[RockDawg]

I have been using Media Companiion to maintain my nfo files and never had any problems. I built a pc for running XBMC and and after I scanned in my movies, I noticed that they all showed unwatched. I played around and not matter what I do, I can't get XBMC to get the watched status from the nfo file. I can alter the name and genre on the nfo, refresh the movie info in XBMC and it reflects the changes I made to the nfo file. In the past having <playcount> be >1 has resulted in the movie showing as watched in XBMC. I've seen mention of a <watched> tag, but setting it to true never did anything. I tried setting <playcount> to 1, <watched> to true, and put in a proper date and time for <lastplayed>, but none of that results in the movie showing as watched.

I am running Win XP Pro SP3 and I tried XBMC rev 18899 & 19011 and both act the same. Here is my debug log:

http://paste-bin.com/view/dcc8c8df

Can anybody else confirm this?

[jmarshall]

Correct. Watch status is a property of the file table now, so it's unlikely that an nfo import will update that field.

Not sure if it should to be honest.

[xexe]

It definitely shouldn't fot those that have multi user setups.

Do yourself a favour use XBMC proper and not XBMC + some random program. XBMC can do everything you need without it

[ashlar]

xexe, the external files thing is supported by XBMC, not "some random program". And it's the only reliable way of backing up the whole library, with info, thumbs, posters, fanart, etc.
Suppose for whatever reason my XBMC library gets corrupted (hard drives die, etc.). Why shouldn't I be able to have a backup of it, including the "watched" status?

[smcnally75]

Say you've watched a movie but it is not showing as watched because you've added it to your library after you've watched it. Wouldn't it be easier to just click the button in Media Companion to define it as watched? Or do you think it would be easier to just watch the movie again so it shows as watched in XBMC?

Or simply mark it as watched from within XBMC?

[xexe]

I have no problem other than the fact that XBMC does everything you need without it.

I believe external programs have a place but they should be the second port of call for recommended solutions after the prime way has been exhausted.

XBMC library is multi user capable to my understanding media companion is not.

My library is large in excess of 700 shows.

[ashlar]

xexe, as I already wrote, there are implications that go beyond the use of external programs, though.

[xexe]

xexe, the external files thing is supported by XBMC, not "some random program". And it's the only reliable way of backing up the whole library, with info, thumbs, posters, fanart, etc.
Suppose for whatever reason my XBMC library gets corrupted (hard drives die, etc.). Why shouldn't I be able to have a backup of it, including the "watched" status?

Feel free to backup the "Userdata" folder.

[RockDawg]

Not sure if it should to be honest.

It used to read it from the nfo files and IMO it still should. It's the only way to preserve the watched status if a total re-scan is necessary for some reason (devs change db, current db is corrupt, system becomes hosed and unrecoverable, etc). It's beyond painful to have to set the status of each movie through the XBMC GUI. I used to even manually edit the db and set them all as watched and then go through and mark the ones that were unwatched, but event that was a PIA. When I found out it could read that info from the nfo and programs like Media Companion would set it it was great. Made things so much easier. I hope this change is re-thought. What is/was the reasoning behind changing it?

xexe - You're really off base on this. If XBMC does "everything you need" then tell me, how do you rip DVD's/Blu-Ray's with it? You can't. So at some point most of us end up at the computer anyhow to perform those tasks. That's what makes Media Companion nice. Once I rip my movies to my server I run MC and set the watched status if it needs changed, or I change the movie info, rating, or whatever else I want. How do you do that from within XBMC? Then when I scan in my movies on any of my boxes, they are scanned it exactly as they should be. I don't have to wait until they scan in and then go and change them to my liking (some of which I can't do in XBMC) and then copy the new db to every other box running XBMC.

And for your mulitple user scenario, I've never done multi user, so I'm not sure exactly how it works, but wouldn't the ideal scenario be a seperate db for each user be the best way? How does it currently handle a movie automatically being marked as watched when you play it all the way through, but another user hasn't seen it yet?

[xexe]

Ive no idea why people have so many problems with the database. I have reset mine once since the beginning of 2008 and that was just because of the special path change XBMC made. Thats a 28MB database running for over a year and a new installed SVN every few days. To update i deleted my userdata files and preshed update library.

How do you set watched status in media companion for 4 separate users? How do each of these users get to choose their favorite fanart? How do Linux, XBOX and OSX users users use these extra programs... are saying to get the best from XBMC you need to go buy a copy of windows and a PC?

Sure it will suit some people and better match how they want to work... but lets be clear there is no real need for it, just a nice to have in some circumstances.

The focus is and always should be doing things in XBMC.

In that spirit what can Media Companion or the like do that XBMC cant. We should capture these features in trac for the betterment of the rest of the non windows community

[jmarshall]

Stop the bickering.

The problem is what to do when the db has a playcount already and we're reading an nfo file in.

Which should take priority, and when? Perhaps if nfo.playcount > db.playcount then update, else don't. I don't like selectively ignoring things though.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[Livin]

JM,
I'm wondering if supporting NFO files is unnecessarily causing inefficiencies and additional work; user, core development and 3rd party?

Maybe not supporting NFO files (to remove potential conflicts and decisions points) and have 3rd party apps directly make changes to the XBMC DBs?

[jmarshall]

No, they're not. They're treated identically to any other XML source - the scrapers return the same format to XBMC.

[RockDawg]

Which should take priority, and when? Perhaps if nfo.playcount > db.playcount then update, else don't. I don't like selectively ignoring things though.

Cheers,
Jonathan

What was the problem with the old method? XBMC only reads the nfo when scanning or refreshing. Otherwise the db will keep updating the count, right?

EDIT: and for anybody that wants to preserve that info on re-scans, can't they just export the library as separate files before the re-scan?

[jmarshall]

Refreshing movie information should not alter the play count - they're two separate things: Metadata for the movie which could come from anywhere, and play count information which is specific to the user. These must be kept separate (thus the reason for moving the playcount info into the files table).

The only case that one can make an argument for is if no playcount exists (or, similarly, if db playcount < nfo playcount).

Cheers,
Jonathan