mpbroker 0.2.0

Media Player Broker

README

NOTICE: this is a beta release, expect things to change (and soon)!

Media Player Broker (mpb) is an application that helps you play and track media you have watched over disparet locations. mpb keeps track of what you have played at Location A so when you are at Location B you can see what you have watched from either location to avoid digging through history command output over SSH. mpb is not a player itself, it can be configured to launch a player such as vlc, smplayer or others when you use the 'play' command.

The Need

I needed something that remembers what episode of MacGyver I had watched in one location so when I was in another location I could continue watching the next episode without digging through history output or keeping track of what was played where.

mpb consists of a CLI application (the client) and a database (couchdb). From the client you injest your media metadata. This extracts the file names from file paths and stores the data in the database. After injesting, you can list your media which shows you the media Item, whether it has been watched or not along with a Rating, Notes, and the Sources the item is available at. You can then use the play command along with the Item to watch the Item. After playback is completed you are prompted to mark the item as played/watched, Rate it and add Notes - all of which are used in the list command to show what you have already watched and what is new.

Setup

The following steps use a virtual environment for the application (which is recommended) but not required:

Note: APP_ROOT is the directory that contains the main.py file

• add a python virtual environment and activate:
  • in APP_ROOT; create virtualenv: python3 -m virtualenv .venv
  • in APP_ROOT; activate virtualenv: source .venv/bin/activate
• install requirements:
  • in APP_ROOT; install requirements pip install -r requirements.txt
  • deactivate virtualenv as you should no longer need it: deactivate
• create app symlink:
  • in APP_ROOT; ln -sf -T "$(pwd)/bin/mpb" "$HOME/bin/mpb"
  • note: you may want the link in something other than $HOME/bin/mpb, we recommend this directory if it is in your PATH, otherwise add it to PATH or adjust the symlink to wherever you need it (e.g. /usr/local/bin, etc.)

Configure

NOTICE:

• an example user_config.toml file can be found in the client/example directory
• if you do not want to use the standard locations and do not want to set a MPB_CONFIG_HOME envvar you can set MPB_CONFIG_HOME on the command line before calling mpb such as MPB_CONFIG_HOME=/opt/tmp ./main.py list 'The_Matrix')

To set up MBP you need to:

• create your user_config.toml file and place it in one of the following locations :
  • MPB_CONFIG_HOME
  • XDG_CONFIG_HOME/mpb
  • APPDATA/mpb
  • HOME/.config/mpb
• configure your user_config.toml file as needed
• ensure your mpb database is available
  • use the db-init command to initialize your db if it is a new instance!