(outdated thread) XBMC for Dummies!

[Rojoyinc]

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I dunno what's causing that - I can't find it.  (corrupt file or something)  I'm going to restore from a backup my entire music dir.
I did remove the <unknown>

how long before new update of voxc is out then?

[Rojoyinc]

Using m monkey - I got artists working.
NO albums yet - still searching and dumping odd character files.

Once I remove them in media monkey - must I  "clean" the music files in XBMC?
or just close and re-run it?  to get them out of xbmc.

[Rojoyinc]

In new version (or can we now?)

set the volume of what ever is playing to fade down quickly - when the computer voice talks - then restore vol.

for example - asking  "What song is this"  I hear the voice, but can't understand it over the loud music.  ;-)

[jitterjames]

I can post something unofficial in the next couple of days I think.  I am hoping to remove all the old stuff of the main site and replace with the new version, but that might take a little longer.

Note that from now on new versions require activation (i.e. you must be a paid user) or they operate in demo mode which means you can only do X commands before you have to close VC and restart.  I haven't settled on the number of commands yet.  X = 25 or 30 probably.  I want people to be able to set it up and evaluate its usage without it being too annoying but I don't want to make it so that people can use the demo mode without feeling the need to buy it.  Depending on user feedback, I may raise X to 40.

There are a number of "softmute" commands available in the command builder.  I'm not sure what version you would need to use, probably later than 8.51.  There is one for master vol, and one for each of: xbmc, itunes, and mediamonkey.

[Rojoyinc]

(minutes passing) and xbmc still says working....  since I clicked genXML on vc.
I have over 18,000 songs, maybe it will just take a while... I'll go take a break and come back later.

[jitterjames]

please try to be a bit more thorough and accurate in your posts if you want assistance.  I can't help if I have to guess what you mean.

Clicking GenXML in VC doesn't do anything other than bring the dropdown menu into view which shows 4 other options, so if that is really all you did you will be waiting a long time for something to happen.

Under no circumstances does using GenXML cause XBMC to display any message.  If XBMC is displaying a message that says "working" then it is doing something else on its own, and that could be part of your problem.

Scanning data from XBMC should be almost instant.  Restarting VC after updating XML files can take a while.

[jitterjames]

a this point, after all the poking and prodding, it might not be a bad idea to do a reboot...

[Kalle]

(minutes passing) and xbmc still says working....  since I clicked genXML on vc.
I have over 18,000 songs, maybe it will just take a while... I'll go take a break and come back later.

Rojoynic

only for understanding, XBMC you started as admin and it runs in the background?

Kalle

[Rojoyinc]

ok - trying again loading xmbc... waiting for it to load EPG n stuff...
it's done.

running VC

window opens -  says  "Error creating group: XBMC play music
-Voxcommando will continue to load, but commands in this group will not be available.

selected  "gem xml - xbmc".
I get the  notice in the history pane. genXML all XBMC...

Looking at files in the VC folder.
(I should see them dated today right?)  Movies is 2/8... 

Moving all the xbmc*.xml files to a temp dir... (removing) incase it doesn't re-gen if exsisting.

selecting  GENxml (XBMC) again - it should re-gen all the files?

It only generated  xbmcMovies.xml.  (Again) no others.

hopefully I was more clear this time.  Any ideas?  (I can copy MM generated file to xbmc and get it to work, but obviously I have something wrong).

[jitterjames]

OK.  A much better report. 

You would be amazed at how much more happy I am to respond to a post like this.  It is night and day for me.

One thing I suggested before, that I think you missed, is that you should open the genXML form which allows you to do each one individually and it tells you how many items were found.  By doing that you can isolate which is giving you problems.  (i.e artist or album movies etc)  The GenAll button is design to give up if one fails rather than hammering away at XBMC which may not be on or may not be configured correctly.

Note that you shouldn't need to move or delete any xml files, VC will overwrite them if it is able to process what xbmc is serving up.

I assume that you are using version 0.873 ?  If not, you should be.  It is better at handling weird xbmc data.  (at least it is supposed to be).

If you must use MM to scan and want to rename your files, that may work ok, but some artists/albums might not work.  (I'm not sure)

[Rojoyinc]

the genXML - FORM (oh) nice.

Mmonkey (all worked)
Itunes all worked
XBMC = (    only  movies were found all others 0

That's worse then the previous VC version did (I could get songs and artists before).
Like I said - I can copy my MM files over - but I figured you'd want to track down any
bugs (if that's the case).  I know you said you were doing a new method this vers.

0.873  yes.
I'll - close and re-run as admin, to see if that makes any dif?  I have admin account, I hate it when win7 still wants permission....

Ran XBMC and VC as admin, no change - 0 for all except movies.
I can rename - and move the files to get it to work, but figured you'd want to hear back.
(It still doesn't like something in my library).

And doing it this way I scan scan TV channels or shows.

[jitterjames]

I'm honestly surprised that the new version isn't able to scan properly.  Are you sure your xmbc data is good?  Are you able to browse stuff in "library" mode?

anyway enter this into the address bar of a web browser on the computer where xbmc is running:

artist:
http://127.0.0.1:8080/xbmcCmds/xbmcHttp?command=querymusicdatabase(select%20idArtist,strArtist%20from%20artist%20order%20by%20strArtist)

album:
http://127.0.0.1:8080/xbmcCmds/xbmcHttp?command=querymusicdatabase(select%20idAlbum,strAlbum%20from%20album%20order%20by%20strAlbum)

view source, then save it to a text file and send it to me.  Once we look at this we can worry about the other stuff like TVshows.

I'm sorry it isn't "just working" for you, and I really appreciate your patience in helping me figure this out.  We'll get to the bottom of it I am sure!

[jitterjames]

As far as admin goes, I don't think that either VC or XBMC requires you to run as Administrator.   Of course I could be wrong, but I never run anything as Administrator and it all works.

The only time you have to run as Admin is with MediaMonkey, but you should only have to do this ONCE.  After that you should be able to run it normally and it will work.

On the other hand, I probably have UAC turned off because I find it too annoying.  Maybe if you have UAC on you need to run stuff as admin?

[Rojoyinc]

I think I'm making progress.  I restored a backup of my music, since many of my files were corrupt and 0 file length.  Have done lots of searched for 0 length files to remove them.  Still had problems and deleted some files that seemed to be corrupt (file info by looking at the source html from the generated file from yoru previous artist/albums links.

It now processed and ended up like this.  Is it normal for all three programs to have different counts?

I also have LOTS OF DUPLICATE files, since I had previously done searched for songs that had  (  and )  and removed them. Upon restoring my music backup
it's tossed dupe of all those files and has included the  ( and ) again in the dupes.   Any way to easily find dupes and remove in music.

[jitterjames]

You are asking if it is normal to have a different number of songs in the 3 different programs.  That will depend entirely on which songs have been added (indexed) to the programs.  It probably doesn't have anything to do with VoxCommando.  Also some programs might be aware when you delete a song and some might not.  Go look in each program and see how many songs are being reported by them.  It is possible in MediaMOnkey to set it to scan your folders for changes so that new songs or deletions are detected, but this is probably not enabled by default.

Eliminating duplicates can be done but usually requires a fair amount of work on your part.  Media Monkey can report duplicate songs for you, but there could be a lot of songs that have the same name, that are not actually the same song.  I am not sure if it requires a song to have the same name AND the same artist to be considered a match.  Mediamonkey can also analyze songs to see if they are the same actual file, but it still won't find duplicates if the two songs are even slightly different.  Even if you started with the same CD and used two different programs to encode it to mp3, or encoded at two different bitrates, I don't think it would show up as a duplicate.