indexing status screen

[perrin21]

Hi, i find that music indexing is painfully slow, i also dont know when its being indexed as there is no progress bar or notification. Also albums with embedded album art sometimes (more often that not) dont show any art at all.

Firstly, is there any way to speed up the indexing process? And second, can someone please fix the art issue. A media center isnt a media center if it cant handle media effectively. I can see all of my music in the folder but there is no art on any of it. If i leave the computer for a while some songs start to appear in my other folder with art, some without. I dont get it? Why does it do things like this. Its confusing and very unintuitive.

[marcel]

there is no visual indication that scanning/indexing is going on since this is done frequently in the background. we are still contemplating on what the right UI behavior would be.

sometimes it can not resolve the media art so you have to manually try and recognize it.
we try and keep improving our metadata retrieval mechanisms so hopefully you will not have to use manual resolution too much

[perrin21]

Does the indexing use the full bandwidth of my internet connection. I am on a 20Meg Line and it still seems slow?

[C-Quel]

No but it will only index when theres no i/o activity afaik due to the sql db being locked due to threading?

This is how XBMC behaves...

But i could be wrong :) but it would explain why it takes so long.

[John Doe]

I know boxee have an advance indexing engine that works in the background..but it would be very handy if there was a index now option

Settings>General>Index now

To do the first time indexing.. when you first install boxee and add a 1TB source it will take some days before everything is index.. that's a little annoying

cheers,
John D.

[marcel]

something to think about ..forwarded to product :)

[mikeswitzer]

So the only issue I've had with the latest version of Boxee is (apart from Youtube not working anymore) that I've got several TV shows that aren't recognised by Boxee. It's not the Software's fault, as the information isn't on the website it gets it's data from - or I've named them incorrectly. My problem is that it takes me awhile to realised these aren't listed. What about a 'unknown media' option that lists all media Boxee has been unable to precisely identify. Then you can either identify the show through the normal method (if it's just the naming convention you've used, for example), or confirm the name/data to be used within Boxee manually - and then it will appear in the right area. This makes it much easier to see at a glance information that Boxee can't identify, as opposed to those things it just hasn't got around to indexing yet..

[agentlame]

+1... i have quite a few movies, and didn't realize for about a month after using boxee that about 5% were missing.

i was able to sort most about by either renaming them, or using the 'recognize video' option, but i would have noticed sooner, if there was a view like this.

[agentlame]

these two features should be lumped in to this idea:
http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=1000
http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=1208

i think it should be one screen:
settings > indexing

in said screen it should show you the progress it's made,
offer the option to 'index now'
and list the files that have failed and offer the 'recognize' option.

[lladnaar]

i think it should be one screen:
settings > indexing

in said screen it should show you the progress it's made,
offer the option to 'index now'
and list the files that have failed and offer the 'recognize' option.

For the record, I love this idea.

While boxee's indexing works for me more often than it doesn't, the lack of control and feedback makes it feel more frustrating than rationally it should. This would be a very elegant solution.

[crankeye]

these two features should be lumped in to this idea:
http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=1000
http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=1208

i think it should be one screen:
settings > indexing

in said screen it should show you the progress it's made,
offer the option to 'index now'
and list the files that have failed and offer the 'recognize' option.

I'm going to have to second this idea. This feature would be extremely helpful as far understanding whats going on with my collection. I have such a large collection, its frustrating trying to understand whats being indexed, what needs to be indexed, and what couldn't be found.

Adding a menu in the settings would be a great idea. If your looking for ideas in regards to UI of the status display, take a look at Banshee (http://banshee-project.org/). They actually have a small box in the bottom left corner that shows the status of the metadata collection. Its useful, compact, and easy to understand.

[alextrob]

these two features should be lumped in to this idea:
http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=1000
http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=1208

i think it should be one screen:
settings > indexing

in said screen it should show you the progress it's made,
offer the option to 'index now'
and list the files that have failed and offer the 'recognize' option.

Thirded.

The lack of a progress indicator leaves everyone guessing about what is going on.

[killmickey]

these two features should be lumped in to this idea:
http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=1000
http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=1208

i think it should be one screen:
settings > indexing

in said screen it should show you the progress it's made,
offer the option to 'index now'
and list the files that have failed and offer the 'recognize' option.

I completely agree.

[perrin21]

these two features should be lumped in to this idea:
http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=1000
http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=1208

i think it should be one screen:
settings > indexing

in said screen it should show you the progress it's made,
offer the option to 'index now'
and list the files that have failed and offer the 'recognize' option.

only problem with the list is that mine would be about 3000 songs long. All of my songs are catalogued perfectly in itunes with art and everything but boxee ignores 80% of them like they dont exist.

[zerofx]

I agree with you perrin21 I have the same situation with my music. There are songs that Boxee has not found and sure it is running in the background but I really don't know what is left. As well my movie selection is very extensive and I don't know if it missed movies or not?

[nlenart]

only problem with the list is that mine would be about 3000 songs long. All of my songs are catalogued perfectly in itunes with art and everything but boxee ignores 80% of them like they dont exist.

Same here but about 4000 songs. If it is helpful to anyone, I discovered that pushing the 'a' button brings up a library status page. However, all this really does is frustrate me as I can sit there watching the number of unresolved entries steadily increase even though iTunes has categorized and labeled everything correctly, including the folder structure.

I second the idea that there is a manual option. Although I would say the easiest, most useful thing to do would be to directly import the folder structure, then resolve everything. While I think it is cool that boxee fetches art, covers, descriptions, etc., the primary point for me at least is to watch/listen to my library. I would love it if boxee just imported everything immediately based on the structure and names already present so I had access to it all, and then slowly resolved and updated them in the background.

Additionally, I apologize if this is a bit off-topic, but has anyone else noticed inconsistencies in the resolved names? For instance, I have "Panic at the Disco" and "Panic! at the Disco" as two separate artists; same thing with "e s Posthumous" and "E.S. Posthumous". Again, it would be nice to a manual override option :)

[HTDCANBF]

My 100gb collection which was tagged with AllMusicGuide info through WMP was indexed very well by leaving boxee open all night, but I would really appreciate a way to manually enter info for any media without it being over-written by the auto index.

This is the best media center software I've ever used! Keep up the great work there boxee guys! If this ported over to the game consoles, you would be HUGE!

[mupet0000]

I also want some sort of a progress update for indexing :)

[Scalpel78]

Agree! There should be some way to force indexing.

[mchelen]

there used to be a status screen available by hitting "a"
unsure if its gone or the shortcut changed

the best way to see the status is looking at the "recently added" section

you can force a media source update in the settings area, but it can still be a long time before all the media gets indexed

[DPK]

there used to be a status screen available by hitting "a"
unsure if its gone or the shortcut changedd

It was removed because it didn't meet quality standards of the Boxee team. It was a remnant of the xbmc project.

[dsbruin]

Since the 'a' shortcut was removed, how do you properly access that information now? I find the Boxee Beta on OSX is made *almost* completely unusable because of its "black box" indexing system. If it weren't for the file-browser menu where I can directly watch media files that mysterious aren't indexed [yet?], I wouldn't be using it anymore.

It would be great to just see a debug log or some way to tell the obvious stuff: if it has attempted to index a file, if it is waiting for IMDB connections, etc.

thanks-

[darcilicious]

How to turn on debug logs: http://support.boxee.tv/forums/49599/entries/43963

[dsbruin]

How to turn on debug logs: http://support.boxee.tv/forums/49599/entries/43963

Does that have library status information in it, perhaps periodically or something? (I have the log on and don't see that type of information). I found http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=12164 about library status, which is really what I'd like to see, however, "Browse --> Unresolved Videos" doesn't mean anything to me because I don't see an obvious "browse" menu... perhaps I'm missing something?

[darcilicious]

Does that have library status information in it, perhaps periodically or something? (I have the log on and don't see that type of information). I thought I saw another post with log entries related to indexing/scanning issues.


I found http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=12164 about library status, which is really what I'd like to see, however, "Browse --> Unresolved Videos" doesn't mean anything to me because I don't see an obvious "browse" menu... perhaps I'm missing something?

That's from the alpha -- that feature isn't currently available in the beta.

[DPK]

Advanced logging will allow you to see what exactly is being indexed as it is dumped to the boxee.log file. You'll also be able to see what is failing to be indexed.

[dsbruin]

I see some events in the log, but I can't seem to figure out a way to view the important logical groups like, "all media that doesn't have an IMDB match yet." Is this possible at all in Boxee, with debug logging or not?

[hutmacher]

these two features should be lumped in to this idea:
http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=1000
http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=1208

i think it should be one screen:
settings > indexing

in said screen it should show you the progress it's made,
offer the option to 'index now'
and list the files that have failed and offer the 'recognize' option.

a while back, i submitted a bit of an enhancement/new applet that would basically be a stand-alone background process to index boxee w/o the application running. i put it here:

http://getsatisfaction.com/boxee/topics/scan_media_libraries_without_running_boxee_backgro und_applet#reply_1764199

I just thought that it'd be nice to have the ability to run it in the background so you could check windows processors etc to see what it's doing (and add it to scheduler and all that jazz...)