[djcla]

Originally Posted by jameson_uk

No, are you running at 1080p? I used to miss 6 pixels on my old 1366x768 LCD as that was fed at 1360x768.

There is a plugin that I think will remove any black space automatically depending on your settings.

I.F.C. - Intelligent Frame Correction - MediaPortal Forum

I think codec choice can do odd things too. IIRC I tried a couple of different MPEG2 codecs and some of these added black lines or the funny data at the top (this used to carry teletext on analogue signals but I assume still carries some data ??)

This is hard to find but you can go into the settings (there are some settings within MP itself) which allows you to set where your screen is). The only issues I have seen like this are across the board not just in MP and I guess based on the question you did not have this issue in 7MC (or did you adjust the overscan there ?)

Casulty was not full screen or luther

[jameson_uk]

Originally Posted by djcla

Casulty was not full screen or luther

On hd or sd? (And freeview or fteesat) I have never had any issues with tv not being full screen. In mp config app (not tv app) what is the default zoom for tv?

[djcla]

Sd freesat not tried freeview will check that later. In mp set to normal aspect ratio. 720p plasma with windows set to 1980p.

[PsyVision]

Originally Posted by djcla

Sd freesat not tried freeview will check that later. In mp set to normal aspect ratio. 720p plasma with windows set to 1980p.

My MP did this briefly with Lethal Weapon on ITV1 HD last night. For a brief period of time I had a very clear cut black boarder around the whole screen, possibly a good 100-150 or so pixels. It reverted back to fullscreen after about 10-20 seconds.

[djcla]

What zoom setting u both use?

[jameson_uk]

Originally Posted by djcla

What zoom setting u both use?

Will have to check when I am home but 99% sure it is normal.

Are you using IFC ? Did you try shift f1 to see what Res it was reporting?

Only thing I can think is you tv is doing something odd (1080p signal into 720p tv) but this would generally be odd with normal window too... what is the native res of your tv? Is it rectangular pixels? Have you applied any form of overscan correction on tv / gpu control panel?

[djcla]

Originally Posted by jameson_uk

Will have to check when I am home but 99% sure it is normal.

Are you using IFC ? Did you try shift f1 to see what Res it was reporting?

Only thing I can think is you tv is doing something odd (1080p signal into 720p tv) but this would generally be odd with normal window too... what is the native res of your tv? Is it rectangular pixels? Have you applied any form of overscan correction on tv / gpu control panel?

Ive not tried IFC yet as i was concerned when i got a 4:3 program it would chop the bars off and stretch the image. I tried your Shift F1 and it was 720 by something 480 i assume as it had no bars top and bottom. so that seems correct to me . its strange how some stuff is fine and other programs are not. My TV is 1024 x 768 Panasonic PX60 rectangle pixels ( who came up with that idea ) i transmit my signal from PC as 1080p via HDMI which is then scaled down to 720p so i let my TV do the scaling . Its not ideal for 480P material as its obviously being scaled twice but its better for Blu ray etc i feel.

7MC never had this weird issue. Other strange thing that happened to me is that i had set luther ( cracking program ) to record but needed to come out of the show for some reason while watching it live so pressed stop as i would in 7MC MP said sometyhing about the live tv buffer which i did not care about but it also seemed to stop the program recording does trhat make sense?

[jameson_uk]

Originally Posted by djcla

Its not ideal for 480P material as its obviously being scaled twice but its better for Blu ray etc i feel.

Four times.... 480p source => 1080p => 720p => native res of 1024x768 (not sure where the 720p comes in though as I would have thought there would only be one scaling from 1080p input to 1024x768 native res ?) Not that it matters and this appears to be the best picture

7MC never had this weird issue.

I have never seen this on any MP machine... I would suggest you try changing the codecs for MPEG2 and H264 for TV just to see (although the Win7 codecs are working fine on two machines I have....)

Other strange thing that happened to me is that i had set luther ( cracking program ) to record but needed to come out of the show for some reason while watching it live so pressed stop as i would in 7MC MP said sometyhing about the live tv buffer which i did not care about but it also seemed to stop the program recording does trhat make sense?

That should not happen. As you say if you press stop then it will stop live TV but carry on recording in the background. If you notice anything like this it would be good to post a bug report on the MP beta forums.

Recordings will always take priority over live TV (there is an option to turn this off though...)

[djcla]

I will get on to the Media portal forums once i get things settled , when you say bug report you mean just explain fault or is there a script taht needs filling ?

I notice the left and right bar thing on some TV episodes i have in avi played through MPC and also recall i got this on some pal DVD's too maybe its just my tV. im back at 1280 x 720 at the moment and issue is still there the 14:9 zoom in MP gets rid of it through.

Im wondering if i can force 1024 x 768 from pc over HDMI and set things to rectangle pixel format if its possible to see if issue still there to prove if its a scaling issue.

Anyway its not a deal breaker just weird as wimbledon is full screen and thats all that matters right now

Im still plugging away at the xmltv issue and now getting somewhere ive cleared out all the cr** channels from teh EPG and there are a lot and tidied it up. Now trying to just add what i need to digiguide and have been succesful getting xmltv gui to work. I found a program that lets me view the xml file and lists the stations within it etc so at least i can see where any fault lies. Im confident i can get this working correctly now though. How are you running it in console mode btw as a task?

Is there a way to back up your TV channel database?

Oh i tried Maya but not to my taste writing was not clear so went with StreamedMP which i love for now Infoservice plugin errors so i need to look into tahts ome more.

[jameson_uk]

Originally Posted by djcla

I will get on to the Media portal forums once i get things settled , when you say bug report you mean just explain fault or is there a script taht needs filling ?

MediaPortal Forum - Announcements in Forum : MediaPortal 1.2.0 BETA

Basically if you can replicate the problem then you can use the debug mode option from start menu and then post logs to the beta forum over at MP with a description of the problem and it will get looked at. If you can't replicate but it has happened you can still use the debug tool to gather all existing logs and attach them.

I notice the left and right bar thing on some TV episodes i have in avi played through MPC and also recall i got this on some pal DVD's too maybe its just my tV. im back at 1280 x 720 at the moment and issue is still there the 14:9 zoom in MP gets rid of it through.

Yeah, did you set any overscan in 7MC? have you tried the config options within setup actually inside of MP?

How are you running it in console mode btw as a task?

Can't recall but I think so... will check over the weekend

Is there a way to back up your TV channel database?

Sort of. The database is just a MySQL database (assuming you chose the default). You could back this up but it is not really worth it. There is an import/export option that allows you to export the import details to a file. I am not 100% sure if this includes xmltv settings though... will have to check that. If not I think that is probably a bug...

Oh i tried Maya but not to my taste writing was not clear so went with StreamedMP which i love for now Infoservice plugin errors so i need to look into tahts ome more.

How did you install Maya? IIRC you might need to install the fonts manually in some situations.

[djcla]

maya was a double click and install package , the info service one i had to manualy copy and paste stuff.

Edit Info service now working maybe because i added an rss feed

[djcla]

Originally Posted by jameson_uk

Yeah, did you set any overscan in 7MC? have you tried the config options within setup actually inside of MP?

not that i know of just chose 720p in the display setup interesting maybe it auto overscans in 7MC

[CHBMB]

It'll be worth it in the end.

The other route you could perhaps consider is using For The Record. I use digiguide and import xml data into it once a week via a scheduled task and works brilliantly. For my money it's better than the mediaportal tv server and integrates perfectly with mediaportal.

For The Record

[djcla]

Originally Posted by CHBMB

It'll be worth it in the end.

The other route you could perhaps consider is using For The Record. I use digiguide and import xml data into it once a week via a scheduled task and works brilliantly. For my money it's better than the mediaportal tv server and integrates perfectly with mediaportal.

For The Record

whats better about it as ive got everything working now with MP TV server?

[jameson_uk]

Originally Posted by djcla

whats better about it as ive got everything working now with MP TV server?

On the actual TV server side, there is not that much in it any more. MP used to be a little temperamental and decide to die but is now a lot more stable.

4TR initially was a layer which actually took TV from different sources and combined them (so dealt with EPG, recording etc) but did not actually do any of the work. This has a number of things going for it; a web interface, ability to record via MSN, plus some rule based schedules (record every time a Bruce Willis film is on or record this program around this time each week). So basically in MP you get your TV from 4TR but that in turn actually got the TV from MP TV Engine.

They now have their own recording Engine (Argus) to actually do the work on top of this (you can still use 4TR with MP TV Engine as a source).

I have tried this many times over the years and I find it gives you a lot of flexibility but IMHO this was at the cost of usability when actually interacting with MP. I can't remember the exact details now but ISTR that things like a list of scheduled recordings was missing, the episode and series info was not displayed properly, actually adding recordings was actually complicated then using built in MP TV plugin....

The fact that the TV side is now far more stable also makes me less likely to go down this route again (IIRC each time I have a big struggle trying to install and then end up going back to MP anyway....)

[djcla]

i wont be trying it anytime soon anyway as its not free and like free things Found a neat plugin last night taht backup all my mediaportal settings etc which is great assuming it restore ok

[jameson_uk]

Originally Posted by djcla

i wont be trying it anytime soon anyway as its not free and like free things Found a neat plugin last night taht backup all my mediaportal settings etc which is great assuming it restore ok

It is free (For The Record - View topic - For The Record 1.6.0.0) but I would not be surprised if they move to a paid for model at some point (especially if the much anticipated XBMC plugin materializes)

[djcla]

Originally Posted by jameson_uk

It is free (For The Record - View topic - For The Record 1.6.0.0) but I would not be surprised if they move to a paid for model at some point (especially if the much anticipated XBMC plugin materializes)

oh right for some reason i thought you had to pay for it... How you getting on with your microserver btw ?

[djcla]

In the music plugin am I meant to get artist thumbnails? I am Getting backdrops and the cover artwork but no artist thumbnails just a pic of a USB drive. Fanarthandler is installed and I ticked artist thumbnail option under music on mail P config

[jameson_uk]

Originally Posted by djcla

In the music plugin am I meant to get artist thumbnails? I am Getting backdrops and the cover artwork but no artist thumbnails just a pic of a USB drive. Fanarthandler is installed and I ticked artist thumbnail option under music on mail P config

Music, now we are talking, my favourite section

The top option (annoyingly) is shares view which is basically just folders and I don't think this will pick up artist thumbs. The other views are database ones which require you to tag your collection and import it into the database (Music Database - MediaPortal Wiki) do not tick the generate artist thumb option though as you will get crap thumbs.

In database views artist thumbs will be scraped by fanarthandler

[djcla]

I will take another look ta, my music tags are pretty solid to work in both iTunes and wmp

[djcla]

I deleted all the artwork thumbs etc and now i cant get anything to load lol.. Under music dynamic control should these settings be disabled or enabled? I have my music sorted like //server/share/atrist/album. Im getting the album covers straight away even after i deleted them all so not sure where they being picked up from. Anyway cant get backdrops to fetch and should i be seeing artist thumbs instead of folder name?

When you database view im not seeing that option?

Edit found somthing under switch view but only 2 artist showing hmm

Edit 2 ok i had folder.jpg in each album folder which must have been put there by wmp or something i have deleted all jpg files now

[jameson_uk]

Originally Posted by djcla

I deleted all the artwork thumbs etc and now i cant get anything to load lol.. Under music dynamic control should these settings be disabled or enabled? I have my music sorted like //server/share/atrist/album. Im getting the album covers straight away even after i deleted them all so not sure where they being picked up from. Anyway cant get backdrops to fetch and should i be seeing artist thumbs instead of folder name?

When you database view im not seeing that option?

Edit found somthing under switch view but only 2 artist showing hmm

Edit 2 ok i had folder.jpg in each album folder which must have been put there by wmp or something i have deleted all jpg files now

Right ok, first off delete anything in the subfolders of
C:\ProgramData\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\thumbs\Music
(leave the folders there)

Then go into config and disable the dynamic content option to download coverart (fanart handler does this much better than the inbuilt MP function).

On the music database page in config do not tick the create artist or create missing thumb options but do tick the embedded option (and folder.jpg if you want to pick up images from there too)

Also tick the treat tracks in a folder as an album option (not sure what the defaults are on all this)

Make sure the place where your music is stored you ticked in the top bit of this screen and the only update new/changes since... option is unticked. Then re-import all your music. (then I suggest you re-tick the only update new/changed.. option so next time it will be much quicker)

Then fanart handler should download images as and when needed for artist thumbs and fanart (album artwork I trust is already embedded within your files?)

Now in MP you should be able to bring up the menu and choose the change view button which will bring up a list of things like album artist, artist, albums by age, genre etc..

Then the last thing (which thinking about it might have been the issue anyway...) is what thumbs are shown where is down to the skin. I would have thought that streamed MP would show artist thumbs most places.

eg.

this is a list of albums so no artist thumbs

this is a list of artists but the selected one gets a large thumb

this is a list of artist thumbs in coverflow layout

The same list in icon layout

They should also appear in music now playing

[djcla]

I now realise i dont have embedded artwork in all my mp3's so will find a program to do that and check the options i have ticked per your instructions thanks.

[djcla]

Well its now loaded about 6 artists and backdrops not sure why its not getting them unless i actually need to be in music all the time. Also is it not possible to default to a view other than share view?

[jameson_uk]

Originally Posted by djcla

Well its now loaded about 6 artists and backdrops not sure why its not getting them unless i actually need to be in music all the time.

I can't remember what triggers automatic downloading of artist thumbs in fanart handler. I have a feeling this might only be triggered by actually playing.

I think you can force a full scrape by going into the config app and going into the fanart handler setup. I think you can go to manage thumbnails tab and select the scrape options

Also is it not possible to default to a view other than share view?

it will default to whatever was open when you closed music plugin.

[djcla]

What file naming convention do you use btw thoughti migh sort mine out a bit while i go though adding artwork. Something like Artist - Album (Disc x of x) - Track# - Title.mp3 ?

[djcla]

Managed to force a scrape of artist and album covers now thanks.. Just not getting many backdrops even though I have tried starting the scraper many times ..

Edit getting somewhere now i unticked use default if fan art not available and deleted all backdrops . Clicked resart abd then start and left it running for ten mins..

[jameson_uk]

Originally Posted by djcla

What file naming convention do you use btw thoughti migh sort mine out a bit while i go though adding artwork. Something like Artist - Album (Disc x of x) - Track# - Title.mp3 ?

I use album artist\album\#track. title.flac
disc# is a tag which I set when ripping. The file name should name make any real difference to anything anyway as it is the tag values that are used.

This setup seems to work in most players. There are two bits of software for tagging / cleansing your collection I would recommend.

MediaMonkey is brilliant but the option to name all the files and sort into folder automatically I think is only in the paid for version

There is also MPTagThat which was built by one of the MP devs and does a pretty good job of tagging and organising. I believe it can even identify unknown tracks by analysing the music

[jameson_uk]

Originally Posted by djcla

Edit getting somewhere now i unticked use default if fan art not available and deleted all backdrops . Clicked resart abd then start and left it running for ten mins..

All fanart is scraped from Home - Home Theater Backdrops & Wallpapers
This seems to have a slight American bias but does seem to have a lot of bands. If it is not working post on the MP forums as Cul8r is pretty hot at fixing things and it might be that the 1.2 beta compatible version of his plugin is only beta too