So over the years there are a few things that I keep bumping into over and over again. Small things that keeps nagging me. The Plex developers have a backlog of hundreds of features and even many feature requests, and some things will take a long time to be developed. So I contacted my childhood friend Mikael (who is a talented developer) with this idea, and we have together been developing a tool which we call Palantir for Plex. Hopefully the interest in the Plex community is big enough for a tool like this so we can develop this for a long time.
Palantir for Plex is in early alpha (alpha 0.2 at the moment) and we are a few weeks/months from offering it to you guys just yet (the app does look like crap at the moment and is not easily understood), but the core features are working already.
Alpha 0.2 features:
Change default subtitle language for shared users (today the server owner can only change his/her own default subtitle language).
Change subtitle mode for shared users (today the server owner can only change his/her own subtitle mode).
Change default audio language for shared users (today the server owner can only change his/her own default audio language).
See a list of all your movies and get the exact bundle name, plus a button which takes you to the bundle file (the latter only works well for now if you run the app on the same machine as you have the server).
Backup functionality. We do not want to be responsible for database issues, so we have built in a database backup functionality that you can use before altering the database.
Features that we have decided to look into and possibly support (if we can solve it):
A list of actors for the movie, and the possibility to change the order of the actors so they are shown in the order you want on the different preplay-screens in each client.
Possibility to see (and in some cases change) the metadata that is associated with a movie or show. For example; show where the posters are, TV theme music location and a few other cool things.
Alter the PHT advancedsettings.xml file in a nice GUI which helps you with the different choices that exist but few know off.
Finally, we will of course listen to your requests. Do you have something that would fit in this little toolbox that we call Palantir for Plex?
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMERS (to avoid disappointment):
* We have decided to charge a small sum for this. Pricing has not been set but somewhere around 3-4 dollars are likely the point we will end up around.
* This tool will be Mac-only to start with (likely we will sell it via the Mac app store). If the tool proves to be popular (if it sells ok) we will consider making a version for other platforms. And yes, we are aware of the fact that the windows user base is bigger and should sell more, but we are Mac users primarily and we are making this app as much for us as we are making it for others. Palantir is able to alter the windows version of the database as well, as it is exactly the same. So all you need is access to a Mac OS X environment (likely 10.8 and higher is needed) to alter your database.
* We are a few weeks/months away from beta, which is the point when we will start selling this. We have never sold anything via Apple before, so this is all new for us. Please please be patient with us.
UPDATE: We have come a bit on the way. The app can now load and update the audio and subtitle settings for a PMS database that is located locally on your Mac. The app also shows the bundle that is associated with a movie, and with a single click you can be taken to the correct bundle if you are on the same machine. We have not finished a good way to do this if you have PMS on a remote machine. We have no date for when that can be done as we are doing this on our free time and free time is not something we have a lot of. But hopefully we have something working within the coming 2-3 weeks. Total guess though.
UPDATE #2: So I was planning to come in here and tell you that finally we got a working solution on how to open up the PMS database when you do not have the PMS app on your local machine. But a last minute test revealed that it does not work in all situations. The good news is that we think we know how to make this work.
I am super excited about this because I feel that this app will solve a lot of nagging issues that I have had. And with that I assume at least a couple of others are having these issues as well. It is just so frustrating that it takes so long to develop things that are good enough to let others use it. :)
I have been on vacation, just back. And my friend who I am doing this with is on vacation now. So it does not look good to get this out in the next couple of weeks :(
I have been on vacation, just back. And my friend who I am doing this with is on vacation now. So it does not look good to get this out in the next couple of weeks :(
Everything that can make administration of the Plex database easier is very welcome by me. I will be happy to pay whatever you charge if I can get "normal" app quality and upgrade frequency.
My wish-list (I have more than 2000 movies in my library):
- Find duplicates easy and erase them easy by quality or size
Everything that can make administration of the Plex database easier is very welcome by me. I will be happy to pay whatever you charge if I can get "normal" app quality and upgrade frequency.
My wish-list (I have more than 2000 movies in my library):
- Find duplicates easy and erase them easy by quality or size
- Export movie list
- Export list of movie files not scanned
I am looking forward to this effort!
We have been thinking of doing some kind of movie export in a future version of the app (not the release version). Out of curiosity: Do you have any preferences on formats or other things regarding the export of the movie list? Any ideas on what the export should contain? Everything? Only movies which have duplicates? What should count as duplicate? Should we include filenames in the list? Anything else?
How is the progress, I've been holding my eyes on this for quite a while :rolleyes:
Hehe. It is progressing. At the moment we are still working on the behavior when loading the altered database back into PMS, and a safety mechanism for if something goes awry in that process. We have added a few more gems/features to this first version as well. We decided that we needed to be able to connect to the PMS machine over both AFP and SMB, but we also realised that it is more important that we get a first version out to the public before making a smooth process out of all that. So at the moment one needs to add the protocol and server address to a XML file located in the Application Support folder. I think that will be fine enough for a first beta version.
As soon as we can figure out a good process so you guys do not destroy the PMS database when doing a lot of changes we will package it up somehow. I am not sure yet which channel would be smoothest for you guys to buy it from. I would love to say the Mac App Store, but at the same time I am a bit afraid that it will take a long time to get approved.
Ah, anyways, that it a headache for a few weeks up ahead :)
Awesome, I wish you guys the best of luck, and 'speed'! :ph34r:
Though I would suggest considering other platforms if you need to boost sales by a considerable amount (Linux/Windows)!
My biased gut tells me that Mac is no longer the most used OS for PMS, which is not good in a short term business case. At least do not hold development for other platforms if sales on Mac are slow!
Awesome, I wish you guys the best of luck, and 'speed'! :ph34r:
Though I would suggest considering other platforms if you need to boost sales by a considerable amount (Linux/Windows)!
My biased gut tells me that Mac is no longer the most used OS for PMS, which is not good in a short term business case. At least do not hold development for other platforms if sales on Mac are slow!
We have been thinking of doing some kind of movie export in a future version of the app (not the release version). Out of curiosity: Do you have any preferences on formats or other things regarding the export of the movie list? Any ideas on what the export should contain? Everything? Only movies which have duplicates? What should count as duplicate? Should we include filenames in the list? Anything else?
So why would you want to export the movie-list? Some uses I can think of:
- To make it possible to have a portable (on the phone) list of all movies, this can be useful when buying discs or if you are outside your home.
- To find duplicates (this would require to have at least one field containing the number of source-files for a movie, this function existed in the old Mac-native Plex server app where you could sort movies by this field, making it very easy to see all duplicates, you could also choose "Show in Finder" making it possible to easy delete a duplicate) The source filename is less important, it would be better to add the function "Show in Finder" again...
- To find not-scanned files (again it would be good to have the function "Show in Finder" in order to easy rename or diagnose the problem...)
I would suggest the following fields in an export function:
- Movie name
- Release year
- Scanned (yes/no)
- Number of source files (1, 2, 3, etc)
Regarding file format why not borrow the xls-format (very common and compatible with a lot of free software including Numbers on the Mac OS), CSV is not good since comma is used in different ways in different regions. Tab-separated text could also be an option...
I would love to say the Mac App Store, but at the same time I am a bit afraid that it will take a long time to get approved.
I would think that the Mac App Store is the easiest way to test the waters with this piece of software. Apple have a pretty streamlined process for approval etc now. You also should have some in-house experience from the iPhone app...
There are a lot of, still, Plex faithful Mac users out there and I can promise you much higher purchase rate from these users (in part because an extremely low threshold when buying from the App Store...
Name rocks BTW