ServerWMC and pvr.wmc Wiki Pages
#31
Hello all,

I am a software engineer and am new to both XBMC and ServerWMC. I bought a Pi about 3 weeks ago and have it running OpenELEC along with PVR.WMC against the ServerWMC backend...all works great. Thank you for your hard work. I am not experienced at programming with Linux tools but am very experienced with the .Net framework. I would be happy to help with this project in any way that I can.

Again, thanks to everyone for this great product.
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#32
(2013-12-09, 22:29)AlwaysCurious Wrote: Hello all,

I am a software engineer and am new to both XBMC and ServerWMC. I bought a Pi about 3 weeks ago and have it running OpenELEC along with PVR.WMC against the ServerWMC backend...all works great. Thank you for your hard work. I am not experienced at programming with Linux tools but am very experienced with the .Net framework. I would be happy to help with this project in any way that I can.

Again, thanks to everyone for this great product.

You're hired. Welcome aboard.

Serverwmc is written in c# and scarecrow and I do our best to move most of the functionality there. I need your email or a your bitbucket account login to give you access to the server code. You can PM me either.
Windows Media Center PVR addon (pvr.wmc) and server backend (ServerWMC)
http://bit.ly/serverwmc
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#33
(2013-12-09, 01:12)scarecrow420 Wrote: Hey TechLife,

Here are some details for the Advanced section of the wiki about running ServerWMC as a service (as of the latest build just released). Don't feel that you have to post it up verbatim, it's a bit rambly so hopefully you can clean it up to more fit into your wiki style Smile

I got the info copied over today and updated the screenshots to reflect changes in the UI. I'll do the formatting and editing hopefully tomorrow. Boss decided I needed to migrate the entire company from hosted Exchange to Google today. Just a tiny bit buried atm.
The XBMC team, plug-in devs, skinners, etc. do this for us for FREE in their spare time because they want to. Think about that for a second before you start bitching...
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#34
(2013-12-10, 01:35)krustyreturns Wrote: Serverwmc is written in c# and scarecrow and I do our best to move most of the functionality there. I need your email or a your bitbucket account login to give you access to the server code.
Any plan to host ServerWMC's backend source code on GitHub? Might be easier to get more developers on-board then since XBMC uses GitHub too

Private repositories on GitHub are available under paid plans if needed, however GitHub is free to use for public open source software projects
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#35
(2013-12-10, 10:54)RockerC Wrote: Any plan to host ServerWMC's backend source code on GitHub? Might be easier to get more developers on-board then since XBMC uses GitHub too

Private repositories on GitHub are available under paid plans if needed, however GitHub is free to use for public open source software projects

We have talked about it. One reason why we don't is some of the code serverwmc uses we are using under permission of the author who asked that access be restricted for now. Restricted access on bitbucket is free.

In my experience so far, lots of people say they want to look at the code because they want to help but few actually do. I am skeptical github would change that. But you are right that its a bit of a pain that pvr.wmc is now on github, and the server code is not, but we'll manage.
Windows Media Center PVR addon (pvr.wmc) and server backend (ServerWMC)
http://bit.ly/serverwmc
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#36
(2013-12-10, 17:20)krustyreturns Wrote: In my experience so far, lots of people say they want to look at the code because they want to help but few actually do. I am skeptical github would change that. But you are right that its a bit of a pain that pvr.wmc is now on github, and the server code is not, but we'll manage.
Well that could may be the case, maybe not, but one fact to consider is that GitHub is now the world's largest open source community.

And it is my personal belief that XBMC itself would have as many contributing developers as they have today without being on GitHub
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#37
Need to open firewall for the server service. I am not able to access it from remote clients without either turn off my firewall on the LAN port or create a custom port passthrough. It doesn't work with the existing ServerWMC settings.
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#38
Hey guys - One more item I need clarification on please: 'Remux Active Recordings' - Obviously this will remux an active recording to TS rather than just saving to WTV, but what is the benefit? Is this to allow clients to watch the recorded stream while it's being recorded rather than tying up another tuner or for finicky clients like the Pi or am I way off? Thanks!
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#39
An active recording is a WTV file, and although XBMC can play WTV files, it bugs out when the WTV file is still being written to - XBMC only plays it up to the size it was, when playback started. Eg if a recording has been going for 10 minutes and you watch the WTV file in XBMC, then at the 10 minute mark, XBMC will stop playing the file, eventhough by that stage it is 20 minutes long etc. So just like with live TV, we remux an active recording's WTV file to a TS file and send that to XBMC (because XBMC is able to play a growing TS file and re-evaluates the file size as it goes etc), if the user wants to watch the recording while it is in progress. There are no extra tuners used or anything like that, it is all about being able to watch an active recording to the end without the playback stopping etc.
I should also mention that this is the way that ServerWMC has always worked for a long time.

There is one draw back to the remux to TS of an active rcording, which is that if an active recording has been going for say 45 minutes, and you start viewing it, we start remuxing the TS file when you start viewing, but you cant immediatley skip to the 30 minute or 45 minute point etc (because the TS file remuxer only just got started and the TS file doesnt have all that data in it yet). Ultimately we think the TS remux should catch up pretty quickly but certainly you cant skip ahead a much/as soon as you want etc. One user on here was having issues where even after pausing things, the remuxer didnt seem to catch up. Behaviour here seems odd and we need to test more, there could be a problem with XBMC or our stuff where even if we wait for the remuxer to catch up, we still cant skip nicely etc. As an aside, we are looking at developing an option to have active recordings automatically remuxed to TS immediately, rather than only when a user starts trying to view one. Ie "remux active recordings incase the user wants to view them" type thing. Perhaps every recording or perhaps a way to flag certain recordings (series recordings etc) to enable this pre-emptive remux. I also suggested having times of day where it would and wouldnt do this (no point doing it if its 3am and the users are asleep etc). Of course the remuxed TS file will be deleted whenever the user isnt watching it anymore or the recording actually completes (at this stage, it is a completed recording and watching the normal WTV file works fine).

The reason it can now be disabled is that as of the latest build (and on GOTHAM only!) we now support Resume playback on recordings. Given this fact, when watching an active recording in WTV format, when playback stops at the "size when XBMC started viewing" point, you can simply play the file again, and it will offer to resume from that point. Krusty thought this was an interesting workflow that some users might prefer, so he made the remuxing of active recordings to TS, be an option.

To sum up that whole lot of drivel, essentially there are 2 behaviours

- The default (and long standing behaviour) of remuxing active recordings to TS - meaning they can play right the way through but with some difficulties skipping/fast forwarding etc

- An alternative behaviour of playing the raw WTV file, being able to skip around to your heart's content, but playback stopping prematurely, with the Resume functionality making it less painful to get the playback going again


Regading your thing about Pi clients, you are confusing another thing which was that they seem to have issues playing large WTV files, so another option "remux all recordings" can be used so that even completed recordings will be remuxed to TS and hopefully work on a Pi (when normally a completed recording, we just play the WTV file)

Sorry for the rambling post, I have no idea how you could even attempt to make sense of this and put it in the wiki! Smile

Im actually interested in the whole "XBMC playing active WTV file stopping at the filesize when playback started" thing... I wonder if it's just a simple bug in XBMC and if we raised a Trac ticket, we might end up with XBMC able to play live WTV files. That would reduce alot of complexity for us, as we wouldnt need to remux live TV or active recordings, to TS anymore...
pvr.wmc TV addon and ServerWMC Backend Development Team
http://bit.ly/ServerWMC
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#40
Holy crap dude. Thank you! The better the understanding I have, the better chance I have of condensing and having it make sense in the wiki. Plus it feeds my insatiable hunger for knowledge. I absolutely love the detailed responses you and kr write me when I ask a question. I almost feel bad having to strip it down lol. I'll mull it over for a bit and it will magically appear in the wiki. Thanks again!
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#41
Ok, I lied, there's another lol.

'Group Recordings in Folders' - I thought this was self explanatory but I'm a little confused. The default for 'group active recordings in folder' is '* Recording Now'. What is the significance of the '*'? I have the option checked but I can't see where it is being recorded. The only folders I have in '\\TV-SERVER\Recorded TV' are '\TempXBMC' where the show I am currently watching is being cached and '\TempRec' which. even though I have an active recording, is empty. Also with the 'movie' and 'sports' options, I assume they will cause recordings marked with those genres to be sorted into folders after the recordings are complete? If so, will those folders be under the main recording directory e.g. \\TV-SERVER\Recorded TV\Sports\' ? Do the directories need to exist prior and the names match or will they be created if they do not exist?

The wiki is almost ready for me to put a '1.0' stamp on it and just make clarifications and additions from there. We're very close...so exciting!!
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#42
Not that I have used the feature or have more than about 5 recordings (lol), I believe it controls how they are grouped/displayed in the XBMC recordings list, not the physical file structure.
pvr.wmc TV addon and ServerWMC Backend Development Team
http://bit.ly/ServerWMC
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#43
(2013-12-12, 06:30)TechLife Wrote: Ok, I lied, there's another lol.

'Group Recordings in Folders' - I thought this was self explanatory but I'm a little confused. The default for 'group active recordings in folder' is '* Recording Now'. What is the significance of the '*'? I have the option checked but I can't see where it is being recorded. The only folders I have in '\\TV-SERVER\Recorded TV' are '\TempXBMC' where the show I am currently watching is being cached and '\TempRec' which. even though I have an active recording, is empty. Also with the 'movie' and 'sports' options, I assume they will cause recordings marked with those genres to be sorted into folders after the recordings are complete? If so, will those folders be under the main recording directory e.g. \\TV-SERVER\Recorded TV\Sports\' ? Do the directories need to exist prior and the names match or will they be created if they do not exist?

The wiki is almost ready for me to put a '1.0' stamp on it and just make clarifications and additions from there. We're very close...so exciting!!

As you tell I'm a master of language.

The groups it is talking about are all specific to how recordings are displayed in the 'recordings' section of xbmc. Basically it enables the display of a hierarchical recording menu. It has nothing to do with how recordings are stored on disk. We do not mess with that. They will be arranged the way wmc arranges them, i.e. flat.

If you uncheck 'Group recordings in folders', you get a flat list of recordings in the recordings section.

If you check it, you get a list of series names and inside each series name will be the episodes recorded for that series (for series recordings only obviously).

As sub options in this tab, you can also choose to group movies together and/or sports events together. You can also choose to group shows that are currently recording in their own folder, that's what '* recordings now' is about.

But again this only has to do with how recordings are displayed xbmc.
Windows Media Center PVR addon (pvr.wmc) and server backend (ServerWMC)
http://bit.ly/serverwmc
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#44
I added additional information and did some more revisions on the ServerWMC page today. Going has been slow as of late with everything I've had going on in real life. If there are any recommendations to improve the page, please let me know. After a final revision, I will consider it complete until a new version is released necessitating changes or changes are required for accuracy. I will be beginning to finalize the pvr.wmc page soon as I can.
The XBMC team, plug-in devs, skinners, etc. do this for us for FREE in their spare time because they want to. Think about that for a second before you start bitching...
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#45
I stumbled across something today and I think that the 3 letter codes for the languages in audio streams are probably following this ISO standard

ISO standard ISO 639-2 - Codes for the representation of names of languages-- Part 2: alpha-3 code.

The ones we know about so far (fra, ita, eng) are as per the standard at least... Hardly a big sample size but I thought perhaps the section in the wiki about language codes could have a comment "it seems likely/possible that these 3 letters are ISO639-2 codes" with a hyperlink to the following: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-2_codes
pvr.wmc TV addon and ServerWMC Backend Development Team
http://bit.ly/ServerWMC
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