Python biftool replacement

Thanks for making this available - I've been tearing my hair out running PERL scripts for Biftool on windows - at last a MacOSX solution.

No problem! Let me know if it works on OSX ok so I can 'certify' it 🙂

Hi BCL, thanks soo much. I am also trying out your homevideo thing, but it seems like it might be very early in the development stages, I can produce a BIF files and an assoicated "feed" entry, but I haven't figured out how to get that specific feed instead of the TED talks (which are still interesting). I was able to use the "simplevideoplayer" app to stream my chosen mp4 file beautifully from my osx laptop. "Web Sharing" is just apache, isn't that nice 😉

Tommy

There is a new and improved version in the works. ETA is when its ready 🙂

The XML files are static, so you need to:

* run the bif tool (I'm not happy with the image aspect ratio so you may want to play with that)
* run the staticvideo script to generate the XML file of all the movies
* edit the categories.xml to point to your server


For the new version I've gone in a totally different direction. I have a TornadoWeb application that handles serving up the media files as well as providing a (very) crude interface for editing details about the videos.

It will have much better documentation on how to install it and use it than the version that is currently released.

I noticed it produced a blah-SD.bif file, even though the mp4 file was from an HD source. Of course I think it was maybe Half-Res to save space? I dunno, I honestly just got ffmpeg installed with ports and tried it out, but I haven't actually told the roku how to find the bif file yet because I am using the "simplevideoplayer" example still. I will look through it a little more to see what I can do. Honestly, the BIF part is really secondary to the other stuff 🙂 The biggest problem I see is that the BIF file takes quite a while to generate, so it would be mostly impossible to generate it dynamically. It would probably have to be a periodic "cron" job or something similar instead.

** Maybe we should start another thread for the "channel/webapp" part ?
(but in the mean time)

I was looking at a way to have the XML file dynamically generate when the roku requests it. Once we have the ability to I was thinking about basing the categories level on "folders" (directories). Either that or parsing based on the file name (between the dots) ... maybe a little of both. At this point, I only have *one* mp4 file, and the rest are in AVI containers, and I don't really care to transcode right now. It has also been literally forever since I wrote any "webapps" ... so I am a bit rusty (no more like rusted solid). I have also never tried python, but it doesn't look too difficult 🙂

~tommy

I already have most of that working. The new system serves up the XML based on database entries. You rescan the source media directories to update the list. I currently don't have bif file generation integrated into it since it is such a long running process.

I saw the sqlite stuff creeping into the code. commit! I guess I am going to have to install mercurial now too 🙂

"bcl" wrote:
I already have most of that working. The new system serves up the XML based on database entries. You rescan the source media directories to update the list. I currently don't have bif file generation integrated into it since it is such a long running process.

Oh by the way, I sortof mentioned in in passing, but I "certify" that it runs on MAC OSX. I installed MAC PORTS and issued

sudo port install ffmpeg

and a little while later I had ffmpeg. I did need to modify the top line to read "/usr/bin/env" instead of just "/bin/env" ... but other than that, it runs fine. You are right though, its producing a squished image. My source is "widescreen" (but far from HD).

Tommy

bcl, I was able to get the biftool to unpack bifs created by your tool with the following fix. It's a simple off-by-one bug.

--- makebif.py.orig	2010-01-26 10:06:47.000000000 -0800
+++ makebif.py	2010-01-26 10:07:05.000000000 -0800
@@ -115,7 +115,7 @@
         imageIndex += statinfo.st_size
 
     f.write(struct.pack("<I1", 0xffffffff))
-    f.write(struct.pack("<I1", imageIndex + 1))
+    f.write(struct.pack("<I1", imageIndex))
 
     # Now copy the images
     for image in images:

Probably so, I'm in the middle of a huge batch of changes. I may do a release tonight or tomorrow.