[TheDuffMan]

Hi all, this is a plugin to play South Park episodes from xepisodes.com. As far as I know, this should work for users in any country.

Features:

• Stream full episodes from all seasons
  
• Thumbnails for each episode
  

Download:

• Github
  

The plugin may not work 100%: sometimes the site serves links from a different host but it's pretty infrequent. It's a known issue that I'll fix if it becomes frequent enough to debug. If you face any other problems, please let me know and I'll see what I can do.

Ideas to expand on this plugin in the future: add download option, add plot, add thumbnails for seasons.

[jolid]

Thank you, works really good..

[matejdro]

Thank you!

It works fine on my desktop machine, but i'm having big performance problems on my HTPC machine. Yes, machine is really slow and outdated, but other plugins works without problems and also videos on xepisodes in browser works without problems.

[TheDuffMan]

Thanks for the feedback.

Where does the slowdown occur? Loading lists or loading videos? I have an idea that it may be slowing down when trying to find if a string exists in the page before playing the video, and I can try changing this if the slowdown is at that time.

[matejdro]

It happens when playing videos. Videos are playing little slower than usual and looping (it plays few seconds of the video, then it plays that part again. After that another few seconds and again loop)

[TheDuffMan]

Hmm, it should definitely not loop. It's hard for me to say. Can you try changing the one function called PlayVideo to this:

Code:

def PlayVideo(url,name):
    req = urllib2.Request(url)
    req.add_header('User-Agent', HEADER)
    response = urllib2.urlopen(req)
    link=response.read()
    response.close()
    match=re.compile('<embed src="http\://www.4shared.com//flash/player.swf\?file=(.+?)" width="590" height="430" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always"></embed>').findall(link)
    g_thumbnail = xbmc.getInfoImage( "ListItem.Thumb" )
    liz=xbmcgui.ListItem(name, iconImage="DefaultVideo.png", thumbnailImage=g_thumbnail)
    liz.setInfo( type="Video", infoLabels={ "Title": name } )
    xbmc.Player(xbmc.PLAYER_CORE_DVDPLAYER).play(str(match[0]),liz)

Also, can you post a debug log. I may be able to get some info out of that.

[matejdro]

I will try changing it. Here is recording of my issues (without your modification):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkcavAUukI4

sorry for bad quality, it was recorded with a phone. But i hope you get the point. Audio is very silent (sorry), but if you listen carefully, you can hear it looping.

Also videos takes forever to load.

[matejdro]

OK, i changed function now. First, when i tried to play file i get script error notification. But after pressing few times it player. Unfortenately, performance is same

Here is log:
http://pastebin.com/ZrPFekw9

[TheDuffMan]

OK - the script error notification was due to it serving a video host that the script doesn't handle (yet). Known issue there.

As for the lag, I'm not sure what I can change on the code. The video link is being served up fine, and from the debug log it looks like the video keeps getting a buffer underrun. That makes me think it's just not being downloaded fast enough. These videos are about 110mb streaming for each episode - can your connection support that? I know you've said you've used other plugins, I'm just wondering if they were maybe a lower bitrate.

Maybe someone with more experience than myself may be able to find out something from the logs as well.

[matejdro]

I have 20/20 connection, but my HTPC is connected via wifi network, so it's chance that something is wrong there. I will try connecting it to cable and see it.

Thanks for suggestions.

[TheDuffMan]

After doing some research I found that maybe this could be due to me specifying which player xbmc should use to play the video, instead of letting it choose the default. I've post up a patch for you to try here once xepisodes goes back online. It's been down for a couple of days now.

EDIT: Ok, please try this:

On the code in the master branch, change line 44 from:

Code:

xbmc.Player(xbmc.PLAYER_CORE_DVDPLAYER).play(str(match[0]),liz)

To:

Code:

xbmc.Player().play(str(match[0]),liz)

Without me specifying the player you should use, you may see an increase in performance.

[matejdro]

I have connected XBMC computer via cable and it works great. It seems i need to do something to improve my wireless connection.

Thanks for your help.

EDIT: even at cable it still loads video forever and you can't skip video either. But OK, at least i know why video didn't worked.

[Eldorado]

Does this work with new Dharma releases as an Add-On?

[garyi]

Please explain how to install?

I tried 'installing from zip file' and nothing happened.

[TheDuffMan]

@matejdro: I think that's just a limitation of the server it's streaming from. Skipping is slow because they cap download speeds.

@Eldorado: No, it's not ready for Dharma yet. I plan on converting to it to an add on though for Dharma. I will post an update in this topic when it's ready, so feel free to subscribe here for email notifications.

@garyi: If you're using XBMC Camelot version or earlier, download the files through github, and unzip them into /usr/plugins/video/South Park. Then XBMC will recognize the folder and add an entry called 'South Park' when you go to Videos -> Plugins in whatever skin you're using.