Trailers not streaming part 2

[jbinkley60]

Thank you, sir. Now i just need to figure why trailer channel is not being picked up by trailer.py When looking in database, I do not see entries from trailer channel. Any thoughts why would be appreciated.

Sorry, I am not quite following. What are the trailer channel and the trailer.py, some other Kodi tools / utilities ? I am not familiar with them.

The Trailer Checker tool only looks at the Mezzmo database for trailers to download. If you don't see a trailer in the Mezzmo video properties window then the Trailer Checker won't find it either. The Trailer Checker also only looks for You Tube trailers in Mezzmo.

So if you have other non-You Tube trailers in the Mezzmo database then I'll need to know what those URLs are (a couple of sample URls would be fine) and whether they can be downloaded with the Trailer Checker utility, as it is today.


Thanks,

Jeff

[spags65]

Hopefully this clears things up. I setup Mezzmo channel for movie trailers. Attached picture is of "Now Playing" movie, Barbie. The youtube url for Barbie movie is not in the checktrailer database. Does the checktrailer python script search the Mezzmo database table for "Movie Trailer" channel?

Mezzmo Trailers.JPG

[jbinkley60]

Hopefully this clears things up. I setup Mezzmo channel for movie trailers. Attached picture is of "Now Playing" movie, Barbie. The youtube url for Barbie movie is not in the checktrailer database. Does the checktrailer python script search the Mezzmo database table for "Movie Trailer" channel?

Mezzmo Trailers.JPG

Sorry for the delay responding. I've been traveling the past few weeks.

Ahh, now I understand the question. I didn't even realize there was a Mezzmo Movie Trailer Channel. Nice to see you are using my iHeart radio channel. I wrote that a while back and still use it often.

To answer your question, channels store their data outside of the main Mezzmo database. Each channel has its own local storage area as far as I know but I am pretty sure the trailer channel leverages the same Mezzmo You Tube viewer mechanism (i.e. curl). I'll need to spend some time looking at the movie trailer channel code and see if there are any options here to improve. I didn't write it but it is written in Python. If it can spawn an external session to a newer You Tube DLL then I might be able to get it to work better. I may need to chat with Peter about whether the Mezzmo Python wrapper will allow this or if there is another mechanism. It would be nice if we can get it working. I presume the You Tube trailers are stalling at times ?

I am getting ready to travel again next week but will look at this when I get back. Mezzmo channels are pretty cool and are an easy way to add functionality.


Thanks,

Jeff

[spags65]

I am excited about using the trailer channel. Keep me updated on progress for pulling in trailer channels into the trailer pythong script. Also reach out if need beta testing or anything else. I really do appreciate the assistance.

[jbinkley60]

I am excited about using the trailer channel. Keep me updated on progress for pulling in trailer channels into the trailer pythong script. Also reach out if need beta testing or anything else. I really do appreciate the assistance.

So I am back from my travels now and will start looking into this more. Before I do, please tell me what isn't working for you right now with the T\Movie Trailer channel ? I want to be able to reproduce the issues. Tell me what is working and what isn't working. I assume playback isn't working due to the Roku format issue between mp4 and mkv files, correct ? I've got a couple of ideas on how to attack this and get to high quality local trailers.

The biggest question is how to pull new trailers, either via the Mezzmo Trailer channel plugin or an external script (like the Trailer Checker). Regardless it will need to be kicked off manually to fetch new trailers. More minor questions are how many trailers to keep and for how long. If you have any thoughts here, please let me know. I will likely have more questions once I hear what is and isn't working.


Thanks,

Jeff

[spags65]

The larger issue is that the python youtube/trailer script is not pulling down trailer channel youtube urls from mezzmo database to process. Then converting from mp4 to mkv will be required once youtube videos are downloaded.

[jbinkley60]

Thank you, sir. Now i just need to figure why trailer channel is not being picked up by trailer.py When looking in database, I do not see entries from trailer channel. Any thoughts why would be appreciated.

It's a bit more complicated than this. The reasons that the Mezzmo Trailer Checker isn't picking up the Mezzmo Movie Channel trailers is because channels do not leverage the main Mezzmo database and, after looking at the code for the Mezzmo Movie Trailer Channel, it doesn't store the trailer URLs anywhere. It grabs them dynamically when you launch the channel. Also, trailers in the main Mezzmo movie database are tied to movies that are already in your library. In other words you can't add trailers without an underlying associated movie. A channel can pull down stand-alone media types, like trailers, because they just query a list of items and make them display like other media in your library, without adding them to the Mezzmo library. This is how the iHeart channel works too for radio stations.

Having said all this, there are solutions here. I tested the Mezzmo Movie Trailer Channel and it is fully functional except for not playing the trailers. There are for two reasons for this. First, the method Mezzmo uses to pull the trailers isn't really supported any longer by You Tube and thus tends to be too slow. Second, even if that wasn't an issue, your Roku devices can't play mp4 trailers. To make the Mezzmo Movie Trailer Channel work with high quality mkv trailers 3 things are needed: First getting a listing of trailers. Second storing them somewhere for playback and converting them to the proper format. Third, a mechanism to play the trailers from where they are stored.

There are a couple of options here to solve this. In either case I think it will take two pieces of software for this to work. I could try to put all three pieces into the Mezzmo Movie Trailer Channel but I expect that will have undesirable results and less flexibility. Here's what I am thinking. First create a Python script which will fetch the trailers that the current Mezzmo Movie Trailer Channel script does today. Store them into a database, track them for retention periods, dupes, error checking etc.. Then process them into the proper format and write the results to a database which the Mezzmo Movie Trailer Channel can access. Then create a new version of the Mezzmo Movie Trailer Channel which will go to the database and pull the available trailer information (based upon which the user selects like new, popular etc..). Then leverage the Mezzmo Movie Trailer Channel to playback the local trailers vs. going to the website and trying to pull them down, like it does today.

Whether the Python script I reference would be adding functionality to the current Mezzmo Trailer Checker or another new script is something I'll have to think about. For this to work the user would have to periodically run the script to check for new trailers and to insert them into the local database. The Mezzmo Movie Trailer channel would be much faster because it wouldn't need to query the Internet for new trailers. That would be done by the Python script. It would simply query the local database to display the available trailers. That would be very fast.

I hope this makes sense.

Feedback welcome,


Jeff

[spags65]

Since i could not find the urls in the mezzmo database, i suspected they were not stored in the database. Seperate script(s) by function is a logic step. Oncw the bugs are sorted out of the script(s) automating windows task is easy enough. What do you need from me?

[jbinkley60]

Since i could not find the urls in the mezzmo database, i suspected they were not stored in the database. Seperate script(s) by function is a logic step. Oncw the bugs are sorted out of the script(s) automating windows task is easy enough. What do you need from me?

This will take a little while to pull together. I need to do some testing with the Mezzmo channel interface to ensure it is a fully functioning Python shell or at least supports the new calls required for local database access. Based upon the current Mezzmo Movie Trailers Channel code, it looks to be fully functional. The good news is that I have all of the required various pieces of code to do this between the current Mezzmo Movie Trailers channel and the Mezzmo Trailer Checker. I will just need to reassemble them. A Windows task could handle the fetching and converting of new trailers.

I don't need anything else right now. What will be interesting to learn is how often themoviedb.org updates their trailer information.


Thanks,

Jeff

[jbinkley60]

Since i could not find the urls in the mezzmo database, i suspected they were not stored in the database. Seperate script(s) by function is a logic step. Oncw the bugs are sorted out of the script(s) automating windows task is easy enough. What do you need from me?

Just a quick update. Peter and I have discussed the proposed approach for the next generation of the Mezzmo Movie Trailer Channel and we are aligned. I hope to begin development on it next week. I've got a few other things to finish up first. I plan to structure this solution so that we can potentially add in other channels easily into the same framework.


Thanks,

Jeff