[Olethros]

same boat, multiple machines, all accessing the same stuff.
i want to be able to stop a movie in one room and resume it in the other, and want everything to be in each device and look the same. same posters for each movie etc.

Have you thought about setting up one machine with the library and then using the XBMC UPNP server function to share out that library to the other machines?

[RckStr]

It will end in tears.

At the end of the day if you have NAS then updating library on start up does not appear to be that harder problem surely?

I think a get by right now would be the ability to tell XBMC to check library in the background (i.e. don't tell you about it) every hour or what ever.

Not sure I understand you. Whats gonna end in tears?

Updating on start is np. Its the manual editing of incorrect data on several machines thats a pain in the ass.

What I want is to scrape and edit the library on one machine, and have all the other machines be able to acess it.

On initial setup, there could be a prompt "are you gonna create a new userdata folder, or will you be using an existing one on your network". And an option to put the userdata dir on the samba, afp or whatever share. This alone, would really be a great start.

If the database could be written to while in use by another xbmc, It really would kick ass.

[prae5]

Its the manual editing of incorrect data on several machines thats a pain in the ass.

Rather than editing it on each machine, fix the source content to it scrapes correctly - either than or add an nfo for the problematic items.

That way, should you ever need to rebuild your library you don't need to go through it all again.

[garyi]

Once you are happy with your library have the correct pictures etc just export the library as individual files.

Now your other XBMCs have access to the exported NFOs and you get the correct data every time.

[RckStr]

I do realise there are alternative sollutions (that, no offense, suck). I appreciate everyone trying to help though. But honestly, the library system as it is today is dated. It will be interesting to se what the plex team achieves. Maybe xbmc can borrow some ideas.

[Reject732]

.nfo files per movie will definately help with the manually entering things per computer, but not the stop / resume in different rooms.

Is it possible to make one -portal install on the master server and redirect the individual "client" or "workstation" computers simply redirect to the masters setup files for information, user settings, resume positions and such?

I come from the windows world, be we do it all the time for outlook settings, security profiles and such... Would it be possible to do it on this type of system?

Just an idea.

[RckStr]

Symlinking will give you the stop/resume functionality. And all macs will obviously have exactly the same libraries with the same covers and fanart etc, and you will only have to edit / maintain the library once, or on one computer.

However, it to has issues. It wont fix the face that the library (userdata folder) cant be written to while in use by another mac. This goes for both XBMC and Plex. There are other issues aswell.

It would be really great to hear from some of the devs what their thoughts are regarding this. It seems the Plex team is really putting an effort into the library these days so it will be interesting to see what they manage.

[Thomss]

lol it's people on the PLEX forum normally going crazy to grab stuff / ideas from XBMC.
I took the time over the last few days to run all my Library though Ember Media Manager and saved all my artwork and NFO's to the individual folders which is going to be a lot better, especially when I had another machine...

[Thomss]

Double post

[Reject732]

Along the lines of symlinking;

I see that XBMC has the option to have multiple "profiles" I wonder if this could be translated in to independant user data while maintaining the same database...

If you KNOW you are only going to be using one machine at a time, a common server based profile would be fine.

If you and your kids or roomates are battling for content, maybe it could be resolved with login profiles?

Just a thought.

[RckStr]

lol it's people on the PLEX forum normally going crazy to grab stuff / ideas from XBMC.

That may very well be. One shouldnt be so ignorant and ruling out they may have some great ideas of their own though, and look into adapting them if it can make XBMC better.

[JPDeckers]

-- RePosted after site-crash, so I can find them back when MY stuff crashes

I have 3 XBMC setups on 3 apple-tv's, all pointing to a single NAS w/ the movies, and got around all this by using/creating a few perl-scripts, creating the (for me) perfect setup.

I only care for daily (so not realtime) updates of the watched-flags & regular updates of IMDB ratings/votes & top250 placements of the movies, and the living-room XBMC setup is the master.

At 2am at night, I rsync the other appletv's databases to the master-appletv, which then updates the watched-flags from the others and IMDB ratings to itself. An hour later, the other 2 sync back the master-db.

This also means that adding new content is handled through the master setup, and is pushed to the others at night. If needed, I can do a manual push ofcourse. Library is exported to individual files to allow for re-scraping later on if needed.


Quote:
Originally Posted by quotaholic
Creative solution! Any chance you would be willing to share those perl scripts?

Of course, but note that they have been created w/ my specific setup in mind, so provided as-is

Sync watched-flags scripts: http://pastebin.com/f8a8c9c4
Note: It syncs on filename, so make sure you have unique filenames for your movies.
You could/should probably better use idFile as the key IF AND ONLY IF the masterdb is indeed pushed to the others, using the same paths everywhere.

Update IMDB ratings locally: http://pastebin.com/f6779ebf9
This one uses IMDB::Film (see CPAN) to fetch the IMDB data. Very unstable, as IMDB changes the layout often, but good-enough™ for me.
I actually use a modified Film.pm for this (as top250 search is currently broken), see the diff: http://pastebin.com/f54e5b4d

[outleradam]

Rather than editing it on each machine, fix the source content to it scrapes correctly - either than or add an nfo for the problematic items.

That way, should you ever need to rebuild your library you don't need to go through it all again.

NFOs are more of a hinderance then a helper. If you put a tvshow.nfo in a folder, it needs an accompanying NFO for each item in the folder. Also, if you do not have a TVDB API key, then it will stop future updates.

It says right in the wiki that the NFO system is not working. You must keep your NFO labeled items separate from the rest of the entire library.

[charrua]

There is a feature already implemented in XBMC that lets you use a central MySQL database for all your clients. I think that feature will solve most of the problems described here. See Database Abstraction Proposal for more details.

[RckStr]

I didnt understand any of that but if its implemented, I dont know howto use it.