[Cyrelc]

Hello,

I am a second year student at Grant Macewan University in Alberta, Canada. I was absolutely thrilled to see XBMC on Google's 2014 list for summer of code for two reasons: First I believe XBMC is a fantastic piece of software, allowing average users to manage their media in a clean, modern way. The scraper implementation is simply brilliant, and to top it all off, this is a not for profit open-source project. However the second reason I was excited was that I see a few small issues with the software that I would be thrilled to be given the opportunity to repair if given the chance. I feel that the automated scrapers silent failure when scanning a media library is a huge overstep, and wish that there was an implementation that allowed the software to raise an error when data was not found. Secondly, in accordance with this, it would be phenomenal if the software were able to correct the given name of the file if so desired (once you have corrected a scrape to determine that that is in fact, a copy of The Avengers (2013), the software would overwrite the name you had (if given permission) with the new one that could be scraped without error next time).

This software is as impressive as it is grand, and with more and more media going digital, it is inevitable that average home users start seeking ways to organize and view their media in an easy to use and versatile format. XBMC is an astounding front leader in this new area, and as we work to tighten the UI and simplify it for the end user, I believe it will be around for quite some time.

If there are aspects of what I have written that I have misunderstood or misrepresented please do not hesitate to let me know, I welcome all feedback as I learn and enter the coding world fully.

[jmarshall]

Hi there and welcome.

I'd suggest you'd need to extend your project a little bit. After all, the scanner already knows when it doesn't hit anything, so prompting the user would literally be a few lines of code. Having them input a different name would be a few more, and renaming the video files a few more after that. Probably 20-30 lines of code all up.

However, there's plenty of room for improvement in the scanner side of things should you wish to take on that sort of task - just think a little bigger - you've got a whole summer after all!

Cheers,
Jonathan

[M@yeulC]

Hello,

I have an other idea you could use to expand a bit your project, I didn't talked about it before, but it would be awesome if we could have better multi audio support within XBMC.
Let me expand this Idea a bit more : you add a language tag to the file name for the scraper, (JP or Japanese for example, or FR, FRA or FRENCH...). If this is different from the interface language, put a flag in the view. Also allow the user to stack different versions of the same movie, and allow them to play a movie in the desired language from the context menu.

This is just an idea, you can expand it if you wish, or this can be taken by an other student, but since you wanted to work on scrappers, you could work on this one as well ;-)

[da-anda]

your suggestions to expand are touching different areas while AFAIK a GSOC project should be in a single area

[M@yeulC]

Yes, you are right, sorry.
But if someone wants to pick up this project, it's a feature I saw requested many times, and could be a good summer of code proposal.

[jmarshall]

Supporting multiple versions of the same movie would be a great idea. The changes would involve the database as well as the scanner, along with some other areas (UI), but that's OK. It's reasonably self-contained none-the-less.

The basic idea is to support an additional movielinkfile table. The first movie scanned of a certain title/year/id would go into the movie table as now, but when you scan the next, you check if you have a match based on imdbid. If you do, then you add it to the movielinkfile table. If not, you have a new movie and add it to the movie table.

There's a little bit more: When removing a movie you'll need to take care of the duplicates (e.g. would one of the duplicates now move to the main movie table?)

And when the user clicks on a movie they have the option to choose which one to playback. This could perhaps be optimised by ordering the "best" version on top or similar.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[kreeturez]

Supporting multiple versions of the same movie would be a great idea. The changes would involve the database as well as the scanner, along with some other areas (UI), but that's OK. It's reasonably self-contained none-the-less.

+1, this would be very useful to many XBMC users.

It might also make sense to extend it to TV Shows in the same manner (eg SD/HD of the same episode shows as per your suggestion.)

Very excited to see XBMC on the GSOC list again this year!