Roku Developer Program

[swiharta]

Good call, in the log I see this message repeated when navigating to a folder containing MP3 files:

WARNING:root:library failed to parse ID3 tags for Z:\mp3\Aphex Twin\Richard D. James Album\Richard D. James Album by Aphex Twin - 01 4.mp3. Skipping.
WARNING:root:library failed to parse ID3 tags for Z:\mp3\Aphex Twin\Richard D. James Album\Richard D. James Album by Aphex Twin - 02 Cornish Acid.mp3. Skipping.
etc., etc., etc,...

I have ID3v2.3 tags on my files applied using MP3Tag. Like I said they are parsed fine by the older version of the app (see the resulting xml). Is there a preferred ID3 version / format I should try?

EDIT: I just updated the tags to v2.4 as well as v1, with no luck.

[swiharta]

Looking briefly at the code, I noticed there were changes in the way the eyeD3 module is getting used in rss_server.py. I just now tried copying the entire "file2item" function from the old version of the app to the new one, but this didn't change anything; I get the same log errors about not being able to parse the ID3 tags.

The reason I tried that is because the log warning message I'm getting seems to be coming from the "file2item" function. Here's the brief snippet (starting at line 146 in rss_server.py):

  if ext == ".mp3":
    # use the ID3 tags to fill out the mp3 data

    try:
      mp3 = Mp3AudioFile(fname)
      tag = mp3.getTag()
    except:
      logging.warning("library failed to parse ID3 tags for %s. Skipping." % fname)
      return None

It is kind of interesting I think that the embedded album art in my MP3s is getting recognized and displayed even with the newer version of the app that's giving me issues.

[renojim]

"swiharta" wrote:
Looking briefly at the code, I noticed there were changes in the way the eyeD3 module is getting used in rss_server.py.

You should be running mymedia.py not rss_server.py.

-JT

[swiharta]

I have been running mymedia.py, but I was just inspecting the rss_server.py code, pretty dumb huh?

I'll try replacing the file2item function in mymedia.py with the older code and see what happens.

[swiharta]

Thanks for pointing out my stupid mistake.

Replacing the file2item function in mymedia.py from "ExtremeAvocado-40-g2e97365" version with that from rss_server.py in the old "alpha3-59-g25aaa89" version fixed my MP3 ID3 tag parsing issue, and I get the expected XML response, identical to the old version that is working for me. Unfortunately, clicking on a song from the Roku doesn't play it, it just makes the generic "do-do" beep sound and sits there.

I'll try to inspect the code a bit more and try to work out what is going on. I'm surprised no one else is reporting this, just because other than this issue, the app is running perfectly for me. Honestly, I don't know how much longer I'm going to spend on it though, because in reality I doubt I'll be listening to music much thru the Roku. Videos are still working great!

[renojim]

I'll have to take a look at the code and see what changed, but as I said it's working for me. I probably use my Roku (connected to my stereo) for listening to music more than anything else, so I'd be concerned if there was a problem.

When you say you get the expected XML response, do the links to the songs look the same? If the links are the same with the old and the new I can't think of a reason why it wouldn't play.

Thanks for looking into a potential problem. I sent you a PM if you'd like me to takeover for you.

-JT

[swiharta]

Yeah I get the same exact xml response other than the timestamps of course, as shown here. It didn't make any sense to me either that it wouldn't play, weird huh?

Some other weird behavior: I had originally just copied a few select videos that I thought would play on the Roku into a test "videos" folder on a mapped network drive Z:, now I just tried changing the videos folder in the config to point to another mapped network drive V: which has a larger assortment of videos, including the ones I had copied that played fine. Now, the same files in that were playing fine do not play, in fact no videos play. When I switched the video folder in the config back to Z:, everything is rosy again.

Are there any things to watch for when assigning different folders in the config?

On another note, I also reinstalled the client on the Roku using the default theme, which is snappier at the top level menu (high contrast was fine everywhere else but very sluggish on the top level menu). But, this didn't affect the music playing issue.

[Pookla]

Hi.
Redownloaded, restarted computer, restarted Roku.
Started up mymedia within the server folder, images FINALLY working. yea.

So new question.
When I stop playing a video, the menu jumps to the "play all" part of the list when I press either left or right, and then jumps back to that video that I had just been playing. This is even after a few seconds, so I tend to accidentally re-select that exact same video because it jumps back to the old position, rather than selecting the new video at the new position. Do you know why this might be occurring?

Thanks again for all the help. I love mymedia and so does my 400 disc DVD collection.

"renojim" wrote:
You are running "python mymedia.py" from within the server directory and that's where config.ini is located, right? The images are located in the 'client/images' directory (unless you changed the theme in config.ini from "default", but I doubt that). If the zip (or tarball) was unzipped properly, the structure should look like:

netguy204-roku_media_server-2e97365
   client
      images
      source
      themes
         high_contrast
   server
      django
      eye3d
      simplejson
      static
      web

I've left out a lot of subdirectories that we're not interested in. You can rename the 'netguy204-roku_media_server-2e97365' to anything you like as long as the rest of the structure is unchanged.

One more thing - make sure you reboot your Roku. I know that it caches images, but I don't know whether it "remembers" that an image was unavailable and therefore won't try to retrieve it again. Also, repeat the experiment where you try to load the image from the feed XML in you browser.

-JT

[renojim]

Yay, Pookla! Now wasn't that easy?! 😉

"Pookla" wrote:
So new question.
When I stop playing a video, the menu jumps to the "play all" part of the list when I press either left or right, and then jumps back to that video that I had just been playing. This is even after a few seconds, so I tend to accidentally re-select that exact same video because it jumps back to the old position, rather than selecting the new video at the new position. Do you know why this might be occurring?

It's happening because there's a background refresh of the folder happening and it takes a second or two. Two things are fighting over what the currently focused item should be and/or the code is confused about what it should be. I find the jumping annoying, but I believe I have a fix. In the very near future I plan on sitting down and putting out an update to fix that along with a few other things.

-JT

[renojim]

swiharta, I tried the MP3 you sent me and it just worked. Don't you hate when that happens? The song shows up and plays fine. I'm not sure where to go from here. The only thing I can think of is the possibility that you've mixed the old and new version of the server. Did you copy the new files over the old files? If so, make sure you delete all the .pyc files in all the subdirectories. If there's any chance that they're mixed you may want to try a fresh install into its own directory.

"swiharta" wrote:
Some other weird behavior: I had originally just copied a few select videos that I thought would play on the Roku into a test "videos" folder on a mapped network drive Z:, now I just tried changing the videos folder in the config to point to another mapped network drive V: which has a larger assortment of videos, including the ones I had copied that played fine. Now, the same files in that were playing fine do not play, in fact no videos play. When I switched the video folder in the config back to Z:, everything is rosy again.

Are there any things to watch for when assigning different folders in the config?

I use mapped drives all the time even using an SMB share from a Linux box with the server running on various flavors of Windows. The only thing I can think of is that you can't use a root directory. You mentioned a "videos" folder on Z:, but don't mention a folder on V:. Is it that the videos don't show up, or they show up but won't play? It's always a good idea to try just using the browser interface to the server (http://localhost:8001/feed) to test things. You should be able to at least save the "media" link to a file. As always, check the output of the Python window and the my_media_log.txt file for any messages that might be helpful.

"swiharta" wrote:
On another note, I also reinstalled the client on the Roku using the default theme, which is snappier at the top level menu (high contrast was fine everywhere else but very sluggish on the top level menu). But, this didn't affect the music playing issue.

I know that the different poster images used aren't the right size. It's one of the things I'll be fixing in the near future. I believe that it used to work just fine with those images and an update to the firmware has made it slower, but there's really no way to prove that now. If you have PIL installed, it should make the issue better. With properly sized poster images the navigation is much better. I prefer the high contrast theme and it's the one I use in my personal version of the channel. I'll have to compare the two and see if I notice a difference, but it seems pretty snappy to me.

-JT