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Too many limitations on personal media files using plex

Wed, 16 May 2012 01:46:11 +0000

Okay, I would like to start off with saying Plex is awesome! It's really nice to be able to access all my media from every computer I own, my Roku, and my cellphone. Also, I really appreciate the active involvement of the developers and power users on this forum.

Now onto the point of this post. While sorting commercial media using scanners seems pretty cool (especially for movies), It seems like the options to organize our personal media (family pictures, home movies etc.) is really lacking. I would love to see a different approach, that would be more based upon us users teaching Plex how to organize our files, rather than the seemingly limited ways it does now. What I suggest is that the plex server has a predefined list of attributes (For example: Date, clip name/picture name, location, creator etc. / or even allow us to define an attribute) and we as the users then can build an example file tree as you will that we would like to organize our files by, and then Plex will know what we mean because the pre-defined attributes will have meaning to Plex. Also you could add the same concept to the file names themselves and allow users a bit more flexibility in how they want to name their stuff. Currently I would love to be able to have a name of my home movies show up when I browse, but the only way for me to do that is use the Movie scanner, but I would rather use the TV Show one cause I might have several clips that are all part of the same event (like tv episodes), or I would like to separate different events rather than have them all show up on the same screen like what the movie scanner does, however when experimenting with using this approach, I was only getting episode numbers and not clip names etc. Feel free to tell me that I'm totally off and there are ways to have more control over organizing our personal content than what I'm aware of.

Thanks again for a really cool product.

How does PMS deliver the streams to clients

Tue, 15 May 2012 08:56:16 +0000

Hi there,

I'm a new Plex users and I'm also a developer. So I'm interested in how PMS delivers its streams to its clients? Does it simply provide a URL to the stream, or how does it work? I couldn't find any information on this.

Regards

Plex Media Server Manager .NET

Mon, 14 May 2012 11:03:29 +0000

Hello Everyone,

Background
I've been a Plex Media Server user on both Windows and Linux for a couple of months now, I started out using used Windows Media Center switch to media portal for a few years and last 2 months I have switched to PMS because of the extra possibilities over Media Portal.

The goal
I would be 100% / absolutely happy with Plex Media Server if it allowed me to manage my library properly. What I mean with properly is that I have 3 sections full with media totaling over 30k media items. At that point the HTTP Management UI is not super effective when you manage large libraries. So I decided to start messing around and attempt to build a .NET management tool that will do the following:

Goals:
- fast navigation, convenient navigation (tree style) of your libraries.
- Fast way to manually match a series / move to one of plex's scanners. (UI to search tvdb / or enter ID straight away)
- Per Movie / Episode, directly see where the file is located at, the codecs used, the file name etc. (To easily verify matches).
- Search libraries.
- Change and input Meta Data.
- Extra Feature: Search / Add / Check subtitle. Preferably integration to manually check if its syncs with video and adjust the timing.
- Extra Feature: Allow the tool to search sources such as TVDB or Trakt to see if your missing any episodes.
- Extra Feature: Allow watched flags to be imported to and FROM Trakt. (to make migration from other sources such as media portal easier).

This is the first set of things I want to work on, last weekend I took some time to make a proof of concept and I was able to list the information and navigate through 1/3th of my library however with quite a slowdown when I added the second.

Unknowns:
The HTTP Api will almost certainly be too slow for large libraries to pre populate all seasons and episodes
Using the Database directly runs the risk of corrupting the data and ruining the database.

So thoughts / idea's? would you want a standalone tool to manage your library?

regards,
Yuushi

Meet Simon

Tue, 08 May 2012 18:38:29 +0000

Being new to the Plex forums, I figured I should contribute with photos of our Silky Terrier, Simon. He's now about 6 years old.

Relaxing in the sun:

Marking Media in Plex - Feature Request

Tue, 08 May 2012 00:10:00 +0000

For users who add media from various sources to Plex Media Server, it's not always possible to fully screen these for awesomeness prior to adding to the library. When a movie or TV show or family video is added and the media is corrupted, or encoded improperly, or has Russian dialogue and Korean subtitles you don't always have the opportunity to discover this until you sit down with your bowl of popcorn to watch the movies.

What Plex really needs, IMHO, and this is a client-server solution, is the ability to mark programming from within the Options menu while viewing. If a movie is bad you could flag it for review and/or even delete it from the library right there on the spot. Ideally you could say why if you're flagging for review (ie. reasons above plus more) and control via the Plex Media Server control panel whether or not clients are allowed to actually delete broken files. This could also be a button press option for when you're viewing the listings ... in the event that the media file is so screwed that you can't even get the media file to play at all..

Plex is full of awesome. Keep it going, team..

how could I have plex serve a live feed

Mon, 07 May 2012 21:33:00 +0000

Hi,
What i would like plex server do is the following. (Ill try to explain myself the best i could)
I have DVB dream, a satellite APP that allows me to watch SATELLITE TV. DVB DREAM also sends the live stream via network.
for instance, when i open VLC player, i can see the stream by opening, udp://127.0.0.1
My question is, how can i make plex server grab that STREAM and Serve it so i can watch live TV on my android ?

I tried to re-stream it using vlc but my android wont play over WAN (and i did forward the right ports etc)
its almost like if my Cellphone provider blocks rtsp ports. anyways

Thanks in advance. I love plex and it works amazing on my android.

Sorting and categorizing Music

Wed, 02 May 2012 05:15:52 +0000

Hi All,
I would like to propose an alternative/additional way to categorize music with the Plex server. Currently, it seems the only way Plex organizes and gathers information about your music collection is by scanning (scrapping) online databases and tries to match up the info. I believe this approach to be appropriate for Movies / TV shows, but not for music. To start, .mp3 files support metadata and have information about the song already inside of them. Second, lots of people (myself included) are or have used Itunes or a similar tool to already label and organize their collection. When I asked Plex to create a database of my music collection it took over 3 days (yes I have a ton of music), but the end results were really disappointing. Only a small percentage of my music appeared with the correct names or any identifiable information. Unlike movies, where you can separate out different versions of a movie fairly easier by the year it was made, music is much more complex. There can be several slight variations in the name of the track, different artists can be listed for the same song differently, different versions of the same song are produced either by the same artist or different artists etc. I would propose an alternate way of organizing music. I would suggest giving the user 3 options: 1. Just scrape the music (as it currently works). 2. Grab metadata information from the .mp3 files, and/or import a itunes library file first then load collection that was organized by same file to get any additional info. 3. a combination approach using both the metadata and online databases, allowing the user to resolve conflicts or allow Plex to resolve them using certain rules etc.

I believe this will make using music collections inside Plex more functional. As it currently stands, I can't really access my music through Plex, which makes me sad.

One additional note, I would love to see support for Itunes playlists (or at least accept .m3u files (which are converted files from itunes format). I know you currently can share your itunes library that's on another computer, but the itunes stuff should be loaded into Plex along with the collection and not separated out.

Thanks for listening.

Cheers,
Brian

Script API Documentation

Tue, 01 May 2012 20:17:40 +0000

I have searched the forum and the wiki but I could not find documentation about writing Plex client scripts. It is probably my bad search skills but can anyone show some pointers? There is documentation about writing PMS agents but what I am specifically looking for is documentation about Plex client scripts , especially that can be launched during playback. Thanks in advance.

Transcode API with myPlex Token

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:46:50 +0000

I tried appending all the X-Plex- params as url params instead of including them in the headers and it worked!

I'm not sure how to delete this post. Sorry.

Plex - Fetching now playing information

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:00:11 +0000

I am looking to write some C# to interface with my home theater case's VFD. Does plex have an API for fetching the "Now Playing" information? Such as the current Movie, or TV show?

Thanks.

Getting Started - HTTP Live Streaming

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 17:21:04 +0000

Hey all,

I was working on a project a long time ago for creating a Plex client for the PS3. Turns out, the browser was so stupid that it became a really hard project.

Great news! They upgraded the browser to be webkit-based, so it's not a total piece of junk!

So, I've restarted my project, and after a few days, am way past where I was initially. Now, since it's webkit-based, I'm thinking that it may support HTTP Live Streaming now, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to test that. Is there a Getting Started guide, or just some pointers that people could provide on how to do it with Plex?

Thanks so much!

Can't open Plex folder

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 22:35:58 +0000

Added channel to Roku, downloaded Plex Server. Can't get the Plex folder to open. I even repaired the download in case there was an issue. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

Emmy

New rocu/what's plex?

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 15:52:27 +0000

Okay, I've gone around in circles with my new roku and plex!

Do i need plex. What does it do? I can't find a directory for plex.

And does anyone know of a rocu channel that streams live news? cbs, nbc, abc all have old news!

sorry to be so dense, but i don't want to make it my life's work to use rocu or plex!

thank you

HTTP API Bugs?

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:11:03 +0000

I've been playing around with the HTTP API and I found a few maybe-bugs.

1. It's really nice how each level of the tree (e.g., /library/sections) links to the next level of the tree (e.g., the sections) but it seems that at least a few things are missing. library/recentlyAdded and library/sections/2/timeline are two that I've noticed while inspecting the manage web UI. Are these going to be added to the response tree in the future? That is, will a request to "library" ever have "recentlyAdded" as a child Directory? Are there others that I'm missing?

2. Single quotes break searches -> http://host:32400/search?type=2&query=foo%27bar

Apr 19, 2012 19:58:01 [0xb0699000] DEBUG - Query: foo'bar
Apr 19, 2012 19:58:01 [0xb0699000] ERROR - SQLITE3:b030ad08, 1, near "bar": syntax error

I guess search is using a case insensitive LIKE clause considering % works as a wildcard. Is the caller of the API expected to escape invalid SQL characters?

------

Incidentally, is there any documentation for the HTTP API? I feel like I'm probably missing some neat features. For instance, I've come across adding "type=X" to the search to limit to episodes or shows, but would love to be able to limit to specific fields (title, description, etc).

Thanks,
David

Best way to use PMS for streaming music to my AV receiver

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:06:45 +0000

Currently I have a physical CD juke box of close to 300 CDs. This juke box connects to my AV receiver which in turn provides music to all of the speakers throughout my home. This works great but I would much rather load all of my CDs into PMS and then be able to use iTunes or some other means to send the music to my AV receiver. What is the best way to do this?

Thanks for your advice and patience with this newbie! :-)

iPhone Remote : Plex Launcher For Your PMC Under Linux

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 23:31:24 +0000

Hello everyone !
I have my computer connected to my TV and everytime i sat down to watch a movie or something, I always had to get up again to start PMC and then I could use Plex Remote (for iOS).
That annoyed me a lot !
I searched all over the internet to find something, but i found nothing working under Linux.
So I made This :
Plex Launcher For Linux

Features
-Launch Plex Media Center from any mobile phone / smartphone / pc (anything with web browser capabilities)
-Can also detect wheter it's already running, so you can close it / restart it
-Password protected (so you sister doesn't launch or kill PMC whenever she wants)

So how does this work ?

It uses a local webserver, accessible from any computer/smartphone on your lan, and allows you to launch PMC.

Requirements
-Plex Media Center For Linux installed and working (get the binary *.deb here : http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/topic/35016-experimental-binary-packages/)
and if that binary works but doenst show the video do this : (belgarth workaround) https://github.com/gewalker/plex-linux/issues/13
-LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP server (see here https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ApacheMySQLPHP).
-A PHP file, I will provide it to you
-A few little changes in some settings on Linux
-And finally, anything capable of loading a webpage.

Installation

I will assume you already have a LAMP server installed and working (see the link I gave you for that). And the same for your Plex Media Center.

1.- You should copy the file I gave you somewhere accesible on your LAMP server.

2.- You should edit /etc/sudoers and add this at the end of the file;
(gksudo gedit /etc/sudoers in a terminal for Gnome)

#Ability to launch PMC
www-data ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/local/bin/pmc
#Ability to kill PMC
www-data ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/killall

This code will allow your LAMP server to actually launch and kill PMC.

/!\ I should warn you ! This change could be a "breach" in the security of your Linux system. I say it "could" be, because I made it so the webserver can only start PMC and nothing else. So you should'nt be worried about it, but since it's an important change, it's my duty to inform you, I can not be responsible for any problem this could bring you.
3.- Now take the file in attachment to this post ( index.php (2.27K)
Number of downloads: 1), and put it somewhere accesible on your LAMPSERVER. Change the password to one you like, and put the username to the one of your linux log in (this is important, it will not work if you don't !)

4.-That's it ! Simple right ?

How do you use it now ?

Simply access index.php?password=ThePasswordYouUsed, here you should type the password you entered in the file.
This is a security measure, because without it anyone on your lan could launch or kill your PMC, that would be annoying !
What I did on my phone is put a shortcut to the webpage launcher. So whenever I click it, it takes me to "http:192.168.1.4/index.php?password=mypassword", the IP adress being the one of the computer in which we want to launch/kill Plex Media Center. (like this : ).
Then I can just swap to Plex Remote and Everything is beautiful !

Improvements
Impossible, I made it, therefore it's perfect !
Ok let's stop joking.
A more beautiful interface would be greatly appreciated (I didnt do it as I suck at photosop --' and CSS).
And a beautiful Logo !

Feel free to browse the code, it isn't really long or complicated!
Adapt, improve and share it !
If you have any question you can ask them here, I will gladly answer them.

Pauldb.

Season Thumb on episodes

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:52:27 +0000

Hi, I tried to put:
$INFO[Container.SeasonThumb]
and i don't have any image.
I don't know if this is possible in Plex, but in XBMC works.
Thanks!

Anyway you can ban/block this constant posting?

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:47:48 +0000

http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php?showtopic=40433

Using Plex scanner in custom script?

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 12:58:13 +0000

I'm looking to develop a simple little a simple little script to move my newly downloaded files into their respective folders on my external hard drive. I would love to avoid all the hard work of parsing the filename and looking it up against the tvdb, so I would love to know where I can get the source for the default TV show scanner that Plex uses. It's python, right?

Title/description edit

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 10:40:13 +0000

Is it possible for the one how started a topic to edit Title/description or is that only possible for a moderator?

I tried to search in IPS Client

only found this post