BTVShowInfo

[jmaver]

Description
This program allows you to manipulate the information BeyondTV stores for your recorded shows. You can edit the fields directly or use a series of plugins to reorder, mass edit, or copy information. You can even write your own plugins.


Logging on
When running for the first time, BTVShowInfo will ask for the server, port, password for the machine to log into. This server should be the one running BeyondTV, which might even be the machine you are running BTVShowInfo on. If you are using a version of BeyondTV prior to version 4, then you will also need to enter a valid license key.
Once you have connected once, this information will be filled in automatically. from the registry. You can also set BTVShowInfo to log in automatically by choosing this in the Tools -> Options menu.
You can log in and out using the toolbar buttons.
The application does not log off on exit. You must log off via the button. Not logging off doesn't seem to have any consequences and plays nicer with BTV/BTV link on the same machine.
Once you are logged in, the show list below will filll with the available shows.


Editing Show Information
BTVShowInfo shows a table with the shows and all the data BeyondTV has for those shows. Some columns have a (r) at the top and are colored tan. This means they are read-only. All other columns can be changed.
To edit a cell, just click on it and change the values. Click out of the cell or hit enter to finish the change. The row will turn green to show that it has been changed, but not saved back to BeyondTV.
To undo a change to a row, right click the leftmost column( grey buttons ) for that row and choose Undo Edit. All changes to that row will be reverted back to the original values.
Continue to change fields for shows until you are done. Then hit the Save button to save these back to BeyondTV. Exiting BTVShowInfo before this will not save your changes.

Copy and Paste Show information
1. Select the row to copy information from by clicking the leftmost column
2. Right-click that row and choose Copy Show Info
3. Select a set of rows to paste the information to
4. Right-click one of those rows and choose Paste Show Info
Information from all the writable columns will be pasted. For more control over what data is copied, use the plugin.

Using Plugins
BTVShowInfo also allows plugins to manipulate the show information. To use a plugin, one or more rows must be selected( using the leftmost grey button column ). Select the rows you want to act on, then select the plugin from the Plugins menu.
Depending on the plugin, it may perform an immediate action, present a dialog, or just display information.
Once the plugin is complete, some rows may have been changed and be green. Hit the Save button to save these changes back to BeyondTV.

Some plugins come with BTVShowInfo:

1) "Copy Show information to Selected Shows"(PluginCopyAllInfo)- takes a set of selected shows, and allows you to copy data to various fields from another show. A dialog is displayed with all the non-ignored and non-readonly known columns as fields. Select the show to copy from in the list at the top. To change a field for all selected shows, check the box to the right of it, and edit the field. Do this for as many fields as you want, and then click ok.

2) "Show a list of columns that were unknown"(PluginDumpUnknownColumns) - discussed in the Advanced Column Configuration section below

3) "Mass edit selected shows"(PluginMassTagger) - takes a set of selected shows, looks for common data between them, and shows a dialog with all the non-ignored and non-readonly known columns as fields. To change a field for all selected shows, check the box to the right of it, and edit the field. Do this for as many fields as you want, and then click ok.

4) "Change the display order of selected shows manually"(PluginSetShowOrder )- takes a set of selected shows, and shows a dialog with a list of all of them. Move the shows up or down to get the order you wan. Set the start date in the picker, and hit ok. The first show will be set to have recorded on the date above, and each subsequent show will be set to have recorded 1 day later. The order in BTV will reflect this.

5) "Change the display order of selected shows based on the Original air date"(PluginSyncTargetToOrigDates)- takes a set of selected shows, and automatically sets the recorded on date to the original air date. If a show does not have an original air date, it will not be updated. The order in BTV will reflect the new recorded on date.


Advanced Column configuration
BTVShowInfo tries to display column information in formats that make sense as well as ignoring or making columns read only. It does this by reading the BTVShowInfoCols.xml which contains information for all the columns I know about.
You can see if any columns on your machine are unknown by selecting any row choosing the "Show a list of columns that were unknown" plugin. This will pop up a dialog with any unknown columns, which you can hit CTRL-C on and paste them into a post here to be added in future versions. You can add them yourself, as well.
You can edit this file using the following information:
-name - the field name
-type - Can be one of the following

- Date - BTV stores this as a long date, and it will be shown in sortable UTC format.
- Time - BTV stored this as a long duration, and it will be shown in minutes.
- Boolean - BTV stores this as true\false and will be shown as a checkbox
- String - BTV stores this a text. This is also the default.

-readonly - if true, will not be editable. I have set this for a bunch of calculated fields
-ignore - not shown in the grid
-description - what the field means.

How to write your own plugin
BTVShowInfo is designed to allow easy plugin manipulation of data. It provides the mechanism for communicating with BTV and selecting data to manipulate, while letting plugins focus on the actual manipulation.

1. In VisualStudio 2003, create a new .net assembly project for your plugin. The plugin must be named PluginXXXX , where XXXX is what your plugin does.
2. Add a reference to BTVShowInfoPluginInterface
3. Create a class that implements IShowInfoEditor
4. In the Initialize member, use the passed in IPluginHost to call AddMenuItem with the text of your plugin menu item
5. In the EditShowInfo member, you are passed the data for the selected shows. Act on those as appropriate, and return true if you modified them.
6. Compile and put your plugin into the BTVShowInfo\Plugins directory.
7. Run BTVShowInfo, select a row and choose your plugin from the menu.
See the sample plugin code in the plugins directory for an example.

Version History
Version 1.2.2563.41352
-Added PluginSyncTargetToOrigDates plugin
-Updated BTVShowInfoCols.xml with all known column information

Version 1.2.2569.24959
-Allow undo edit for selected rows instead of just clicked row
-Add back Copy and Paste context menu items. These now only copy and paste columns not ignored or readonly.

Version 1.2.2572.41461
-Fixed cut and paste and undo affecting the wrong rows

Version 1.2.3061.36525
-Updated to work with BTV 4.8.1

[jmaver]

Would anyone be interested in a regex show fixer Plugin?
You could select the set of shows to fix, then pick the plugin.
Enter a regex expression into the top and it would use that to extract field data.
Would probably only be useful for people adding shows not recorded by BTV into the BTV library.

[jgourd]

OK, this went from being something actually useful to something useless. I am sure it is my own weird brand of work flow that is the cause.

I use this exclusively for importing shows recorded on another system. Those shows were also recorded on my system but at a greatly reduced quality. The old ShowInfoEdtitor allowed me to put an entire show's metadata onto the clipboard and paste it into the imported show.

This is now a tedious process. Selecting the show to copy into, and then selecting the show to copy from in a separate dialog is not efficient. Then manually checking every item, every time is also not efficient. This used to take two mouse clicks, now it takes many.

[jmaver]

new version with old-style copy\paste

[jgourd]

Originally Posted by jmaver

new version with old-style copy\paste

Thank you. Where I work, the doctors drill into my head exactly how much a mouse click costs the patients so reducing them is a peeve of mine.

The problem now is that it pastes into the wrong file if I change the default sort order.

Example:Run program, copy from source, paste into destination, it works great. Run program, click on the Display Title(r) column header, copy from source, paste into destination, it pastes into a file at the position of the destination file prior to sorting the column.

So it works, just not when you alter the sort order.

[tmar89]

Would it be possible to add the functionality to remove unwanted columns? I typically only look at the Added Time and the Episode Title.

[jmaver]

jgourd - ok, should be a simple fix. Will get to it soon.
tmar89 - Just edit the xml file and change any column you don't want to see to have ignore = true;

[tmar89]

thanks!

[willieb]

JMaver this is working great for me. I am glad you added to bulk cut/paste back in. I have not downloaded that version yet, but it was my one complaint. Thanks again.

[thundermax]

I can see why you dropped the word 'Simple' from the title. I'm overwhelmed with culumns and choices. The old version was nice and easy to use.

I don't know what happened, but after I changed 2 show titles with the new version, ALL of my movies are now listed as "Movies" in BTV. They used to have the titles and descriptions, all entered with the older simple show editor. Now that info is gone.

I'll try to edit the XML like you suggested, and go back and relabel my movies.

[jgourd]

I am having difficulty figuring out how to simply edit a show. I don't seem to be able to type any new data directly in the list.

[jmaver]

Thundermax - Well, you can't please all people all of the time. Some people want more columns, some fewer. At least now you can choose which columns you care about. You could make it look just like the old one if you want.
I don't know what would cause all your movies to update except changing all those rows. I have been unable to set the "movie-ness" of a show - BTV's api doesn't allow that. You have to mess with some BTV xml file to fix that part - I haven't done it. Sorry that you lost the show info. It would be possible to write a plugin to extract to and reread from a file - might make a nice backup in case you ever had to reinstall BTV or move to another machine. I will look into that sometime.

jgourd - you should be able to edit any non-readonly row. Those ones are greyed and have an (r) at the top. Which columns don't let you edit them?

[jmaver]

jgourd - fixed copy\paste issue in new version above.
Note: you must actually select the rows you want to copy and paste. Right-clicking without selecting first will not work.

[jmaver]

jgourd - no changes are saved automatically, so you can either undo the edits or just exit if it looks like something is wrong. All changed rows are green, so you should be able to preview before you save. However, fields like DisplayTitle are calculated by BTV after I save the show info. I repull the show info after I save so you can see what BTV has.

[thundermax]

Originally Posted by jmaver

you can't please all people all of the time.

and I have been very pleased with your app. If it weren't for you, I'd have a very big list of shows listed as 'Unknown'. I just need to spend some time with your new version and get it the way I want to. Kind of like setting up XP to work like Win2000