[afremont]

My setup consists of a Win7 Pro WMC install running latest ServerWMC, the front-end is an RPi 2. When running OE 5.0.5 (official), everything works pretty much as it should. When running the Milhouse nightly, I'm running into an odd situation. When I go to select a series name, nothing happens. It lets me watch live TV just fine, which involves attaching the same network share that the recordings are behind so I don't think there is any access rights problem. I do have an administrative user and pw set up in ServerWMC, though the official version will work just fine without it. The library is completely public since I have public folder sharing enabled so that no account is necessary to access the folder.

When I run the nightly versions, every thing looks good in the logs until I try to select a "series", then nothing happens. All the guide data is transported just fine along with channels and timers, and the 10 second interval refreshes carry on just fine. It's all good until I try to select a series, then nothing. And I do mean nothing happens that I can see from looking at the windows event logs, ServerWMC log and Kodi log. I don't see anything happening in the Kodi debug log, just lirc acknowledging the key press. Again everything is good, including liveTV, it just won't let me play any recordings, or even let me get to the individual episode screen when I select a series from the list displayed.

I have the exact same problem with #308b and #309, but I haven't tried #310 yet.

Any ideas?

Here is a Kodi debug log from build #309 showing the problem. At about 46 seconds is when I click on the series name and nothing happens.
http://sprunge.us/QKUP

I really don't think that the plugin or ServerWMC is to blame since there appears to be no response to the selection of the series, but I've been advised to post the issue here in case it's already a known problem.

[krustyreturns]

So you select a series 'folder' but you don't see the episode list after that? What exactly happens? Do you just see a blank screen?

you're right that swmc and the addon don't do anything when you are navigating the the series/episode screens. But you can go into serverwmc's settings and turn off the 'group recordings in folder' in the recordings tab, that might be interesting just to see what happens. Restart your client after you change this setting.

[afremont]

To answer your questions, nothing happens other than a woosh sound and the "series" names stay on the screen. I can keep navigating the "series" list, but I can't see the individual "episodes" by clicking on a "series".

Now for the really interesting part. I unchecked the "group recordings in folders" item in the ServerWMC Recordings tab and restarted the OpenELEC RPi. I can see the ugly mixed together list, but I can actually play the recordings. It seems odd that there were no debug log items telling me anything useful. If you'd like, I can put up another debug log with the ungrouped recordings.

Maybe I don't actually have the latest ServerWMC? When I click on check for updates in ServerWMC, it says that it is up to date. Here are the version numbers of everything:

ServerWMC version: 1.0.0.52 build 1175
OpenELEC PVR WMC add-on version: 0.5.2
OpenELEC build: Milhouse #310


Thanks so much for your help, I really appreciate it. +1 for your reputation for getting me one step closer to satisfaction with the nightly builds. Actually this was the only thing forcing me to switch back to the official 5.0.5 release each day. I like the "group recordings in folders" way much better though. Any idea where the problem might be?

[krustyreturns]

This must just be a bug in the openelec build. You don't have this problem on the pc right?

[afremont]

On the PC? LOL I only run the PC to make use of WMC and to play an occasional game. I have never even tried Kodi on the Intel platform, so I couldn't really say anything about it. It sounds like you're saying that I should open a ticket on trac for this problem. Please let me know if that's not the case. I really appreciate you taking time to look into my trivial problems. Thanks a lot for your help.

[krustyreturns]

Why not just install kodi on the pc just to check this? Its free and easy. I assume series/episode will work on it, but I think its worth checking anyway. I don't know how opening a trouble ticket works for OpenElec, but I suggest either doing that or asking in their forums of others are experiencing the same thing.

[scarecrow420]

I think I saw in the pvr development forum that a recent change broke "non flat" recordings structure

If you turn off the grouping option in ServerWMC you will get a flat list of recordings and that may work for now, until they fix the Kodi bug

[afremont]

@krustyreturns
I think I will install it on the PC just for the experience of doing so. I already posted in the OpenELEC forum, and was asked to post here in case it was a known bug and to make sure that it wasn't the actual plugin at fault. Another user posted in that thread that he was having basically the same problem with the MythTV plugin. He could watch LiveTV, but not play any recordings. He could see the list, but when he picked the equivalent of a series, nothing would happen and he couldn't see the individual episodes. He came to that thread from the MythTV plugin forum because the Mod there said it was a known problem within the Kodi code. He currently has an open ticket on trac as a Kodi bug. I'm sure it will be fixed eventually in the OpenELEC nightly builds. Until then, I plan to keep the "flat" list and continue to run the nightly builds on my main box because it has a few features that I like, but that aren't in the official 5.0.5 release. Thanks again and I'll let you know what happens on the PC with the nightly (assuming that there is a nightly build for that platform). It seems like it would be pointless to install the official version as I already know that release works fine on the Pi. Although it wouldn't hurt me any to get the experience of doing that.

EDIT: I wasn't thinking, obviously there is no OpenELEC for windows. I will install the nightly Kodi and see how it goes and let you know. Thanks.

@scarecrow420
Thanks for the information, I will go do some digging for that. I'd like to become proficient enough with this stuff that I can build my own nightly and experiment with the patches. Turning off the "group recordings in folders" did indeed make things start working again, so I'm going to keep running (testing) the nightly builds as long as they are usable. It's no big deal if I have to set things up again, plus I have a working 5.0.5 official on a backup flash card that I can revert to an "emergency". I assume that Milhouse keeps everything on github so it shouldn't be that tough to mirror it locally. It's been a long time since I cross-compiled anything anyway and I need to reeducate myself on that whole process. Looks like that's a lot easier now than it was 10 years ago.

@both of you
Thanks to both of you for providing the plugin that makes this all possible. Buying x-boxes to use as extenders would never have been an option for me. I have to keep this all on a shoestring budget.

In the end, I'd like to rid myself of WMC completely and switch back to a completely Linux based operation. I'm curious to see how well a Pi 2 can capture video from a USB Hauppauge HVR-950Q tuner. I also want to buy a Homerun box with dual tuners when I can scrape together enough spare cash. Since the box I want outputs H.264 streams, I assume that a Pi wont have any real trouble capturing from it over the network and writing it to disk.

Thanks again for your selfless work. I'm well aware just how thankless your "job" has become. Actually I'm appalled at some people's extremely selfish attitudes about all this. Nobody is paying you to do the work which comes at the expense of your free time an personal lives. The least folks could do is try to remember that simple fact before whining about problems.

[scarecrow420]

This is the post where I saw it mentioned

http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=...pid1949552

[afremont]

Thank you scarcrow420. I'm looking into what I have to do to be able to find my way through the code trees, and which one I need to be looking at. I guess I'll have to pester Milhouse on that one.

I'm getting ready to play with my windows box by installing the kodi nightly on it and see what happens.

I need to try and see if I can't learn some C++ (I'm good with C and various microcontroller assemblers, including ARM7TDMI) by looking at the Kodi source and trying to find where this bug is. I'd like to start giving back to this project by doing some coding, even if my motives are self-serving. I've been a programmer for around 35 years, but I know very little about C++ because I've always been able to avoid it, but since these tiny machines have gotten so powerful, I'm going to be forced to learn it I guess. I've been into embedded stuff for around 15 years or so. Man stuff sure has come a long way in that time.

I've been using Linux since '93. Things have gotten much easier since then, and I've gotten a whole lot lazier too. Now it's time to put the effort into working with it that I had to expend 20+ years ago. I'm thinking that if I can get in on the ground floor of porting OpenELEC to another board, I will learn a few things. Of all the architectures that I've been exposed to, I really like the ARM the most. The instruction set is clean and very interesting in its design. Most of my experience is with very low level work, hence the ability to avoid C++ for so long. I will never be a Java programmer, no way no how. I'm not a windows developer either, unless you count knocking out something with VB being a developer. I hate Intel assembler, biggest mess I ever saw in my life.

Let me know if there's anything you think I might be able to help you guys with. Now, off to install Kodi nightly and see how it works.

Thanks again for your hard work. It's definitely appreciated over here.

[afremont]

So, I installed the kodi nightly. If I try to install the WMC addon from a zip file, I get a message about dependencies not being met. Do I need to download it from somewhere else? Something doesn't seem right, there are very few addons available through the interface and if I click on Get Addons and then the kodi repository, it's an empty list instead of a long list of addon types. Any suggestions on that?

I tried using a version from a few days back, and it doesn't even have PVR capability at all. It was apparently broken. The Mar 12 version (the first one I tried) has a few PVR addons in the list, but not PVR WMC.

[krustyreturns]

You should get the wmc addon when you download kodi, but possibly this is broken in the nighties - I haven't looked. The 'dependencies not being met' error usually means you are running the wrong version of the addon for your version of kodi. Why download a nightly, why not just kodi 14.*?

[afremont]

I did finally install the official windows version and it does include the WMC addon. I did that just to get some experience with it, and to verify that the repository should be showing me a list of available addons That said, the whole point, I thought based upon what you wrote in post 6, was to test the nightly windows version to see if it had the same apparent bug that the nightly version of OpenELEC has wrt not working with "group recordings in folders". There is no problem with the "official" versions, but somebody has to test the nightly builds, or there will never be any progress.

Thanks again for your help. Do you have a PVR WMC version that "meets the dependencies" that I could try with the windows nightly?

[krustyreturns]

You are right I forgot what the point was, sorry about that. I'm following too many threads...

[afremont]

No problem, I'm sure you have more than one fish to fry. I downloaded the latest Kodi nightly for windows this morning and the PVR addons are back. Same problem as with OpenELEC nightly on the Pi. If "group recordings in folders" is turned on in ServerWMC, I can browse the series folders, but when I click on a series, nothing happens. I don't get to see the individual episodes in a list. There doesn't appear to be any traffic to ServerWMC that I can see. (ServerWMC) is running on the same machine as the downloaded nightly. Unchecking "group recordings in folders", and restarting the clients restores functionality, albeit at the expense of beauty and efficiency.

It looks like somebody is looking into the trac ticket that zaphod24 opened for Kodi regarding the MythTV addon doing basically the same thing.

http://trac.kodi.tv/ticket/15848

On the Pi, I'm currently running OpenELEC #311. On the windos machine I'm running 337f5f1 (compiled Friday 13th). Oh boy, two Friday the 13th's in two months time.