MediaManager Release 2.2

Media Manager v2.2 has been released. This is a major update that focuses on iTunes integration. Here is a list of the major changes:

• Able to use the latest XBMC addons as media information sources.
• Many improvements to the XBMC addon source.
• Handle TV episodes that contain more than one episode
• Added new File Database store
• Added ability to store seen file information within a database resources
• Added command line tool to print database schemas
• Added configuration option for strip tokens.
• If sources, stores or actions are configured, sensible defaults are used
• Added new database store
• Show/Film search make use of ignore tokens to find media name
• Added ability to configure database resources
• Added images for seasons of shows. These are used by default for mp4 files.

This has been quite a while coming, but it's finally here. The project website has now move to here. Please use the project website to let me know of bugs or feature requests. Also if you find the application useful then let me know on my blog. 

The main focus of this release has been updating the XBMC scraper support to work with the latest scrapers and stores that make use of databases.

The Road to MediaManager 2.2

The The next release (2.2) of Media Manager is has been quite close for quite a while now. Or at least I though it was. Each time I've been getting close to a relase I've had to put it off due to lack of time.

Well the good news is that it's had quite a lot of development over the last couple of months. It's also now hosted on bitbucket. The main reason for this is the removal of Google code features such as downloads! I consider hosting on github, but currently prefer bitbucket/mercurial. The move over will be completed when I make the next release, however all the code is now pushed to bithucket. Visit the project page here.

The main focus the last couple of months has been supporting the lastest XBMC media scrapers. Their have been a lot of changes in the scraper format since I first added support for them. Some of the changes has caused things to break and media info to be missing. The XBMC scrapers are quite a bit more advance than the initial versions I started using. Media Manager now handles these new scrapers, allowing full information to be fetched for TV Shows and films. We are also now default to the frodo branch of the XBMC scrapers.

In order to support the new features of the XBMC scrapers I created a lot of new unit tests. The scrapers are some of the most heavily tested parts of Media Manager. These test will help a lot with future changes to XBMC scrapers.

The main driver for this was getting TVDB show images to work correctly. Their were quite a few problems with the scraper custom functions that had to be addressed. Most of the web documentation on the scrapers seems to be quite out of date now. This took a lot of trail and effort, but it seems to be working very well now.

Their are still a number of features left to implement for 2.2, the biggest is a pure Java replacement for atomicparsely. This is almost their, just needs testing....

PC Games

For a while now I have been playing mmorpg such as world of Warcraft, rift, guild wars 2. With the odd game in between on my PS3 and iPad. The mmorpg's have been pretty good, except they don't really work on Linux. Each of those games are pretty time consuming, so I've not had chance to play any others.

Things have change now, I have finally god bored of them and started to look around for other games. At the moment the PS3 is not a real option as it is on the main TV, which is always in use. Also PS3 games tend to be pretty expensive. 

I started by looking at steam again due to rumors of it's Linux support and a game console. I have been playing also rats of games. Quite a few of these were from humble indie bundles. Others were big name games.  All of these we're pretty cheap. While the humble indie games might not be the most advance, they have great game play! They also work on Linux.

One great thing about steam is the wish list. If you add games to your wish list, then you are notified when they go on sale. This is great and has allowed me to get a number of games for very cheap. I also have the mobile app for steam on my iPhone and iPad, so I get.a notification on their when things go on sale.

Interestingly I have been buying a lot of windows only games. My hope is that one day they will be updated to run on Linux. If the game console takes off, then I suspect their will be a lot of pressure to have games running on Linux. People looking of stats of game use on Linux via steam might want to consider that I now by much more windows games because of Linux gaming. At the moment I can't see my buying any games for the PS3 or non steam desktop games.

The other thing I really like about steam is that is a App Store. Once you have bought a game, it's yours. So I can uninstall it and reinstall it as I like. Also I have been able to use the codes off my half life 1 CD to activate all the half life 1 based games in steam! One of the things I used to hate with PC gaming was that once something was uninstalled I would never play it again. Also most my old CD games no longer work. Steam keeps older games playable, and I can install them on other machines like my laptop when traveling.

I have been giving big picture mode a go, which will be the console interface. It is pretty good. I think I like,the PS3 interface better, but suspect that is just because I am more familiar with it. I want to use a controller with some of the games. Since I had a PS3 controller I connected this to my windows machine via a driver called MotionJoy. MotionJoy had a horrible user interface, but once it working it's great. Somes games were just meant to be played with a controller ( street fighter for example ). However like been able to use mouse and keyboard for other games. Steam gaming gives the best of both worlds. Very much looking forward to their new controller.

Media Manager 2.2 nearly here!

The next release (2.2) of Media Manager is almost ready. Just need to set aside the time to do start the release process. I just wanted to give people a heads up that from this release I'm not planning to create packages for Linux distributions. So their will be no .deb or .rpm files. Instead people will have to use the Linux installer.

I realise this is less than ideal as I prefer to use packages on my own system, but I was spending too much time with each release making sure the packages worked and had the correct dependencies. I their is anyone who wants to help create packages of media manager, I'd be happy to support them in this!

Media Manager v2.1 released

Media Manager v2.1 has been released. This is a major update that focuses on iTunes integration. Here is a list of the major changes:

• Seen files can be ignored
• Directories can be watched for new media, which is then moved to the correct media directory.
• MP4 Files metadata now handled by fork of atomic parsley.
• Much improved MP4/M4V metadata.
• Support for High Def media.
• New Store for notifying iTunes of media file changes via a remote server running on the iTunes box.
• Improved windows support.
• Improved TV Show/Film searching.
• Fixed issues with launch scripts.
• Debian/Ubuntu install packages.

This has been quite a while coming, but it's finally here. Please use the project website to let me know of bugs or feature requests. Also if you find the application useful then let me know on my blog. 

I'm hoping that project releases will come quicker now with a smaller feature set. Currently work in in progress on the next release which will include a database store and a update to the XBMC scraper support.

The native tools that Media Manager uses have changed since the last release. It now uses media info and my Atomic Parsley fork. The new iTunes store also makes use of my remote itunes controller project.

To download the latest release please visit the project website. Their is a generic installer for most platforms and OpenSuSE/Debian/Ubuntu packages. Also you can find the latest OpenSuSE builds via my OpenSuSE source.

AtomicParsley Shield Fork 0.9.6 released

I've just made another release of my Atomic Parsley fork. I found a bug in the new --outputXML option that generated the wrong output on windows XP due to the console character encodings been non UTF-8. So I though I'd best fix it up and do a release.

So to grab the latest release binaries or the source code, go here.

Using jenkins to build my opensource projects

I've been playing around lately with jenkins. Jenkins is a continuous integration server which has quite a good list of plugins. I've now got most of my open source projects building everytime a change is made. An in the cases of projects like AtomicParsley Shild Fork, I've gotten it to build on 4 different platforms every time a change is made to the source code.

Jenkins makes this pretty easy by allowing a master controll server and then salve servers. So I run the slaves on my different platforms. There are also plugins that allow VM's to be started for needed platforms. Thats something I want to explore for building on different Linux distributions.

The real advantage for me is when the build finished and Jenkins publishes the builds. I have it setup to uploaded AtomicParsley builds the public area of my drop box account. These are then linked to from the project website. In the case of MediaManager, it triggers another build which pushes the current build to the OpenSuSE build server and creates nighly RPM's of the project. These can be used by people who want to live on the bleeding edge.

The other thing I really like is that it collects all the test reports and generated documentation onto the jenkins server. This allows me to quickly review the latest build. I can see how this would be very usefull for teams of develops. However now find the building side of stuff is taken care of automatically leaving me much more time for development. Creating and testing relases is much less of a chore now.

Anyhow Media Manager is getting much closer to a release. Just testing things like the installers at the moment. Once I'm happy with them, I'll be pushing out the release :-)