[Snowburden]

I know that is a terrible topic for a name, but I couldn't name it any differently lol.

Anyway, I'm sure some people have used XBMC on other computers such as a Laptop and all their data and content is on a Desktop of XBMC, like I'm doing now. Well, like any media server out there that you can access, you get no flashy covers or anything of that like. I was wondering if while using an XBMC to stream from a main computer, can you make it look all flashy like it is from the source? I have a bunch of Anime, TV Shows, and Movies and the like, and they all have info from scrapers so they get the awesome covers and info... Well, is there a way to get the same thing on the streaming version of XBMC (streaming from Laptop to my main PC)? Ever since I figured you could literally make XBMC look like Netflix or any kind of streaming service, by adding your content on scrapers I thought it was the coolest thing ever!

So can I do that on the streaming end? Or sadly, I would need the content on that computer to make it look fancy and such from the scrapers?

Thanks for your time!

[Ned Scott]

See UPnP/Share (wiki).

[Snowburden]

Err, well I already read it, and set it up, but how can I get all the awesome flashy covers on my streamed xbmc? Because it just looks like folders and such, no scraper info is used or anything.

[Ned Scott]

Are you sharing from one XBMC device to another XBMC device using UPnP?

[DBMandrake]

I'm under the impression snow burden is looking to see full library integration on the client end - eg movies and TV shows show up in their respective categories with full fan art, info descriptions etc as if it was a local library with local scraping.

I currently have my files on a Mac Mini which runs my "main" XBMC install and does local scraping. I then have a Raspberry Pi in another room which connects to an SMB share on the Mac to access those files directly and does its own local scraping to generate an independent but identical (aside from last watched flags) Library.

This works quite well because I get all the media info, its quite fast to browse the library and start playing items as all the meta data doesn't have to be pulled across the network, (although initial scraping does take a while) but the drawbacks are that I have two machines that I have to remember to perform library updates or cleaning on as I add and delete items...and no synchronisation of last watched.

Yesterday I saw you mention UPnP in the same context so decided to try it - but it doesn't seem to work that well. When I added the Mac XBMC UPnP server as a source on the Pi there is no option to enable a scraper, (fair enough if the metadata is being brought across automatically) and the only meta data that appears is the small cover poster. No fan art, no info description, nothing.

It also doesn't seem to add it to the Movie or TV Library - I can only access it through Video -> Files. Should more happen ? If not this is unfortunately no replacement for direct file sharing and maintaining a duplicate local library...

PS this is XBMC 12.2 on the Mac and the latest version of Raspbmc on the Pi

[Ned Scott]

I made a video about this. It's right here: UPnP/Share (wiki)

You should have poster, fan art, summary, all that stuff. Yes, you go through Videos -> Files, and to make it show up on the main menu you have to use a skin that supports custom home items (I've tried to convince the Team to add this to the default skin, but so far no go on that).

If you want to share watched status and resume points, then both devices should be using nightly builds (wiki).

[DBMandrake]

Thanks Ned,

I have to take back some of what I said - I had forgotten that I had actually tested it at work between two Windows 7 machines and for some reason nothing but the small poster was appearing, no descriptions etc, however when I tried it at home on the Raspberry Pi connecting to my Mac Mini it did indeed show all art work and descriptions, and despite what you said, it was correctly showing watched status as well.

I'm guessing that's because raspbmc includes some back ports from Gotham ? However the Mac Mini end was running bog standard 12.2. So UPnP seems like a workable solution provided that the "server" is running xbmc all the time, (and that xbmc doesn't crash, which it does some times on my Mac) whereas the way I'm doing it now with file sharing only requires that the Mac is on, and would also work with a simple NAS as a file store.

The thorn in the side though is that I use Amber on the Raspberry Pi specifically for speed (and looks, I think it looks great) and it has very limited home screen customisation so I have no way to add a custom home screen button that goes directly to the UPnP share in a way that less technical people in the house will find user friendly

So sadly unless Amber adds some way to customise the home screen a bit more I'll have to stick with my current system of file sharing and independent scraping.

[Ned Scott]

IIRC, the shared watched status code was in v12, but there were bugs preventing it from working, or at least working most of the time. So I guess it is possible that it could work in some situations with only v12 builds :)

There's some stuff "in the pipes" for skinners to make it easier to not only add custom home items, but allow such custom home items to work across different skins. I'm not sure on the details, as I think the code is there but it's just not something most skins use yet, but it should help going forward.

[DBMandrake]

Good to know. So there are no plans though to merge UPnP sources into the Movies and TV Libraries automatically ?

That would be the ideal solution but I can see how that could be difficult (maybe impossible) to implement in a sane way.

[Kib]

It shows the watched status in 12.2, but won't update it when you watch something

@DBMandrake: yes those plans exist (and some design has been thought out) but you correctly identified one of the key difficulties to overcome: it is quite complex and basically requires rethinking the way the entire library works.

You can probably imagine you would need to handle caching of stale items, differentiate between local and remote items, skin support to show those items differently, etc etc

[saiyen2012]

hello all i'm having a similar problem. rather then start a new thread i figured i'd ask me question here.

2.8ghz I5core 16gbram 101 Mbps running xbmc from this machine with UPnp 2 my pi. all the info from the movies are showing up no delays while playing the movie. my only problem is that it isnt showing any of the fanart. is their a way to fix this issue? thanks for listening.