, I’m thinking we support SQLite out-of-the-box and let the user decide if they want a more robust backend.
And finally, maybe it’s time to have another Skype meeting? Heh, Sam and I were the only two to show up for the first one, but now the team is starting to get fairly big and there’s like 8 code-branches now and I’m thinking we need to wrangle the stuff in this email, the Win7 future plans, the version number stuff in my branch, the MCML changes from the other branches and whatever else I’m forgetting into a cohesive Plan?
FreQi
Kristopher Gilbert
Heh, I didn’t know about the “Season 0” folder until Paul mentioned it on Messenger. I don’t necessarily like that solution, but I’m gonna play around with some of the folders I have and see if I can make it all look presentable.
Just off the top of my head though, Season 0 isn’t going to work out for Aqua Teen because of the two Christmas Specials. One is considered an Episode (in Season 4, Episode 3) and the other is considered a Special, however, the second special is intended to be watched right after the first but in order to do that you have to back out of Season 4 and go into Season 0 and then find the other Xmas special. Not intuitive, right?
Heh, plus wouldn’t it be cool if you could just dump all the episodes from every season and all of the specials into one folder and not have to move them into Season X folders? SQL backend would definitely help facilitate this…
FreQi
Kristopher Gilbert
The directory structure doesn’t necessarily have to match what MB shows, right? That’s why I was saying a SQL backend (and something Sam’s been saying for a while) would allow us to display a “fake” folder structure that doesn’t necessarily have to match the actual folder structure on the hard drive. So like you put all of your Auqa Teen episodes in an Auqa Teen folder, make sure they’re named properly and when you select Aqua Teen in MB, it shows you Season 1/Season 2/Specials, etc. even though the episodes aren’t actually in Season X folders. Even better, we could have both, just add a new “view” to the views we currently have.
Cool about fixing the Aqua Teen episode on the Tvdb site, I didn’t realize we had people here who could edit that site. The problem is still though that it’s tagged as a “special” so it appears in its own folder. Apparently this falls into our “episodes split into multiple files” issue as TV.com says Adult Swim officially calls them Episode 58a and 58b:
Also, totally unrelated but I think there’s a bug in .vf’s. If you make a change to a .vf the changes aren’t reflected unless you rename the file, run MB, exit, then rename the file back and run MB again. Pretty sure about that, need to test it again cuz I found it a while ago but forgot to mention it but it may be fixed now…
FreQi
FreQi
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