Kodi Community Forum

i'm dumb found my answer plz ignore

thanks for the speedy reply!

Jason,

Thanks for answering my last question. I do have another though.

If using one pc as a master, what do I point the slave pc's to as far as playlists or m3u files or whatever? Is there a certain place or directory that the slaves need to be pointed to to get the data generated from the master? and should I just share this directory or should I map the directory from the slaves?

Also, is there anywhere that explains the interleaving rules and how to apply them?

Thanks,
Mark

Just point all of the systems that you want to share channel data to the same directory. No need to worry about anything else, it's all done internally.

Interleaving has only a few parameters. You select the channel that you want to interleave into the current channel, and you select the minimum and maximum interleaving interval. You may also select the starting episode, but that's generally just 1.

Let's say you create a network TV channel that plays shows by ABC. You want a few random comedy movies to play in there, as well as bumpers and commercials. So this is your setup:

Channel 1:
Channel type - TV Network: ABC
Rules -
1. Interleave channel 2, min 2, max 5.
2. Interleave channel 3, min 1, max 3.
3. Interleave channel 4, min 1, max 3.

Channel 2:
Channel type - Movie Genre: Comedy
Rules -
1. Don't play this channel

Channel 3:
Channel type - Directory: bumper directory
Rules -
1. Don't play this channel

Channel 4:
Channel type - Directory: commercial directory
Rules -
1. Don't play this channel

The rules are evaluated in order. Pure ABC shows:

1. Castle episode
2. Modern Family episode
3. Wipeout episode

After rule 1:
1. Castle episode
2. Modern Family episode
3. Dodgeball
4. Wipeout episode

After rule 2:
1. Castle episode
2. Modern Family episode
3. Bumper
4. Dodgeball
5. Bumper
6. Wipeout episode

After rule 3:
1. Castle episode
2. Commercial
3. Modern Family episode
4. Bumper
5. Dodgeball
6. Commercial
7. Bumper
8. Wipeout episode

So the important things to note are that the number of items before a video is inserted is a random value between min and max (inclusive), and that the rules are evaluated in order.

Jason,

Thanks for that explanation. It is of great help to me!

Have you given any further thought to incorporating a rule that states "Don't play an episode or movie that has been played within the last n number of days"? Just wondering.

Thanks,
Mark

While that would be nice to have, I'm not sure it's feasible or even possible. I think the more important rule for me to add at the moment is to try and give some even distribution to shows in a channel. I'm still conflicted on how to do this...results would be pretty shitty if a channel had only 2 shows, one with 200 episodes and one with 2 episodes...I can't really get past that sort of thing. I guess in that case, though, don't add the rule to do this...

Jason102 Wrote:While that would be nice to have, I'm not sure it's feasible or even possible. I think the more important rule for me to add at the moment is to try and give some even distribution to shows in a channel. I'm still conflicted on how to do this...results would be pretty shitty if a channel had only 2 shows, one with 200 episodes and one with 2 episodes...I can't really get past that sort of thing. I guess in that case, though, don't add the rule to do this...

Fair enough...I can see your point. But you do know that that is an option when creating a playlist within XBMC?
Let me ask you this....When I create my own playlist to use, of say, Episodes, Comedy, random and select that to be a channel and I also select "Play episodes in order" in the rules, would PTV give me random shows in the proper order or would they be random shows in a random order?
Basically...are the channel rules supposed to work with playlist of my making?

Thanks,
Mark

mwkurt Wrote:Jason,

Thanks for that explanation. It is of great help to me!

Have you given any further thought to incorporating a rule that states "Don't play an episode or movie that has been played within the last n number of days"? Just wondering.

Thanks,
Mark

It's time consuming, but if your channel is a mixed playlist made up of playlists for each show in that channel, you can do it. for each show you have two rules: TV Show is SHOWNAME and Not Played in the Last XX Days. Then your channel playlist is MIXED and has a rule matching the playlist for each show you want on the channel. This way, you can also put a limit on the playlists so even though one show may have 200 episodes, only 50 (or however) are put in PTV when it makes the channels.

CameronC Wrote:It's time consuming, but if your channel is a mixed playlist made up of playlists for each show in that channel, you can do it. for each show you have two rules: TV Show is SHOWNAME and Not Played in the Last XX Days. Then your channel playlist is MIXED and has a rule matching the playlist for each show you want on the channel. This way, you can also put a limit on the playlists so even though one show may have 200 episodes, only 50 (or however) are put in PTV when it makes the channels.

Hi Cameron and thanks for the information. This is, however, how I have had my playlist up until now. I could keep them like this, but was hoping for a way to not have so many playlists in my video directory. Having a couple hundred playlists in there can sometimes get confusing
I thought it would be easier and less messy if that rule would be incorporated into the channel rules.
While I have your attention, if playlists are made the way you describe (channel is a mixed playlist made up of playlists for each show in that channel) can you get them to play in order so that a random show will play the next episode in the story.
I am just coming into PTV version 2 from version 1 and before that TVTime and am redoing all of my playlists to try and get rid of some of the unwatched channels. I am trying to get a grasp of how things work with this version compared to the other two I have used.

Thanks,
Mark

Using the rule to play shows in order should work with your playlists as well. The result is that the shows are done in a random order, but the episodes themselves are played in order.

1. Show 3 ep 1
2. Show 2 ep 1
3. Show 3 ep 2
4. Show 1 ep 1
etc.

Jason102 Wrote:Using the rule to play shows in order should work with your playlists as well. The result is that the shows are done in a random order, but the episodes themselves are played in order.

1. Show 3 ep 1
2. Show 2 ep 1
3. Show 3 ep 2
4. Show 1 ep 1
etc.

Excellent!!!!! Well Done!

Thanks Jason,

Mark

File locking on shared channels.
how long should it take typically to deal with the file locks? i've tried using different servers to host the channel lineups, (linux, freebsd, windows) and it takes on average 10-12 minutes for psuedotv to start playing after its launched.
if i copy the directory to a local drive however it happens very quickly.

I'm not sure why it would be such a big difference, in most cases my samba shares are faster than my local disk (10gigE + SSD SAN in one of the test cases)

as a temporary solution i have all the boxes pointed at a local folder with channels disabled updating on all but one box and am rsyncing the channels folder out to the other machines periodically.

File locking will slow things down, but it shouldn't be by more than about 10 seconds per channel in the worst case scenerio. Are you experiencing much more delay than this?

Yeah its several minutes per channel up to 5-6 minutes

Can you get a debug log of this happening for me, please?

Jason102 Wrote:Can you get a debug log of this happening for me, please?

to do that i just enable debugging in xbmc settings and get you the log file right? or is there a debugging mode for ptv you want me to turn on?

i'll reconfigure them to use some network shared channel folders when i get home.

also do you need me to let it run through the full thing or just 2-3 channels be good enough (takes quite some time if i let it do it with all 30 channels loaded up )